Template talk:Spaceflight crew

Discussion
Before implementing this template on hundreds of pages, could we have some discussion about its aesthetics and whether it's an improvement on the text listing we had before? Rillian (talk) 22:32, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This was already being used on most of the recent Shuttle missions. I just wrote the template, and started putting it on older articles. -- G W … 22:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I noticed it on a few Shuttle missions, but thought it was just someone experimenting and have been looking for a spot to have a conversation. I have some concerns about the template and would like to see some discussion and consensus before it is implemented on every manned spaceflight article - Soyuz, Shenzou, Apollo, SS1, etc. Rillian (talk) 22:40, 14 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Personally, I think it is an improvement, the lists were unclear and the numbers in parenthesis didn't seem all that clear (I didn't have a problem with them myself, but I am sure some users could have.) What are your views on the issue? -- G W … 22:44, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I really like the table itself, but after trying to update a table to this template, I found the template extremely difficult to understand. For example, in the position field, it does not explain that the word "Launching" and "Landing" is built in, so I ended up with "Launching Astronaut Launching" or something... nor does it explain that "spaceflight" is also part of the template, so I ended up with "First spaceflight spaceflight", etc. (Gotta love preview! lol) There were some strange dots inside the template that were spilling into the table, (which I removed). The spacing makes no sense to me, maybe there is some rhyme or reason there, but as a non-templaty girl I've no idea what it is lol. While I like the table, I truly think that turning the table into a template is making things unnecessarily difficult and complicated. It isn't hard to copy/paste the table, and just change the astronaut names. While I'm all for templates, and GW is an absolute genius with templates, I think that this one is just really not needed. Especially since there are only what, two flights without formal crew announcements? The rest of the pages already have the table on them, and after doing the one page (transferring from table to this template), I'm not really thrilled about doing it again. It took me over an hour. Oy! lol Ariel  ♥  Gold  23:35, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think most of those issues were more to do with the documentation than the template. I'm not really that good at clearly explaining how to use things, and the documentation that I wrote is pretty bad. I think that clarifying the documentation would resolve your problems. Also, whilst there may only be two Shuttle missions left with no crew announced, there will still be Soyuz, Orion, Shenzhou, etc. missions that will need crew details. Using a template would also make future format changes easier, and would encourage consistency of formatting. -- G W … 23:41, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * And for the record, those dots were supposed to indicate that I had omitted eleven identical sets of parameters from the documentation. -- G W … 23:42, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Ahhh! Well the dots were showing up when using the template, inside the table, and that's why I removed them, because they should not show up in the table ;) And I realize it was more to do with documentation, and after thinking about it, this won't just be for shuttle flights, so I dunno. I find it hard to convert the table to this template, but that's just me, a personal thing ;) I do love all your templates, and like I said you're a genius with them, so I'm happy to go along with whatever. :) I just use preview about 10000 times before saving, lol! Ariel  ♥  Gold  23:49, 14 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Consistent formatting between articles is a good thing, and templates facilitate that, so I support having and using a template for spaceflight crew listings. That said, I don't much like the table format currently used by this template, but use of the template enables us to change the format in one place (the template), and have that change be consistently incorporated into every article. (sdsds - talk) 06:35, 15 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree with that. The only aesthetic issue I have with this table is it is just too "chunky" for my personal taste, but I think it is better than the old format in many ways. I'd like to see it more horizontal, and take up less vertical space in an article. While the crew is important, the articles are about the missions, and the emphasis this table brings to the crew (in its current format) seems excessive. I'm open to a template that isn't a table, or some modified version of a table, but I'm just not a huge fan of tables in prose anyway (although I do realize that they have their place, and are often the best solution.) Honestly I just would like a template that is easier to actually use, whatever the format, lol. (Again, nothing against GW's awesome coding, a ton of our templates are thanks to him!)  Ariel  ♥  Gold  11:11, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

I started adding the tables, so blame me for all this discussion. I think the table makes it easier for someone, who is not familiar with space and space travel, to read. I will add my comments to each section below, but I would like to say this, that I am open to changes in the formatting of the table, ie. horizontal or vertical, background color and names of columns. One of the things that has been said a lot is that each article needs to be simple enough that a child can read it and understand, and having a section for the crew with # of flights in brackets and then additional sub-sections for the launching and landing ISS crew members does not achieve that. The list format makes it almost look like there is 3 different missions that will be going on as opposed to the table which makes it look like only 1. This is just my 2 cents worth.--Navy blue84 (talk) 16:46, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Size on article
The previous text lists were compact - one line per crew member plus the note about previous flights. The new template is multiple lines per crew member plus the headings. Compare the following for STS-128:

Old

 * Frederick W. Sturckow (4) - Commander
 * Kevin A. Ford (1) - Pilot
 * Patrick G. Forrester (3) - Mission Specialist 1
 * Jose M. Hernández (1) - Mission Specialist 2
 * Christer Fuglesang (2) - Mission Specialist 3 - ESA (Sweden)
 * John D. Olivas (2) - Mission Specialist 4

Launching ISS Expedition 20 Crew
 * Nicole Stott (1) - Flight Engineer

Landing ISS Expedition 20 Crew
 * Timothy Kopra (1) - Flight Engineer

Number in parentheses indicates number of spaceflights by each individual prior to, and including this mission.

Rillian (talk) 22:48, 14 June 2009 (UTC)

Reply

 * I think that the savings in space that the list format brings are at the expense of clarity. The table is more structured, and easier to read. Besides, size doesn't matter, Wikipedia is not paper. -- G W … 22:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I have to agree, I think the table is much easier to read and get the vital information from, position, rookie or not, if not, how many flights. Far easier I think. And as mentioned below, a lot of readers would not see the footnote about what the (4) means and wonder what it meant. This way there is no doubt. Clarity is important. Overall, I very much like this table over the lists, it is concise, clear, compact, and flexible. Ariel  ♥  Gold  23:54, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If you look at actually how many lines are used by both, they are about the same. The difference here is it looks like only 1 spaceflight with the table as opposed to making it look like 3 with the list. Not to mention the table flows with the info box and the spacewalks table. We want articles to flow together and look nice and be easy to read and I think that the table achieves that.--Navy blue84 (talk) 16:49, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Content length
For someone with four previous flights, the old system used the notation (4). The new system uses "Fourth spaceflight". The repetition of the word spaceflight is distracting to the reader. Rillian (talk) 22:55, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I feel that it clarifies the meaning of the number. (4) on its own is meaningless, and the reader may not notice the comment under the list. -- G W … 22:57, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I second what GW says. Thats why when I started using the table(not created by me but Ian Manka, I didn't modify how that was put in there. It is very clear and concise and you don't have to jump around to find the meaning of the number.--Navy blue84 (talk) 16:52, 16 June 2009 (UTC)


 * The forced line break between the person's name and the "Fourth spaceflight" text shouldn't be there. That's a fine place to break the line if it needs to be broken, so "Fourth spaceflight" should use nowrap or equivalent, but forcing a break there doesn't make sense for many places (e.g. wide displays) where the content will be laid out. (sdsds - talk) 17:02, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Format
The background colors and bolding of both the headings and the positions give undue weight to the crew list. Rillian (talk) 22:52, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * The same could be said about a lot of the tables used in Wikipedia, but we still have them. -- G W … 23:00, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Lots of other Wiki tables look bad, so the spaceflight articles must have bad-looking tables? That sounds like Other stuff exists. Can't we have good-looking tables? Rillian (talk) 23:15, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * No. What colour scheme would you suggest? -- G W … 23:20, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * This table uses the standard blue table color that is used across the project, and is used in a multitude of current featured lists, (including the ISS spacewalk list) and is absolutely appropriate. Ariel  ♥  Gold  23:52, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * If the color does not work, then lets find one that does and change it. Simple fix and can be done quickly.--Navy blue84 (talk) 16:53, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Headings
The headings columns are unnecessary. There are only two columns and one is clearly people's names. Rillian (talk) 22:53, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * How about for the tables where there are different crew during launch and landing. -- G W … 22:58, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I agree that the Soyuz flights in particular, where the launch and landing Commander can be different people do benefit from a table layout. I'm not sure that outweighs my overall concerns about the template. Rillian (talk) 23:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * What do you suggest the headings be? We could just get rid of them all togther on the articles where it is the same crew for launch and landing, would that work?--Navy blue84 (talk) 16:55, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Terminology
Having the heading of the people column be Astronaut (or Cosmonaut) raises lots of issues that we have discussed at length. Not everyone who flies on a Shuttle is an astronaut. Not everyone who files on a Soyuz is a cosmonaut. If instead we use "Crew Member", then we have the issue that not everyone who flies on a manned spaceflight is a career astronaut and some sources may not consider them a crew member, e.g. Dennis Tito. Rillian (talk) 22:59, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * I think the generic term for that vehicle would be acceptable in this situation. -- G W … 23:01, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Why? Also, what is the English, common, generic term for someone who flies on a Shenzou spacecraft? Rillian (talk) 23:03, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Admittedly, there isn't one. The Chinese media seem to have started using "Taikonaut", so that is the term that I have been using in that area. -- G W … 23:05, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * According to Astronaut, official English-language texts issued by the government of the People's Republic of China use astronaut while texts in Russian use космонавт (kosmonavt). So based on that, we would use Astronaut as the column heading on Shenzou mission articles? Rillian (talk) 23:10, 14 June 2009 (UTC)
 * We can distinguish the tourists like Denis Tito by putting "Space Tourist" in the position column. Not to mention after the next Soyuz launch, there will be no more tourists for a while, if at all. As to the heading, I can agree to "Crew Member" as the title. Its more general and can be used for all articles.--Navy blue84 (talk) 16:58, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * While Tito was a tourist, his position aboard the spacecraft was "Spaceflight Participant". Rillian (talk) 13:08, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

STS-129 flights up versus expedition down conflict
Currently when this template is used in STS-129 for Nicole Stott we don't get to see that this will be the conclusion of her first spaceflight. Bug, or feature? (sdsds - talk) 17:07, 16 June 2009 (UTC)
 * position7        =Mission Specialist 5
 * crew7_up         =none
 * crew7_down       =Nicole Stott
 * flights7_up      = First
 * expedition7_down =Expedition 21
 * Neither. It was a mistyped parameter in the article, which I have corrected. The flight value was fed into "flights7_up" rather than "flights7_down", which resulted in it being assigned to the empty seat, and hence not displayed. -- G W … 17:16, 16 June 2009 (UTC)

Proposal
No reason the table can't have more than two columns. This proposal saves vertical space and avoids repetition of "spaceflight". It removes the unnecessary bolding from the position titles and places the notes next to the person. Rillian (talk) 13:07, 28 June 2009 (UTC)


 * Please could you present an example for the whole crew of STS-111 -- G W … 13:52, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Overkill for solo flights?
I'm currently looking at the Mercury missions, and I'm wondering if these templates are really appropriate in such contexts. For example, Mercury-Redstone 4 currently has as its first section two one-line templates, complete with a subsection header.

This is basically two points of data; far better to integrate it into the text. On the other hand, there's something to be said for consistency among all articles. Thoughts, anyone? Shimgray | talk | 00:05, 23 August 2009 (UTC)


 * Alternately, it might be worth figuring out a way to clearly display backup crew within the same template as flight crew - say, a bar between the two sections and a different background? This'd cut down on overhead, and help reduce excess whitespace, meaning that even for a solo flight it didn't look quite so "top-heavy". Shimgray | talk | 00:12, 23 August 2009 (UTC)

Whitespace reduction - side-align option?
I'm wondering if we can set the template up with an optional parameter to align it to the right of the page, infobox-style.

Currently, most articles just have the template on its own, which leaves a lot of whitespace in the article. This is exacerbated by it often being the first section, which means that the reader scrolls past a lot of whitespace with the section index, and then... does the same for the content. It's a bit offputting, even if we do try and fill the space up with pictures.

I've experimented with writing a more verbose crew section (discussing selection, roles, alternates, background, etc), which can be seen on eg/ STS-8. This complements the template quite nicely, but it still has the whitespace problem - what I'm thinking is if we have an option to push the table off to the right and float it there, we could have it take up about as much vertical screenspace as the running text, and they'd tie together very clearly and tidily.

Thoughts? I'm fairly sure this is technically possible, but I'd have to do some reading up to figure out quite how to do it. Shimgray | talk | 12:28, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * ...and I've put something in. My testing shows this shouldn't do anything unless you add |right=yes, at which point it floats right. Now to tidy its margin so it doesn't interfere with the text... Shimgray | talk | 12:55, 21 November 2009 (UTC)


 * ...and it works! Compare before, after. Shimgray | talk | 13:04, 21 November 2009 (UTC)

Another proposal
I've recently suggested an alternative to the current crew template; it is an expanded version of Rillian's proposal above. Please leave comments at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Human_spaceflight. thanks! Mlm42 (talk) 23:41, 9 November 2010 (UTC)

Adding date to template
I think I've now added the option of adding the launch/landing date to the template. Mlm42 (talk) 21:07, 26 November 2010 (UTC)
 * It probably would look better unbolded, but I'm not sure how to do that. Mlm42 (talk) 21:08, 26 November 2010 (UTC)

Subtemplate proposal
Hello everyone, I recently did a rewrite of our version of this template in the Spanish Wikipedia. It now uses a subtemplate called "Row" to define each row. That way we avoid the hard limit of 13 crew members with a lot less parameters. I don't know what the policy (if any) is on this but I would gladly make the same changes here. Cheers, josecurioso  ❯❯❯  Talk to me!  18:14, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

Possible updates?
I just found this and it appears to no longer be in active use and is sorely out of date to how ISS Expedition crews are currently specified with numerous up and down dates for various segments of the crew. Is there any way this could be updated? @Erick Soares3 pinging you as you might be interested. Ergzay (talk) 20:45, 4 November 2021 (UTC)