Talk:C. Michelle Olmstead

Re merger with C. M. Olmstead
On 25 January 2015, ‎ splitted the article with the edit comment " and C. Michelle Olmstead are two different people. In 1978 the latter was 8 years old and not working in an observatory. WP:BLPREMOVE"‎.

Explanation: Although the discovery date of most asteroids is from 1978, this doesn't mean she was physically there at Palomar Observatory when she was just 8 or 9-years old. Instead, in the early 1990s, Olmstead (b. 1969) performed astrometric measurements of photographic plates taken at Palomar in the 1970s. While she is credited for the discovery, the discovery date corresponds to the date when the photographic plates were taken. This becomes obvious when taking a closer look at section "Observations" in, where the Minor Planet Circular (20706), containing the body's discovery-observation, was published in 1992, i.e. when Olmstead was a 22/23 year-old undergraduate.

Consequences: Separating "C. M. Olmstead" and "C. Michelle Olmstead" has caused confusion when and I categorized thousands of minor planets on Wikipedia. Only now, with a bit more time at my hand, I finally could take a closer look at this mystery (what are the changes, that among the group of less than 1,000 people, who discovered minor planets so far, two have the exact same name and the MPC does not even distinguish them?).

Conclusion: @‎ pls seek advice and provide at least one source for your hypothesis, before you do this kind of edit again. Applying common sense to topics you are unfamiliar with can be really detrimental, as in this case. Thank you,  R fassbind  – talk   12:36, 28 June 2016 (UTC)


 * For the record, see also User talk:Tom.Reding & User talk:Thiebes.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  12:47, 28 June 2016 (UTC)