Talk:Extrasolar planets in fiction/Archive 3

Archive 1

Archive 2

Archive 3

Moving forward

It's becoming clear that TompaDompa's recent wholesale deletions have encountered resistance - in particular, little support for MOS:POPCULT applying to this article. Under WP:BRD, the appropriate action would be to simply revert to an earlier version and then proceed to discuss the proposed changes here. That would be significantly disruptive, and I'd prefer to see if there is consensus to move forward with that before pulling the trigger. Comments? Tarl N. (discuss) 20:34, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

Reading this thing out of curiosity, what exactly is the plan after you gather enough people that you can call a 'consensus' to revert all his changes? The POPCULT guideline seems straightforward enough, as is the precedent from numerous AfDs, and TompaDompa's arguments so far are basically supported by all that. The arguments against him are "slow down", "a lot of people have put work into this", "WP:PRESERVE" (even though that policy explicitly excludes trivia), or some procedural details that don't really matter (guideline supposedly applying to sections only, not articles). The burden of demonstrating that content should be preserved lies on those wishing to add or retain it. BRD doesn't mean Wikipedia is inert, and if your case for reverting and demanding that a consensus be formed is based on those sorts of arguments, without any concrete plan of further action, then you risk being simply an unnecessary obstruction. Avilich (talk) 23:15, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I'd revert back to here (where Lithopsian suggest WP:DRAFT work). There have been 300-odd edits made by TompaDompa since then, deleting roughly 95% of the article: It used to have information about 187 different stars, now it has 10. Surely some of that deletion was well-deserved, but there have been complaints about wholesale and inappropriate deletions. Reading MOS:POPCULT it's very clear to me that policy was intended for "in popular culture" sections of articles, not as a prohibition of such information in their own articles. To go forward, I'd prefer we start over and discuss the massive changes before they are made. Tarl N. (discuss) 23:53, 29 November 2021 (UTC)

I'm neutral to whether/where we revert to. But I think we should have a discussion that creates an explicit consensus about notability. Even if that discussion is informed by prior discussions that have occurred elsewhere, we should have it established here so that we can avoid ambiguity. Uncited sources can be cited. Secondary and tertiary sources can be added, but those alone won't determine how to avoid this article being an indiscriminate collection of information. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:15, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

Trivia is trivia whether it's located in a section or a separate article. That someone just so happened to create a spinoff article to deposit every popcult mention instead of trying to fit everything into a section inside the parent article doesn't make the guideline any less applicable. The correct thing to do is what TompaDompa has been doing: to trim these indiscriminate listings and rewrite them as prose with secondary sources. You say you want to discuss, but you don't need to revert anything at all to do so (all diffs are at your disposal), and so far your only arguments are, as I have pointed out above, 1, that you're astonished by his speed and amount of content rewritten, and, 2, that a small procedural technicality invalidates the entire spirit of the WP guideline on popcult trivia. You have not pointed out anything specifically objectionable, content-wise, and indeed, vague and elusive remarks like "some of that deletion was well-deserved but" and "there have been complaints about wholesale and inappropriate deletions", which don't really convey anything meaningful, suggest that none are forthcoming, and that this is all inertia rather than genuine concern for improvement of the article. That 95% of the article was rewritten also makes no difference: the threshold is purely arbitrary. Avilich (talk) 00:54, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I am with Avilich and TD on this one. This page was chock-full of unreferenced trivia, and overly loong as well. It's great to see this cut down to (referenced) size; the topic is notable, but a laundry kitchen skin list of each star and work they were mentioned in is not fit for Wikipedia (that said, I'd also suggest copying all that amazing but trivial fancruft to Fandom/Wikia, surely it is useful and can be preserved somewhere on the Internet instead of being lost in the history of our page - that it is non encyclopedic does not mean we should just destroy it). _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 11:10, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

@Avilich:, I don't think your criticism of Tarl for being vague is well placed. I have articulated specific, policy-based objections; that Tarl has not echoed them explicitly in the process of agreeing with me doesn't mean that they are unwilling to take part in a meaningful discussion. Really, your comment that they are just motivated exclusively by inertia rather than a genuine concern for improvement of the article belies an assumption of bad faith, which has no place here. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 14:33, 30 November 2021 (UTC)

I'll comment that I had found this article useful in the past, tracking some things down. Seeing it go from listing nearly 200 systems down to 11 looks like wholesale and indiscriminate destruction. But my taste for wikidrama has faded, and with Avilich's appearance and comments, I'll walk away. Yes, my comments were about "inertia". It was useful before, it had a wide variety of "fancruft", which surely could have been better referenced and probably picked over for relevance. But 300 edits later each removing all but a page and a half with 11 entries, it's no longer useful. The current state probably qualifies for an RFD. Regards, Tarl N. (discuss) 00:01, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

Regardless of the merits of the article then and now, bludgeoning onwards while discussions take place hardly strikes me as being in good faith. Given the lack of consensus, it would be hard to object to someone just reverting the whole lot. Surely a few days pause to establish some likely agreement wouldn't have caused the world to end. Lithopsian (talk) 20:36, 1 December 2021 (UTC)

A mass change like this does resemble disruptive editing. I support a mass revert followed by a discussion to reach consensus. (Note that, per WP:FILMPLOT, "Since films are primary sources in their articles, basic descriptions of their plots are acceptable without reference to an outside source". The only thing that needs to be established is the notability, which is usually provided by the linked article.) Praemonitus (talk) 06:18, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

WP:FILMPLOT isn't relevant here (it's about what kind of sourcing is required for a plot summary in a film article, which isn't what we're doing here), MOS:POPCULT is. Community consensus is opposed to TV Tropes-style lists of appearances of X in fiction/popular culture/whatever with entries that are based solely on WP:Primary sources. Consensus is also opposed to basing the content of such articles on WP:Secondary sources about the works themselves, as opposed to sources about the overarching topic of the article (i.e. X in fiction/popular culture/whatever), which has been codified in MOS:POPCULT. This is not something I came up with on my own, this has been discussed pretty thoroughly (the current text of MOS:POPCULT is the result of fairly lengthy discussion about how best to handle this kind of material). For some specific examples of TV Tropes-style lists being rejected in favour of prose articles based on proper secondary (and/or tertiary) sources, see WP:Articles for deletion/Far future in fiction, WP:Articles for deletion/Eco-terrorism in fiction, WP:Articles for deletion/Earth in science fiction (2nd nomination), WP:Articles for deletion/Space stations and habitats in fiction, WP:Articles for deletion/Supernovae in fiction, and WP:Articles for deletion/Neptune in fiction. Simply fixing these massive and widespread issues with the articles that remain, in the same way we have fixed such issues before with similar articles, seems a lot more sensible to me than dragging a bunch of articles to WP:AfD to relitigate this separately for every single article.

Avilich basically said all of this already, but: there is nothing stopping anyone from discussing how to improve the article without restoring a previous version of the article that violates MOS:POPCULT, misrepresents sources, engages in WP:Original research, and commits outright WP:PLAGIARISM. I'm not opposed to discussing how best to improve this article, but I'm not sure what the alternative to rewriting it as a prose article in line with MOS:POPCULT—as has been done for several other articles, see above—is supposed to be. So, what are you proposing? What do you think should be done here? What are your suggestions for improving this article? TompaDompa (talk) 15:12, 4 December 2021 (UTC)

• Do the editors here think this mass-deletion project is limited to this one article? Look again, TompaDompa has been going through these pages for weeks: What the template used to look like, likely every one of its pages "worked" on. I've asked them not to remove entries which are linked to a page which has sources, with maybe limited success. Check out the Moon landings in fiction page, where the editor has tried to answer by putting cite needed tags on to more obscure linked pages but not to 2001 which they leave alone (maybe thank a god of sci-fi, Arthur C. Clarke). In any case, this deletion project has some good results (getting rid of random "there's a poster on the wall in one scene" entries) but deleting way to many sourced-at-their-page good topics of long-term historical importance and study, which is what these pages are ultimately for (studying human reaction to the advent of the thoughts of, and then the actuality of, space travel) the next several generations of Wikipedia readers. Randy Kryn (talk) 15:33, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
  • You know why I've added "citation needed" tags to those particular entries and not others: because you restored those particular entries after they were removed, one at a time, for not being supported by the kind of sourcing that MOS:POPCULT mandates. The WP:BURDEN of providing proper sourcing is on the editor who adds or restores the content, which in this case is you.
    These pages aren't for studying human reaction to the advent of the thoughts of, and then the actuality of, space travel, they're for summarizing what WP:Reliable sources have said about the topic—as is the case with all articles on Wikipedia. We're not supposed to analyse, evaluate, interpret, or synthesize what we find in WP:Primary sources, we're supposed to leave that to WP:Secondary sources (and tertiary ones, sometimes). And we can in fact write articles based on sources that do that—see e.g. Moon in fiction which summarizes what WP:Reliable sources have said about how fictional depictions of the Moon have been influenced by the first moon landing in 1969—but that requires actually finding the sources that discuss those aspects and writing the articles based on those sources. TompaDompa (talk) 15:49, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
    • The Tintin adventure Explorers on the Moon has 56 sources on its page. If you didn't like it being on the list but are fine with 2001, and removed it as unsourced while not doing 2001, then please understand why I've been opposing the wholesale moves until a group of people check every one to makes sure its linked article is unsourced. You could have gone there yourself and added a source if you think that's a problem instead of removing the page. Tintin's Explorers on the Moon either describes or implies a Moon landing, I haven't read the volume, and qualifies for the page. He's exploring the Moon, for Armstrong's sake. Randy Kryn (talk) 16:51, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
      • We're kind of getting off topic here, but anyway: I removed the entries one at a time in a more or less arbitrary order, and I would've removed the 2001 later for the same reason (unless it had become properly sourced in the meantime, of course). I have actually read the Tintin adventure many years ago, and they do indeed land on the Moon. That is however irrelevant to the point here, which you seem to have missed completely: the entries need to be discussed in sources about the topic of the article, i.e. Moon landings in fiction, per MOS:POPCULT. Again, I'm not the one who came up with that, that's the result of rather lengthy discussion and represents the current consensus about how to treat this kind of material in general. I have actually looked for sources on the overarching topic—the ones I've found discuss Moon landings in fiction as part of their general discussion about the Moon in fiction and I have consequently elected to cover it over at Moon in fiction#Moon landings—and as it turns out, they don't mention Tintin (they do mention 2001, but not in the context of Moon landings). Your assertion that the Tintin adventure qualifies for inclusion flies in the face of MOS:POPCULT unless you have some source to back that up with that you have yet to share with the rest of us. TompaDompa (talk) 17:25, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
        • The point is the removal of pertinent material from a wide variety of articles, and you saying you would have removed 2001 should set off alarm bells everywhere alarm bells are installed. Are you saying that according to your reading of popcult's view a source has to specifically mention the words "Moon landing in fiction" and not just confirm that a Moon landing has taken place? The language you and the guideline use seems confusing, can you give an example or two? Thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:30, 5 December 2021 (UTC)
          • Sure. If we are to include Tintin in an article about Moon landings in fiction, we need a reliable source about Moon landings in fiction, not just a reliable source about Tintin. In general, if we are to include example ABC in an article about XYZ in fiction, we need a reliable source about XYZ in ficion (what MOS:POPCULT calls "the subject of the article"), not just a reliable source about ABC (what MOS:POPCULT calls "the cultural item"). An example of a reliable source for XYZ in fiction when XYZ is space-related is the relevant entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (if one exists). TompaDompa (talk) 15:00, 5 December 2021 (UTC)

To try to get back on topic here. Having looked at TompaDompa's contributions, they have made well over 1500 edits to the pages within the Template:Astronomical locations in fiction in the past month, around a thousand of these were in the past fortnight, many of these are deletions/blanking. None of these had consensus but they are continuing to reshape the ecosystem despite a number of objections both here and on other connected talk pages. I am fully aware of WP:Assume good faith, and I would say that many of the changes in of themself, considered individually, make sense. However, when you add these up, into the thousands, it becomes a major re-design and blanking exercise. I really don't understand why TompaDompa cannot spell out his full intentions for the pages in this template and get everyone onside before being so drastic, rather than just forging ahead regardless. Mountaincirque^talk 12:33, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

The background here is that several articles within Template:Astronomical locations in fiction have been nominated for deletion recently with the outcome being consensus to rewrite them as prose articles rather than the TV Tropes-style lists they were at the time they were nominated. See WP:Articles for deletion/Earth in science fiction (2nd nomination), WP:Articles for deletion/Supernovae in fiction, and WP:Articles for deletion/Neptune in fiction. A few others have been rewritten in the same manner without going through WP:AfD first. I'm planning to do the same for the rest of them, where possible.

There is a community-wide consensus about how topics like this are to be sourced, and that has been codified in MOS:POPCULT. Removing content that does not meet those requirements is simply enforcing existing standards. The only question that remains is what the next step should be. While it's true that that wasn't discussed ahead of time for these specific articles, either individually or collectively, the precedent is pretty clear: rewrite as prose instead. If you have alternative suggestions, please share them. TompaDompa (talk) 22:13, 7 December 2021 (UTC)

If this is your attempt to spell out your full intentions for the pages in this template, you will need to do better, TompaDompa. You have already been tasked with doing so several times and have not provided anything beyond a desire to ensure that content is properly sourced. The more you contribute without doing this and the more you edit these articles, the more WP:OWNy your behavior becomes. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 01:04, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

My intentions are to clean up these articles such that they comply with Wikipedia's standards, including but not limited to MOS:POPCULT. Calling that "WP:OWNy" is rather silly. I would be more inclined to characterize the position that changes to the status quo should be discussed ahead of time as such, especially in the absence of other specific suggestions about how to improve the article(s). For that matter, I would be more inclined to characterize the phrasing You have already been tasked with (as opposed to, say, "asked to") as such. TompaDompa (talk) 06:15, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Community discussion is an important part of the project, not some option that you get to disregard if someone doesn't ask you nicely. You can bristle at the implication that you might be going about this in an abrasive manner all you want, but no one here has reverted your edits, and no one has even implied that you aren't allowed to edit the article. So implying that several other editors are exhibiting OWNy behavior because they are showing resistance in the talk page strikes me as a childish attempt at Tu quoque. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 17:57, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Not what I said, and you know it. But more to the point, I have in fact engaged in discussion. I have asked what other editors think the best way to improve the article is. I haven't stopped anybody else from attempting to improve the article. Unfortunately, the discussion on this talk page has mostly been a kind of meta-discussion about the need for discussion. So to bring us back to the core topic: What are you proposing? What do you think should be done here? What are your suggestions for improving this article? TompaDompa (talk) 23:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

You can consider my revert to have been solely "procedural" with no special favour shown to any particular content. I was just returning, more or less, to a pre-debate article in line with the attempts of more than one other editor. I have no great love the for the article in its long condition, but the approach of making hundreds of edits while there are clear misgivings from multiple other editors, and while there is still active discussion without anything close to a consensus, is just not how this should be done. Get consensus, work on a draft if it would be helpful to see or work on the format of a replacement article, and above all don't attempt to bulldoze through all opposition by sheer weight of words and edits. Lithopsian (talk) 14:04, 27 December 2021 (UTC)

Sorry, that's the only way I could parse what you wrote. If that's not what you intended, you haven't been very clear.

You and I have both attempted to draw out people's vision for the article. I've put a workable start below — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]}

That's pretty biased interpretation. I don't see any serious objections, and I for one am fully supportive of TD's rewrites, which are transforming fancrufty listicles or random trivia into something resembling entries found in reference works like the https://sf-encyclopedia.com/ Consensus for such rewrites seems clear from AfDs when such topics end up there. Perhaps the best practice would be for TD to list such articles AfD, see them properly deleted, then write them after WP:TNT - although this way will result in the loss of editing history, so I'd prefer the current SOFTDELETE approach of rewriting this. That said, it wouldn't be the first time hardcore inclusionist would shoot themselves in the foot and bring hard delete to cases where soft delete is enough. But if someone wants to force the issues... _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 10:37, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

You've got a bit over the top here when everyone is being quite civil, I don't think many of us are 'hardcore inclusionists', it would be just nice to understand the rationale when embarking on an 1800+ edit restructure across many connected pages. I do feel that this page has now improved with the 'Type' section of prose added by TompaDompa, which has incorporated some previously-deleted text from Binary stars in fiction, so I'm more reassured than I was. Mountaincirque^talk 15:06, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

The problem remains that majority of the "long" article is "cool" but fails GNG/OR/SYNTH/FANCFRUT and so on... I think AfD discussions like Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fomalhaut in fiction have indicated such lists cannot remain. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:44, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I would think an AfD would be a bit WP:POINTy if we don't actually intend to get rid of this article. Wouldn't an RfC be more appropriate? If it does simply get rewritten, as TD seems intent on, content would still be available in the edit history if there is reason to retrieve some of it. TornadoLGS (talk) 19:09, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

Bringing the article to WP:AfD with the intention of getting it rewritten would have been very WP:POINTy, not to mention WP:BUREAUcratic, which is why I didn't. I don't think an WP:RfC would have been appropriate either, because those need a clear question with clear and well-defined answers. Starting one ahead of time would basically just have amounted to "all in favour of doing something, say 'aye'". Even now, what would the options be? RfCs are usually most productive when previous discussion has resulted in a stalemate around a particular contentious but well-defined (and typically but not necessarily fairly limited) issue with a limited number of clear-cut options all of which enjoy some support as an outcome. TompaDompa (talk) 23:35, 8 December 2021 (UTC)

It seems so far that there have been several attempts in this thread to get others to articulate what they would like to see in the final version of this article. Since so far no one has really taken the bite on responding to such queries, I thought I'd go the opposite route and declare a first draft proposal of what I think the "final version" of the article should have:

1. Allow for a long list again. I have no problem with scrutinizing for notability, but going from a list of almost 200 star systems to less than a dozen is a losing a lot of work from numerous editors over many years; as others have said, that information made this page a useful source of information.
2. Restrict to works of ficton that take place in the star system/planet in question.
3. Allow for secondary sources to be used for verification, not just tertiary ones.
4. Only real stars. Until TompaDompa's edits, there was no coverage of fictional planets and stellar systems and IMHO these fictional planets don't have a place here (though they can go at planets in science fiction. Maybe that means we need to reconsider the title. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 02:42, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

If we go with the last point, then this article should be moved to a title that explicitly indicates that it is about the depiction of real stars in fiction and not fictional stars, which I bring up in the section above this one. TornadoLGS (talk) 02:55, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Any ideas? We can probably avoid "and planetary systems" in whatever we formulate, since that is kind of redundant. We may want to pair our rename with planets in science fiction, something like Real stars in fiction and Fictional stars in fiction. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 16:19, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Fictional stars could be covered by an article dedicated to planetary systems, since its the planets and/or systems, rather than the stars themselves, that are the setting. But I think expanding the scope of this article to include entirely fictional systems is the better option. If a story is set on a fictional planet, I don't think it's a terribly big distinction whether the star it orbits is real or not. TornadoLGS (talk) 17:53, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

IMHO, it is of encyclopedic interest to focus on coverage of works of fiction set in real star systems in a genre that more often features made up ones. We could, in addition, spotlight fictional works that choose to set their stories on one of the many exoplanets that have been discovered, but I suspect those are relatively rare.

Because planets in science fiction already covers fictional star systems, the separation between real and fictional star systems has been the status quo for a long time. I don't see a compelling reason to change that. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:38, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

Though, per my comment above, that the planets are generally the focus of the story rather than the stars, would fictional stars, in and of themselves, warrant an article? TornadoLGS (talk) 19:02, 10 December 2021 (UTC)

I'm with TornadoLGS on this. The current approach is more in line with how WP:Reliable sources do it, see e.g. the "Star" entry in Brian Stableford's Science Fact and Science Fiction: An Encyclopedia, the "Stars" entry in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and the "Stars" entry in The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy. Those sources all discuss real and fictional stars alike in the same entry rather than having separate entries for them. I think that's a compelling reason to do likewise. Planets in science fiction is also badly in need of a cleanup (I would suggest turning it into a navigational list similar to Astronomical locations in fiction).

As for using secondary sources, the article already cites a couple of them such as Aliens in Pop Culture. I don't think having a long list of examples should be an aim in itself; the list of examples that used to be on the article was of extremely poor quality and almost none of the examples listed were usable since only a handful of them had proper sourcing. A list is also not the best way of presenting this type of information; examples should ideally be illustrative of the analysis that makes up the core of the article. TompaDompa (talk) 00:57, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

I don't think that's a compelling reason to do likewise. Wikipedia is its own project, and we are allowed to have articles with a focus of our choosing so long as it is encyclopedic. Fictional works set in real star systems is an encyclopedic topic.

Given that I have already indicated with point (1) that I have no problem with scrutinizing the list to ensure proper sourcing, I don't get your point that you removed entries for not having proper sources. Can you please clarify the relevance of mentioning that?

Wikipedia policy allows for articles that are composed mainly of lists. That you wish to add prose with overarching analysis is fine, but that's not a reason to limit the list itself. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 18:14, 11 December 2021 (UTC)

Compelling is perhaps too strong a word. It is a good reason to do likewise, since we're supposed to reflect the sources. I don't see a good reason to draw an arbitrary line (as TornadoLGS pointed out, what's the difference if a fictional planet orbits a fictional star or a real one?) between real and fictional stars when the sources don't.

The point is that those examples were not removed because there were too many examples. The number of examples is not something that we should be trying to change—in either direction—for its own sake. Quality is the relevant thing to look at here, not quantity.

Obviously list articles are allowed, but that doesn't necessarily mean that this article would be better with list formatting than with its current prose formatting. Indeed, as MOS:POPCULT points out, prose is usually preferable. The article currently has a fairly substantial number of illustrative examples that are presented in prose form. TompaDompa (talk) 02:39, 12 December 2021 (UTC)

I am restoring this article to how it was on October 31st, as it appears a majority of people here are in agreement- the downsizing of this article is not a good thing, and it appears that it only has gotten smaller since this talk section was started- if you want to argue for your vision of the article Tompa, you can do it while the unedited version stands.Chickeness (talk) 03:54, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Honestly, I was actually starting to see TompaDompa's side of things, since this page does seem to be a case of example cruft and is longer than the recommended maximum length for an article. TornadoLGS (talk) 19:08, 15 December 2021 (UTC)

Indeed. It's not a majority vote, and I don't really agree with the assessment that there is an agreement that the downsizing of this article is not a good thing (see e.g. the comments by Avilich and Piotrus). In the interest of not starting an WP:Edit war I'm not going to revert this right away, but since the article badly needs cleanup I will add a couple of maintenance templates to that effect. Anybody is of course welcome to clean the article up by improving sourcing, removing excessive examples, and so on. If nothing else, I'll get back to it myself later.

What I will however do right away is restore the prose part I wrote. The earlier version of the prose introduction contained blatant WP:OR, improper use of primary sources, misrepresentations of sources, and outright WP:PLAGIARISM. That is obviously not acceptable, and I'm guessing there was no specific intention of reintroducing that but rather that it was just a side-effect of reverting to an old version of the article. It's not like there have been strenuous objections to the old version of the prose introduction being replaced with the new one—discussion has focused on the examples—so this should be uncontroversial. TompaDompa (talk) 00:29, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

The prose part that you wrote was mostly about fictional stars, which is the main thing talked about outside of the concern for excessive entries. It's well-researched enough, but there's not agreement as to its relevance to the scope of this article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 00:36, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Fair enough that the specifics of my version have been discussed, but the main point I was making was that removing the prose that used to be there did not result in protests against that prose being removed and that removing it again should therefore not be controversial. Restoring the prose that I had written was more about having a prose introduction at all. This is rather moot now as the edit that reverted to the October 31 version of the article has itself been reverted by Avilich. TompaDompa (talk) 01:08, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

This has been reverted, and I reverted, but reverts are probably not the right way to deal with this (although the editor whom I reverted hasn't yet commented here, sigh). Anyway, AfD or RfC might be needed for the next step. Regarding AfD, TD's version could be split and then the "old mess fancruft list" here could be AFD per WP:TNT. Although this might result in the deletion of the history. The current rewrite, preserving the old content from which few tidbits could be potentially rescued, seems better - but it wouldn't not be the first time that good faithed but a tad overzealous inclusionists refusing to compromise would end up getting hard delete as a result. May I suggest deescalation? Softdelete is generally better. I agree the long list is "cool" but sadly it does not meet GNG/OR/etc. _{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:40, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

I should like William M. Connolley and Lithopsian to explain whether they deliberately removed maintenance tags and restored blatant WP:OR, improper use of primary sources, misrepresentations of sources, and outright WP:PLAGIARISM or whether that was just a side effect of an unfortunate choice of revision to revert to. I would assume the latter, in which case I shall correct that mishap. TompaDompa (talk) 17:16, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Also, please let's not make this an edit war. This should be settled on the talk page and I'd rather not have to take this to RfPP. TornadoLGS (talk) 20:20, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

Just to make it clear what is being argued here, no one is advocating that the entire list from before TompaDompa's edits be restored without any effort at corroborating with secondary sources. I wouldn't be surprised if efforts to corroborate would still trim the original list by half, and I would personally be okay with trimming it down with that criteria alone.

I don't think other limiting criteria would be a problem either, and we can come up with those as I did with point (2) above). But we shouldn't be so limiting that we restrict the utility of the article. — Ƶ§œš¹ _{[lɛts b̥iː pʰəˈlaɪˀt]} 21:52, 16 December 2021 (UTC)

• Now Saturn in fiction is being culled of entries with articles with promises of more to come (see recent page history). Wikipedia has a problem here of extreme deletions in one field, space and space exploration related fiction, and there doesn't seem to be any letup. Can someone check the extreme editing of Space travel in science fiction as well which may be just good copyediting but I'm not sure, thanks. Randy Kryn (talk) 13:08, 17 December 2021 (UTC)
• Venus in fiction was culled yesterday, massive removals of entries which have Wikipedia articles. Have reverted until these can be checked by editors outside of those doing the removals from these long-term and well-worked on topics. Randy Kryn (talk) 11:19, 18 December 2021 (UTC)

Liu's "3-Body Problem" trilogy missing?

Liu's "3-Body Problem" trilogy seems to be missing from the list, in spite of Trisolaris being an obvious reference to the Centauri system. Perhaps some people argued that the 3 stars of Trisolaris orbit each other chaotically, whereas the Centauri system is stable, with the two stars in Alpha Centuri orbiting each other closely and Proxima orbiting the pair from afar? I'm just speculating on the reasons for not including it. If my guess is right, I would argue that scientific inconsistency in fiction is nothing new, and the fact that in the novel this system of three stars is said to be the nearest system to our Solar System pretty much eliminates any doubts. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 38.129.51.184 (talk) 16:51, 7 May 2021 (UTC)

If someone can find a reliable source linking the two, then fine. Otherwise it sounds like original research to me. -- Beardo (talk) 02:04, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

In Chapter 23 (page 273 of the Tor Mass Market paperback translated by Ken Liu) it says (referring to an extraterrestrial signal) "In could only have come from the closest extra-solar stellar system: Alpha Centauri" and the associated footnote discusses the binary star system and also Proxima Centauri. The substantiates the relationship. Nexus501 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 21:41, 30 December 2021 (UTC)

Beetlejuice - Betelgeuse

Should be added because the character Betelgeuse is named after the star Anpus8 (talk) 13:11, 11 November 2023 (UTC)

Gamma Draconis

Gamma Draconis appears twice in the list. -- Evertype·✆ 14:28, 9 December 2023 (UTC)

Preview paragraph

I suggest that each star or planet section include a brief paragraph of astronomical facts, so the fiction can be placed in context. Praemonitus (talk) 16:25, 9 December 2023 (UTC)