Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight/Timeline of spaceflight working group/Archive 5

Reorganisation of space WikiProjects
There is a discussion at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Space/2010 Reorganisation regarding the future of WikiProject Space and its child projects. The discussion is aimed at defining the roles of projects, and improving the activity and coordination of the projects. The input of members of this project is requested as it is one which may be affected by the issue. -- G W … 22:34, 28 November 2010 (UTC)

sort keys
See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight. My mistake in reporting the problems what may be the wrong WikiProject. — Arthur Rubin (talk) 12:00, 29 November 2010 (UTC)

Scope
Given that this has now been converted into a working group concentrating on the Timeline of spaceflight itself, should other parts of the scope, such as categorisation and launch logs for individual rockets be transferred back to WPSpaceflight, or retained here? -- G W … 12:16, 13 December 2010 (UTC)

Soyuz from Kourou
When Soyuz launches from Kourou for Arianespace, do we tally it as Russian or as European? I'm guessing it goes in the European count in the "by nationality" table along with Ariane and Vega launches, but with other Russian Soyuz in the other tables. There is precedent for this for Sea/Land Launch Zenits vs. government Zenits. --IanOsgood (talk) 17:13, 22 July 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems to be somewhat arbitrary; some rockets are listed by LSP and others by original nationality. In theory it should be original nationality, but due to a mistake I made a few years ago, Zenit was miscategorised, and that caused a couple of other errors. The easiest way to resolve this would be to abolish the "international" category, and put Zenit back where it belongs. -- W.  D.   Graham  (previously GW) 17:33, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've implemented this categorisation in this year's pie chart, and I will go back and apply it to the older articles at some point soon. -- W.  D.   Graham  (previously GW) 22:04, 28 December 2011 (UTC)

Articles past 2013
Historically we have only maintained lists up to one or two years into the future, however in the last few months a large number of articles for more distant dates have sprung up. We're currently struggling to maintain the 2011 and 2012 lists, and with today's creation of 2019 in spaceflight, I think we need to look at exactly how far ahead we can feasibly have articles at this time. 2014 in spaceflight was deleted last year because it was too far in the future (see Articles for deletion/2014 in spaceflight), however it has since been recreated. Given the difficulty in mainaining a near-term launch schedule, I think there is little or no merit in trying to have a long-term schedule, so we should not try to create such articles past the end of the next calendar year (i.e. 2013 should not be created until 2012, 2014 should not be created until 2013, and so forth). With regards to the DSR sections, which in many cases are the only content in these pages, whilst the dates are less likely to change once spacecraft are in flight, some of the dates are extremely vague, and others are dependant on other factors, such as launches or departures from the orbits of other celestial bodies. I think that maintaining a list more than one or two years into the future, let alone eight years into the future, is optimistic at best. Should we look to delete, merge or move to a sandbox some of the more distant articles? -- W.  D.   Graham  (previously GW) 17:47, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I didn't know that this has been debated. Template:TLS-L has got some red links, and I was lured to paint them blue.
 * Regardless of the Earth is blown up in a nuclear war, Rosetta will reach 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May 2014, and New Horizons will fly by Pluto 14 July 2015. However minor space agencies have a tendency of saying "yes, we are going to set a man on the Moon in the year 20XX". It will be a problem to make a distinction between intentions and solid plans.
 * The template's 1944-1950 leads to Spaceflight before 1951, so perhaps 2014 to 2019 in spaceflight should be redirected to a similar [Spaceflight after 2013] page? --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 18:40, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * The problem with that would be that every time we create a new article, we're left with the old title, and there isn't really anywhere to redirect it. How about just putting any additional DSRs in Timeline of spaceflight itself, and limiting them to spacecraft which have actually launched? -- W.  D.   Graham  (previously GW) 19:12, 20 December 2011 (UTC)
 * If you look at Timeline of spaceflight — is that what you mean? Should there be a warning at the [2014 etc. in spaceflight] with the policy, in order to avoid premature writing? --Regards, Necessary Evil (talk) 00:16, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've made a couple of small tweaks, but that was almost exactly what I had in mind. I would suggest we redirect the other pages there, and use a comment to tell users not to recreate them. I might look into having edit notices put onto the pages as well. Finally, we should probably look into setting up a sandbox to house spacecraft which have not already launched. -- W.  D.   Graham  (previously GW) 09:02, 21 December 2011 (UTC)
 * I've created a template at WikiProject Spaceflight/Timeline of spaceflight working group/Crystal, the year can be set using the first parameter. If you're happy with the design, I'll ask an administrator to set it as an edit notice for the relevant articles. I'm going to redirect the existing pages now. -- W.  D.   Graham  (previously GW) 10:50, 21 December 2011 (UTC)

50 years ago next month workgroup coordination template
I propose creation of a "50 years ago next month" template somehow automatically driven by the timeline of spaceflight data, which could be transcluded in Wikiproject and User namespaces. This would focus the attention of editors on articles which might be spruced up prior to the time when readers will be interested in them.... (sdsds - talk) 08:54, 29 December 2012 (UTC)
 * I remember now we have e.g.: Portal:Spaceflight/On This Day/January. That helps! (sdsds - talk) 03:52, 2 January 2013 (UTC)

Working group activity
What do you all want to do with this working group? Revive it, or deactivate it? Doing some general cleanup on the Spaceflight project, so trying to assess where we are here. Let me know thanks! Kees08 (talk) 18:43, 1 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Might be useful to revive it as we are coming up to some very important 50th anniversary milestones for both Apollo-Saturn and Soyuz-N1/Zond-Proton (UR-500) in the next three to five years.--Abebenjoe (talk) 14:54, 3 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Fine with me! Do you have time to put together some goals in some sort of timeframe for us to reach? I can help out, but I would rather not try to manage the effort if I can avoid it. Also if you get time to cleanup the to-do list on this page that would be good, I am not sure what some of the bullet points are referring to. I suppose we could probably just wipe the whole thing. Kees08 (talk) 05:24, 4 April 2017 (UTC)


 * Kees08 looking at the first item, using DMY date formats might cause a lot of grief, even though that's what the USAF uses. I think removing "manned" and "unmanned" and replacing it with "crewed" and "uncrewed" which is NASA's nomenclature is important. It also standardizes on Wikipedia's policy of gender-neutral language WP:GNL. What else do others what to deal with?--Abebenjoe (talk) 13:54, 4 April 2017 (UTC)
 * That is fine with me. I can help with some stuff as the need arises, but I have several other tasks I am working on at the moment. Kees08 (talk) 07:27, 5 April 2017 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the late reply. There's some bit the wikipedia stewards need to set in my account profile to allow me to edit any pages on wiki at all using my primary internet connection. Can't really help here until they do their job! (sdsds - talk) 20:10, 12 May 2017 (UTC)
 * I've been plugging away, preserving Air Force date format for consistency. Rather than move around deck chairs, I think it's more important to add content.  I've got March and April of 1966 in spaceflight done so far, and I intend finishing the page.  Then I'll either go on to 1967 or flesh out the satellites of 1964. --Neopeius (talk) 02:51, 12 April 2019 (UTC)

List of ... launches articles
Some of our lists of launch vehicles launches articles are divided up across many articles by decade (e.g., grouping all Thor Delta vehicles made by the same government contractor division (even when owned by McDonnell Douglas, Boeing, United Launch Alliance, etc. due to merger/acquistions) as if all those launch vehicles are comparable from 1957 to 2020. Here's the current division into eight lists: List of Thor and Delta launches
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (1957–59)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (1960–69)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (1970–79)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (1980–89)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (1990–99)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (2000–09)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (2010–19)
 * List of Thor and Delta launches (2020–29)

I find that a bit odd, and don't think it serves our readers very well. I have suggested we think about an alternative way of grouping these lists, more by similarity of the rocket designs, like is done with the quite similar rockets of the List of Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches article.

I've started a discussion about the eight (8) articles that make up the eight decades of Thor/Delta launches. More input from editors who think broadly about Wikipedia spaceflight would be most welcome. Please join the discussion, here. Cheers. N2e (talk) 17:45, 29 August 2020 (UTC)