Talk:List of Mars-crossing minor planets

Martian Perihelion Distance
In the second paragraph the Martian perihelion distance is given as 1.58 AU, but this is incorrect as it is ~1.38 AU. The reference cited does not specify 1.58 AU as the Martian perihelion distance but rather the minimum perihelion distance for a shallow Mars crosser. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 149.169.114.163 (talk) 15:58, 30 August 2010 (UTC)

Requested move 17 May 2018

 * The following is a closed 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: retain the present title at this time, per the discussion below; no consensus to move the page. Dekimasu よ! 19:21, 23 May 2018 (UTC)

List of Mars-crossing minor planets → Mars-crossing asteroid – Move over redirect. Restore original and more appropriate title from 2008. R fassbind – talk  23:05, 16 May 2018 (UTC)
 * This is a contested technical request (permalink). ToThAc (talk) 00:36, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose per ASTONISH. The current title is already concise enough. ToThAc (talk) 00:36, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Support as nominator – the term "Mars-crossing asteroid" (MCA) is undoubtedly better than "Mars-crossing minor planet", as much as "near-Earth asteroid" is to be preferred over "near-Earth minor planet" (which is unheard of). On Wikipedia, the term "asteroid" is used consistently for all minor planets inside the orbit of Jupiter. This should be the case for any corresponding dynamical group as well. Unfortunately, in 2009, user renamed several articles concerning Mercury-, Venus-, Earth- and Mars-crossing asteroids from "asteroid" to "minor planet". This was a mistake: all these articles will need to be renamed (back) to "asteroid" in order to establish consistency across all cis-Jovian dynamical groups. In addition, it is reasonable to drop the "List of.." from the article's name (the list can be linked by an #R-to-section instead). The corresponding Wikipedia articles in Spanish, French, Italian, German and Portuguese all agree with the proposed renaming. Finally, I don't know what the invoked WP:ASTONISH- objection should be good for; but I'm sure, that the term "asteroid" is more comprehensible to a layperson than "minor planet".   R fassbind  – talk  03:13, 17 May 2018 (UTC) Struck nom's duplicate support vote. ToThAc (talk) 17:22, 17 May 2018 (UTC)


 * This list includes more than just asteroids, so just "asteroid" is not good enough. Also, interlanguage wikis have different rules for naming than the English Wikipedia, and we shouldn't follow their conventions just for the sake of doing so. As far as I can tell, this is still technically a list, and should follow the conventions at WP:LIST accordingly. Lastly, this move would violate consistency, as we have List of Mercury-crossing minor planets, List of Venus-crossing minor planets, List of Earth-crossing minor planets, List of Jupiter-crossing minor planets, List of Saturn-crossing minor planets, List of Uranus-crossing minor planets, and List of Neptune-crossing minor planets. ToThAc (talk) 17:39, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Are you sure about that? I don't think editors are allowed to do this in a discussion. Ego aside, this should be really an uncontroversial request. The definitions given by the MPC and JPL SBDB agree with the foreign wikis and with articles, categories, and groups used in the on the English Wikipedia. The criteria used in the article in question are unmaintainable and poor (quote from the lead: |"Nevertheless, these objects are listed on this page") as is the above rationale, which is – to the best of my knowledge – ignorant and self-referential on the inconsistencies I pointed out.   R fassbind  – talk  21:08, 17 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The "Nevertheless" part can be deleted, but you still haven't responded to my statements above about how this is still technically a list, and how this would violate consistency, which must be considered before moving any one page within the consistent naming scheme. And I should have mentioned this above: we don't always rely on official names, and instead rely on common names; in other words, this means that even if official statute changes, readers may not understand the current official terms, and thus we must use common names that aren't that unofficial but not entirely official, either. Also, why are you still comparing interwikis? They are different, content- and page traffic-wise and need different rules than the English version. ToThAc (talk) 16:11, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Also, I removed your vote because you already voted as the nominator, therefore the other vote is not needed. ToThAc (talk) 16:14, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * , I changed 's vote to Support as nominator so as not to demote (i.e. default hide) it. "Comment" is also acceptable. Collapseing is more appropriate for the likes of sock puppets, etc., even with the heading.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:52, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Thanks, I don't have any objections to that. ToThAc (talk) 18:34, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Not to mention that those edits made on my comment above were a direct violation per WP:TPO.  R fassbind  – talk  01:03, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose rename to a non-list, but conditional support for List of Mars-crossing asteroids pending wider discussion/consensus – After reading Rfassbind's statement I was inclined to simply Support, but looking at List of Mars-crossing minor planets, there is a very clear consistency of "minor planets" usage, which I don't think should be broken without a wide discussion/consensus. Otherwise this will be just another to-and-fro in the minor planets/asteroids saga amongst WP:ASTorians. I do like the idea of "asteroids" when inside of Jupiter's orbit, and "minor planets" when outside, though.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  16:47, 18 May 2018 (UTC)
 * The Mars-crossing asteroids (MCAs) are a dynamical group of asteroids, located between the near-Earth and main-belt populations. It is one of 5 and 7 classes, used by the JPL SBDB and the MPC, respectively. For every other class a dedicated article on Wikipedia exists. The group of Mars-crossers is as large as the near-Earth and the Jupiter trojan population. The fact the Mars-crossers are the only dynamical group named after a criterion that is insufficiently restrictive, is the reason for a lot of semantic confusion and erroneously perceived consistency (since a large number of NEOs, mostly Amor asteroids also cross the orbit of Mars). What is more important is the dynamical group, not the orbit crossing property. Otherwise Wikipedia does not reflect accurate terminology and drifts into double-classifications.  R fassbind  – talk  02:27, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * that's a good argument, but not for removing "List" from a list article. Developing seems like the easiest solution. If/when that happens, it will be easier to move this list to List of Mars-crossing asteroids, if desired.   ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:30, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Misread the original proposal thinking it would go from a list article to another list article, so amended my vote.  ~ Tom.Reding (talk ⋅dgaf)  13:30, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose WP:LISTNAME this isn't an article on the class of asteroid, it is a list of asteroids. The intro paragraph is insufficient to consider this an article on the class of asteroid. -- 65.94.42.219 (talk) 15:39, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Because the article's original name, Mars-crossing asteroid (MCA) has been changed, and subsequent edits lead to this unmaintainable "Frankenstein" list. On astronomy related articles, Wikipedia needs to follow the official definitions on the term used in virtually any publication on the subject. We have articles on any principal dynamical class (NEOs, MBAs, CENs and TNOS) except for MCAs. There are more than 2,400 numbered near-Earth objects (NEOs) that cross the orbit of Mars, but that doesn't make them a member of this dynamical class, only Mars-crossing NEOs. Therefore we need move this article to Mars-crossing asteroid, preserving its history, and begin with a complete revision. For years I've made tens of thousands edits on minor planets. Why would editors I've never seen working on these articles want to prevent me from doing the right thing? This is only disturbing.  R fassbind  – talk  23:00, 21 May 2018 (UTC)
 * No one is stopping you from converting the redirect into an article. However, this article is a list article, so your proposed name is wrong, since it doesn't have "list of X" as its title, per WP:LISTNAME. If you cannot conform your request to match the recommended title format, then obviously it should not be accepted. If your proposal is to have this moved and then be shorn of the list, then there's no reason to rename this article to your suggested title, since that is a different article. Just write an article without a list, and you can have this current article as a list associated with your new article. Further if you're accusing me of not working on asteroids, I have, on several. You can withdraw your move request and submit a new one that conforms with WP:LISTNAME.  -- 65.94.42.219 (talk) 05:19, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * Of course converting the redirect (rather than moving this article) into a separate one is a possibility (and would have avoided this entire conversation) but I consider that a much inferior solution. First, because this would not preserve the article's edit history (which started as Mars-crossing asteroid). Second, a large number of links would also need adjustment. My approach, that is, to move and revise this article, and then create a group of well-crafted lists seems more thought through. Also, I hope you understand, that I refuse to defend accusations I did not say.  R fassbind  – talk  17:08, 22 May 2018 (UTC)
 * They probably don't need link correction. I would hazard that most or all of those links are arriving via a template. And in the template, the list article being a list article, would be correctly linked. If it is for the object class, then a minor change to a few templates will propagate across most articles that need the new link -- 65.94.42.219 (talk) 04:39, 23 May 2018 (UTC)


 * Oppose - The article is just a list, so the name must be prefixed with "List of ". The proposed name is not consistent with other list articles. UU (talk) 10:57, 22 May 2018 (UTC)


 * 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.

reason for inclusion?
So, what is the reason for including a minor planet here? I counted a little under 1100 objects from the list. List of minor planets tells there are 5750 mars-crossers. That means little over 4500 are missing here. The article states "The known numbered Mars-crossers are listed here", but I think List of minor planets only has the numbered ones. 109.240.153.46 (talk) 20:46, 24 September 2021 (UTC)


 * There are 21,644 Mars-crossers of which only 5751 are numbered. The last MCA is 2021 SN and the last numbered one is 585874 (2019 WT2). The list was originally generated when there was a much smaller number. Most of the MCAs numbered above 100,000 will simply not be noteworthy asteroids. -- Kheider (talk) 21:27, 24 September 2021 (UTC)

Frequency of significant impactors in dispute?
New paper suggests they are more frequent on Mars: https://arxiv.org/abs/2405.02614 John_Abbe (talk) 21:57, 20 May 2024 (UTC)