Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight

WikiProject Spaceflight

Main page   Members   Assessment   Open tasks   The Downlink   Recognized content   Discussion   Portal Inspiration Mars Foundation File:Inspiration Mars Foundation working logo.png The logo we're using now, and the variants of it available on Commons, do not appear on the IMFoundation flickerstream or its website. Do we have any evidence this is actually the logo? -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 09:14, 3 April 2013 (UTC) The image description says it's 'own work' by EricMachmer on Commons as a 'working concept'. I suspect this image is simply outdated. Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 09:43, 3 April 2013 (UTC) The problem is, is that it is unreferenced, so falls afoul of WP:OR and WP:V. If neither their flickerstream nor their website use it, then it also can be considered inaccurate, as it isn't the logo that the foundation uses, so shouldn't be in the infobox, it should be in the history section. -- 65.92.180.137 (talk) 04:48, 6 April 2013 (UTC) Then be bold and change it Cabe6403 (Talk•Sign) 13:05, 6 April 2013 (UTC) Y DoneIt appears to have been fixed by someone now; entirely new image/logo is on the article. N2e (talk) 04:13, 26 April 2013 (UTC) Except the new logo, which is on Commons, appears to be a copyvio. - The Bushranger One ping only 05:55, 26 April 2013 (UTC) wikidata I'd like to scope out how we might use wikidata in project infoboxes. It would seem a good thing to use for satellite articles. I'm not finding wikidata guidelines massively helpful. There's Wikidata infoboxes task force. I think we would have terms for satellites (similar to planets), and events for missions - could we have the same in one infobox? I've asked on the wikidata wiki for advice. Secretlondon (talk) 09:58, 27 April 2013 (UTC) Actually Russian wiki seems to have started. There are wikidata objects for COSPAR ID, launch vehicle and SCN. We have Kosmos 419, although I don't think it's used in the article. Secretlondon (talk) 11:59, 27 April 2013 (UTC) Wikidata space proposal Secretlondon (talk) 12:08, 27 April 2013 (UTC) I am brand new to Wikidata and don't yet have a full appreciation for how Wikidata should be used, or how it will be used. Having said that, I think that it willcould have a major effect on spaceflight-related articles. Therefore, it seems to me that it is important that and that WikiProject Spaceflight editors from the English Wikipedia Spaceflight project get over there and participate in the creation and delineation of the data element tables that will could very well affect us in a big way over time. I just did so, for the first time, today. N2e (talk) 14:15, 27 April 2013 (UTC) After reading WDGraham's comments, I've moderated my comments above. I have no idea if the existence of Wikidata—and the emergent use of it on Wikipedia—will be a good thing or not. I'm pretty sure that we will have to deal with it, one way or the other. It is probably one of those things where we can do so proactively, or else we may get hit with reacting to its use later on. N2e (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC) While it is useful for things such as interwikis, I have huge misgivings about using WikiData for actual article content. Firstly, there are certain areas where sources conflict and as a result disagreements or disputes can arise. This is hard enough to resolve for one site with one language, so on a multilingual project that's going to be a clusterf**k. Secondly, I'm not entirely sure how the referencing system works, but it seems very user-unfriendly, and I suspect that this will encourage lazy referencing. I don't know if you can put a {{cn}} tag on WikiData... Thirdly there's the question of dialect: for example, someone has put an entry on the Mars 7 page that it is "part of" the "Mars program", however our article on Mars 7 is written in British English (where the spelling is "programme"), so is that going to force the WikiData editor's dialect preference on all associated articles? Finally, I cannot, for example, correct the "launch vehicle" field on the Kosmos 419 page to say "Proton-K/D", and if I could I'm pretty sure it would mess up the linking - and if we were to put in separate fields for rocket and upper stage, how could we put that into the infobox? That said, I feel there are a select few fields in Template:Infobox spacecraft (|talk|history|links|watch|logs) which could benefit from its use: Launch date/time (in UTC per last October's discussion - this would actually help standardisation), landing time/date (if applicable), possibly reentry date, SATCAT number, International Designation (as long as editors agree to avoid ridiculous anachronistic designations such as 1957-001B for Sputnik 1, and pseudo-designations like 2013-F01A for Intelsat 27), and orbital parameters for satellites which are in their operational orbits. --W. D. Graham 20:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC) In short, I think we should limit the use of WikiData to situations where there can be absolutely no possible scope for ambiguity, interpretation, preference or dispute. Mostly quantitative ones... --W. D. Graham 20:30, 27 April 2013 (UTC) WD -- I've moderated my comments above, based on the perfectly plausible rationale you presented. How do you suggest we, WikiProject Spaceflight, respond to this new capability in the Wikiworld? Is there something we should do to attempt to develop a broader consensus, or maybe test some limited subset of it on a few articles, or what? Cheers. N2e (talk) 23:46, 27 April 2013 (UTC) I've been playing with it on Kosmos 2485. I think we have the basis of a satcat with this, though we lose some detail. Secretlondon (talk) 14:38, 28 April 2013 (UTC) I've added Proton-K/D to Kosmos 419. You do it by having more than one entry for launch vehicle. I've also added various pads in Baikonur and Plesetsk to deal with the problem with losing detail. Secretlondon (talk) 17:59, 8 May 2013 (UTC) Infobox standardisation The discussion about WikiData finally gave me enough motivation to put forward a loosely-related proposal that I've been meaning to bring up for a while, but haven't got around to. We currently have about five infobox templates doing essentially the same thing: our main infobox is {{Infobox spacecraft}}, but there's also {{Infobox space mission}} which is a mess of redundant parameters and mostly used for manned missions, {{Infobox space telescope}} which has an over-detailed instruments section optimised for astronomical missions, {{Infobox cargo spacecraft}} which is a derivative of infobox spacecraft optimised for cargo missions to space stations, and finally {{Infobox space expedition}} for resident crews aboard space stations. Each of these have slight formatting differences, and varying syntax. I believe that we would be better off with a single, standardised and simplified template. I also think we should remove the cargo and instruments sections from the infoboxes in favour of covering them in the article body. I've drawn up a prototype at User:WDGraham/Infobox spaceflight - this is a work in progress, and I'm still testing it to find and fix bugs, but I would welcome some feedback on a) whether you would support standardisation and b) how the prototype looks/works, and c) what should be changed. --W. D. Graham 20:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC) I like standardisation. I think I'd still like to be able to say in an infobox that a satellite has a infrared telescope of x diameter, if that's really what it consists of. I could see that the instrument section could get too much detail, but I think for simple craft at least it seems quite important. I would always cover it in the body too, but I'd cover most of the text in the infobox in the body.Secretlondon (talk) 21:03, 28 April 2013 (UTC) It would be fairly easy to add parameters for instruments to the new box if necessary; its just that such sections could get very long for large spacecraft, and since we're looking to standardise, we should be trying to encourage consistency between articles on larger and smaller spacecraft. What parameters would you be looking to retain for instruments? --W. D. Graham 22:30, 28 April 2013 (UTC) I've been thinking about the Soviet satellites I write about that really only have one instrument, something like Kosmos 2479 which is pretty much an infrared telescope in space. For complex modern craft we can talk about it in the article, but if it is just an orbiting telescope I think the infobox should mention the telescope. However I think this is much less important than standardising parameters and linking in with wikidata. Secretlondon (talk) 23:05, 28 April 2013 (UTC) I've not really answered your question - it would be one parameter which would be free-form text. It would be used when a craft has one main instrument. Secretlondon (talk) 23:07, 28 April 2013 (UTC) I'd also like to throw my support behind this project. Having a single template that can be reconfigured in this way would much simplify editing.Graham1973 (talk) 01:36, 29 April 2013 (UTC) Seems like a good proposal. I'm for anything that supports clarity and simplification, as it is, some of the infoboxes are on the confusing side with way too many parameters that don't apply, which only encourages editors who may not know what a field/parm is for to use it "incorrectly." I put incorrectly inside quotes because it is often hard to know. Maybe we should ensure that some brief instructions are left for the editor on appropriate use, inside the template, possibly as hidden comments. Good luck. N2e (talk) 11:38, 30 April 2013 (UTC) It should go without saying that clear, useful instructions need to be provided in the /doc page that goes with every template. And I have another comment: I believe it should be called Template:Infobox space flight. The difference may seem trivial, but I think this is clearer usage; the compound word spaceflight refers to the business of flying in space, while space flight clearly refers to a single flight in space, which is the intent of this template. JustinTime55 (talk) 15:53, 30 April 2013 (UTC) I disagree; both "spaceflight" and "space flight" are correct terms for both meanings, however in both contexts "space flight" is somewhat archaic and "spaceflight" is the most common term. --W. D. Graham 16:39, 30 April 2013 (UTC) ┌────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘Since the response seems to have been positive, I've moved it to Template:Infobox spaceflight (|talk|history|links|watch|logs) to begin rolling it out. I've added back the instrument and transponder sections, and I'll restore the cargo section for applicable articles. Kosmos 1484 is the first article with the new infobox. --W. D. Graham 15:53, 5 May 2013 (UTC) Looks good. Few thoughts: I like end of mission, but wonder if we should have start of mission. I've been trying to do GLONASS satellites and they have a published start date that is obviously after their launch date. I've also been wondering how to handle satellite names/numbers - Kosmos 2456 is known in GLONASS as 730. I've put it in mission identifier but that's not quite right - maybe it belongs in name? Secretlondon (talk) 19:18, 5 May 2013 (UTC) I've added a new field, "entered_service", to cover this. Could be useful for GOES too, those things can spend years in orbit before they are brought into the operational constellation. Infobox spacecraft's mission_identifier field was (I think) supposed to be for a mission patch/insignia, but it was hardly ever used. I put the "spacecraft" field into the new template to handle serial numbers - so I would use "|spacecraft=Uranan-M No.730" in the new template. (By the way, it says 733 in the article) --W. D. Graham 01:15, 6 May 2013 (UTC) Thanks. These articles need to be made by script really, humans make too many errors.. Secretlondon (talk) 10:17, 6 May 2013 (UTC) I used a semi-automated program when I wrote the DS articles. I was about halfway through before I realised I'd put the Perigee and Apogee in the wrong way around... --W. D. Graham 23:42, 7 May 2013 (UTC) Template:Cubesats2012 {{Cubesats2012}} has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 23:19, 7 May 2013 (UTC) MAVEN (spacecraft) MAVEN (spacecraft) has been proposed to be renamed, see talk:MAVEN (spacecraft) -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 12:00, 9 May 2013 (UTC) NTRS is back online Although not all documents are there.--Craigboy (talk) 23:00, 9 May 2013 (UTC) File:All PZT Mach effect thruster test unit.jpg File:All PZT Mach effect thruster test unit.jpg has been nominated for deletion -- 65.94.76.126 (talk) 07:53, 23 May 2013 (UTC)