Wiktionary talk:Votes/2021-03/CFI for celestial objects

Comets and black holes

Why are comets and black holes excluded? I understand that comets are often ephemeral, if not literally, in human experience, as they disappear back outside orbit of Neptune, but I would still include them. Black holes, OTOH, mystify me as an exclusion; they are some of the most major single objects in our universe, and a named black hole would be as important as a named star.--Prosfilaes (talk) 01:53, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@Prosfilaes: What are examples of individual entries you would want? Comets have systematic names like C/1843 D1 that we definitely don't want, and proper names like Great Comet of 1843 and Comet Bennett. Black holes have names like GRO J0422+32 and Sagittarius A* / Sgr A*; I don't think any of them have normal-sounding proper names. Do any of these entries seem like lexicographical material to you? Edit: I just noticed that the last two already do have entries... —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:19, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Well, there is Pōwehi (which might even meet CFI). I'd consider non-systematically-named black holes inclusion-worthy, at least as much as moons. I'm not sure about comets. Are there any that have (non-systematic) names which don't include comet? (Edit: oh, "Hale-Bopp", "Hyakutake", etc are sometimes called by those short forms. Well, I'm still on the fence about comets. Hopefully more people comment.) As manmade objects go, we currently have e.g. Skylab with its descendant skylab (“taxi”), and sputnik with its extended sense, but deleted Talk:Curiosity and Talk:InSight; meh.
Also, is this vote intended to cover things like Olympus Mons, Sea of Tranquility and Rheasilvia? If so, it seems like this vote would delete them, and that strikes me as undesirable; whereas if not, it'd be worth adding clarification that geographic (f I can use that term) features on celestial bodies are to be covered by the Placenames criteria. - -sche (discuss) 06:27, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: As you note, Pōwehi looks like it would fail RFV regardless. To be clear, do you think that Sagittarius A* is worthy of inclusion? That's not a systematic name, by the way. On the topic of geographic features not on Earth, I do see them as covered by Place names; see my edit to the text, where I try to make that explicit. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 18:32, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

After some digging, I managed to cite Citations:Powehi without the macron. But even if it didn't meet CFI yet, (it will soon, and) I think on a conceptual level level black holes are as inclusion worthy as stars, so defaulting to exclusion isn't desirable IMO. Regarding Sagittarius A*, I took it to be named in some systematic way inasmuch as it's is the black hole associated with Sagittarius A and Messier 87* is the black hole associated with Messier 87 (or Virgo A* is the black hole associated with Virgo A, NGC 4486* with NGC 4486, etc for the other synonyms the entry lists), but if there aren't enough other examples to consider that a pattern / systematic, then what would be the reason for not including it? - -sche (discuss) 22:24, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

I'd favor including almost any name of an astronomical object that had a name that included as its head a word in some language consisting of Roman letters. That would (tentatively) include Sagittarius A*. I don't know how I would feel about having all of Sagittarius A* through Sagittarius Z*. I would think that attestability in use would exclude many such names. That would be more inclusive than the proposal would allow in the case of the two explicit examples of what was intended to be excluded. I note that we do include names of other kinds of objects with somewhat similar form, eg, Saturn V, Decapod iridescent virus 1. DCDuring (talk) 22:55, 19 March 2021 (UTC)

Is there a "Sagittarius Z*"...? As for Saturn V (rocket), I wonder if we should tackle criteria for the names of vessels as a separate matter, whether on earth (we probably want Titanic, but not any random yacht that's been talked about three times) or elsewhere (Voyager 1, Curiosity, ...). Even then, there is a difference between Titanic, Curiosity etc denoting specific individual vessels and Saturn V denoting a type of rocket like a Mosquito is a type of plane (or a cruiser is a type of ship, etc). - -sche (discuss) 01:42, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

@-sche: I'm convinced on black holes; extremely few have proper names, so the cost of including them is very low. There is no consistent naming scheme for them, but I suppose we can consider Sagittarius A* / Sgr A* to be systematic in that it refers to its constellation. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 02:43, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Privileging of names of certain types of specific entities

Could someone elucidate the argument for why we should have an entry for, say, Snake Nebula or Pike County, but not Ronald Reagan, or The Spoils of Poynton, or MacBook Air? The recent decision created very generous criteria for the inclusion of names for places, and this proposal would do the same for celestial objects. But why do entries for the names of specific places or stars/planets/etc. benefit the reader more than the names of specific people, works of art, products, etc.? (To the extent that we include names of obscure members of the former categories but not the names of very significant members of the latter categories.)

My view is that we should have entries for none of the above examples, and that, generally, names of specific entities should be included only when those names have taken on figurative meanings, e.g. Maecenas, or in a few other cases that satisfy CFI's "general rule" that A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means. (e.g. historical names like Azania). But I'm interested to hear arguments to the contrary. Colin M (talk) 17:33, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

So, one thing that's going on is that the guidelines are not coming out of nowhere (in the context of Wiktionary)—this and the preceding placenames vote are not "creat[ing] very generous criteria for the inclusion of names" as if Wiktionary doesn't currently include place names and these votes mean they start to be allowed. Wiktionary has long included a lot of geographic and celestial placenames (e.g. London, Uranus, Tennessee, Shropshire, Downing Street, Milky Way, and Antares since 2006 or earlier), but without well-defined criteria, various placenames (like roads, gates, etc) recurringly show up at RFD. The guidelines are trying to provide a (clearer) framework for what to include vs exclude; they may err more on the side of including, rather than on the side of excluding—although, as seen above, some people would like to include even more than these guidelines allow—but, a lot has tended to be included up to now. It's possible we should make them more exclusionary (not allowing minor neighbourhoods, etc), but much of what they include has previously been included, just in a way that's not codified as explicitly forbidden or allowed, which therefore comes up on RFD. Another thing that's going on is that they're not coming out of nowhere within the broader context of lexicography; checking OneLook, most general-purpose dictionaries have entries for Milky Way and Alpha Centauri and Antares, but only Wiktionary (and Wordnik) has Mitsubishi and no dictionary has MacBook Air; dictionaries seem to consider things of the former type more inclusion-worthy than things of the latter type. - -sche (discuss) 20:46, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

I'm certainly receptive to WT:LEMMING arguments, but the examples you mention are entities with some cultural/historical significance which readers could easily come across in a number of (non-technical) contexts. This is not true of Snake Nebula, Einstein Cross etc. And indeed, OneLook returns no (non-wikimedia) results for those terms. On the other hand, it lists 10 dictionaries that include Ronald Reagan.

I would suggest something like requiring 3 independent uses in non-astronomical works. Milky Way, Alpha Centauri, and Antares would easily pass that test. Snake Nebula, probably not. Colin M (talk) 00:57, 25 March 2021 (UTC)

Boötes void- not a Celestial "Object" per se

This vote is about celestial objects. Well what about celestial non-objects? Boötes void is a gigantic void- not an object per se. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 19:36, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

Try reading the text. Voids are explicitly mentioned. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 19:55, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

'Void' is not a celestial object, right? --Geographyinitiative (talk) 20:12, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

So what? I couldn't think of a better name for the section. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 21:08, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

If you had left out the first sentence you would have saved yourself some typing and not been rude... Colin M (talk) 23:59, 22 March 2021 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: Have you considered that Wiktionary’s definition of object is incorrect or incomplete? Me, I only know epistemological objects. Something is an object because there are subjects conceptualizing them in their phenomonologies. So exactly objects do not presuppose having physical existence, not even under empiricism, existence for an object is only accidental. To say nothing about what “existence” even means, as some metaphysical assumptions are made with this term. Fay Freak (talk) 17:23, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

Hey- I do not want to get involved in a prolonged discussion. My negative vote is very disruptive because I'm calling out a 'void' as not being what is traditionally considered to be an 'object' in English. This will probably lose on some grounds, but I want to make sure someone tried to correct the incorrect naming. Yes, if we take a philosophical view of the meaning of 'object', then any noun could be an object. But Wiktionary's 'object' page does not have 'any thing that is a noun' as one of the definitions. That is all I will ever say about this; I have said my full piece. --Geographyinitiative (talk) 17:40, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: In general, one cannot assume the wordings of Wiktionary votes or statutes to refer back to definitions in the dictionary, but they intend to use the language as everywhere else across the internet and the meatworld, else they would be written in private language. Therefore I contend the naming is correct, especially in the knowledge that Metaknowledge is able to take a philosophical view, and also considering that he left that wording while still mentioning voids (so even if the general usage is not like I assume then the private language of this vote is clear), whereas the dictionary definition is of no bearing. You would have fared better if you hadn’t looked up the word “object”. Later one can still claim it to mean what one likes it to mean, one cannot reasonably claim that in this vote it does not mean “void”. Fay Freak (talk) 17:53, 24 March 2021 (UTC)

@Geographyinitiative: for what it's worth, I can find plenty of citations of phrases like "objects such as voids" and "objects like voids" which specifically include voids in lists of things which are objects, including in the context of physics/astronomy and geophysics. I think "voids" can be considered things which have existence; certainly it's also possible to say google books:"voids exist" or speak of google books:"voids which exist". - -sche (discuss) 04:21, 27 March 2021 (UTC)

Typo in proposed text?

The current version of text to add begins "The following names of celestial objects shall be included...", is it instead meant to be "The names of the following celestial objects shall be included..."? —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 23:01, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Not a typo, but I can see why it might be confusing. It's not a list of types of objects, but rather types of names of objects; this is only made explicit for those which have both proper names and systematic names, which are treated separately. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 23:06, 28 March 2021 (UTC)

Got it that, makes sense. Would clearer (and equivalent?) phrasing be something along the lines of "The following types of terms for celestial objects shall be included if they fulfill attestation requirements: All names of constellations and asterisms, Proper names of stars, galaxies, ..." On another note, it seems that "proper name" is being unused with a non-standard meaning of "non-systematic name". Could that instead be stated explicitly, or is there a clearer term. Finally, there is extraneous period at the end of the first bullet point. Take care. —The Editor's Apprentice (talk) 03:34, 31 March 2021 (UTC)

Changes of that kind to the text would have to meet with agreement of a sufficient number of supporting voters to pass; if you want, you could ping all the supporters and see if they agree to change it. (I removed the period, as that's non-controversial.) As for the term "proper name", I used that because that seems to be what the IAU uses. —Μετάknowledge^{discuss/deeds} 03:43, 31 March 2021 (UTC)