Template talk:Andromeda (constellation)

Latest comment: 5 years ago by PhilipTerryGraham in topic Navbox design

Unknown objects?

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I couldn't find anything about two objects in this template:

M31V J004437.99+412923.6

M 1-1

While the first is a totally mysterious object, the second could be from Rudolph Minkowski's catalogue of planetary nebulae, but I still don't find anything about it using Google. Should I remove them or do you have any information? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Psyluke (talkcontribs) 16:32, 3 December 2018 (UTC)Reply

Requested move 3 February 2019

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The following discussion is an archived discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.

Moved, per Netoholic's alternative proposal. Don't worry, I'll sort out the right links. bd2412 T 20:32, 13 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

– It would make much more sense to change the scope of these navboxes to encompass not only just stars in a constellation, but all deep sky objects and miscellaneous objects and astronomical events in a constellation. Some of these templates, such as {{Stars of Carina}} and {{Stars of Cygnus}} already do so, but do not reflect such in their names. The scopes and names of all of these templates should all be standardised and harmonised to this new approach as well. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 04:48, 3 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

@Netoholic: So, you're actually supporting a move, but to a different naming scheme than originally proposed. I wouldn't mind this naming scheme per the guidelines you cited. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 06:03, 3 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
Eh, I fully oppose the original move proposal, nor any other move except my alternative, so no and you should de-bold the misleading implication of support. -- Netoholic @ 11:54, 3 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Netoholic: Your proposal is to move "to match the associated main articles", so you do support my proposal to move the templates to a more appropriate name. I proposed that the names be "standardised and harmonised" in some way, not specifically proposing any name. An oppose would be wanting to keep the status quo. This is why I'm begging you to change to the more appropriate "Support the move, but to a different title", which is a more accurate description that's less likely to lead to people who didn't actually read your argument opposing the move citing you. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 23:20, 3 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: perhaps the first discussion should be whether the scope of these templates should be expanded to cover non-stellar objects within each constelation, and then the best name will be more apparent. Some of the templates have been expanded already (eg. {{Stars of Cygnus}}, some have not (eg. {{Stars of Taurus}}. I find the expanded versions, at least for some constellations such as Cygnus, to be very large and intimidating. It isn't clear if there is a real benefit to expanding them. Do readers about a star, for example, want to quickly go and read about galaxies in the same constellation? Just to come back to the renaming question, even though I said I didn't want to yet, the templates that have already been expanded have also been re-titled, for example to Cygnus Constellation, which might serve as a guide to the template name. Lithopsian (talk) 14:30, 4 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Lithopsian: I'd say out of pure convenience it would be better; naturally people would like to know the kind of objects one can find in a constellation, not just exclusively stars. Most navboxes that do already have a merged scope don't have that many non-star objects to begin with; for example, {{Stars of Norma}} has only five articles on non-star objects and {{Stars of Crux}} only has three. Having completely seperate navboxes for lists of only three, five, or a similar small number of articles would be quite the joke, in my opinion. You may find {{Stars of Cygnus}} large and intimidating because it is completely overloaded with redlinks, which really shouldn't be in a navigational box, since those articles don't exist. Guidelines on this topic state that "Red links may be used on navigation templates with links to existing articles, but they cannot be excessive." This is how the navbox ideally should look like, with much cleaner grouping and only links to actual, existing articles on Wikipedia. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 02:59, 5 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
Perhaps it would help to make the template auto-collapsed if we're going to make them all twice the size? I realise that this is not the original move discussion, but the move question is probably moot if there is no desire to expand the templates in the first place. Lithopsian (talk) 14:19, 5 February 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Lithopsian: No, the discussion is on changing the scope mainly, so you're right to discuss it. most of the navboxes won't be twice the size. As mentioned above, some of the navboxes will only gain as little as three or five wikilinks. Even then, {{Navbox}} naturally autocollapses if there is a second navbox on the page. One can also set any normal {{Navbox}} to state=autocollapse if an editor feels that it is unnecessary to have it expanded, i.e. in a stub article where it is the only navbox on the page. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 00:08, 6 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

Counter-proposal list

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--В²C 19:51, 13 February 2019 (UTC)Reply

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page. No further edits should be made to this section.
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@Lithopsian: I wouldn’t mind a clarification on what made the new version of the navbox a “mess”, and why a version of the navbox which has dozens and dozens of redirects to List of stars in Andromeda, has many wikilinks that do not share the article titles, has entire rows dedicated to only one to three links that could be better consolidated into larger groups, and is missing a number of unlinked stars and deep-sky objects, is somehow better. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 15:51, 3 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

If objects are missing, then by all means they should be added. I apologise if I removed such objects, but there didn't seem to be a reliable way to undo the widespread changes except as a single block. As for merging naked-eye BS stars into "other", etc., it is unhelpful because the whole navigation box is sorted in a rough order of "noticeability": Bayer -> Flamsteed -> Variable star designation -> BSC -> HD, etc. This used to be consistent across all the constellation navigation templates. It is now getting progressively broken for no good reason that I can see. If there is just one entry in a group then so be it. The redlinks were present for a reason, and if there were so many that they were overwhelming the readability of the article, then they should have been commented out individually. Essentially all of them are present in the related list articles, and redirects to those lists would be more helpful than simply removing whole swathes of notable stars. If you don't understand what a navigation template is doing, it might be best to ask around a bit before mangling it. At the very worst, a complete overhaul of the entire navigation template system for a project deserves some discussion at that project, ie. Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Astronomical_objects. Lithopsian (talk) 15:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Lithopsian: We're already having a discussion on this page, so we might as well continue here. Ultimately the purpose of a navigational template is to navigate between articles on Wikipedia, and a navbox fails its goal if it has numerous links to articles which simply don't exist, whether red links or redirects. The guidelines on navboxes state that "red links and redirects should normally be avoided unless they are very likely to be developed into articles." It has been years and most of the non-articles that either currently occupy or had occupied this template in the past were either deleted due to notability concerns or were never created in the first place. If these are supposedly "notable stars", why are there no articles on them, and why should the burden be on the navbox to include red links or redirects in their place only for no article to be created for years and years to come, much like the red links and redirects that used to occupy this template for many years prior. Editors should ideally write the article first before linking them, and the guidelines on redlinking state not to "create red links to articles that are not likely to be created and retained in Wikipedia". It also doesn't make sense that certain links in this template say it links to a page titled one thing, and then leads them to a page with a completely different title. For example, a link to a page named HD 221246 should not be linked as "HR 8925" as it is currently. This is another failure to provide navigation between articles on Wikipedia, as the reader is being actively misled. Again, the burden should not be on the navbox if there is a hierarchy of star designations that are not being enforced on the articles themselves – more productive resolutions for this would be either a mass move proposal or bold page moves if you believe that pages such as "HD 221246" should instead be named "HR 8925". Rather than confusing readers trying to navigate between said articles by renaming them only through navbox wikilinks, rename the articles themselves. These navigational templates should not be serving as proxies for articles such as List of stars in Andromeda and opinions on star names, they should be serving their intended purpose as navigational tools for existing articles on Wikipedia as titled. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 00:36, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
What's your objection to having a wider discussion before changing 88 templates? If the reasons are so compelling, then there will be a clear consensus and then you can change every template with no complaints. You never know, people might come up with even better ideas that can be incorporated. Lithopsian (talk) 13:24, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
@Lithopsian: You're putting words into my mouth. I never said I objected to a wider discussion. I've left a notice at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomical objects pointing to this discussion if that satisfies you. – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 14:17, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: If we want to provide more consistency, we should be using a higher level Constellation NavBox template to standardize the layout. Perhaps we should try an experiment with a draft template? I agree with culling the numerous red links; if a new star article is created, we can always add it back in. Praemonitus (talk) 16:30, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment: I feel like I should comment here, because lately I've been expanding the constellation navboxes so that they include non-stellar objects. I wasn't the one to start this: StringTheory11, who is now retired, started it but stopped at the C's, and I've picked up since. So obviously my view is that the constellation navboxes should include non-stellar objects as well, since I don't really see a reason why a navbox would limit itself to just stars. As for the problem of excessively large infoboxes: I have noticed this before, especially with one like {{Dorado}}, which includes a large number of NGC objects that are open clusters. Because the standard of shortening NGC objects to just their numbers only applies for galaxies, it makes the open cluster section extremely large. However, I don't see it as a reason to not expand the navboxes. My personal view is that it's an NGC problem: the NGC notability guideline is (IMHO) too lax anyway, and results in many boring articles along the lines of "NGC xxx is a galaxy in the constellation X". Loooke (talk) 22:59, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Reply
  • Comment 2: Let's keep this discussion separate. I thought the set indices and lists were supposed to be next to the "Stars" category, which was why I started moving some of them (like [right here https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Template:Aquarius_(constellation)&diff=prev&oldid=913593069]). But I am not sure which option is the best: having the lists at the top, bottom, or next to the "Stars" category. I'm willing to redo all the changes I've made here. Loooke (talk) 22:59, 5 September 2019 (UTC)Reply

I've decided to act upon Praemonitus's idea of a standardised navbox template that these constellation navboxes can use in order to enforce some design consistencies across a group of very inconsistently-designed navboxes. The result is called {{Constellation navbox}}, and I'm moving this discussion to Template talk:Constellation navbox#Design! – PhilipTerryGraham (talk · articles · reviews) 03:25, 7 September 2019 (UTC)Reply