Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Formation and evolution of the Solar System

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

The article was promoted 01:51, 19 May 2008.

Formation and evolution of the Solar System[edit]

I'm nominating this article for featured article because it has undergone massive improvement since achieving GA status. I would like to make it a co-nom between myself, Ruslik0, and Ashill. Thank you. Serendipodous 16:08, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Co-nominator: I indeed co-nominate this article. ASHill (talk | contribs) 16:23, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Alignment fixed, and I added a source for Image:Voyager_2_Neptune_and_Triton.jpg. ASHill (talk | contribs) 19:05, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I added a perhaps-slightly-sketchy source for Image:Pierre-Simon Laplace.jpg. ASHill (talk | contribs) 19:55, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, although obviously not the direct source of this copy of the image, that "source" provides what the spirit of IUP is effectively asking for (confirmation of copyright status - in this case, a 1842 creation date to support the PD-Art tag). Good enough for me. ЭLСОВВОLД talk 20:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support Comments, leaning toward support. This is a very good article already and only minor tweaks should be needed to get it up to par. I'm going to have accretion nightmares for some years to come now. Some examples:
Issues resolved. --Laser brain (talk) 21:01, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The lead is promising. As a layperson, I was confused about the inclusion of this sentence: "Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s and the discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s, theories of planetary formation have been both challenged and refined to account for new observations." I'm not sure what you are trying to say in relation to the topic of the article.
    • For some reason the word "end" at the end of the lead doesn't sit well with me. Do astronomers really say a solar system will "end"? The word implies a time period to me ("Your time has ended") not a physical entity. You wouldn't say, "My neighbor ended when someone shot him."
    • "Sir Fred Hoyle elaborated on this premise by showing that all the elements in the universe heavier than helium were in fact created..." The phrase "in fact" is generally superfluous.
    • "This means that Uranus and Neptune probably formed closer to the Sun—near or even between Jupiter and Saturn—and later migrated outward as discussed below." I would avoid language like "as discussed below" because it is unlikely to be checked and changed if the article ever undergoes splitting or reorganization.
    • Later, you do it like this: "One such giant collision is believed to have formed the Moon (see below)" where the "see below" is a wikilink to the heading. I like that a bit better, and you definitely need consistency in the cross-references.
    • "Even so, the Solar System will continue to evolve as time goes on." Can remove "continue to" or "as time goes on".
    • I read several sentences that contain multiple constructions like "eventually", "over time", and "as time goes on" that become redundant. Please read through for these. Example: "However, over time, the probability of a chance encounter with a star increases, and planetary disruption eventually becomes all but inevitable."
      • Actually, I'd like to suggest that the sentence should read "cumulative probability", just to be clear that it doesn't mean the incremental probability.—RJH (talk) 01:33, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • I've made the change. While I do think it's appropriate, I fear that the term may be jargonny enough that it only helps those to whom it would have been clear anyway that the cumulative probability is what is meant (while readers who might be confused wouldn't be helped by the term). ASHill (talk | contribs) 02:04, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd prefer to see Notes and References split up (see Ima Hogg for example); it's a much cleaner look and easier to follow. Not a deal breaker.
    • The Further reading heading should be expanded a bit if possible - are there really no other major works on this subject that you haven't used but that someone might like to read? --Laser brain (talk) 19:02, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • Re lead: I reworded the sentence slightly to now read "Since the dawn of the space age in the 1950s and the discovery of extrasolar planets in the 1990s, the models have been both challenged and refined to account for new observations." Planetary formation, as it said before, wasn't mentioned beforehand and thus may have been out of context and confusing. Does this help?
      • Re Notes and References: There are a ton of sources referenced in this article; every ref footnote is a different source with the exception of the Zeilik & Gregory textbook, which is already split off as you suggest. (For comparison, Ima Hogg has just 11 different sources listed in the References section.) I'm not sure that implementing that suggestion would really help clarity for this article. Or am I missing your point? ASHill (talk | contribs) 19:17, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
        • Whoops, I see what you mean. Disregard that comment please. --Laser brain (talk) 19:29, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      • I've given the article another read-through/copy edit with attention to extraneous wording and the other writing issues you've raised; I think it's improved. I don't think one sentence you mentioned ("However, over time, the probability of a chance encounter with a star increases, and planetary disruption eventually becomes all but inevitable.") does have redundant wording in the context; I can't see a word to trim without changing the meaning. ASHill (talk | contribs) 03:59, 13 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Citation formatting concerns resolved SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Recurring note: Because these recurring issues have come up in about half a dozen (at least) of the recent planet FACs, I'm going to mention it up front this time. I do not understand why we see these recurring issues from the same nominators on multiple FACs, causing reviewers to type the same information and ask for the same corrections repeatedly. 1) The article mixes citation templates with the cite family of templates, causing inconsistent citation and breaching WP:CITE#Citation styles. 2) The article uses incorrect endashes in the citations, and you can ask Brighterorange to fix them. 3) Dates are incorrectly or inconsistently formatted in the citations (see WP:MOSDATE) and there is also 4) inconsistent formatting on author names (please pick one method and stick to it, see crit 2c). After so many FACs, I do not understand why this recurs; perhaps working with someone who understands citation and MoS before presenting FACs would help, or perhaps the message hasn't been clear in the past FACs. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:58, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    1. The article uses the citation template for a very limited, specific purpose which I do not believe causes any inconsistency, as we discussed at Talk:Formation and evolution of the Solar System#Citation templates. The citation template is only used in the Further Reading section and thus does not cause inconsistent formatting within the References section, where cite xxx is universally used. Moreover, the inputs to the templates are chosen so that the citation templates in Further reading produce the same output style as cite book. The citation template is used to allow Harvard citations of Zeilik & Gregory, a textbook which is cited repeatedly with a variety of page numbers. If there are any citations which appear inconsistently formatted within this article due to the differing templates, I will certainly fix it, but I don't see any examples of that.
    2. Brighterorange did run his script, and I'd appreciate if you could point out a remaining incorrect endash as an example so we can fix it.
    3. I fixed a few dates that were not correctly formated. I believe now that all full dates in the references are autoformatted.
    4. The author formatting is, I believe, consistent: We use First M. Last, if available, or F. M. Last if the full first name is not available. I do see we missed that some authors are separated by semicolons and some by commas; I'll fix that. ASHill (talk, contribs) 20:25, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      Author formatting fixed; removed all semicolons and 'and's. (I think I got them all.) ASHill (talk, contribs) 20:42, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
      1. (edit conflict) The bibliographic style in Further reading differs from the rest of the article, giving an unprofessional appearance. If that is the only place where citation is used, why can't they be swtiched to cite book, to agree with the rest of the article? What is accomplished here by mixing styles?
      2. Thank you for contacting Brighterorange this time; perhaps the problem occurs because other editors add citations after he goes through, or because you all don't realize that his script can only detect numbers, not letters? They seem fine now (or my eyesight isn't detecting what it did last time through :-).
      3. I don't spot any remaining date issues, thanks!
      4. I see the article is inuse and you're quickly cleaning up these issues, but the author thing is still very unprofessional looking. One reference refers to H. F. Levison, while the very next reference refers to Harold F. Levison. Notice that almost all med/bio articles (which use Diberri's template) consistently return Levison HF for Pubmed entires and eliminating the messy punctuation and inconsistency in names (just a suggestion); it would be stupendous if these astronomy article would pick a consistent author format and stick with it, for professional bibliographic formatting. See autism, for example, as a sample of clean and consistent author citation.
        I apologize for taking up so much space on your FAC, but it's important to get to the bottom of this once and for all, as it recurs. I'll cap all of this off once everything is resolved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:51, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • (outdent; edit conflict) Re point 1: Because Harvard citations are repeatedly used in footnotes to refer to the textbook listed in Further reading. I wish cite journal was compatible with Harvard citations, but it's not. I think the utility of wikilinking the harvard citation is more useful for a reader reading the references than the format drawbacks of using different templates and, as I mentioned above, I've massaged the templates to produce what I believe are identical formats anyway. If others feel strongly otherwise, the Further reading could be converted to cite book and the Harvard citations could lose their wikilinks.
  • Re point 4: That's because in one article, the author lists his name as "Harold F. Levison" and in the other he lists his name as "H. F. Levison". We cite authors the way they name themselves in the cited work, and we obviously can't assume that H. F. Levison really is Harold F. Levison if that's not the name he uses in the first work. ASHill (talk, contribs) 21:03, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • They are not identical formats: pls look more closely. That is exactly the point raised in WP:CITE#Citation styles. There is a consistent way to refer to repeat use of book sources and page numbers without resorting to an inconsistent biblio style, which is to just type "Zeilik & Gregory (1998, pp. 118–120)" between ref tags. If the Harvnb system and the citation templates can't get in sync with the cite family of templates, they can't both be used in one article. If that little blue link is so important to a few editors, you should all go over to the citation template and argue for the few small changes needed to bring them in line; otherwise, per WIAFA, this article needs a consistent biblio (by the way, one of the references is listed as Further reading, which is incorrect). If you must use Harvnb's, the entire article should use the citation template and not the cite family; that is what WP:CITE and WIAFA crit 2c says. At least on the authors you've gotten rid of the rest of the inconsistency, so that's an improvement. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:15, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Where do we use all caps? There's one referenced article that uses them in the title (HUBBLE SPACE TELESCOPE/NICMOS Imaging of Disks and Envelopes around Very Young Stars), but we need to use the same capitalization as they do for their title, ugly and inappropriate as it is. (I've been bugged by that and rechecked the original paper multiple times.) ASHill (talk, contribs) 21:31, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • No, you don't; that's the point of MOS:CAPS#All caps. And incorrectly listing a reference as Further reading doesn't allow skirting of 2c, which requires consistent citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:34, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • The sources listed in Further reading are intended as Further reading, per the guideline: "[I]f an item used as a reference covers the topic beyond the scope of the article, and has significant usefulness beyond verification of the article, you may want to include it [in Further reading] as well. This also makes it easier for users to identify all the major recommended resources on a topic." I've renamed Further reading to References, renamed References to Notes, and removed the Further reading source that wasn't explicitly cited. ASHill (talk, contribs) 21:50, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Indeed, I missed the author order in the further reading. To get technical, that's because of the use of the last=and first=parameters, which is consistent between citation and cite xxx, but which is not the author order we're using on this article. I discovered Template:Anchor, which I have used to put the further reading in cite book templates with author=rather than first=and last=and still get the anchor. I believe the concerns are now addressed. ASHill (talk, contribs) 21:41, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for the speedy response, Ashill; I'm almost reluctant to cap these comments, as I'm afraid these same issues will appear on the next astronomy FAC, but I'll keep my fingers crossed :-) By the way, Ashill, I've had to alter your sig here, since a bar in sigs bombs out caps; would you mind changing your sig in prefs to remove the bar ?? That will be a recurring problem at FAC, since commentary you make after the bar will be lost if anyone caps opposes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:57, 12 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Issues resolved, Ealdgyth - Talk 01:56, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Comments

Otherwise sources look okay. Still on the road, so didn't check links. Ealdgyth - Talk 02:46, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I can sub the link with Mirriam Webster online; it gives the same information.
Probably a good choice to back it up with MW. A quick perusal of the other site didn't give me much information on where they got their information, etc. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
* I'm assuming the author of http://www.gps.caltech.edu/~mbrown/planetlila/moon/index.html is a noted astronomer?
Sarcasm aside, that page is the personal page of Mike Brown, the astronomer who discovered the object it describes. You can't get more notable than that.
I'm sorry you thought I was being sarcastic/flippant/whatever, but it was a genuine question. Not everyone is an expert in every field, and better to ask than to assume. I had a feeling it was someone notable inthe field, but wanted to double check. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
* Same for this site http://www.dtm.ciw.edu/sheppard/satellites/?
Scott S. Sheppard is a faculty member of the Carnegie Institute of Washington. He has published papers in Science.
* And http://www.astro.washington.edu/balick/WFPC2/?
Bruce Balick is chair of the Department of Astronomy at the University of Washington.Serendipodous 07:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I struck the last three, and will be happy to strike the first when it's backed up with MW. Ealdgyth - Talk 12:05, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
It already is. Serendipodous 12:50, 14 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
Issues resolved, ErgoSum88 (talk) 22:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comments - I made a few minor changes for clarification. Although I'll need further clarification for this issue:
    • Planetary migration "The migration of the outer planets is also necessary to account for the existence and properties of the Kuiper belt, scattered disc and Oort cloud,[26] regions beyond Neptune sparsely populated with icy bodies which lacked enough mass density to consolidate into a planet, as accretion in its region was too slow to enable planetary formation before the solar nebula dispersed." I'm not sure if the "accretion in its region" is referring to only Neptune or the whole area of the Kuiper belt, scattered disc, and Oort cloud. If so I would change the commas after ref 26 to parentheses or em dashes and change "its region" to "these regions" to for clarification.

Also, for future reference, it would be nice to use the {{convert}} template whenever using metric units (or vice versa) to placate those who are familiar with imperial units (unless there is a compelling reason not to). This also conveniently places non-breaking spaces between numbers and units automatically. Overall, an extremely good job and one of the best FA candidates I have seen yet (although I haven't been here for that long), very well-written with engaging prose and asthetically pleasing! A !vote of support will be forthcoming as soon as this minor issue is resolved. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 03:01, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed, that was hard to follow. Planetary migration should be more clear now. ASHill (talk | contribs) 03:57, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support A well-composed article. This one deserves to be on the front page. --ErgoSum88 (talk) 22:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support—A good article with only a smattering of minor issues.
Issues resolved RJH (talk) 17:22, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    • The notes have inconsistent date formats: 2008-02-03; 21 August 2001; July 21, 2006; December 31, 1998; 28 January 2005 and 23 April 2008. Please pick one and stick with it.
    • Something bothers me about the text surrounding the sentence: "T Tauri stars have far stronger stellar winds than more stable, older stars." It doesn't quite flow as well as it should, jumping from mass migration to the strength of T Tauri stellar winds and then back to the solar wind sweeping up matter. Perhaps the statement about "far stronger" needs to be made relevant?
    • In the "Terrestrial planets" section there appears to be some confusion about the order. I see: (a) large bodies collide and merge; (b) terrestrial objects migrated only slightly, and (c) these objects collide to form the terrestrial planets. I almost suspect that (b) belongs at the end of the paragraph. Do you agree?
    • The paragraph that begins "Water is too volatile to have formed..." is too jarring a jump from subject matter of the previous text. Could this be smoothed out with a segue?
    Thank you.—RJH (talk) 21:21, 16 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Thanks. I believe all your comments have been addressed. (I had to log out to see the inconsistent dates in the notes because they're all autoformatted. When logged out, the access dates all appear as ISO dates (2008-05-17), while all other dates appear as 17 May 2008. Because the cite journal template explicitly requires that the accessdate parameter be in ISO format and apparently doesn't reformat the dates for not-logged in readers, I think that's hard to avoid; I don't think putting the publication dates in ISO format by default is desirable.) ASHill (talk | contribs) 14:33, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Technically, you should put all the dates in the same format so that non-logged in readers see the same thing, but since Wiki can't seem to make these cite templates consistent with one another, I'm turning a blind eye. Try to get this next time. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:10, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support for a superb article.
    • Issue resolved GrahamColmTalk 17:39, 18 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    Please allow me one nitpick; can something be done about roughly? This word occurs roughly 16 times. GrahamColmTalk 12:29, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]

    I've smoothed it a bit :) (bad joke) Serendipodous 13:16, 17 May 2008 (UTC)[reply]
    The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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