Talk:Gao–Guenie meteorite

Article name

I do not agree with the last article renaming. The official meteorite name is "Gao-Guenie" and there is no reason to misspell it in the article name using a en dash. Moreover there is no need to disambiguate it since there is no toponym called "Gao-Guenie" (this is a rare case in which the outcome of the pairing of two meteteorites was the fusion of the names). -- Basilicofresco (msg) 10:34, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

This is not a spelling difference, but rather a typographical style that is used to signify that Gao and Guenie are two names that retain their identities in the descriptive name Gao–Guenie meteorite, just as Bose and Einstein retain their identities in Bose–Einstein condensate. There is no conflict with the official name, just a typographical style that clarifies the structure of it. In other styles that don't use the en dash in such contexts, the hyphen would be correct, but not in WP, per MOS:ENDASH. Furthermore, omitting the term "meteorite" leaves the article title meaningless to people who don't already know what it's about. Dicklyon (talk) 18:15, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Ok, sounds reasonable. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 05:12, 8 August 2011 (UTC)

"It's not one stone"

I'm not sure there is the need to stress in this way that the meteorite Gao–Guenie is composed by many stones. "Xxxx meteorite", or just the bare meteorite name, is a common way to indicate "the meteorite fall xxxx" and the meteoritic material coming from this single fall, thus there is no need to stress in every sentence that we are talking about a class of stones. For example: [1][2][3][4][5][6]. It is very important to mention the number of fragments recovered (one, several, a shower) but an incipit like "Gao–Guenie meteorites are any H5 ordinary chondrite meteorites in the classes formerly known as Gao and Guenie, which fell in 1960 in Burkina Faso" in my opinion sounds unnecessary contorted. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 11:55, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I was very confused when I read the article and compared it to sources. Read ref 2, which I added to clarify; it's very clear that it's an official collective name for a bunch of meteorites. The "common way" that you mention might be useful shorthand among those in the know, but doesn't work in an encyclopedia for the rest of us. Dicklyon (talk) 18:08, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

Pointless: any official name is a collective name for any meteoritic stone associated to a specific fall / find. Please take a look here: [7][8][9][10][11][12]. As you can see it's not a "shorthand", it the way the sources talk about meteorites. We have to follow sources on Wikipedia. -- Basilicofresco (msg) 19:44, 7 August 2011 (UTC)

I'm obviously no expert on meteorites, but the source I cited [2] indicates that the official name is a collective name for multiple meteorites. If there's a better way to put that such that it wouldn't mislead a reader unfamiliar with the field, please do fix it. Dicklyon (talk) 07:09, 8 August 2011 (UTC)