Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of 22nd-century lunar eclipses

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was keep. postdlf (talk) 12:00, 27 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

List of 22nd-century lunar eclipses

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No problem with lists of eclipses in the past (as they may be relevant for historical facts, and received sufficient attention on their own), or for the near future (being of general interest to many people). But lists of lunar eclipses for the next 9 centuries? While the entries are presumably correct, almost certain to happen, and will be notable at that time, they are now and for the next decades / centuries nothing but WP:NOT lists of statistics about for now utterly non-notable events.

Also nominated are:

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Human3015^TALK 13:01, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. Human3015^TALK 13:01, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all - I don't know how to argue about notability. Eclipses repeat in cycles that repeat over hundreds of years, and these cycles have been analyzed and given nice summaries we can look at. There are also long term statistical patterns like tetrads and central eclipses that have statistical significance and can link back to such tables like this. I'd agree having ONE ARTICLE per event about things hundreds of years in the future would be very excessive, but a summary table is notable and at worse harmless to readers who are not forced to look at it against their will. Tom Ruen (talk) 13:08, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

no one is forced to look at any article, that's a non-argument. And the rest just describes why we can make these articles (because they are predictable), not why they are notable. The cycles are pretty clear from the articles we already have, and the statistics (after all, the articles under discussion are nothing but statistics) do nothing to learn anyone anyting new. It's a database of future eclipses, not an article about anything. Fram (talk) 13:39, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

One of the long periods is inex which interacts with the saros cycle, like shown in this graphic for eclipses from 1000-2500 and eclipses from 1900-2100 in yellow. Here you can start to see some long term patterns that vary over time, why the number of total vs partial eclipses vary by century for instance. So the century listings end up as diagonal in this chart. Tom Ruen (talk) 15:17, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(Comment) Ah, but you see, what you have just written above is (a) interesting and (b) encyclopedic. Although very short, it tells us something. Whereas the tables in the articles under discussion are simply not encyclopedic articles, by any stretch of the imagination; they are raw data, which in a Proper Printed encyclopedia would belong in an Appendix. I think the current strategy of trying to pretend that all information can be sliced into WP article size is a bad one: it would be much better to find ways of offering tabular appendices. Amongst other disadvantages: this table is only available in WP:en (and WP:zh), and requires manual work to port to other languages; it is susceptible to vandalism, while allowing free text-editing is of essentially no value; the full list of eclipses is chopped into century-size pieces, to no logical advantage; it is not very amenable to machine-reading. In other words, I am not against offering this information (of course, "Science. Can't beat it."), but I do not think this style of "article" is appropriate. Imaginatorium (talk) 06:14, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Keep all: Astronomy is all about predicting future. Nominator is saying "No problem with lists of eclipses in the past". But no one interested in eclipses of past, all people or researchers look for eclipses or astronomical events of future. These lists are encyclopedic as far as "Astronomy" is concerned. There are already lists giving astronomical predictions of 27th century, 28th century, 29th century and so on. Number of Lunar eclipses is large so they deserve separate list. --Human3015^TALK 13:13, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
p.s. past eclipses could be considered more important since they can relate to past historical events, and including influencing those events, like a rather small sampling current at Historically significant lunar eclipses. Tom Ruen (talk) 13:19, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Any evidence that e.g. 28th-century eclipses are currently of any interest to anyone, beyond compiling the list? Will anyone, even an astronomer, come looking on Wikipedia for a list of 28th-century lunar eclipses? And if so, why? What purpose does it serve? Fram (talk) 13:39, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Tom, I'm not saying that past eclipses are not important but future eclipses also have same or even more importance. Fram, you are saying "28th-century eclipses are currently of any interest to anyone?". That can be your view, article Stevens–Johnson syndrome may not useful for 99% of the human beings but it is useful for medical students. Considering the huge scope of Astronomy these lists are highly useful for students of Astrophysics/Astronomy or even Astrologists. Moreover, these topics are also of interest of general public. --Human3015^TALK 15:23, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: all these eclipses are also listed in articles like Lunar Saros 145 and the other 63 lists in Category:Lunar saros series. So it's not as if the information is gone from Wikipedia if these articles are deleted. Fram (talk) 13:39, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Saros cycle listings are useful because they are of finite duration, <500 years. Chronological listings are useful for finding specific events in specific time intervals without having to search through n-lists of saros cycles. Having both lists with dates and saros numbers means you can move between lists. You could argue that for example event times belong in the chronological lists and can be given as cross-referencing in the saros lists, although that would require a large number of internal anchor links to be friendly. Tom Ruen (talk) 17:33, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep Science. Can't beat it. Lugnuts ^{Dick Laurent is dead} 14:20, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Delete Otherwise there is (literally!) no end to it. List of lunar eclipses in the 31st to 40th centuries List of lunar eclipses in the 41st to 50th centuries... Basically such things are not notable. What would be more sensible would be a reference to the algorithm for generating these, and /or a site that will generate a list for a desired time interval. Imaginatorium (talk) 15:05, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Relax, apparently 3000AD was good enough for NASA, so we can rest on that limit as well. And long term orbital mechanics is an n-body problem and isn't going to be solved by simple algorithms. And chaos actually takes over at some point where we actually don't have accurate enough measurements to extrapolate past a certain point. So there are undefined error bars in these calculations, and NASA might come up with an updated dataset. The main variable actually arises from classifications, whether an event is total or partial in limiting cases, or partial vs penumbral. Tom Ruen (talk) 15:10, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Imaginatorium: Up to 3000AD is ok. Age of Earth or Moon is between 4 to 5 billion years, still few billion years of life is remained for Earth, so writing eclipses for next 1000 years is very minor thing. 1000 years is very minor time in Astronomical studies. On lighter note, my name is Human3015 because I'm Human from 3015AD, from future. See, anyone from this era thinks up to next 1000 years. We can keep Astronomical predictions till next 1000 years, it is very obvious thing with Astronomical perspective. --Human3015^TALK 19:24, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Keep. This request, fundamentally, seeks to replace a non-arbitrary cutoff for lunar eclipse coverage (3000 CE, where the current NASA tables end, likely for reasons of precision and complications of long-term orbital mechanics) with an essentially arbitrary cutoff (the current century, apparently on the grounds that it is the limit of "general interest"). I understand the "Wikipedia is not a collection of statistics" argument here; I just don't think that well-studied astronomical phenomena of this nature are what that is intended to exclude. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 17:16, 16 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, Sandstein 11:19, 24 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

keep all - whether or not WP is an ephemeris is not in published policies. Seems like very useful knowledge. DangerDogWest (talk) 05:17, 26 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.