Talk:Water on Mars/Archive 2

Merge suggestion
IMO the section "Development of Mars' water inventory" is an unnecessare techincal detail in the general article Water on terrestrial planets of the Solar System. Staszek Lem (talk) 00:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)
 * I think that the sub-section on water on terrestrial planets for Mars should just be a summary of this article's info. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 92.0.159.185 (talk) 17:05, 10 June 2015 (UTC)


 * Do not merge. Since there are multiple separate articles about water on Earth, there can be a separate article about water on Mars. Water on terrestrial planets of the Solar System section should be shortened for that article and then new information moved there, as this article is about other planets of the Solar System. - Mardus /talk 23:31, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Do not merge, but shorten this section in favour of the separate article Water on Mars with a Template:Main article link here.--Sae1962 (talk) 01:10, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I will leave a short information that already exists before the subsections and move the rest to the main article Water on Mars soon.--Sae1962 (talk) 15:47, 1 November 2015 (UTC)
 * Completed suggested merger now.--Sae1962 (talk) 07:03, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

NASA-TV/ustream (9/28/2015@11:30am/et/usa) - Mars Mystery Solved.
NASA-TV/ustream (Monday, 28 September 2015@11:30am/et/usa) - NASA will detail a "Major Science Finding" about the planet Mars - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 01:12, 25 September 2015 (UTC)
 * BRIEF Followup - evidence presented that liquid water may be currently flowing on the planet Mars  (conference videos  and somewhat related Nature (journal) (1979) reference re lifeforms in the hypersaline (and/or brine) water of Don Juan Pond, Antarctica ) - in any case - Enjoy! :) Drbogdan (talk) 18:08, 28 September 2015 (UTC)

Over-referenced article
While this has been discussed earlier, it's probably worth bringing up because it's been almost a year since the last discussion with no sign of progress (and, in fact, the problem has gotten worse).

The references, in their current state, impedes with the readability of the article. I don't see a need for 7 references on a one-sentence claim, frankly. Since the purpose of Wikipedia is to provide users with information on different topics, adding so many references, while making the article reliable, cause it to be harder and harder to get information out of the article. For more information, I fully agree with the essay on the topic of overkill citations.

I propose that at least some of the 5-10 reference segments be cut to about 3 references. Ideally, references could include a primary source, a scholarly secondary source, and a mass-media source. More than that really isn't needed and just makes the article hard to read. Appable (talk) 19:28, 28 September 2015 (UTC)
 * There is a historical background to it. This article grew with multiple sections stating the same information or concepts. Some years ago I did an overhaul and restructured the article. Since any article is only as good as its reference, I made an effort to keep the reliable references in order to look at them calmly, and in time, delete the outdated ones. Some competent users weaned a few.  I disagree in that too many references make it hard to read, but I agree that there are too many, and selecting which ones to keep will take some intellectual effort.  Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 00:59, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Thanks for your comment. I don't mind 3 references or so for claims (especially more unknown claims or claims on highly controversial articles), but some small claims here seem very overdone. For example, under Evidence for Recent Flows, in the first paragraph, this claim: "So, a geological mystery commenced when observations from NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter revealed gully deposits that were not there ten years ago, possibly caused by flowing salty water (brine) during the warmest months on Mars," has ten references. It actually takes time for a reader to try to find where that sentence picks up again. It's also unreadable in the "edit source" mode.
 * I agree that citations are useful to accuracy of a wikipedia page, and so more than one should be included on bold claims. But once it gets past 5 references, I don't really think it's nessesary. At that point, there's probably a large number of cited articles repeating exactly what another article said with no more depth, and that's not helpful to anyone. Appable (talk) 05:31, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yes there are too many refs in non-controversial statements, and in 'edit mode' is quite challenging to review/edit. I will work on another article today, but on a slow day I will get into it. Cheers! -BatteryIncluded (talk) 14:42, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I see that the (rather long) lead has heaps of references too. Per WP:CITELEAD I don't think most of them are needed there. 220  of  Borg 12:33, 9 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Per  re 'edit mode', this page would be a good candidate to be converted to WP:List-defined references, thus removing the defining of references from the content. 220  of  Borg 12:42, 9 October 2015 (UTC)

A question:
Is there a better approach to building a list of references or bibliography?

Wikipedia seems to not like external links in the article, and put them in the external links section; but then editors delete the external links which can provide valuable info. So I and others put the links in as citations. Which editors then delete as overciting losing the info.

I like primary source, a scholarly secondary source, and a mass-media source if that includes the NASA press release and videos. but some editors always delete the primary source, per WP guidelines using only secondary sources, but I prefer having the primary, especially when the secondary source doesn't state the primary source.

FYI: Medical articles never use primary source, because they are not reliable, and wait for a secondary source validating the multiple conflicting primary source studies.

Thank you, CuriousMind01 (talk) 16:57, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * Yeah, I agree this is problematic. I always think of WP refs like academic refs, so if there's subtleties in, e.g., interpretations by two sources, keep them both. If we follow your model of primary-secondary-mass media (which I like a lot), it means we quickly build up 4,5,6 refs in a line. Which per Appable above, is also not ideal.
 * I'm also a big fan of retaining primary sources in planetary stuff, if only because secondary sources can get extremely thin on the ground for more tightly focused articles. There's also the problem that 2aries get out of date pretty fast - e.g., much of what the Surface of Mars (review book by Carr, which a lot of this article is built around) says from 2003 has now been very much superseded by new missions. I'd like to think earth & planetary literature is a bit more robust than the medical literature, if only because papers tend to be longer (i.e., more meaningful intros and discussions, which essentially often become secondary sources) and publication rates much slower.
 * Hopefully we can find a balance. A lot of the most egregious overciting is in the lede, which is good as we can thin them without removing their repeats later in the article (as everything up top should be repeated somewhere below - THOUGH WE SHOULD CHECK THIS BEFORE REMOVAL). Later, I think a good balance can normally be found with one secondary (if exists)-one mass media-any truly relevant academic papers, which means normally <3 cites, but occasionally more. This seems OK to me? DanHobley (talk) 17:50, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * I agree for sure. I've been thinning out references (as you can see from the history page) but I'm keeping academic primary sources because users who care about finding technical information on a concept in the article have quick access to those. What do you think about the "overviews" that NASA produces? As well as the press statements, I'm not sure how important they are compared to mass-media secondary sources. I'd love to hear what anyone thinks about the NASA press statements and discovery overviews (in terms of whether it should be included compared to other types of sources). Appable (talk) 18:29, 29 September 2015 (UTC)
 * IMO, NASA's overviews or news releases indulge is some degree of hype, as it brings on increased funding to this federal administration. I am the opinion to stay as close as possible to the science - primary research papers and scientific reviews of them. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 18:38, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I think the NASA press releases are valuable to inlcude, sometimes they are the primary source. The press releases usually include photos and videos for reference, not included in the article. I wish there was a way to include a citation-like link which allows users to embed other references in the 1 link.

CuriousMind01 (talk) 19:09, 29 September 2015 (UTC)


 * If you go to your hospital, who do you trust for heart surgery, the administrator or the cardiologist? Same with NASA. Grunsfeld, the administrator, raised his coffee mug in the conference and said "just drink that water!" This is top political BS, I want to see him swallowing perchloride hydrate crystals. Discern science from propaganda/hype.  BatteryIncluded (talk) 17:23, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * I trust both for the surgery, scheduling and billing. Some NASA press releases may be self-promoting, but they contain facts, photos, videos.  In Wikipedia, we keep our views aside, and report the facts being reported. I know easy to write...hard to do.

CuriousMind01 (talk) 17:33, 30 September 2015 (UTC)

Water: sentences in MARs, place in this article?
Water: Should these sentences in the MARS article, be in this article?

On September 28, 2015, NASA announced that they had found conclusive evidence of hydrated brine flows on recurring slope lineae, based on spectrometer readings of the darkened areas of slopes.[93][94][95] These observations provided confirmation of earlier hypotheses based on timing of formation and rate of growth that these dark streaks resulted from water flowing in the very shallow subsurface.[96] The streaks contain hydrated salts, perchlorates, which have water molecules in their crystal structure.[97] The streaks flow downhill in Martian summer, when the temperature is above –23 degrees Celsius, and freeze at lower temperatures.[98]

--CuriousMind01 (talk) 01:09, 30 September 2015 (UTC)


 * Article has most of this info already in the Evidence for Recent Flows section. To me only new info would be that perchlorates have water in their crystal structure, and that the specific T at which they flow is -23degC. The former I consciously left out, as it's somewhat misleading: the argument is that the perchlorates must be mobilised as a solution in water to get where they are, and the water in the lattice is a bit of a red herring. The latter just seems a bit spurious. I note also that "freezing" at lower Ts is pretty misleading too; they actually fade, not freeze, and freezing has weird water-related overtones that don't really belong. DanHobley (talk) 06:08, 30 September 2015 (UTC)