Talk:List of people with craters on Mars named after them

Move discussion in progress
There is a move discussion in progress on Talk:List of people with craters of the Moon named after them which affects this page. Please participate on that page and not in this talk page section. Thank you. —RMCD bot 15:31, 28 September 2017 (UTC)

Requested move 28 October 2017

 * 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: moved to List of people with craters on Mars named after them. The list as currently structured is clearly a list of people and not a list of craters. There seems to be a budding consensus that the article would be more helpful to readers if it were structured differently. Once it is restructured, we can figure out what name best suits that structure.--Aervanath (talk) 21:49, 9 November 2017 (UTC) Aervanath (talk) 21:49, 9 November 2017 (UTC)

List of craters on Mars named after people → List of people with craters on Mars named after them – A month later, this nomination is a variation upon the unsuccessful move proposal at Talk:List of people with craters of the Moon named after them, as noted above under section header "Move discussion in progress". The proposed title would thus have a form analogous to List of people with craters of the Moon named after them and, unlike the current title, would be factually correct, because this list is not a "list of craters on Mars" (such as Lomonosov (Martian crater), but, in fact, a list of people (such as Mikhail Lomonosov). &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 03:29, 28 October 2017 (UTC) Note: Announcement of this discussion appears at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Solar System and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Anthroponymy &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 01:32, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support per WP:PRECISE and WP:CONSISTENCY; nom's reasoning is sound.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ &gt;ʌⱷ҅ᴥⱷʌ&lt;  04:30, 28 October 2017 (UTC)
 * Comment: This list and others like it seem like trivial cruft with no particular value. The entire list here has one single reference - that being the primary source Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature. That source doesn't separate them by "named after people", so some editor has done WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH and curated a special selection of craters from that primary source to compromise this list. They have stripped that sources list of all scientifically relevant data. These lists should all be deleted as they currently stand. -- Netoholic @ 07:57, 1 November 2017 (UTC)
 * If the individual has any kind of notability, it is usually easy to cite their status as a crater eponym. Take Walter Sydney Adams for example. Somebody just needs to do the thankless work of adding citations. Praemonitus (talk) 22:47, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose, restructure instead. Agree with Netoholic.  I think it can only be justified as a navigation aid.  For this purpose, I suggest restructuring into a sortable table, exactly as with the table at List of craters on Mars.  --SmokeyJoe (talk) 00:55, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * If restructured, it would just be a subset of List of craters on Mars, and I don't see the need for that. --mfb (talk) 07:59, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The current structure is a subset of the suggested restructure, and so it follows that you would have this page deleted? —SmokeyJoe (talk) 10:57, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support per SMcCandlish. Praemonitus (talk) 14:49, 2 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Oppose. But a sortable table is an excellent idea. Nom's reasoning is faulty: if the proposed rename were to go ahead, the result would be no more a complete list of people than the current one is a complete list of craters on Mars. Nor is the rejected RM a precedent for this one, that proposal was to rename to  List of people who are namesakes... and was rightly rejected. If this RM is rejected, the question of consistency with the moon article should be considered, yes, and the obvious fix is to rename the moon article to the shorter, less awkward title similar to this one. Andrewa (talk) 04:32, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The moon? Yes it really is an oddity, the moon. How long has it been discovered?  And still, it hasn’t been named. —SmokeyJoe (talk) 05:53, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I wondered about that. The article on Ceres for example gives a systematic name of 1 Ceres, but there is no systematic name given for the moon in its article that I can see. Now that the Planet Pluto has been abolished, perhaps the wise men of astronomy can address this anomaly. (-> Andrewa (talk) 09:31, 4 November 2017 (UTC)
 * There appears to be a misreading of the nomination in the most recent "Oppose". First, there is no claim being made, either in the existing title or in the nomination, that this list is "complete". Second, as clearly stated in the nomination, the current title is factually incorrect since the list is, in fact, one of people, not of craters, analogous to List of people with craters of the Moon named after them, which is also a list of people, not of craters. Third, the nomination does not state that the previous dual nomination, which included both the Moon article and this article, serves as a "precedent", but rather "a variation upon" that "unsuccessful move proposal". In the Moon crater discussion, the "craters of the Moon named after them" part of the title was found to be factually correct and, therefore, acceptable for remaining as the main header. Since this list has exactly the same form as the Moon crater list, the presumption was that if the Moon crater title was found acceptable, then the Mars crater title should be also found acceptable since, in its present form, it is, again, factually incorrect. &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 01:36, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * You may be right, in that I'm finding this logic very hard to follow. The two names... the current and proposed... seem to describe identical lists to me, in that they'd contain exactly the same things, just perhaps in a different order. So if one of these names is factually incorrect, both of them must be. (But I think they're both quite accurate.) Andrewa (talk) 11:18, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Support. Proposed title accurately reflects the scope of the article. It is a list of people, not a list of craters. I have no opposition to a merge or somesuch, but that is largely tangential to the RM and can be carried out once the page has been renamed if it is necessary. Jenks24 (talk) 09:53, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Agree it's a list of people, but isn't it also a list of craters? Andrewa (talk) 11:23, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * It just looks like a list of names of people to me. Jenks24 (talk) 15:12, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Because Category:Lists of impact craters includes List of craters on the Moon (with seven partial lists) and a sortable List of craters on Mars (with three partial lists: List of craters on Mars: A–G, List of craters on Mars: H–N and List of craters on Mars: O–Z), I expected possible uncertainty as to the focus of this list's nominated title and added, as the last words of the nomination, an example that Lomonosov (Martian crater) is solely about the crater, while Mikhail Lomonosov is an extensive biographical entry for the scientist after whom the crater was named. All the entries at "List of craters on..." articles are expected to link directly to the crater articles, while those on the "List of people with craters..." articles are expected to link directly to the biographical entries. &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 16:25, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Wouldn't it be best to link to both as proposed? It isn't a DAB, so there's no reason not to have multiple links per entry. Where there's no article on the crater itself, the crater link should be to the section of the article on the person (or an anchor). That article should at least mention the crater, date of naming etc, particularly if there's no article on the crater itself. Andrewa (talk) 17:16, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * As also indicated by Jenks24, above, the immediate aim of this nomination is to correct a misleading title. Taking a wider view, of course, there must be more apt modes of approaching this subject, but one method does not fit all. Glancing at, for instance, one of the seven Moon lists, List of craters on the Moon: O–Q, it becomes evident that it is almost entirely a list of names in alphabetical order, thus making the other alphabetical (not chronological, by year of birth or period of activity) List of people with craters of the Moon named after them mostly redundant. The List of craters on Mars: A–G, however, includes, in addition to names, many geographical features, thus making the existence of a list consisting exclusively of notable names more sustainable, unless a sorting feature capable of filtering human names can be implemented for the "List of craters". Your proposal of linking to both may well be the next topic. This discussion has been listed at three WikiProjects and, hopefully, there will be further input. &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 19:35, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Understood I think. So by factually incorrect you simply meant that the current (not terribly helpful) format of the list would be better described by the longer, proposed title. Agree, but misleading is a better description, and even that is a bit over the top. Readers are after content. Nobody is going to be misled by the current title. Andrewa (talk) 20:28, 5 November 2017 (UTC)
 * Although I did use the term "misleading title" in my previous comment, as long as the main header continues to indicate "List of craters", rather than "List of people", I fail to see how the description of the title as also "factually incorrect" can be avoided. Readers, who are after content, expect to find, under "List of craters", Adams (Martian crater), Agassiz (Martian crater), Airy (Martian crater), etc, but, instead, are confronted at the top of the list with links to lengthy biographical entries for Walter Sydney Adams, Louis Agassiz, George Biddell Airy, etc. Furthermore, unlike the crater articles which source their content with a link to the Gazetteer of Planetary Nomenclature, the biographies of these men do not readily explain what connection they have to Martian craters and, in some cases, omit that information altogether or, as the case of Walter Sydney Adams, provide no link to the Martian crater named after him. &mdash;Roman Spinner (talk)(contribs) 01:46, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * The term factually incorrect can indeed be avoided and IMO is best avoided (and itself factually incorrect). It's an opinion disguised as a fact. But we are probably best to agree to disagree on that.
 * Agree that the format of the list can and should be improved. Andrewa (talk) 03:03, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * And quite right that there was no link from Walter Sydney Adams to the crater named after him, so I've added the link to the mention of that crater that was already there (and done some related cleanup, lots more to do if that's typical of our coverage of craters). Andrewa (talk) 03:31, 6 November 2017 (UTC)
 * I think I see the problem. Yes, it's currently formatted as a list of people. Its content could be expressed as either a list of people or as a list of craters, and it's proposed above that the format should be a sortable table, which would allow it to be viewed in either way. Surely, that makes for the best user experience? Andrewa (talk) 17:08, 5 November 2017 (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.