Wikipedia:Featured article review/Moon/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by YellowAssessmentMonkey 23:40, 18 May 2010.

Review commentary

 * Notified: Lunokhod, Ckatz, Serendipodous, Nergaal, Rreagan007, rst20xx, WikiProject Astronomy, WikiProject Solar System

Hey folks! I would hate to see this article or its featured topic be demoted, but the article was promoted way back in 2007, and I think it needs some touching up. The main problem that I see is referencing. The following paragraphs (as of this revision) need additional citations:


 * Two Sides of the moon ¶3
 * Presence of water ¶1, ¶5
 * Surface temperature
 * Geologic evolution ¶1
 * Ocean tides
 * Eclipses ¶1
 * Observation ¶1, ¶3, ¶6
 * Exploration
 * Human understanding ¶7, ¶9
 * Most of those are now covered. Remaining: Ocean tides (now Tidal effects) and Human understanding (now In culture) need to be cited; Exploration sec. 1990-present still needs a bit of cleanup on the manned lunar landing para. Any others? Iridia (talk) 13:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Some of the references, presumably those added by n00bs between the original FAC and now, need to be expanded:


 * "Nasa Spacecraft Reveal Largest Crater in Solar System - on Mars"
 * "The Smell of Moondust"
 * "Versteckt in Glasperlen: Auf dem Mond gibt es Wasser - Wissenschaft - SPIEGEL ONLINE - Nachrichten"
 * "Artemis Project: Lunar Surface Temperatures"
 * Between Stone, Serendipodous and myself, all of those are now I think either gone or fixed. Smell of Moondust is kept as a NASA-sourced document. Iridia (talk) 13:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

The other potential issue is organization:


 * The entire article is littered with one-sentence and two-sentence paragraphs.
 * This should now be considerably less of a problem. Please note any remaining? Iridia (talk) 13:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)

Fun stuff. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 19:38, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
 * There is a main section on Lunar surface, but then in the next main section there is a subsection on Topography, resulting in various redundant pieces of information.
 * I have merged Topography in with Two sides of the moon. Cleanup in progress. Iridia (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * A similar redundancy occurs between Orbit and relationship to Earth and Ocean tides&mdash; perhaps the latter should be a subsection of the former?
 * Now a subsection; more merging to follow, once Earth and Moon is integrated. Iridia (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Merging done! Now Earth and Moon just has to be deleted merged. Iridia (talk) 03:58, 19 March 2010 (UTC) Now merged. Iridia (talk) 05:57, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Orbit and relationship to Earth is a mess of images.
 * Hopefully better now? I might see if I can do a bit more. Iridia (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Yes, definitely better! I'm not a huge fan of the beam of light image for two reasons: First because its horizontal orientation is somewhat awkward, but that's not really a big deal. Second because the content in the caption is not presented in this section. I suggest either removing/replacing it or adding some material to the prose here. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 05:53, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * It's now next to the text that talks about the size/proportion relationship, & I reworked the caption. Does it seem less out of place now? Iridia (talk) 06:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Looking at the Image:Lunar_libration_with_phase2.gif, I note that it is no longer a featured image because there is a better one: the 900K Image:Lunar_libration_with_phase_Oct_2007.gif. However, there is also a 300K Theora video of the latter image File:Lunar libration with phase Oct 2007.ogv that may be better to use in the "Orbit and relationship to Earth" section because it is smaller, and does not repeat (which can be distracting). I put an example of the wiki-markup for adding the video above this text (so it appears to the right).Michael JasonSmith (talk) 12:34, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I changed over the images.

Comments
 * Images need ALT text, see WP:ALT.
 * All now ALT-text'd. Please do give it a look over: I haven't tried doing alt-text before. Iridia (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The external links section needs a trim.
 * Now pruned down. I tried to keep notable-organisation links as much as possible, but left one podcast to help with accessibility. Iridia (talk) 06:52, 23 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The see also section needs a trim. If terms are linked in the body of the article, they don't need to be repeated here, and if the article is comprehensive, most of the these terms should be already in the body.
 * I gave it a trim: could probably take out the whole thing, truth be told. Iridia (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Now gone altogether. Iridia (talk) 04:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I'm not sure how referencing is being formatted. There are several books in the Footnotes section that do not appear to be used for in-line references. If they are not used for this or general referencing, they should be moved to a Further reading section.
 * I a going through and I will make them look the same. With the quality this will take a second tour through the article.--Stone (talk) 22:17, 17 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Do we really need a ref for illuminated exactly as often as the near side: once per lunar day if not we can get ride of the badastronomy ref.--Stone (talk) 13:09, 20 March 2010 (UTC)
 * I think when it comes to explaining anything remotely involving orbital mechanics & viewing geometry, citations are good. It's an unfamiliar topic for most people. Phil Plait is an astronomer, though I'd prefer not to cite blogs if peer-reviewed/textbook is available instead. Iridia (talk) 04:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)


 * I am concerned about this article meeting the FA criteria for high-quality sources. Many of the references seem to be to popular press and popular science articles (CNN, NatGeo, Epoch Times, etc), rather than high quality book and peer reviewed journal sources, which are plentiful for this topic.
 * I am going to go through section by section and replace anything even slightly dubious with peer-reviewed where I can. Iridia (talk) 04:49, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * There are two dead linking external links and several dab links, see the toolbox.
 * Fixed. Iridia (talk) 00:51, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The merge tag in the Orbit and relationship to Earth section needs to be resolved.
 * Done. Iridia (talk) 06:00, 19 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The stacking of images in the Eclipses and Observation sections are causing a lot of white space for me.
 * Now improved. Iridia (talk) 01:50, 16 March 2010 (UTC)

Plus everything that Cryptic mentioned. This article needs quite a bit of work before it's back to FA status, but it's all do-able! Dana boomer (talk) 20:16, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I have been bold and taken out quite a few of the images, which in many cases were not useful in explaining the text or adding to the article. Iridia (talk) 01:05, 15 March 2010 (UTC)

Suggested article reorganisation

I propose the following reorganisation and consolidation of the sections. This will bring the article more into line with the layout of similarly significant bodies such as Venus and Mars. Please do comment and let me know if this might work... * Name and etymology * Physical characteristics o Internal structure o Surface geology o Volcanic features o Impact topography o Presence of water o Gravity and magnetic fields o Surface conditions and atmosphere o Origin and geologic evolution o Formation o Magma ocean and subsequent evolution * Orbit and relationship to Earth o Rotation o Ocean tides o Eclipses * Observation * Studies and exploration o Early studies o First direct exploration: 1950-1980s o Current era: 1990-present * In culture o Legal status * Notes (merge footnotes here) * References * External links Iridia (talk) 05:41, 15 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Having waited a reasonable period of time, I will now start implementation of this article restructuring. I am aiming to consolidate the material that is already here, and remove the single-sentence paragraph problem. Iridia (talk) 04:10, 23 March 2010 (UTC)

Lede rewriting

The lede as of this revision is rather straggly and long, and has a lot of infobox-level information. It's a really interesting satellite - this should be highlighted. Here is my suggestion: Iridia (talk) 01:51, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

The Moon is Earth's only natural satellite and is the fifth largest satellite in the Solar System. It is the largest moon in the Solar System relative to the size of its planet, a quarter the diameter of Earth and 1/81 its mass, and is the second densest satellite after Io. It is also in synchronous rotation with Earth, always showing the same face; this near side is marked with dark volcanic maria among the bright ancient crustal highlands and prominent impact craters. Despite being the brightest object in the sky after the Sun, its surface is actually very dark, with a similar reflectance to coal. The Moon's gravitational influence produces the ocean tides and the minute lengthening of the calendar year. The Moon's current orbital distance, about thirty times the diameter of the Earth, causes the Moon and Sun to be the same size in the sky: this allows the Moon to exactly cover the Sun in total solar eclipses, a very rare cosmic event.

The Moon is the only celestial body on which human beings have made a manned landing. While the Soviet Union's Luna programme was the first to reach the Moon with unmanned spacecraft, the United States' NASA Apollo program achieved the only manned missions to date, beginning with the first manned lunar mission by Apollo 8 in 1968, and six manned lunar landings between 1969 and 1972–the first being Apollo 11 in 1969. These missions returned over 400 kg of lunar rocks, which have been used to develop a detailed geological understanding of the origin of the Moon 4.5 billion years ago in a giant impact, the formation of its internal structure, and its subsequent history. The Moon has since been visited only by unmanned spacecraft, but these have come from many countries: since 2004, Europe, Japan, China, India and the United States have successfully sent lunar orbiters. These spacecraft have confirmed the discovery of water ice in permanently shadowed craters at the poles and bound into the lunar regolith. Future manned missions to the Moon are planned but not yet underway; the Moon remains, under the Outer Space Treaty, free to all nations to explore for peaceful purposes.
 * It's great to see good work going into this article! With the lead, however, please note the WP:LEAD recommends a three to four paragraph lead for articles over 30kb (this article is over 90kb IIRC). Also, be careful to make sure that all information in the lead is also included and sourced in the body of the article, and that the lead correctly summarizes the body of the article without leaving out any major issues. (I'm not saying your version does, as I haven't checked that closely, it's just a comment!) The length thing is probably going to be the main issue with your version. Dana boomer (talk) 14:12, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Lead now replaced, slightly expanded from this version. Iridia (talk) 13:41, 8 April 2010 (UTC)
 * When the MoS Taskforce gets to WP:LEAD in its rolling program of audits, the paragraph guideline will be examined. I worry that some editors obey it by chopping up and producing stubs. I believe it needs to be flexible, although this is not easy to express in concrete terms. That is, however, required. Tony   (talk)  11:15, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

FARC commentary

 * Featured article criterion of concern include references, organization and images. Dana boomer (talk) 22:23, 31 March 2010 (UTC) 
 * References are an ongoing work in progress, and have been steadily improving over the last week or so. The tags are expected to be transitory. Please detail your concerns with the organization and images? Iridia (talk) 23:24, 31 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Iridia, this is just a list of the FAC criteria that were brought up during the FAR stage of the review, as a starting point for reviewers. It doesn't mean that I personally believe that these issues are an issue in the current version of the article. Dana boomer (talk) 00:15, 1 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah! Sorry. Sometimes these Wikiprocesses can be a bit opaque. Iridia (talk) 00:20, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

 Conditional keep: The work that has been done thus far leaves me with no doubt that the few remaining issues will be taken care of. However, those issues do exist: Hooray!


 * "The Moon's appearance, like that of the Sun, can be affected by Earth's atmosphere, producing effects including a 22° halo ring, and the smaller coronal rings seen more often through thin clouds." Needs a citation.
 * Done. Iridia (talk) 04:13, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Last paragraph of "Early studies" needs a citation.
 * Rewritten and done. Iridia (talk) 04:13, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Second paragraph of "First direct exploration" could do with a citation.
 * Done. (I think; could keep finding he said/she said X was important to the success of Apollo for quite a while). Iridia (talk) 05:15, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Second paragraph of "Current era" could also do with a citation.
 * Added. Iridia (talk) 13:14, 13 April 2010 (UTC)

Other than that, the big issues are all addressed: No more one-sentence paragraphs, less image clutter, better organization. Solid! --Cryptic C62 · Talk 02:17, 13 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. I think this is excellent. There's still one cn tag to be taken care of, but apart from that my only other comment is that I found the word "species" rather than "elements" in "The absence of such neutral species as oxygen, nitrogen, carbon, hydrogen and magnesium, which are present in the regolith, is not understood", to be rather unusual, and I'm not sure in what sense these elements are to be considered "neutral". But then I abandoned chemistry after A-level, so I'm probably just demonstrating my ignorance. Malleus Fatuorum 17:54, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I have fixed up the text on the magnetic field that had the cn tag. I couldn't find a wikilink for "neutral species" when I wrote that part, annoyingly. I have modified the sentence to say "such neutral species (atoms and molecules) as oxygen,". It is a little close to jargon, but it is also a precise term: "elements" would be less appropriate. Better? Iridia (talk) 04:31, 15 April 2010 (UTC)

Keep. It seems well-written. I've removed an "also", and replaced the hyphen in "planet–satellite system".
 * "Comparative sizes of Earth and the Moon,"—I'd use "the" twice here—I see "the Earth" in the adjacent text.
 * Fixed. Iridia (talk) 00:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * "South Pole-Aitken basin" is a problem (Is there an east Pole-Aitken basin"?). But there's an article on it formatted that way. Tony   (talk)  12:57, 14 April 2010 (UTC)
 * It is a little strange. The basin stretches from the South Pole out to Aitken crater, so it is named for the features that mark each end (a little like the Indo-Australian Plate, I suppose). Iridia (talk) 00:43, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Ah, in which case the en dash must be used (to/from is the sense). Shall I be bold and move the article names, too? Tony   (talk)  11:17, 15 April 2010 (UTC)
 * I did a quick whip-around on ADS to see the journal usage, and they seem to be consistent in their nice pdf copy with an en dash (or in the case of Science, at least one em dash). Please do :) Iridia (talk) 11:35, 15 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep - Prose, refs, images and organization now excellent. --mav (Urgent FACs/FARs/PRs) 00:59, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comments I'm unfamiliar with the FAR way of doing things... I was asked to help with copy editing. I've hit a rough spot, not in the surface editing, but in the organization and content of at least one section: Moon. For starters, I wonder if I am wholly alone in disliking the organization of the info. It's kind of... name a period, present a hodgepodge of facts, move to next period and another hodgepodge... roughly chronological order. Sorta. This conflicts with my understanding of unity in a paragraph, not because the info is presented sorta chronologically, but because it could more coherently be organized according to topic... I was kinda working on this in user space (temporary link), but have stopped to get input from this forum. As I was working, I became more dissatisfied... the whole Galilean response Aristotelian "moon is a smooth sphere" thing was a bit underdeveloped, I thought, and... I dunno. It just seems to be a nice yet incoherent hodgepodge of interesting facts that omits some key details, etc. I suppose it's supposed to be a summary of Exploration of the Moon (which unfortunately has huge chunks of copyvio)... ALSO: No mention of Paradiso (Dante)? No mention of Paradise Lost? Your thoughts are invited. &bull; Ling.Nut 06:11, 21 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Early studies always had a few issues: it had to be extensively condensed in the FAR rewrite, and did get a bit mashed. The problem is partly that it has to be very short (giving it more space than the later paragraphs seems a bit inequitable), and that it also has to cover a lot of different ancient astronomical knowledge bases. I agree: having a good link between the Aristotelian smooth-moon and Galileo is important.
 * I'm not sure where Dante/Milton can come into it, unless you want to add a sentence down in Cultural influences, which is a bit light on things. Iridia (talk) 02:05, 22 April 2010 (UTC)

Ling.Nut: Sorry. A bit late to the discussion. You could write a book (several books) on the topic of early observation of the Moon. We've been looking at the Moon since we crawled out of the sea and very likely before then. Every culture has Moon myths and Moon theories. We can't list them all. I don't really know how to present a coherent picture of early Moon observation that didn't become an article (Hell, an entire encyclopedia) in its own right. We have to stop somewhere. As for Dante and Milton, they would belong in the Culture section, though at present I think that should be kept as short as possible, as it too could fill an encyclopedia.  Serendi pod ous  07:14, 29 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep. There seems to have been a vast amount of improvement from FAR to FARC, which is the whole point of the process. It looks like most of the items listed above have been addressed, except for the issue raised by Ling.Nut (on which I have no opinion) - are there any other outstanding concerns we need to tackle? UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 13:18, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * Comment I probably shouldn't hang out at FAR/FARc, since I Supremely Strongly Disagree that "improvement is the whole point of the process". Improvement is certainly the point of PR and arguably the point of GA, but the point of FAC/FAR/FARC is to ensure that FAs meet a very stringent interretation of WP:WIAFA. If I were gona get involved, I'd Oppose this article's retention, at the very least per my ealier comments (and probably per others). But I'm not gonna get involved. SO I don't Oppose... If people wanna consider me a jerk for being so... whatever... well, at FA it's Not About the Hugs. Or it shouldn't be. &bull; Ling.Nut 15:24, 23 April 2010 (UTC)
 * My apologies, I was being more general - Everything we do on here, including FA, FAR, et al, is (or should be) intended to improve specific articles in particular and the encyclopedia in general. If bringing (or attempting to bring) an article up to FA standards isn't an improvement, then it's possible we need to rethink the FA standards or the FA program in its entirety. But I agree, raw improvement to an article is better found at Peer Review and its like. On point, I didn't check every concern above; the dozen or more I did check were indeed handled, and they seemed to be representative. That, and the overall state of the article, seemed to meet the criteria. If I get the chance today, I'll perform a more in-depth review, but I stand by my Keep, for now. UltraExactZZ Said~ Did 12:32, 26 April 2010 (UTC)


 * Beating a dead horse: for some reason that escapes me, I have to ask on Every Single Planetary FAC or FAR why some space ships are in italics and others aren't. Sandy Georgia  (Talk) 22:26, 3 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Fixed. (Just oversight, I think). Iridia (talk) 10:50, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Actually, I've had to revert this change for the time being. Per the style guide, we italicize names of spacecraft, such as Luna 1. I'll try to discern what the procedure is for missions (such as with the Apollo missions). --Ckatz chat spy  20:46, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Then could we please have the style guide linked on WP:Solar_System? I did not know where that part of it was, checked a few WP:SS FAs, found them inconsistent in italicization, so went and asked Ruslik before doing this, and the reply was that we don't have a MoS for it. Iridia (talk) 22:58, 4 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Spacecraft names now italicized. "Apollo" consistently not italicized. Iridia (talk) 23:33, 4 May 2010 (UTC)


 * Keep. I see some good improvements to the article page. -- Cirt (talk) 16:29, 5 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Keep Comments - Iridia, you have done a great job on this article. I just have a few final comments before I add my vote to keep"
 * Lead, "only celestial body on which human beings have made". Why not just "on which humans have made"?
 * Man mad its way to Mars and Titan too, but only with a robotic lander. So the word beings serves a purpose.--Stone (talk) 07:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * 1) It's humans, not "man", for a good reason ;) 2) it's fine having "humans have made", as the next part is "a manned landing". Iridia (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Internal structure section, "Its composition is not well constrained". Perhaps "its composition is not well known"? "Constrained" just sounds a little odd in this context.
 * I'm not quite sure how to fix this. "Constrained" has a specific technical meaning here, along the lines of "from our understanding of the composition of terrestrial planets, our models say something like the Moon should be like this and this, but the values the models put out have large error bars because we need certain pieces of extra data to make the error bars smaller". Iridia (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Interesting! Dana boomer (talk) 18:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Impact topography, "constant rate, counting the number of craters per unit area can". Do we need this wikilink, since the term is linked two paragraphs above?
 * Probably not. Removed. Iridia (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Presence of water, "and water vapour is quickly decomposed by sunlight". Is it decomposed or evaporated?
 * Now reads: "water vapor quickly evaporates, breaks up through photodissociation due to sunlight, and is lost to space". Iridia (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * You probably don't need the explanation of what evaporation is, but if you keep it, it should probably be in parentheses rather than between commas. Dana boomer (talk) 18:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Presence of water. The first sentence in this section is really long and twisting. It would probably benefit from being split into two sentences.
 * Done. Iridia (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Appearance from Earth, "an observer can see a boat Moon". What's a boat moon?
 * Now reads: "an observer can see a smile-shaped crescent Moon". Iridia (talk) 01:18, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * I learn something new every day :) Dana boomer (talk) 18:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Ref #122, "Martel, Linda M. V." has something screwy going on with the formatting.
 * I added the missing http: --Stone (talk) 07:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Some authors are given as first name last name and others as last name, first name. This should be made consistent.
 * I tried to get all of them! --Stone (talk) 07:13, 13 May 2010 (UTC)

Other than this, things look good. I look forward to adding my vote. Dana boomer (talk) 19:19, 12 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Nice work! I have changed my comments to "keep". Dana boomer (talk) 18:16, 14 May 2010 (UTC)

Comment. Much improved. I have only one minor concern: that non-breaking spaces are not used consistently between numbers and units. See WP:NBSP. --Avenue (talk) 00:11, 15 May 2010 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.