Talk:Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy and astronomers

Comments

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. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: Page not moved: no support Ground Zero | t 12:40, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

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Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy and astronomers → Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy and space science – The alternate name would allow for the inclusion of works on related topics such as astrophysics, spacecraft and possibly (I'm not sure of this one yet) UFOs, all of which are included in the same section of Kister's guide at User:John Carter/encyclopedias. John Carter (talk) 20:15, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I acknowledge that UFOs may better belong in a list related to some other topic like pseudoscience if I can find sources to establish its independent notability.John Carter (talk) 20:15, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

• Oppose I would not jumble spacecraft or UFOs into this list, I'd create a separate one. The utility of the bibliography drops as it broadens, unless you haven't a more specific biblio. Instead create Bibliography of spaceflight; rename this to bibliography of astronomy, astronomers, astrophysics, astrophysicists, cosmology, cosmologists if you want to add specificity to the subfields of astronomy (astrophysics, cosmology). -- 65.94.169.222 (talk) 22:36, 24 August 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose per 65.94.169.222's first sentence. Rename to Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy to get rid of long-windedness and redundancy.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  00:58, 25 August 2014 (UTC)
• Oppose and rename Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy for succinctness (any book on astronomers will cover history of astronomy). Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 02:36, 25 August 2014 (UTC)

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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 or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

UFOs

I have copied the following discussion from my talk page:
BEGIN COPIED DISCUSSION

First, I agree with you that the UFO material doesn't belong in the astronomy article. Having said that, I found it in a reference source in the broad "astronomy" section, which indicates that reference source thinks otherwise. I agree myself it probably doesn't belong there, but somewhere else, but am still in the process of getting all the information from all the lists added, and haven't seen exactly where to put it yet. I have already asked one professional astronomer to review the page in question to put the works listed in a more thematic format, and I hope after he does that, and after I get together the material from all the other Guide to Reference lists, I will find some other place to put a lot of UFO and fringe science related works, leaving only a "See main listing here" section in the other lists. But that is still a few weeks, possibly a month or two, away, and there is no real harm to having the data included somewhere until that time. John Carter (talk) 20:17, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Hi John. If you agree that the UFO material does not belong in the Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy and astronomers article, you did not need to put it into that article, and you also did not need to revert it back into that article. I could say more, but I believe that any continuation of this discussion should be at the talk page of Bibliography of encyclopedias: astronomy and astronomers so that other people can participate in deciding what is best for the article. Cardamon (talk) 23:52, 16 December 2014 (UTC)

Feel free, but, like I said, I have requested the page be reviewed by an editor who is a professional astronomer to sort out the content. And, like I said above, the UFO book is listed in the reference source as an astronomy related reference book. Removing it because the reliable source disagrees with us would be OR. Like I said above, adding a separate section to one of the other bibliography pages for pseudoscience or whatever is certainly something I can and will do if it seems supported, but there is no rational reason to remove the material which is cited to a generally reliable source until such time as another page in the bibliography set which might be more directly relevant can be found. I am still working on those other pages, and I will probably add a section and a "see main listing here" to that page as I find it. But, at least in the short term, I think it would reasonably qualify as some form of vandalism to remove material which is as per citations reasonably relevant to the page in question until and unless a "see main listing elsewhere" section can be added to replace it. John Carter (talk) 00:01, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

END COPIED DISCUSSION

It is also worth noting that as someone who himself actually studied astronomy, I myself do not agree with the inclusion of the topic in this article. The same, however, can be said about many of the reference works I have found placed in pages of the online Guide to Reference in locations other than the ones I would personally have expected or thought reasonable. But editors involved will also see that at this point, given the very early level of development of most of the Bibliography of encyclopedias articles, it probably doesn't make sense to qualify or disqualify articles from inclusion in the sections in which they are included in that site. Those reference sources are, by and large, considered by professional librarians among the best out there on all topics, and forcing someone to go through the page history to find which sections were deleted by others as being in their eyes inappropriate will do nothing but, basically, make the ongoing development harder on those like me working on such development. At this point, I still have over 50 such lists that I have not yet started, and am, slowly, in the processing of adding that information as well. These pages, like all pages, are by definition incomplete and in a state of moderate flux. Particularly for pages still in the early drafting, there is no good reason that I can see to start making judgments regarding the appropriateness of the terms of the sources until such time as a full and thorough review is done, along with the development of all related pages. John Carter (talk) 00:57, 17 December 2014 (UTC)

@John Carter Here are some replies to your points.
1) Everyone who has yet discussed the issue (even you!) agrees that the books (encyclopedias) about UFOs do not belong here.
2) It is not a good idea to use a Wikipedia article to store content that doesn’t belong in it.
3) Those mentions of encyclopedias about UFOs won't be lost if they're removed from this article, as they should be. They’ll still be in the article history, and also in the history of the user page, from which you moved them, and they could be returned there. If necessary, they could be copied to this talk page.
4) Vandalism only occurs when an editor makes edits that s/he knows are bad ones. An editor who deleted material that s/he believed did not belong in the article it is in, believing that s/he was thereby improving Wikipedia would not be committing vandalism. On the other hand, an editor, who fights to keep material in the article that he has already admitted doesn’t belong there, could well be committing vandalism.
5) If I understand correctly, about twenty years ago, a librarian named Kenneth Kister included a couple of books about UFOs in a list of encyclopedias related to astronomy. There is no reason to think that he thereby exercised some awesome authority which forces us to list books on UFOs in this article. Whatever his motives were for doing this, they couldn’t have included improving this article, and it is unlikely that he was an authority on astronomy.
6) It isn’t original research to say that books about UFOs don’t belong in a list of encyclopedias about astronomy and astronomers. It is more the result of understanding both what each category of objects means, and the difference between science and pseudoscience. However, it may be original research to claim that their having been included in one list of such encyclopedias by one librarian means that everyone else should do the same. Cardamon (talk) 00:33, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

It is however possibly less than productive if not counterproductive and of no real benefit to the project, but that doesn't seem to be that important to the one objector, specifically, you. But, yeah, if one determined individual who places his own personal opinions before independent reliable sources which are still counted among the best in their fields believes that, based apparently entirely on his opinions, and what some might consider dubiously rather irrational ones, saying what one of the most reliable sources out there relating to reference materials says qualifies as OR by wikipedia standards for our own content, and if that one objecting individual chooses to make changes based on what is more clearly his own OR and opinions over the sources, by all means, let them do so. The bibliography of encyclopedias pages are time consuming to generate, and I would certainly have no objections to leaving the development of them to nitpickers so I can go on to other things. John Carter (talk) 00:42, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I don't think UFOs belong in astronomy. You're quite welcome though to create a Bibliography of encyclopedias: Paranormal activity and list UFOs, ghosts etc.♦ Dr. Blofeld 10:34, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

If you would see the previous discussion, you would note that I intend to at the time I find additional material on those subjects. But the existing online GtR runs to some sixty separate pages and over 3,000 listings, and I have yet to find any others to add to a listing for pseudoscience or pseudohistory or the occult or whatever. John Carter (talk) 15:29, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

You know you can paste google book urls into here. Makes drawing them up much quicker and you also get the benefit of links to the actual books for people to buy them then too.♦ Dr. Blofeld 16:23, 30 December 2014 (UTC)

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