Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/List of nearest exoplanets/archive3

The following is an archived discussion of a featured list nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured list candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The list was archived by Giants2008 via FACBot (talk) 00:33, 30 May 2016 (UTC) [1].[reply]

List of nearest exoplanets[edit]

Nominator(s): Nergaal (talk) 18:13, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

I am nominating this for featured list because I think it passes the FL criteria. I would appreciate any input. Nergaal (talk) 18:13, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose please seek an native English speaker for a thorough copyedit. The lead alone is full of problems, e.g. "Of the 133 stars within 50 light-years that are bright enough to be visible with the naked eye,[b][1] and only 20 have confirmed ...", "In 2015, the International Astronomical Union announced intention allow the public to vote on ...". These kinds of fundamental flaws should be sorted out well before a nomination arrives here. There are also sorting problems with the table, inconsistencies in accuracies, bizarre claims of precision and what, exactly, is "8==List=="? Clumsy and poorly prepared. The Rambling Man (talk) 20:54, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

You never stop amazing me how little good faith you like to assume. Thanks for the feedback though. Nergaal (talk) 21:05, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

It's not about good faith, you should know better than to have nominated something in this condition. The Rambling Man (talk) 10:45, 29 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose - Although I would like to reply in a constructive manner, the prose does need some serious work. The general issue appears to be grammatical in nature. Constant passive sentences, run-on sentences, difficult wording, are evident throughout the text. Let's breakdown 1 sentence at random:

"There is no official organization that acknowledges reports for the existence of exoplanets, but the Working Group on Extrasolar Planets of the International Astronomical Union adopted in 2003 a working definition limiting the upper masses of exoplanets below that where thermonuclear fusion of deuterium occurs."

Ok there are two distinct thoughts here, contained in one sentence. They don't appear to be related, and simply two sentences separated by a comma instead of a full stop. Second "acknowledges reports for the existence of exoplanets". What does this mean? They don't read reports of the existance of exoplanets? No agency makes lists of exoplanets? Is it true that NASA doesn't index exoplanets? I find that hard to believe. Next, what does the "exoplanets below that where thermonuclear fusion of deuterium occurs". Are we talking stars here? What is the point of this?... anyway I can go on but now you see the reason the previous user suggested an English speaker to copyedit. For example, "adopted in 2003 a working definition" is much harder to read than "adopted a working definition in 2003". It's very difficult to read as is, and I regretfully must oppose. I hope this helps. Mattximus (talk) 23:49, 28 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

@Mattximus: When I wrote it I was thinking something like the International Astronimical Union deals with things like dwarf planets, satellites, and minor planets. Until about half a year there was no "official" list of exoplanets, but then IAU took a poll for ~50 exoplanets. I am not sure how serious the chosen names are, since I cannot think of an "official" catalogue. NASA lists confirmed planets, but not sure how official is that. Any idea how to rephrase that? And yes, if you get something 12 times the size of jupiter you get into brown dwarfs, which are like kinda mini-stars that only burn deuterium, no hydrogen. Nergaal (talk) 01:24, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The writing needs serious work, not just that one sentence. I recommended a change but it was ignored. Sentences like this one:

Among the confirmed exoplanets within 50 light-years, more than half were found to revolve around their star closer and complete an orbit faster than Mercury does around the Sun, many of them with highly eccentric orbits.

Are incredibly hard to read. It can be fixed with something like "More than half of the confirmed explanets within 50 light-years of the sun orbit..." But even then the rest of the sentence has grammar errors... Gosh, this needs a good copyedit before being nominated. Mattximus (talk) 03:26, 8 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on table sorting for me, the following columns do not sort correctly: Name, Label, Semi-major axis, Eccentricity. Also do not understand why different degrees of precision are used within the same column for many aspects. Also no reason for References to be sortable. Statistics section is borderline trivia, and nothing that isn't already in the main table, plus e.g. why would the "Total" row move during a sort? The Rambling Man (talk) 19:02, 30 April 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for catching all that!

I think I fixed the label, sm axis, and ecc. columns; but I am not sure what issues you see for Name, which ones look off?
Precision: the sources give greatly varying amounts of uncertainties. I tried to decrease the amount of sig figs for stuff that are overly precise; for example for mass I tried to give only 2 or 3 sig figs, but some entries have a single sig fig so I left it at that.
Refs are not sortable anymore.
Which things in the stats section you think are (most) unnecessary?

Nergaal (talk) 22:23, 1 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

Closing note: This candidate has been archived, but there may be a delay in bot processing of the close. Please see WP:FLC/ar, and leave the {{featured list candidates}} template in place on the talk page until the bot goes through. Giants2008 (Talk) 21:23, 29 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.