Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Astronomy/Manual of Style

Preliminary discussion

(Note: I transferred the discussion here because the project talk page is subject to archival. Praemonitus (talk) 19:43, 18 May 2024 (UTC))

I put together an early draft of a MoS guide for astronomy under Wikipedia:WikiProject Astronomy/Manual of Style. It is intended to embed what has thus far been tribal knowledge for this WikiProject and its associated task forces. For comparison, other such style guides can be viewed under the "By topic area" tab in the infobox. What do you think of this proposed guide? Do you disagree with what is stated? What else should it cover? I'm sure it can be significantly expanded. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 05:24, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

This is very helpful. I particularly appreciate the linking to other relevant guidelines. ~Maplestrip/Mable (chat) 06:40, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

I would suggest adding something discouraging the usage of computer-generated 2d/3d models in the lead image when suitable alternatives are available; this prominently applied to Miranda, where a 3d model was used as the infobox image for several years in lieu of an image or image mosaic.

It may also be worth mentioning an apparent informal convention to use full-disc images of visited Solar System objects when possible, as the Sun, all nine planets (except for Venus, which does not have any full-disc true-color images on commons), Pluto, Ceres, and all visited moons seem to follow this convention. A similar/analagous convention seems to be in place for imaged galaxies and DSOs too. ArkHyena (talk) 00:14, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Makes sense. I've seen truncated images from Hubble in the lead image spot, which might not be ideal. A pair of examples are NGC 5506 and NGC 5634. Praemonitus (talk) 04:45, 15 April 2024 (UTC)

Of course! There may also be an additional caveat needed in that quality/accuracy still has priority over full disc. To provide a planetary example, this[1] quarter-full image of Europa takes precedence over this[2] full disc image, which is lower-resolution and exaggerated color. ArkHyena (talk) 20:58, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

As there didn't appear to be any serious objection to this proposal, I added it to the project sidebar so it can cook longer. Eventually, I hope it can be proposed as an addition to the MoS. Praemonitus (talk) 18:22, 30 April 2024 (UTC)

Abbreviations

A style question came up during a recent edit discussion: should infobox data entries preferentially use abbreviations or words? For example, 'Mly' or 'million light years'; 'AU' or 'astronomical unit'; 'Gyr' or 'billion years'; 'g/cm³' or 'grams per cubic centimetre'. In my mind the infobox should be kept compact by sticking to abbreviations, with the word usage being left for the article body. Is there a preference? Praemonitus (talk) 20:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Okay, it's already covered by the MoS: "Where space is limited (such as tables, infoboxes, parenthetical notes, and mathematical formulas) unit symbols are preferred." Praemonitus (talk) 22:17, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

AI

It's probably not an issue yet, but should we mention AI-generated illustrations? For example, "AI-generated illustrations should be avoided unless their accuracy is confirmed by an astronomy expert. The AI system may have been trained using copyrighted material, so the legality of such use is unclear." Praemonitus (talk) 17:28, 17 April 2024 (UTC)

New here so I don't know if it has already been covered in a more general guide or such, but I believe mentioning AI-generated images is a good idea. It's better to cover everything before it becomes a problem, than having to adjust it later in my opinion. AstroChara (talk) 17:15, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

The copyright rules for AI-generated images is commons:AI-generated media. If we prepare rules for objects that have never been photographed (such as exoplanets), gone millions of years ago (Theia, Mars with oceans), or just hypothetical (a terraformed Mars), they should be for any way to create such an image, be it AI, an artist's work or whatever. Cambalachero (talk) 19:40, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

I guess that artists and the astronomy experts are also trained using copyrighted material. Is the legality of the use of their work also unclear? Johnjbarton (talk) 23:05, 18 April 2024 (UTC)

You're taking the piss, right? Primefac (talk) 11:31, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I think you are misunderstanding the issue with source materials and AI. Artists in all genres and authors in all fields re-mix material. That's Standing on the shoulders of giants. The legality of that re-mix is never clear cut. That's why we have courts, law suits, and lawyers. Furthermore, the legal onus is on the person who causes the material to be displayed, not on the creator. I can copy Monet in my home all day and night. Only when I sell my painting on the street will it be illegal. Similarly, the AI generation won't be illegal, uploading the image that infringes on a copyright will be. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:33, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

The legality of that is already established via the ramifications of plagiarism and the fair use law. No such ruling exists for AI; it's not even clear they can generate patents. Praemonitus (talk) 14:21, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

The discussion was copyright, not patent. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:21, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for stating the obvious. I was making the point that the legalities on the use of AI output are far from settled. Praemonitus (talk) 19:26, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

I do agree here. The morals and merits of AI art can be debated here endlessly, but the primary concern is that laws surrounding AI art (and really, AI anything) are young and volatile, and potentially subject to rapid near-future changes. It would probably be wise to at least require AI-generated material to be clearly marked as such. ArkHyena (talk) 20:54, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

As for the way an AI generates an image, unless there is an actual case law over that, I would dismiss the whole thing of "they used copyrighted images for training" as immaterial. The only thing that is truly relevant is the final image, the result of the prompt. If that image is derivative, then delete (or don't upload), under the same conditions we would with any other non-AI image. Cambalachero (talk) 14:12, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

My concern is that there is current controversy about the use of copyrighted web content for training, which may ultimately lead to take-down orders. Praemonitus (talk) 12:37, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Praemonitus: I like the way you worded this, and I agree with a fairly broad restriction on use of AI images without prior vetting and/or secondary sources. - Parejkoj (talk) 16:02, 19 April 2024 (UTC)

SIMBAD and NED

The guide contained the following entry, which was removed with this edit:

However, in general they should not be cited as a source for the infobox data because the information is subject to change over time and comes from multiple overlapping sources. However, they are useful as a stable reference for the other designations listing.

with the comment "I disagree, it is better to directly cite SIMBAD or NED as sources for the infobox, as it makes it easier to verify the information."

I have seen cited data removed from these sources, so they should not be considered stable. An example of this is the coordinate information, which is subject to refinement over time, with the old data being replaced. Instead, in many cases they do provide stable references that can be used to directly cite the data. Hence, I'd caution against using SIMBAD or NED directly.

Are there any concerns about this? Praemonitus (talk) 12:35, 20 April 2024 (UTC)

Units

A few suggestions:

• I think it would be good to pick one symbol for astronomical unit, and I think right now we almost always use "AU".
  • This has been discussed before, and I believe the consensus was to just be consistent within an article. I was in the 'AU' camp, but others preferred 'au'. Praemonitus (talk) 19:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
• Surface gravity should probably be displayed in standard gravity units in addition to m/s², and it would be nice to use "g₀" instead of "g" to avoid confusion with grams.
  • Makes sense. I believe that has been the practice on astronomy articles where surface gravity is listed. Praemonitus (talk) 19:46, 18 May 2024 (UTC)
• Conversions between multiple SI expressions should be discouraged (e.g. both km/h and m/s, which I do see).
  • I'm not sure about that one. There may be cases where it makes sense to do so. Praemonitus (talk) 22:34, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

  Do you have an example in mind? -- Beland (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

  Perhaps in cases of comparisons, presenting the sourced value first then the conversion where it is beneficial for the reader. I'm sure there are other instances. Do you have an example where it seems inappropriate? Praemonitus (talk) 21:07, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

  MOS:UNITS does not have a "present the sourced value first" rule. Primary units are determined on an article-wide basis either because they have strong ties to the US, UK, or neither. If a source uses the secondary units, unless it's a defined exact quantity, we put the sourced units second, for example by using {{convert}} with "order=flip". Otherwise it would be a bit annoying to read, not knowing whether you should intuitively ignore the parenthetical conversions. Where we're just converting SI to SI (which is always exact), we can use "disp=output" to only show readers the units specified in this MOS, but only show editors the sourced value so it can be verified.

  An example of where I think one value would suffice is the equatorial rotation velocity of Mars, which is given as both 241 m/s and 870 km/h. People are familiar with km/h speeds from driving, so that seems like a good choice of units for this field across all planetary infoboxes. If someone needs m/s it's easy to get that without having to look up any conversion factors. -- Beland (talk) 02:31, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

  (Neither of those numbers is given in the cited source, BTW; I assume it has been derived. -- Beland (talk) 02:33, 21 May 2024 (UTC))

  Okay, so my suggestion would be to take this as a separate issue to the WP:AST talk page and see if the community wants to address it. Thanks. Praemonitus (talk) 04:13, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

• This section is a bit unclear on whether both SI and astronomy units should be used, or only one. In infoboxes (and prose where it's not excessive) I would argue for both. It's much easier to intuitively grasp huge distances and masses in AU, light-years, Earth gravity, Sun masses, etc., so very worthwhile to convert into these if necessary. I like the idea of converting to metric units as well because it allows intuitive comparisons across measurements - for example, how much bigger is the Earth than its orbit around the Sun? And as much as I want everyone to learn the scientific units from birth, it's a bit kinder to Americans who have come halfway and learned either metric or astronomy units but still haven't gotten a handle on the other.
  • Per MOS:UNITS, the practice has been to use SI units in general, but switch to astronomical conventions where customary for the astronomical community. Praemonitus (talk) 19:35, 18 May 2024 (UTC)

  Do you think that's a good practice, and if so, why? And also if so, what about the above argument for metric conversion? -- Beland (talk) 18:18, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

  Yes. It's a consensus policy for Wikipedia, and the conventional practice in the astronomy sources we use to reliably cite the articles. Hence, per MOS:UNITS, we use "such other units as are conventional in reliable-source discussions of the article topic". Praemonitus (talk) 21:01, 20 May 2024 (UTC)

  Going back and reading more carefully, the part of MOS:UNITS you're quoting is only talking about which units to pick as primary, not about whether or not to add a conversion. MOS:CONVERSIONS says "For units of measure that are obsolete, obscure outside of a particular specialty or geography (e.g. furlong), or not part of the SI or US customary systems (e.g. zolotnik), supply a parenthetical conversion into at least SI units."

  If you want to simply apply the site-wide policy without any astronomy-specific overrides, then I would interpret that as saying light-years and parsecs should also be shown converted to kilometers. -- Beland (talk) 02:52, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

  Hmm. Well basically, it's just stating the protocol that has been in widespread practice on astronomy articles for many years. That is, we use typical SI except when professional astronomy convention overrules it. That's part of the goal here, is to codify what we're already doing as a type of tribal knowledge. You're not going to change that by making changes here; if you really want to do something like that on a larger scale then you'll need a group consensus. Praemonitus (talk) 04:11, 21 May 2024 (UTC)

• I'm agnostic as to whether metric or astronomy units should be primary where both are given via conversion, and I'm actually fine with just making whichever the cited source is using as primary for convenience. But whatever the rule is it should be made clear up front.

-- Beland (talk) 03:51, 18 May 2024 (UTC)