Wikipedia:Featured list candidates/Astronomical symbols/archive1


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

The list was promoted by PresN via FACBot (talk) 00:25, 1 December 2018 (UTC).

Astronomical symbols

 * Nominator(s): W559 (talk) 22:36, 17 July 2018 (UTC)

I am nominating this for featured list because I believe it meets or surpasses the criteria for a Wikipedia featured list, and for inclusion in a print encyclopedia. The article is useful, comprehensive, and extensively researched. I put a lot of effort into editing and organizing the page several years ago (under IP addresses), including writing most of the body text, finding sources, and pruning unsourced and unreliable speculation. (Scouring Google Books for instances of astronomical glyphs in their OCRed scans of nineteenth-century print matter was fun.)

Regarding FL criterion 3b, I note that some of the scope and content of this article overlaps Astrological symbols, an article created in 2006 as a fork of this one. Astronomical symbols, the nominee, meets the criteria of WP:SUBPOV, and therefore I believe it should not be disqualified as a featured list.

Thank you for your consideration. W559 (talk) 22:36, 17 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Just looking quickly I noticed that some sentences in the "represents" column start with a capital letter, where others do not. Mattximus (talk) 02:51, 19 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Fixed. The seven rogue capital letters have been lowercased. I also removed stray punctuation marks and made tiny fixes to the wording of a couple of entries. Thank you! W559 (talk) 22:03, 23 July 2018 (UTC)


 * Support: comments resolved.  RAVEN PVFF  &#124; talk ~ 10:40, 28 August 2018 (UTC)

Support Great job. TompaDompa (talk) 22:38, 17 August 2018 (UTC)

Comments by Dudley

 * "The Byzantine codices in which the Greek papyrus texts were preserved continued and extended the inventory of astronomical symbols." I am not clear what you are saying here. Do you mean that the papyrus texts were neither preserved nor copied, and only survive by their incorporation in Byzantine codices?
 * "These symbols were once commonly used by professional astronomers" Until when?
 * The last comments in the first two paragraphs are unreferenced.
 * monogram should be linked.
 * The article only covers Europe and ignores Arabic, Indian, Chinese astronomy - and there were no doubt other systems. It also only covers modern notation in passing. The article title should be something like List of historical European astronomical symbols. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:11, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Thank you for taking the time to review the article. I've reviewed your comments:
 * "The Byzantine codices in which the Greek papyrus texts were preserved continued and extended the inventory of astronomical symbols." – Replaced "the" with "many" to avoid the implication that Greek papyri survived only as copies in Byzantine codices. Is this better?
 * "These symbols were once commonly used by professional astronomers" Until when? – Per MOS:LEAD, the lead "should identify the topic, establish context, explain why the topic is notable, and summarize the most important points". I believe that specific details about when different symbols fell into disuse among professional astronomers are best left for the article.
 * The last comments in the first two paragraphs are unreferenced. – Source citations in the lead are not strictly necessary; see WP:WHENNOTCITE. I tried to limit sources in the lead while still citing sources for any claims that might reasonably be challenged. The sentence beginning "New symbols were further invented..." is a one-sentence summary of the Symbols for minor planets section, which introduces 34 sources and uses more. The section "with some exceptions..." briefly alludes to sourced material in bits and pieces throughout the body of the article. If you think the lead would work better with more or fewer source citations, let me know.
 * My understanding is that list articles are an exception to the rule that leads do not require referencing because they generally contain information which is not referenced below, but I see that you have repeated and referenced below, so I agree that more referencing is not necessary in this case. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:33, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * monogram should be linked. – Agreed. The first occurrence of monogram (in the Symbols for the planets section) is now linked.
 * The article only covers Europe and ignores Arabic, Indian, Chinese astronomy - and there were no doubt other systems. It also only covers modern notation in passing. The article title should be something like List of historical European astronomical symbols. – Not done. The article is about "astronomical symbols", which is what reliable English-language sources call the symbols described in the article. See WP:NAMINGCRITERIA and WP:CONCISE. An article about "astronomical notation", a different topic, would properly cover modern notation in more depth, and would reasonably be expected to include more information about Arabic, Indian, and Chinese astronomy, but this isn't that article.
 * Let me know what you think. W559 (talk) 20:46, 7 September 2018 (UTC)
 * That is fair enough regarding modern symbols as they are often referred to as notation, although I would like to see a comment or note explaining why they are not covered. I do not agree that a general title is right for an article about European symbols. Just because sources are Eurocentric does not justify Wikipedia in following their example. There are for example off-wiki sources about Maya astronomical symbols, and I would expect at least brief coverage in a generic article about the subject. Dudley Miles (talk) 09:33, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced that the characters used in the Maya calendar belong in this article any more than, for example, the written names of the planets and zodiac signs in Hindi and Chinese, both because the article is about "astronomical symbols" as opposed to normal written language (and, come to think of it, numerals and mathematical operators), and, of course, because English-language sources do not generally group them with the symbols that make up the content of this article. However, a link to the Maya characters in the "See also" section would be appropriate. Here's what I've done:
 * "a comment or note explaining why they are not covered": Added some text to the first sentence of the lead further clarifying the scope of the article.
 * coverage about Maya astronomical symbols: Added a link to the relevant page in the "See also" section of the article.
 * How's this? W559 (talk) 23:50, 11 September 2018 (UTC)
 * See for a discussion about non-European astronomical symbols. Dudley Miles (talk) 08:29, 12 September 2018 (UTC)
 * I can't read what you linked; Google Books gives me the message, "You have either reached a page that is unavailable for viewing or reached your viewing limit for this book." If the source you linked has content that would improve the page, feel free to be bold and incorporate it into the article. Edit: I switched browsers and went incognito, and Google Books is serving up the page for me now. The page you linked doesn't seem relevant at all to this article other than being a search result for the words "Chinese", "astronomical", and "symbols". The section of that book discusses the "Chaco supernova pictograph" (see Chaco Culture National Historical Park, reviews several theories about the image, and then concludes that the drawing marks a Zuni sun-watching station. The page specifically discusses the star next to the crescent in the petroglyph, compares it with the Islamic star-and-crescent symbol, and mentions the theory that the symbols together originally depicted a conjunction of the moon and Venus.
 * Regarding your previous comment, "I do not agree that a general title is right for an article about European symbols", we'll have to agree to disagree on this point. I note in passing that the equivalent pages on the Chinese and Hindi Wikipediae, zh:天文符號 and hi:खगोलीय चिन्ह respectively, both have "general titles" while also being about the same set of "European symbols" that the astronomical symbols page discusses. W559 (talk) 02:16, 13 September 2018 (UTC)

just a quick question, are you complete with your comments here? The nomination has been stalled for about six weeks now, so it would be great if you'd be prepared to offer some guidance on your current view. Cheers. The Rambling Man (talk) 19:27, 29 October 2018 (UTC)
 * I do not have a problem with the article text but I do with its title so I prefer to neither support or oppose. Dudley Miles (talk) 10:56, 2 November 2018 (UTC)


 * Support – My concerns have been addressed. Giants2008  ( Talk ) 20:11, 20 November 2018 (UTC)

Source review passed; I'm fine with the title, but think that it would be helpful to have something in the lead explicitly discussing that the symbols are part of the European astronomical tradition, and other traditions use(d) words or logograms instead of non-language-based symbols. I'm not going to hold this nomination up for it, though. Promoted. -- Pres N  05:33, 30 November 2018 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.