Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy/Category maintenance 1

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Loop in astronomical categories

I noticed that Category:Great Attractor is a subcategory of Category:Norma Cluster which is a subcategory of Category:Great Attractor. One of these relationships should be broken. The category system is supposed to be a hierarchy. So that if you keep selecting a subcategory, you eventually reach a category without subcategories. Another problem is that there seems to be confusion about which supercluster these belong to. Since I am not an astronomer, I brought these matters here rather than fix them myself. JRSpriggs (talk) 20:40, 5 December 2010 (UTC)

I removed Category:Great Attractor from Category:Norma Cluster. Hopefully that is a suitable arrangement. Thank you for identifying the concern.—RJH (talk) 17:46, 6 December 2010 (UTC)
To RJHall: Thank you. JRSpriggs (talk) 10:33, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Bot Request for Category:Numbered asteroids Maintenance

The Bot Request folks need WikiProject Astronomy to endorse putting the remaining ~18,708 numbered asteroids that aren't in [[Category:Numbered asteroids]] into that category, which only contains 529 of the ~19,237 numbered asteroids at the moment. Yea/nay?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  14:56, 25 May 2015 (UTC)

Sorting Issues

It seems that the concern is actually over whether or not there is concensus for how to sort the pages that will be in Category:Numbered asteroids, so that multiple changes don't have to be made to so many articles. To help, I've gone through the numbered asteroids in Category:Minor planets and Category:Numbered asteroids and found:

Numbered Asteroids in Category: Category:Minor planets Category:Numbered asteroids
Pages that use {{DefaultSort:<alphanumeric>}} 16,429 (85.4%) 539 (95.6%)
Pages that use {{DefaultSort:<numbers only, w or w/o "()">}} 1,477 (7.7%) 25 (4.4%)
Pages without "{{DefaultSort" 1,331 (6.9%) 0
Total 19,237 564

There are other categories such as Category:Asteroids named for people for the named asteroids, which is probably why there are 12,335 using {{DefaultSort:<name>}}. Therefore, most straight-forward solution I see is to (with a bot request or 2):

  1. Explicitly use [[Category:Numbered asteroids|<a 0-padded 6-digit number>]] on all current and future additions to this category. 11 of the 564 pages currently use this sortkey.
  2. Explicitly use [[Category:Asteroids named for people|<the non-numeric portion of the asteroid's name>]] on all current and future additions to these types of categories which rely on name.
  3. Not sure how best to handle the {{DefaultSort}} discrepancy. I'd say leave it alone for now, and deal with it after we've sorted out the category sortingpun! (but I naturally prefer using a 0-padded 6-digit number, and since the most important (lowest numbered) asteroids are already {{DefaultSort}}ed this way).

What're everyone's thoughts on this?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  18:54, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

First of all, it appears your number of objects with numbers instead of names is perhaps(?) incorrectly counted, as nobody had used the 0-padding 6-digit number sort before me, and I find it hard to believe 10 times more asteroids than I had edited are already using this. However, the current sort is to list the name of an asteroid, and if it does not have a name to simply include the provisional designation. As a result, I believe your defaultsort:<number> asteroid listings are off by approximately an order of magnitude. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 19:36, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Hmm, in my search I looked for either a number or an A-Z character (case insensitive) after "{{DefaultSort:" (also case-insensitive) with the possibility of spaces after the colon and/or an opening parenthesis, so you're right, I think I certainly picked up a lot of numbered asteroids which are sorted by their provisional designation. I'll run this search again, except looking for number-only sortkeys. I updated the table above to reflect this and I'll update it again once I'm finished.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  20:03, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Updated.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  22:13, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
A remark concerning the 0-padding. Right now, because there are asteroids under 10000, you only need to pad with 3-zeroes at most (e.g. 0001-9999). If you include asteroids with numbers under 100000, you would need pad with 4-zeroes (e.g. 00001-99999). The exact number of zeroes things should be padded with depends on the biggest asteroid number. If the largest asteroid numbers is say ~975000, then it's likely that the million threshold will be crossed soon, so we should plan ahead and sort things to accomodate asteroid number 0000001 to 9999999. If it's 25000, then padding to accomodate asteroid number 000001-99999 is reasonable. I mentionned 6 zeroes because I can't recall seeing something with a number above a million, but that many zeros may not be needed, or more might be required.
Now concerning what should be done, IMO, explicit sorting by number in :Category:Numbered asteroids and by name in Category:Asteroids named for people seems the best. For the defaultsort, let's imagine what should happen when they are in something fairly generic, like Category:Radar-imaged asteroids. IMO, things should be sorted according to asteroid number. So to me, it seems like a good argument for defaultsorting according to number, except perhaps in the case of Ceres, Vesta, and similar.
Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 20:58, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
There are currently approximately 435,000 numbered asteroids at my last count, and based on the current rate of adding of numbered asteroids, it will reach a million in about 8 ± 2 years. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 21:26, 27 May 2015 (UTC)
Also, I'd previously been sorting asteroids by articles simply containing physical or orbital characteristics by their numeric designation, or provisional if not available; Asteroids in categories pertaining to their name e.g asteroids named from greek mythology are sorted using their names; Asteroids in categories relating to dates are sorted by significant dates- Asteroids visited by spacecraft I sorted by the date visited, Astronomical objects discovered in YYYY I sort by the date discovered, Near earth objects in YYYY I sort by closest approach, and comets in YYYY I sort by the perihelion date if in that year, a close approach made by that comet in the year, or the comet's discovery date, in that order of preference.
Based on this, I sort asteroids with numeric designations as a six-digit number. For 4 Vesta, for instance, I would sort 000004; and for 385446 Manwë I would sort 385446.
Asteroids with provisional designations are titled as YYYYMNNNP; for instance 2014 RC would be expressed as 2014 R000C, and 2015 DB216 would be expressed 2015 D216B.
Any object pertaining to the year is sorted YYYYMMDD, with the year being included even if sorted for objects in the same year, as otherwise objects would be sorted 01, 02, 03, 04, 05, 06, 07, 08, 09, 10, 11, 12 but only show up as 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, which is confusing and causes little help, so the year is included for simplicity. Additionally the time of the discovery in decimal in UTC can be included, but isn't necessary again for the purpose of simplicity.
Comets with numbers are expressed as PNNN, with N being the number. For instance, Halley's Comet is P001. The presence of the P is to separate Periodic comets from numbered asteroids in categories of both.
Comets with provisional or normal designations are assigned based on their orbit type, year, and designation. C/1980 E1 would be represented C1980E01. D/1770 L1 would be represented D1770L01. P/1997 B1 would be represented P1997B901. X/1106 C1 would be represented X1106C01
For comets with provisional designations, the scheme is CYYYYMNNNP, with C/2013 US10 being represented as C2013U010S.
I know it's a bit wordy, but I hope this helps in what you will do with sorting. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 21:47, 27 May 2015 (UTC)


As of last week, (432949) 2012 HH2 is the highest-numbered asteroid in Category:Minor planets. According to the MPC, there are currently 433,937 numbered, 247,275 unnumbered, and 685,070 total minor planets. That works out to the IAU numbering ~330 asteroids/year. And judging by the fact that there are roughly the same # of unredirected asteroids from 2000-433,000 as there are from 1-2000 (i.e. lack of notability strongly correlates with number), 6 digits is probably good for a while.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  21:48, 27 May 2015 (UTC)

Are we in agreement with 6 digits for point #2?

Exoplanetaryscience and I are for it, and I assume Headbomb is for it, based on his comment and the information provided after it. Anyone else?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  14:25, 1 June 2015 (UTC)
I'm fine with an ~8 year window before we revisit the question (6-digits), but I'm also fine with future-proofing things with 7-digit sort key. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:36, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Regarding point #3 (using the name in a cat's sortkey), I guess we should agree on which categories should have this done. All categories starting with [[Category:Asteroids named ...]] (there are 14) and [[Category:Minor planets named ...]] (there are 2)? Anything else?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  13:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

That also includes Category:Asteroids with names of unknown origin? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 16:07, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Yes, it does now.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  16:10, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Creation of additional categories for multiple-designation objects

Certainly anyone who has done searches into asteroids' provisional designations for wikipedia or otherwise has noticed that a large portion (if not all of) of the first discovered asteroids have multiple designations from before there were easy ways to discover if the object you're observing is already known or not. Even some of the first asteroids have multiple designations. Ceres is additionally known as A899 OF and 1943 XB. Astraea is known as 1969 SE. However only one date is included in the Category:Astronomical objects discovered in [year], so I propose that asteroids discovered multiple times, and given multiple designations, be either sorted into a separate category, for instance Category:Asteroids rediscovered in [year], or something similar. Or, alternatively, be sorted into multiple discovery year categories. Additionally, while I'm on the topic, a number of asteroids discovered after around #300 are listed as being discovered multiple times, but a true date of discovery is included because after observations on the previous dates, it was lost. Should its discovery date noted on the article be the most recent one of which sufficient observational data was found to have it not be considered a lost asteroid, the first discovery date displayed, or should both discovery dates be listed? exoplanetaryscience (talk) 21:04, 28 May 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the first part, would [[Category:Asteroids with multiple designations]] be sufficient? Then, an interested reader can look up the various designations, which should be in the infobox. The alternative seems a bit clunky.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  21:45, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
Well my reason for suggesting as described is that when an asteroid has multiple 'discovery' dates, should the first discovery date simply be included, even if it was subsequently lost and rediscovered several decades later? I would simply like to define a definition of which year to include, or whether multiple should be. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 22:19, 28 May 2015 (UTC)
All numbered asteroids have multiple designations. They have their provisional designation, their number, and if they have names, their name. So many have atleast 3 designations. Early asteroids from the period when they were considered planets have many more, such as their astrological sign. -- 65.94.43.89 04:48, 29 May 2015 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 65.94.43.89 (talk)

On a revision of the categorization of astronomical objects

There are quite a few important categories relating to astronomy on wikipedia, and groups of categories. These range from category groups like Category:Astronomical objects discovered in [year], Category:Discoveries by [astronomer], and Category:[spectral type]-type asteroids, to more specific categories like Category:Quasars, Category:Multiple star systems, or Category:Kuiper belt objects. Every one of these categories contains a fairly large amount of objects in it and covers an important topic, but in most of these cases, and in quite a few more, there is no clearly established system or sort order for these objects, and in this discussion I seek to put an end to this, and provide a consensus for the outcome of this.

PROPOSALS:

      • keep in mind wikipedia's entire database, for better or for worse, is driven and only held up through consensus and majority, so none of these suggestions are rules unless the majority of WP:AST should deem it so.
  • For minor planets and solar system objects:
  • For asteroids:
  1. For default:
    1a. For numbered default: sorted by a 0-padded 6-digit Minor Planet Center number (642 Clara would be sorted 000642, 19731 Tochigi would be sorted 019731, and (52430) 1994 PF8 would be sorted 052430).
    1b. For provisional default: If it does not have a numbered designation, the provisional designation would be sorted YYYY MNNNL, in which 2015 FG345 would be sorted 2015 F345G, 1992 QB1 would be sorted 1992 Q001B, and 2014 RC would be sorted 2014 R000C. This is to establish hierarchy of the classification, as 2014 RC was discovered before 2014 RA1, yet would be sorted after. In this situation, they would be sorted 2014 R000C and 2014 R001A, sorting it appropriately
  2. For name sorts: The asteroid's name would be included in categories directly relating to the name of the asteroid, such as Category:Asteroids named for people, or Category:Asteroids named for places.
  3. For date sorts: Specifically for Category:Astronomical objects discovered in (year), asteroids, comets, and all other objects will be sorted by YYYYMMDD of discovery in UTC- the introduction of the year, even though it is implied, is because without the year included it would simply be MMDD, and would end up in a separation of some objects sorted with a 0 and some with a 1- objects discovered in January to September, and October to December.
  • For comets:
  1. For default: Numbered comets will be sorted as (A)NNNN- where the N is the designation of the comet. A is invariable and simply serves as a discriminant as to not confuse comets and asteroids, as well as establish numbered comets before unnumbered comets. comet 1P/Halley would be sorted A0001, and comet 34D/Gale would be sorted A0034.
  2. Unnumbered comets are sorted as PYYYYMNN with P being the orbit of the comet- X, D, P, or C, and YYYYMNN being the comet designation, formatted much the same way as asteroids- Caeser's comet would be C-043K01, C/2013 US10 would be C2013U010S, P/2012 F5 would be P2012F05, and D/1993 F2-K would be D1993F02K.
  • For other astronomical objects
  1. For multiple stars (more than 3): The exact number of stars in the star system, it's quite simple
  2. default: sorted by distance, padded designation if categorized by a non-RADEC catalog, or discovery date?

I would recommend the exact sort format be provided on each category's page, as the sort format could quickly become quickly confusing and conflicting.

These are my proposals, yea or nay? Also, any comments or input? This is still a work in progress, and most of this I have based only on what I have encountered so far on wikipedia. Either way, I believe that this could be immensely helpful for providing meaningful information on Wikipedia, and I hope others will see this too. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 02:21, 16 December 2015 (UTC)

I cannot comment on all of the proposals here, but I say "For other astronomical objects" just go with the status quo, categories listed in distances would surely rupture categories listing objects by entries of their catalog (ex. Category:Exoplanets discovered by Kepler (spacecraft), Category:Exoplanets in the Gliese Catalog, etc.). Davidbuddy9 Talk 
As per said convention, exoplanets discovered in both would be sorted by their Kepler designation or GJ designation. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 15:01, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
Thx for addressing these issues. As for the magic word {{DEFAULTSORT}} the basic question of whether or not such as default-option should be used in the first place is not mentioned in the proposal. Frankly, I've come to the conclusion that such an generic sort-option does potentially more damage than it helps. I suggest its removal from all articles about minor planets using a bot-request. -- Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 15:37, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
I agree and would prefer to see each category's sorting done explicitly.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:51, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I agree with most of exoplanetaryscience's post. I'm unfamiliar with comet nomenclature, so I'm neutral on the comet issue. I don't agree that anything should be sorted by distance; we had several categories sorting objects by light years from Earth, but they were thankfully done away with with a majority vote I believe.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:51, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
I have to wonder how much some of the more esoteric categories are actually being used by visitors. Category:Henry Draper Catalogue objects? Category:Exoplanets in the Gliese Catalog? Seriously? How are these useful? Praemonitus (talk) 17:50, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
In addition, most of the [[Category:Discoveries by <astronomer-name>]] in minor planets articles do not make much sense to me. Why not directly list the bodies in the article about the astronomer? This would also simplify the inconsistent sorting-issue of categories, as mentioned above. For example the article about the astronomer Nikolai Chernykh already lists his discoveries, while the redundant Category:Discoveries by Nikolai Chernykh is incomplete (probably 50% of the bodies are missing). While it's easy to create a new category, it is much harder to make sure all articles are added in the correct sorting order. Maybe that's why there are so many incomplete categories... Rfassbind – talk 23:31, 16 December 2015 (UTC)
http://stats.grok.se/en/latest/Category:Exoplanets_in_the_Gliese_Catalog about 1 view per day. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:48, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
I'm not sure that we can learn a whole lot of useful things about categories from views, just because Wikipedia categories generally aren't really used by readers. For example, Category:Biology only has about 30-50 views per day: [1]. Category:World War II has 40-60 with some spikes up to 120: [2]. A2soup (talk) 06:35, 17 December 2015 (UTC)

It is my opinion that readers are most likely to search for an article by its title. In the case of minor planets, this means the name, or if there is none, the number. In the case of stars, nebulae, galaxies, etc., this would mean the most commonly used designation, or common name if that is used more. I think that the categories should be arranged so that it is easy for readers to find articles they want, so they should be ordered by name/designation. StringTheory11 (t • c) 16:13, 19 December 2015 (UTC)

All categories are esoteric to a certain point. Categories may not necessarily be used by casual readers but esoteric categories are not unhelpful or unconstructive as you are suggesting. Davidbuddy9 Talk  18:27, 22 December 2015 (UTC)
Yes, regardless of the need or use of categories by casual readers (though important), as a contributor, I find these categories quite useful, and frequently do category arithmetic while searching for a particular group of articles, or checking for inclusion, or exclusion, or looking for accidental exceptions. Indeed, esoteric categories exist, but they have yet to be mentioned here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Ding ding ding ding ding! Yes these categories are very handy for contributors! Casual readers that barely understand how to use Wikipedia are obviously not going to browse through categories to find what they are looking for but instead they are going to use the search feature. The bigger point is why would you not make a category for all objects in a catalog? Why would you even suggest such a thing? Because casual readers aren't going to use them? Really no rights for the editors and contributes to make their lives easier? Davidbuddy9 Talk  04:51, 15 January 2016 (UTC)

I think a reasonable course of action is, as expolanetaryscience suggested, to state on each category page exactly how it should be sorted, both for preliminarily-designated objects and for numbered objects, but only if the intended sorting method for each category is obvious. If the category is a mess, we should discuss them individually, preferably on their talk page, but placing a link here (WT:AST) so that all may participate.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:05, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

As an example, I've done so on Category:Potentially hazardous asteroids, since I created and populated it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:43, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

For the asteroids#1b (and comets#2) proposal for preliminary designations only (i.e. 1991 BA, not (3708) 1974 FV1), why are we trying to keep preliminary designations ordered by date of discovery in a non-chronological category? Isn't that the job of Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery? Turning "1992 QB1" into "1992 Q001B" seems unnecessarily confusing and could easily be done incorrectly. Any category explicitly or implicity sorted by name (Category:Minor planets, for example, implies sorting by the object's name), the name of the article should be used (with the rare exception, which these names are not; they are the norm in their number range). This doesn't relate to numbered asteroids, whose sorting proposal I agree with. And even numbered asteroids are not sorted chronologically (they're only "roughly" chronological).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:30, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Numbered asteroids Maintenance

It's been a few months since exoplanetaryscience brought up the point that most of the ~19,200 numbered asteroids are not contained in Category:Numbered asteroids (current population = 1,605). This bot request was made shortly after, but never performed. The archived WT:AST discussion we had alongside the botreq is here (I'm only concerned with point #1 at the moment); the consensus of which was to add a 0-padded 7-digit sort key to the end ([[Category:Numbered asteroids|0000001]]) while adding the category to all of the ~19k pages. I'm thinking about taking up this request in the near future (as I did with the then-incomplete request to selectively redirect the many asteroid stubs), so I'll ping all those previously involved to see if any opinions have changed or been added, since I haven't really kept up with WP:AST, nor WP in general, over the last 6 months. [@Exoplanetaryscience:, @StringTheory11:, @Kheider:, @JorisvS:, @Primefac:, @Casliber:, @Headbomb:]   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:15, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

I would be adding an extra 0 to the front of any existing {{DEFAULTSORT:000001}} 6-digit entries too.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  19:21, 29 December 2015 (UTC)

Fine by me. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:26, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
My question would be why add "asteroid re-directs" to such a category? ~15,000 of those ~19,000 numbered asteroids re-direct to very generic list articles. -- Kheider (talk) 17:33, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
This would make it useful for someone wanting to process the list of numbered asteroids. Also, asteroid redirects are currently categorized with cats such as Category:Main-belt asteroids, Category:Asteroids named for people, Category:Astronomical objects discovered in 1982 (9005 Sidorova as a random example). Is Category:Numbered asteroids any different? Finally, it seems that Wikipedia:Categorizing redirects#Categorization of list entries applies here, but I want to get other people's opinion.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅contribs ⋅dgaf)  18:36, 5 January 2015 (UTC)
Being numbered is what got the bots to go on article creation sprees as at the time all asteroids were treated as notable. So I kind of think the category is less meaningful as 75% of the category will be re-directs. -- Kheider (talk) 18:44, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Does it matter, really? Given the total number, it's not a practical category anyway. Praemonitus (talk) 22:15, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
Ok, I thought there was much more support behind this. At the very least, though, I will add this category to all non-redirects, which is much less controversial.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:46, 5 January 2016 (UTC)
I personally prefer the idea of Category:Numbered asteroids only containing numbered asteroids that actually have a wiki-article. -- Kheider (talk) 20:30, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

Since this won't be as all-encompassing a change as I thought it'd be, {{DEFAULTSORT}} will remain 0-padded 6-digit, and a similar sortkey will be added to the category, if necessary.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:02, 5 January 2016 (UTC)

I agree on adding the category to all non-redirects. I've been doing so myself for the last few months to all edits tagged "overall revision". I wouldn't use that category on redirect (though I might have done so on a few occasions), as there is already a complete list, List of minor planets: 1–1000. I have been removing all self-redirect on that list up to #200,000 and now is easy to see how the actual articles get thinner and thinner. So a "compact" (not really) category, listing only articles, is much better. Also, I normally added the "Category:Numbered asteroids" in 2nd position, after the Main-belt/family category and before the "Discoverer" category. If everybody adds a 6-digit sortkey to that category, I will do so as well. (Until recently only up to #2,000 the category entries were numerically sorted, from there on, in 99% of all cases, the higher numbered bodies were sorted by the standard name-based on the DEFAULTSORT key). Rfassbind – talk 15:17, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
Indeed, I have been placing that category in the 2nd position, though not intentionally. I first attempt to place the category (if non-existent) alphabetically against other categories that begins with 'N', going from the top down. If unsuccessful, alphabetically against 'M' categories (Main-belt asteroids, usually). If unsuccessful, alphabetically against 'L-A' categories. If still unsuccessful, alphabetically before O-Z cats. If still unsuccessful, then I just put it at the end.
For minor planet article names of the form (#####) YYYY Wwwww (where w's are word characters), I added a 6-digit sortkey at the end of Category:Numbered asteroids no matter what the DEFAULTSORT. I decided on this after seeing at least 3 (if not 4) different DEFAULTSORT variations for this group: 0-padded 6-digit, "YYYY Wwww", and "(#####) YYYY Wwwww" ("##### YYYY Wwwww" probably exists too, but I wasn't interested in getting that specific), with no clear pattern. The first 2 variants are roughly equally common, and the 3rd is less common. The categories did not seem to always account for these DEFAULTSORT variants. More category maintenance is needed here, and I don't trust the average editor to keep Cat:Numbered asteroids tidy (nor the other cats, but I'm only focusing on Cat:NA at the moment; see the semi-proposal below).
For minor planet article names of the form ##### Wwwww, especially those numbered 1-2000, I'm only adding a 6-digit sortkey if the DEFAULTSORT is not already 6-digits. This might change as I go up in number, if I see a lot of disorder. As of ~1/2 way through, I'm deciding to add a 6-digit sortkey IF other categories on the page also have one, regardless of the DEFAULTSORT. I'll be making a 2nd pass through all the minor planets to include this and other rule changes I've made since I started.
For minor planet article names of the form ##### WW (where W's are upper case word characters), I'm not adding the category since these are still provisionally designated.
Finally, I'm also checking for non-numeric Category:Numbered asteroids sortkeys and replacing them with 6-digit ones. There have been 1-to-a-few dozen of these so far, and I'm 1/3 of the way through.
Semi-proposal: Ideally, every category has a consistent sorting method for all its children. A variable DEFAULTSORT only adds a layer of complexity to the semi-automated check. Going through manually would be a source of error (at least for me). There're 2 ways to approach this: 1) enforce a standard DEFAULTSORT on all articles, then adjust each cat's sortkey for consistency, or 2) abide by the current DEFAULTSORT, then adjust each cat's sortkey for consistency. Since each cat needs to be checked anyway, I'm slightly in favor of #2. Either way, a sort order for each category needs to be established (which is probably obvious, and the prevailing and most intuitive order by just looking at the cat, but I haven't looked at all the various minor planet cats).
If I were given an explicit list of cats and their preferred sort order (consensus approved, if currently ambiguous), I would do this. I don't really feel like making that list, though, if someone else wants to do that.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:34, 7 January 2016 (UTC)
It's my strong conviction that the magic word DEFAULTSORT is detrimental, as it is a source for well-meant bad ideas. Soon someone will come up with a 7 or 8-digit Sortkey and change a few hundreds articles/redirs before anyone will notice the changes. By then, a category's entries in the 1000s will be meddled with those in the 10,000s and/or 100,000s. Rfassbind – talk 04:07, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

 Category:Numbered asteroids is now completely sterilized (in a good way).

~2,100 pages were added (current population = 3,721).

201 minor planet redirects already in the cat had their sortkey changed from alphabetic/non-existent to numeric, instead of removing the cat (sorry).

Unfortunately, there were quite a few more #redirect-worthy minor planets than I expected... I'd say between 200 and 500, while I was expecting maybe 100. But, at least now they're easier to find :)   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:57, 8 January 2016 (UTC)

Well done. Don't worry about the 201 Redirects still containing the category; I'll do that manually. Also, if you could post on my talk-page these mentioned 200–500 "redirect-worthy" articles, I will go through them as well. -- Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 04:06, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Thanks!
The 201 categorized redirects were done intentionally, so there's no need to change anything. I'd rather fix an existing category on a redirect than to remove the cat. Otherwise, this would send a mixed message to future editors, or the cat might be lost if/when the redirect is reverted, if the cat was added to the redirect. Keeping Category:Numbered asteroids clean of redirects is not a particularly worthwhile task, especially for those articles bouncing in and out of redirect; it's best just to keep the category on the page.
Tom, I replied to what you just wrote here on your talk page. Cheers, Rfassbind – talk 08:04, 12 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm working on making a short-ish list of potential redirects, which will likely need guidance from the likes of exoplanetaryscience, Kheider, and several others here to pass judgement. I'll post it here somewhere when I'm done (will likely take a few days).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:37, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
send me another ping when you're done. I will be going around quite a bit in the next few days and will only be able to check my emails for most of them. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 04:58, 9 January 2016 (UTC)
Shortlist posted at User:Tom.Reding/Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:05, 10 January 2016 (UTC)
Adding a template such as {{Large category TOC numeric}} could be useful. Praemonitus (talk) 22:56, 9 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery mass-sterilization

While working for a while on the minor planet redirects, and with considerable prodding from exoplanetaryscience, I finally made an AWB rule-set which grabs discovery year, month, and day from the article text or from the infobox parameter |discovered= (in that order, and, if both exist, checks for agreement (text wrong, text & infobox wrong)) and adds the corresponding YYYYMMDD sortkey, which is the sole sortkey-format I've seen for these categories. I want to run this on all pages contained in the 255 subcategories of Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery in the near future, so I figured I'd warn everyone. There will invariably be another shortlist of exceptions, but it'll be a lot easier to go through that once the easy-to-fix cases are taken care of.

Also, I'm tempted to put a note on this parent-category, and the 255 subcategories, explicitly stating the sortkey format, before I start. How about we come to an agreement on Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery first, then I'll propagate?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:38, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

I've listed Category:Minor planets discovered in 2001 (the only category of its kind) for deletion here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:17, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

Update: 24% of existing articles needed fixing: ~1,261 edits made to the 21,485 pages in this category, ~16,215 of which are #redirects (inoperable due to missing text), leaving ~5,270 articles.

The shortlist of exceptions found, which should be fixed manually, are:

  1. sortkey="?": 109,(Thanks to John of Reading) as of this post, contain a "?" sortkey: [[Category:Astronomical objects discovered in <year>|?]], which were only touched if they:
    1a. have a dmy in infobox or in body text
    1b. have a clean dmy format (i.e. not Discovered by blah blah and [[blah]] on 2000/5/05 or |discovered=2000/5/05)
  2. No sortkey: There are 352 without a sortkey, but spot checking a few of these reveals that search is using a non-current database, so these numbers should be less.

I also found a few pages whose only category is this one, i.e. 170906 Coluche, leading me to do some cat-arithmetic. Since Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery should include all Category:Minor planets, I found 3,986 Category:Minor planets pages not in the Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery hierarchy, and 1,969 Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery not in Category:Minor planets (though, at most, only 300 are not minor planets), so more maintenance is necessary. This will also help process the minor planet redirects and help populate the Shortlist of minor planet redirect candidates.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:25, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Update 2: Of the 3,986 not in the Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery hierarchy, only 66 needed the addition; 96 were #redirects, and the other 3,824 were terrestrial objects (recursion often leads you into weird places). Of the 1,969 not in Category:Minor planets, only 92 are minor planets, and are all redirects, so I'll propagate their categories from redirection, if that's what caused the problem. Aside from these 92, the shortlist above, and barring any stray uncategorized pages, I think I've done pretty much all I can.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  22:12, 14 January 2016 (UTC)

Category:Minor planets Sterilization

I'm going to tackle this very soon, at least in part.

For the numbered minor planets only, I will check for, and soft-handedly enforce the logic: (DEFAULTSORT || Category sortkey) == 0-padded 6-digit (0p6d), in the following ways:

  1. If "{{DEFAULTSORT:" is absent from the text, I will add {{DEFAULTSORT:<0p6d>}}, for 3 reasons:
    1a. There are more asteroid categories which sort by number than there are that sort by name.
    1b. All asteroid categories which sort by name, that I'm aware of, have been sterilized by me, and already use the proper DEFAULSORT/sortkey combination.
    1c. Most of the objects discovered by multiple people, and hence with multiple [[Category:...discovered by <blah>]]s already use the more-appropriate alphabetic DEFAULTSORT.
  2. If a 0p6d DEFAULSORT and 0p6d cat sortkey exist, I won't touch anything (WP:GENFIXES removes the cat sortkey in this case).
  3. If a 0p6d DEFAULSORT and !0p6d cat sortkey exist, I'll remove the cat sortkey.
  4. If a !0p6d DEFAULTSORT and !0p6d cat sortkey exist, I'll correct the cat sortkey to 0p6d.
  5. If a !0p6d DEFAULTSORT and 0p6d cat sortkey exist, I won't fix anything, since it ain't broke.
    5a. If the DEFAULTSORT != (0p6d || <name> || <prelim>) then it is removed. Goto rule #1.
  6. If, after my changes, all cats on the page have a 0p6d sortkey, then the existing DEFAULTSORT is effectively useless. Replace the useless DEFAULTSORT with the 0p6d one, and remove the sortkey from all cats.

That should account for all permutations.

I'll take care of the preliminary designation asteroids later, maybe, after we come to a firm consensus.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:23, 17 January 2016 (UTC)

Of the 579 subcategories of Category:Minor planets, I see 23 asteroid-containing cats that should be sorted by name, which can be summed up with these 6:

for reference.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:34, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Other fixes

  1. "Liberally" applying the WP:NASTRO comment to #REDIRECTS (allowing for that to be the sole change to a page IIF preceded by a page which triggered rule #1-6).
  2. Adding [[Category:Discoveries by <astronomer>]] if explicitly stated in the text.
  3. Adding [[Category:Astronomical objects discovered in <year>]] if %%pagename%% includes <prelim designation>, or if |discovered= or the text includes the discovery year.
  4. Adding [[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] if {{Beltasteroid-stub}}, or similar, exist, and none of the 42 main-belt-family cats exist on the page.
  5. Adding [[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] if an asteroid-family orphan (and after double-checking JPL).
  6. Replacing {{MinorPlanets Footer}} with {{Small Solar System bodies}}, and removing duplicate {{Small Solar System bodies}}. (I didn't notice the prevalence of {{MinorPlanets_Footer}} with a "_" until ~2/3 of the way through, though)
  7. Replacing {{MinorPlanets Navigator}} with {{Minor planets navigator}}.
  8. Adding {{JPL small body}} to the end of ==External links== (create ==External links==, if necessary).

  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  21:35, 25 January 2016 (UTC)

Preferred sort for Category:Discoveries by astronomer

This is a fairly large uncle-category which appears on most minor planet pages: 177 subcats, 7,637 unique pages, 9,522 non-unique pages, only 1 cat deep. Either someone has gone through a lot of trouble to sort ~66% by prelim, or no one decided to (or had the energy/desire/ability to) challenge the {{DEFAULTSORT:YYYY WW#}} convention, until now. Either way, here's a summary of the 8 most-populated subcats, representing 42.5% of all categorized pages, and how they're sorted.

Subcat Entries Composition Sort method Prelim Name #
(Approx)
Category:Discoveries by Hiroshi Kaneda 652 96% #+prelim, 4% #+name 95.5% by prelim, 3.5% by name, 1% by # 623 23 7
Category:Discoveries by Seiji Ueda 652 "" "" 623 23 7
Category:Discoveries by Henry E. Holt 631 96% #+prelim, 4% #+name 95% by prelim, 4% by name, 1% by # 599 25 6
Category:Discoveries by Henri Debehogne 623 ~95% #+prelim, ~5% #+name 87% by prelim, 12% by name, 1% by # 455 75 6
Category:Discoveries by Robert H. McNaught 399 90 #+prelim, 10% #+name 85% by prelim, 9.3% by name, 5.7% by "(" 339 37 0
Category:Discoveries by Karl Wilhelm Reinmuth 381 >98% #+name, <2% #+prelim 63% by name, 37% by # 0 240 141
Category:Discoveries by Eric Walter Elst 372 ~20% #+prelim, ~80% #+name 88% by name, 12% by prelim 45 327 0
Category:Discoveries by Edward L. G. Bowell 339 99.7% #+name 99.7% by name 0 338 0
Total 4,049 2,684 (66%) 1,088 (27%) 167 (4%)

What I'm about to do is pretty much a 1-way street right now, at least if/until AWB implements a $pagetitle$ feature, or the like, which I've recently requested here (but I'm half convinced I'm simply throwing my request into a black hole, since I have ~12 still-open requests from a year ago). Grabbing the numeric or name portion of MPs is easy, but as soon as we're allowed to use {{mp}} for the page, it gets really, really hard to make a reliable regex pattern to always get the page name and nothing but the page name, which would need to be operated on several times to get back to how it is. That's why I want to be very careful, and certain, about doing this.

This is resolved, since %%pagename%%, thankfully, exists! It was just not easily found in the AWB documentation. 2-way street established; hesitation diminished.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:49, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

I think we all prefer to sort all of these subcats in the same way, whatever it is. Personally, I agree with exoplanetaryscience's view that asteroids in these cats should be sorted by #, if possible. I just want to be absolutely sure that we all agree on this.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:26, 18 January 2016 (UTC)

Support Yes, sorting by zero-padded ID# seems to make the most sense; that would also place them in discovery order. Looks like it would take a fair amount of work to accomplish that though, unless it can be scripted. Praemonitus (talk) 14:27, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Scripting is complete (it took just 16 60 122 rules), and there will be very few (if any) exceptions. I'm only waiting for project members' approval.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:06, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
Oppose I've been editing the sortkey of the Category:Discoveries by astronomer-subcategories for vast number of articles and redirects. The order of listing was a complete mess (for several reasons, such as change of DEFAULTSORT key, lousy implementations of redirects, or neglected update of recently named bodies). Now, you propose to sort them by number and no longer by name. Oh well... Fact is that many/most articles about astronomers, who discovered minor planets, contain a wikitable with their discoveries. As these wikitable are all sorted by number, sorting the category also by number would be redundant. Sorting the categories by name would avoid that redundancy. In addition, sorting by name creates more subsection (A-Z), not just one or two subsection (0 and 1). Also, sorting by name separates named minor planets from those with a provisional designation. (Former may have an article, latter is most likely a redirect). For all these reasons, sorting by name is better, but most importantly a consistent sort order is needed. For example, here are some "discoveries-by" subcats I revised to consistent a sorting by name. Previously they were a complete mess.
Sorting by NAME is better, less redundant with wikitables displayed in the biographies, more sectioned, and separates named from unnamed bodies. Rfassbind – talk 18:29, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm literally just fishing for arguments, and these are all good. This sounds very similar to my question about asteroids#1b (and comets#2) proposal for preliminary designations above, regarding (seemingly) needless duplication of chronological sorting: replace "chronological" with "numeric". Therefore, I agree.
The goal of the table above was to test whether the cat's composition (i.e. 95% #+prelim) had an equal sort-% of some kind (i.e. either 95% by #, or 95% by prelim). Because some of them had very different composition-% vs. sort-%, I became very hesitant. Given your reasoning, and the fact that the majority sort for these cats is by name, the question now is: why shouldn't I sort these name? That's a hard question to answer now, but we'll see. I'll go with name-sort here, unless a better argument comes up.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:12, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Preferred sort for Category:Main-belt asteroids

17,500 entries. I went through the first few-dozen pages to find ~25% sorted by #, ~25% sorted by prelim, and ~50% sorted by name, (ugh): 

 17 pages under heading "0": 17*200 =~3,400 (vast majority are #+name, and sorted by #)
 23 pages under heading "1": 23*200 =~4,600 (vast majority are #+prelim, and sorted by prelim)
 ~1 page  under heading "2":  1*200 =  ~200 (50/50 #+prelim/#-name: #+prelim are sorted by prelim, #+name are sorted by #)
 ~½ page  under heading "3-9":      =  ~100 (mostly #+name, sorted by #)
41.5 total pgs under heading "0-9": =~8,300 (~47.5% of category)

~46 pages under headings "A-Z": 17,500-8,300 = 9,200 (~52.5% of category) (nearly all are #+name, and nearly all sorted by name)

I've also requested at Template talk:Large category TOC numeric that 1 more 0-padded level be added, so that 0p6d cats can be looked through in steps of 1,000, instead of steps of 10,000.

I'm thinking about putting the non-family-member, prelim-only pages in a child Category:Main-belt preliminary asteroids, since there are comparatively so few pages of them.

Going 1 step further, I could make the child: Category:Main-belt numbered unnamed asteroids, leaving all the #+named in Category:Main-belt asteroids? I like this the more I think about it. What about everyone else?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:16, 20 January 2016 (UTC)

Update

Überrun complete! Thank you all for being patient while I blew up your watchlists.

Category/Template Before After Change (Improvement)
[[Category:Main-belt numbered unnamed asteroids]] 0 3,934 –
[[Category:Main-belt preliminary asteroids]] 0 3 –
[[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] 17,501 14,973 –2,528
Additions to [[Category:Main-belt asteroids]] – – +1,415 (10.5%)
Subcategories of [[Category:Discoveries by astronomer]] 177 233 +56 (32%)
Unique pages in [[Category:Discoveries by astronomer]] 7,637 7,909 +272 (3.6%)
Non-unique pages in [[Category:Discoveries by astronomer]] 9,522 9,816 +294 (3.1%)
Subcategories of [[Category:Discoveries by institution]] 0 13 –
{{MinorPlanets Footer}} → {{Small Solar System bodies}} ~260 54 −206 (79%)
{{MinorPlanets_Footer}} → {{Small Solar System bodies}} 840 218 −622 (74%)
{{MinorPlanets Navigator}} → {{Minor planets navigator}} ? 2 –

All numbered asteroids (named & unnamed) should now be sorted properly. ~17,600 edits made, 72 categories created, and 24 "(<number>) <name>" asteroids had their categories stripped to avoid duplication. All new categories, and most existing ones, have a sortkey note at the top either explicitly stating their sort convention for asteroids, or a note pointing to their parent, which has the explicit convention, lest they drift in the future.

Very minor exceptions are 1) between 50-75 Category:Numbered asteroids are on #REDIRECT pages (1.8% of that category), and 2) 110 and 316 Category:Astronomical objects by year of discovery with either a "?" or empty sortkey, respectively.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  05:35, 29 January 2016 (UTC)

Great! Now if only all those redirects could be tagged as redirects rather than stubs or start-class... Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 17:06, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
That would've been great to bring up a lot sooner. No one has mentioned Category:Minor planet redirects on the topical archive, or since then, as far as I know. Only Category:Main-belt-asteroid stubs was addressed and cleaned (brought down from 17,077 to ~2,000) at that time. Category:Minor planet redirects doesn't fall into the scope of this run anyway, actually, since it doesn't exist in the Category:Astronomy hierarchy (its parent is Category:Main namespace redirects). All asteroid redirects have an {{R}} template, so they're all accounted for in that sense, but that's probably not your concern here, I'm guessing. If you want to start another thread, I could do this, if there's support.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:31, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I'm talking of their talk pages/Wikiproject banner assessment. E.g. Talk:24899 Dominiona says it's a stub, but 24899 Dominiona is a redirect. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 18:21, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I see. Yes, their importance scale should be identified as "NA" and "class" should be changed to "Redirect". I've corrected Talk:24899 Dominiona as an example. This would move most of the 24,471 pages out of Low-Stub into NA-Redirect on the project matrix. I don't see any objections to doing this, either, other than clogging up watchlists.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  18:58, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
I'll only modify existing, incorrect WPAst banners on #redirects for now. If there are no objections by the time I finish those, I'll add the correct banner to the remaining redirects that are missing one.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:11, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
Don't really see the point in doing it in two batches, but as long as it all gets done in the end, I'm not fussy on the details. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 23:26, 29 January 2016 (UTC)
There are ~25 talk pages which are #redirects to asteroid lists, and ~50 ~500 non-existent talk pages, which I will correct as well.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:12, 31 January 2016 (UTC)
 Done. ~15,944 total talk page banners fixed! Breakdown: ~15,294 talk pages had their banners corrected, 65 were missing the banner, 25 were #redirects to the list, and 560 talk pages did not exist for their associated #redirects (I originally missed them b/c I was using an old list from earlier this month).
This should bring the 'Low-Stubs' on Astronomy quality statistics down from 24,470 to ~9,176 (62.5% smaller), and 'NA-Redirects' up from 1,599 to what should be ~17,543 (11x larger) (needs another day to update). 9k 'Low-Stubs' still seems like kind of a lot. I'll see if I can find any errant #redirects in there.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:54, 1 February 2016 (UTC)
I found 1,321 #redirects bannered as 'Low-Stub'. They are mostly uncategorized (the reason I missed them) numbered asteroids, with 159 HD stars, 60 non-star/asteroids, and 25 improperly titled asteroids (i.e. (4384) Henrybuhl). The cleansing continues.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:21, 1 February 2016 (UTC)

 Done (again). Of these 1,321 'Low-Stub' #Rs: 1,197 were rebannered as 'NA-Redirect', and 124 banners were removed on duplicate #Rs (32 were numbered, named MPs, 92 were preliminary MPs). 'Low-Stubs' should now be completely void of #redirects. Also, 973 MP #Rs were found and had their categories propagated from before they were #redirected (so they can be found more easily).   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:47, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

How important is Category:Minor planet redirects?

I started a disussion on its talk page, Category talk:Minor planet redirects#How important is this category?. Basically, I'm asking whether we want this relatively-small cat (619 redirects) to be: 1) emptied, then deleted, 2) filled, or 3) left alone and incomplete? Please reply there.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  15:00, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

I personally don't see the point in having such a category. Maybe as a hidden maintenance category, but why bother in the first place. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 03:37, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
It would actually be useful for me, and anyone wanting to find, operate on, or investigate all of the legitimate MP #Rs (not the #Rs from typos, diacritics, etc.), now and in the future. I regret not being aware of this cat during my #R maintenance, since I would've otherwise added it wherever I could. So, I'm in favor of either this or a maintenance category. I just don't know how to go about setting up the latter, just the former.
(Copied from the cat talk page) Right now, (almost) all "worthwhile" MP #Rs (excluding #Rs for typos, renames, misspellings, etc.) are in the Category:Minor planets hierarchy, but alongside legitimate articles. To find the MP #Rs, I need to recurse that cat about 5-6 times in AWB, then sweep though that list (again with AWB) to extract only the #Rs. I'm somewhat ok with doing this, but it makes the complete listing of MP #Rs inaccessible to other editors. I only recently discovered this category, and am wondering why it's been so neglected, given its usefulness.
I initially wanted to get rid of it, since it indeed seemed forgotten and not useful. But the more I think about it, the more I like it.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  04:04, 4 February 2016 (UTC)
I recently finished writing some AWB module code (~1,100 lines, heavily augmented by Excel) that extracts the discovery date and discovered-by info (only 1 person 4 persons deep(probably sufficient) at the moment ) from the JPL SBDB, and am about to run it on all MPs missing "discovered in <year>" and/or "discoveries by <astronomer>" category, and/or their corresponding sortkeys. To this I'm tacking on the WP:NASTRO comment and {{R unprintworthy}} to all MP redirects. Since I haven't received any dissenting arguments against Category:Minor planet redirects since posting this here and on the cat's talk page yet, I would like to include it as well—to passively add this category alongside other corrections, instead of dedicating a run to it, seems like the wisest choice at the moment.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  23:25, 5 February 2016 (UTC)
Sounds good to me. You have been doing very well with your category ideas. -- Kheider (talk) 15:36, 6 February 2016 (UTC)


Preferred sort for Category:Discoveries by PLS

To let Category:Palomar–Leiden survey conform to the Category:Discoveries by institution hierarchy, its contents are being moved (and expanded) into Category:Discoveries by PLS. The sortkey for Category:Palomar–Leiden survey is its preliminary P-L designation, which is removed from the article's title when given a name, and (hopefully) added to/kept in the article text (standard for all MPs, as far as I can tell). The sortkey for all other Category:Discoveries by institution child categories is 0-padded 6-digit (maybe because their survey designations are either hard to find, or complicated).

My question is, do we want to:

  1. Keep the P-L designation sortkey, and, by extension, all other survey-designation sorkeys, or
  2. Replace the P-L designation sortkey with a 0-padded 6-digit (this would affect 99.8% of Category:Palomar–Leiden survey (all but 1))

?   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:38, 8 February 2016 (UTC)

Just curious, but why not name the category Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey? Seems like it would be easier to visually identify that way. — Huntster (t @ c) 03:22, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
We could. I've held off on editing anything P-L related until/if there's a firm direction here. I/we try to balance complexity, readability, and addability when naming categories. Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey is in the middle, somewhere between Category:Discoveries by the Palomar Observatory and Category:Discoveries by OLS‎, so it can go either way. The ndash is the main issue, since, to add the category properly, it takes the extra steps of looking up which dash-symbol it uses (n, m, or keyboard, minus?), which is a source of error if an editor isn't careful. I would only feel comfortable with a small constellation of category #redirects to Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey to alleviate the possibility of this. If there are bots that move cats from cat-#Rs to their target, great; if not, I prefer Category:Discoveries by PLS.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:49, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
Tom.Reding: Moving items to a new category is easy-peasy with AutoWikiBrowser, so just let me know exactly what you want the name to be, and I'll take care of the moves. I can also move everything out of Category:Palomar–Leiden survey to whatever the target is, easily, if I'm correctly understanding that this is the end goal. As to your original question, if the designation numbers are now static (aka no more are being created, and I assume this is the case since the survey took place in the 1970s), then I see no reason to switch to the 6-digit key...that's only useful if you're trying to future-proof an ever-expanding data set. — Huntster (t @ c) 17:01, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
My concern isn't the initial moves (I've got 1300 lines of code & ~150 custom AWB rules fixing & sorting MP pages). My concern is unnecessary (or easily avoided) category maintenance in the future, since we have yet to categorize all of the P-L objects. Do you know if a bot takes care of cat-#R moves (moving a page from a cat-#R to the target)? I see Category:Main Belt asteroids and the like moved to Category:Main-belt asteroids, but there are no cat-#Rs to the proper name, so this is very likely done due to popular demand, and not universally. I wanted to save some time here, but I'll ask the bot owner too (discussion here).
I agree with point #1 as well.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  17:33, 10 February 2016 (UTC)
I'm ok with using Category:Discoveries by the Palomar–Leiden survey now, given Russ's response. I'll give a little more time for comments on option #1 vs. #2 before I proceed.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:29, 10 February 2016 (UTC)

With help from Rfassbind, all objects currently associated with the Palomar–Leiden survey cats and the Trojan surveys cats are now sorted into their discovery and/or survey catalog cats. The hierarchy can be seen starting at Category:Asteroid surveys, Category:Astronomical surveys, and Category:Palomar Observatory. I'll continue to search for PL objects as I progress through the MPs, and on pages I've already gone though.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:44, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Very nice job. That's a lot of work, and it looks good. — Huntster (t @ c) 22:04, 17 February 2016 (UTC)

Category:Members of the Yamaneko Group of Comet Observers has been nominated for discussion

Category:Members of the Yamaneko Group of Comet Observers, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:32, 28 August 2016 (UTC)

Category:Asteroids named as an award has been nominated for discussion

Category:Asteroids named as an award, which is within the scope of this WikiProject, has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to see if it abides with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. RevelationDirect (talk) 01:12, 6 August 2016 (UTC)

It has been relisted here.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:48, 1 September 2016 (UTC)

Category:Named minor planets tree

Category to be created & subcats populated soon with both MP articles and MP #Rs, based on suggestion from Rfassbind & discussion, barring any objections.

hildren include, but aren't limited to:

  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  14:19, 8 August 2016 (UTC)

  • Suggestion Category:Stars with proper names tends to be stars visible with the naked eye from Earth (or at least stars from constellations that have some stars visible from Earth). For Wikipedia readers who are--let's face it--mostly on Earth, that might aid navigation. I'm not clear on how named centaurs are physically different than the ones with numbers assigned to them. You don't need my permission to create categories of course, but it might be worth seeing how the discussions (above and below) turn out if creating these would be time consuming. RevelationDirect (talk) 02:00, 10 August 2016 (UTC)
  • RevelationDirect, at least we can agree that 'Named minor planets' is a significant category. To make that category more tractable, since it will contain ~20,000 entries, it would be useful to subdivide it into its major components. What determines a "major" component, however, I'll leave up to others.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  20:39, 14 August 2016 (UTC)
  • On further inspection and on second thought, since Category:Numbered minor planets & Category:Unnumbered minor planets (the categories which Category:Named minor planets is meant to compliment) aren't themselves further subdivided, I'm much less inclined to do so. Doing so would require more input and interest than is present here, since it would be departing from convention. Doing so would also result in duplicate category trees, be susceptible to drift, and require an additional level of maintenance.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  19:54, 17 August 2016 (UTC)
  •  Done - 19,980 named MPs categorized.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  03:17, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Thx compared to the existing 20,071 named minor planets, there is a gap of 91 (0.5%) missing items. I'll try to narrow it down. Rfassbind – talk 14:51, 19 August 2016 (UTC)
Update (for posterity): as of 15 September 2016, Category:Named minor planets includes all 20,244 named MPs per MPC's 4 September 2016's Minor Planet Names: Alphabetical List.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  02:52, 19 September 2016 (UTC)
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