Talk:Starmus Festival

Harry Kroto died on April 30th 2016
I did not remove him from the list of the members of board of directors, as I do not know if you want to restructure the list (i.e. add: "former members"). Kjersti Lie (talk) 08:06, 6 October 2016 (UTC)

Article fails to show notability
This subject may lack notability. Also, about 1/3rd of the article was written by an employee of Starmus, and another 1/3rd of the article was written by a close relative of one of Starmus' board of director members (neither of whom declared their WP:COI or WP:UPE). The article is sadly lacking in citations (even poor ones) and most is original research.

There is a huge amount of namedropping on the page, and multi-linking, with names bluelinked at every opportunity. Examples: Stephen Hawking is linked 5 times, Buzz Aldrin is linked 4 times, Brian May 4 times, and Garik Israelian 5 times.

Re notability, of the 12 citations only 1 qualifies to contribute towards notability: the Guardian article.

Here's my breakdown of the 12 citations (from this version):
 * 1 & 4 are press releases
 * 5 is coverage of a press conference by the event organizers
 * 2, 3 & 6 are primary sources, written by a member of the Starmus board of directors
 * 12 is a primary source
 * 9 is a primary source; it's a bio on the Starmus Festival website about a speaker for their 2022 event
 * 8 is an announcement about the schedule and venue, and related tourism
 * 10 & 11 are briefs about music releases
 * 7 is actual coverage from an independent source

A WP:BEFORE search brings up mostly more press releases, also:
 * A blogger wrote about one event she attended.
 * This looks like some coverage of one of the festivals, and might be useful as a citation for some of the uncited content in the wiki article.
 * This 2016 Guardian article looks promising for content.
 * This 2017 Wired article has quite more detail than other press releases. (Most of Wired's stuff reads like glorified press releases, but I'll leave that decision to other wiki editors.)

Article needs a big cleanup, or maybe even deletion. Grorp (talk) 03:54, 4 December 2022 (UTC)
 * Agreed that the article could use a tidy up and additional sources for verification. However, the festival itself is quite a notable event. With some hard work, this article can be "saved". Archives908 (talk) 14:33, 4 December 2022 (UTC)


 * Glad you see the need for work on the article, however you cannot unilaterally declare the subject notable without any proof after I researched it and laid out my findings that it might not be. I have reverted your edit where you removed the notability tag. If you want to prove the subject notable, either post reliable independent sources here on the Talk page or, better yet, weave them into the article. In its present state the article has only a single independent source, which is insufficient for notability.


 * So far I don't see evidence that this subject passes general notability, event notability, or organization notability. The subject does not have "significant coverage in multiple reliable secondary sources that are independent of the subject". The majority of sources available about Starmus are press releases, event scheduling, event notices, tangential, passing mentions, or primary sources (including anything written by David Eicher because he's on the board), none of which contribute towards notability. The vast majority of content available on the internet are actually press releases from the Starmus organization.


 * If Starmus isn't notable per Wikipedia standards, that doesn't mean it cannot remain in Wikipedia. It just means it cannot have a standalone article. Perhaps it should be inserted into the Garik Israelian article. Grorp (talk) 05:35, 5 December 2022 (UTC)
 * I removed "overlinking" concern from template. Appears to be adequately addressed. Amthisguy (talk) 22:57, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

I did some cleanup (typos, apostrophes, resurrect dead links, italic/underline/allcap formats, translate foreign titles, etc.) but mostly tagging for sections without any citations and third-party-inline tags. About half of the remaining citations are actually press releases in ordinary newspapers rather than independent news coverage; I didn't tag these, but it's clear to anyone reading them. There are VAST sections of this article that have no source, even if primary/non-independent/pressreleases were acceptable as citations. I will give it some time after this tagging before I start removing unverified content. If anyone is connected with Starmus (as several editors here have been) and wishes to add citations from third-party independent reliable sources, please add it here to the talk page rather than directly to the article, per the WP:COIEDIT instructions. Grorp (talk) 01:52, 5 May 2023 (UTC)

September 2023 update
Very few of the above concerns have been addressed in the last 9 months. Today, I deleted several sections that had been tagged as unreferenced. The sections for Starmus I & II have no citations to source the content. Starmus II section has one good source, one primary source , and one about the Stephen Hawking medal. Starmus IV and V sections remain unreferenced. Starmus VI section has 14 citations (8-21) which I'm not going to evaluate at this time.

Time to step up. This article needs at least one source per Starmus Festival I-V in order to keep any content. I will even consider a primary source (such as anything written by one of the directors, including Eicher) which could be used at least to give name, theme, date and location of each event.

If you work for the organization, then please post your suggested sources here on this talk page. Grorp (talk) 01:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication into Starmus Festival
The medal page is a WP:CONTENTFORK of Starmus Festival. Grorp (talk) 04:20, 4 December 2022 (UTC)


 * It doesn't make sense to include the Stephen Hawking Medal article in the Starmus article. Although this award was established by Starmus, it nevertheless has an independent character, in the media it has been called the "Scientific Oscar" for several years now. In addition, if you put the article on the Stephen Hawking Medal inside the article on Starmus, the article will become too huge and it will become impossible to maintain the existing structure with the chapters of the article on the Stephen Hawking Medal.
 * And if, as a result, a medal named after cosmonaut Leonov is established, as co-founder Garik Israelyan said in September 2022, then the article about Starmus will become infinite and unreadable. Nadia0906 (talk) 15:59, 2 January 2023 (UTC)

Need secondary sources
It is important that you use only secondary sources and independent reliable sources for content in this article. This Wikipedia article has a history of being inappropriately used by associates of Garik Israelian as a WP:BROCHURE. See also WP:NOTPROMO. ▶ I am Grorp ◀ 04:26, 20 May 2024 (UTC)


 * Hi @Grorp, thanks for your revision and comment. I will focus on independent secondary sources. I was physically in the festival so I can personally confirm most of the data published in Starmus Festival website but I understand your guidelines. PepTheVoyager (talk) 09:42, 20 May 2024 (UTC)