Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Timeline of MSL Curiosity mission

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 delete individual pages by day; no consensus on the main timeline, default to keep. There is no unique content from the individual pages by day that are not on the main timeline already. Der yck C. 14:29, 28 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Timeline of MSL Curiosity mission

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WP:NOT a gallery of pictures, and WP:NOT a diary. Create a timeline when the main article gets too long to include all the important, notable events, but don't turn this into the (picture) diary of Curiosity on Mars. Also nominated are all subpages by day:

Fram (talk) 09:50, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Strong delete on pages 0-14. Even a 2-year mission would mean 700+ separate pages. Pages very similar to this were already deleted via AfD [1], and those were even grouped by week. Weak delete on the article itself (as it exists currently), but I am open to reasoned compromises. OliverTwisted^(Talk)(Stuff) 09:59, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I can't help but think there could be a way to do the main article successfully at some point. There have been versions of the Curiosity rover article which have incorporated the mission daily summaries into a table. Perhaps they could be summarized by week, rather than by day? After two months, they could be summarized by month? Etc. Evolve the presentation with the mission timeline, rather than creating an endless repository mirroring other repositories? OliverTwisted^(Talk)(Stuff) 10:31, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete the daily mission articles, no opinion on the Timeline of MSL Curiosity mission article. An article for every day of the mission obviously isn't going to work, but a general timeline article of the mission will be useful at some point - I'll defer to others as to whether or not that time is now. --Bongwarrior (talk) 10:15, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

DELETE - all of them. However, expect their re-creation by user:Havebased123 (a team effort will be required to contain this rouge user.) The MSL mission does needs a timeline of "key" developments, once there is something to write about, but I will be willing to help build one with a self-sustainable format. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 13:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete: Too many articles on small events and know that the whole mission will last over 2 years! That's over 700 days, so it's better to not even start making all those articles. However, a single article mentioning all the major events from all the days is a good idea, sort of like a detailed timeline. Giggett (talk) 15:43, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. • Gene93k (talk) 16:34, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Commons can host day to day pictures of the mission, so transwiki the daily pages there if it's not already on there in some form. Keep the overall timeline, as there already are enough events worth noting and it's senseless to delete it now only to recreate it later. postdlf (talk) 19:26, 20 August 2012 (UTC) (edited 14:45, 21 August 2012 (UTC))[reply]
Delete the pages on individual Sols and Keep/Improve the timeline article. The images and videos should go or just be linked to in the timeline text, more like the existing mini timeline in the main article. The Curiosity article is already getting quite lengthy (almost 80KB as of right now) and the timeline looks like a good candidate for splitting into a separate article given that it's quite likely to be the most-growing section. Grandmartin11 (talk) 22:44, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Keep with fixes timeline. Merge subpages. Save the refs! Fotaun (talk) 23:49, 20 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I've saved the code of the page, just in case we need to incorporate items into any future articles. OliverTwisted^(Talk)(Stuff) 00:43, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge all into Timeline of MSL Curiosity mission, which should be renamed Timeline of the Mars Science Laboratory mission to improve grammar and remove the redundant use of alternative names. While day-to-day activities do not warrant their own articles, an overall timeline would be a good way to present the notable activities and discoveries. That said, the article needs a complete rewrite as it currently looks more like a portal than an article. --W. D. Graham 11:35, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Allow me to put in perspective the reason this timeline made it to AfD: simply "fixing" the article is not an option, as user Havebased123 is displaying acute WP:ownership issues and reverts any edit not done by him. Without discussion. Re-doing the article --when there are relevant events to report-- is the best course of action. Cheers, BatteryIncluded (talk) 13:05, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
- We don't delete content because of content disputes or editor conduct issues. Take it through proper channels, not AFD. postdlf (talk) 13:28, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
  - Actually, on occasion, we do, when WP:TNT is necessary. - The Bushranger _{One ping only} 18:34, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

It may very well be necessary. Although the filed SPI for the creation editor was closed without much discussion, the creation editor has a history of attempting to circumvent Wikipedia guidelines by blanking their talk page, avoiding communication, and editing under multiple IPs when confronted [2]. The topic is also under discussion on the ANI board, here. This has caused serious disruption to a series of articles, including the Mars Science Laboratory article and the Curiosity rover article, in addition to at least six editors having to spend significant amounts of time attempting to reign in a non-communicative rogue user. This has direct bearing on the page in question, as there is no indication this behavior will not continue.OliverTwisted^(Talk)(Stuff) 03:43, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not seeing how pulling out the WMDs for this article is going to help in cutting down the user's disruption, as it looks to me like they'd just resume their trouble-making when we start paving, unless we want to just forget about splitting the timeline off from the main article. Grandmartin11 (talk) 17:37, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Delete ths daily pages - they are clearly unnecessary. One Timeline page to list notable events is sufficient. Peacock (talk) 14:40, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete or Move to User space, not encyclopedic to have daily reports, additionally much of this information/content is available elsewhere. - Aeonx (talk) 23:50, 21 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep for now: I know that as of now, it is just a messy collection of bits just laid out in chronological order but it think that it is more a question of finding the right typographical arrangement. For example: A new column added after the date is all that is need to indicate the Sol. The reader is quite capable of scrolling down and finding it by either of the two date references. Therefore, a vertical content box needn't list them. A horizontal contents template may be better for listing the Dates & Sol's anyway, rather than put them all in the standard vertical Contents menu. See: Template:List TOC/sandbox. When the list gets too long - split it up into quarter years (the daily news will reduce to a slow drip after a few weeks anyhow and many Sols may go by with nothing new to add). Most images would be better off on related articles (Curiosity and MSL) as they are only a link away. The article just needs some some style rules to be worked out to make it more encyclopedic IMHO.--Aspro (talk) 16:56, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: Following on from what W. D. Graham and others have said. It would be easier to start a new article properly named as Timeline of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, and properly laid out. The time-line only needs to be a simple wiki-table list for the 'minutia' (without images) that doesn't belong in the two other articles. Then delete this one. --Aspro (talk) 18:23, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I'd think including the (contextually relevant) images in a table like is used for the "missions" bit in the Sol 11 section would be better for understanding, so we'd have |image (if there's a relevant one)|date|event|notes|. Grandmartin11 (talk) 20:57, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep Timeline page. Merge daily articles. Stated deletion rationale is incorrect. 1) The images are not merely a "gallery without text", but synchronized with descriptions of what the rover was doing and when it was doing it. A gallery as defined in policy is not just "a lot of pictures". 2) While there are elements superficially similar to a diary here, the MSL probe simply is not a person. Its daily exploratory activities are not happenstance non-notable events in the life of a celebrity, but a carefully designed plan of research activities, none of which has ever been done before. Had the money used to build this probe been spent on individual research projects, there can be little doubt that hundreds of individually notable results would have been obtained; we should not shoehorn them together under the notion that a thing is a thing, no matter how big or small. That said, while several of the daily articles might nominally be notable, it is unlikely that the Sol 453 article will be, so it's not a good organization. Merge them together into a single page, and when that page gets too big to edit comfortably, break it down along more conceptual boundaries (alluvial fan, water-deposited strata, wind-deposited strata, etc.) The idea that multiple pages are necessary is good, the idea that they should be sol by sol or that it will be possible to display them all in full detail on one single page when the mission is finished is not. Wnt (talk) 20:44, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Strong Keep Timeline, Delete Daily Articles. I do not think having a lot of pictures is grounds for deletion, and the timeline is too big to be merged back into the MSL page. I agree to delete the individual Sol pages, or at least merge them; they are redundant and useless. Kelvinsong (talk) 21:54, 22 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Keep timeline, Delete daily pages. I see no reason to have a ton of separate daily articles on the subject. One consolidated timeline page where some restraint on what is included is far better. We don't need to have every single image and activity of Curiosity documented. Silver seren^C 21:59, 23 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Merge all to Timeline of MSL Curiosity mission (which should be renamed to Timeline of the Mars Science Laboratory mission), as per Graham above. But not to keep it as it is now. Reh man 03:28, 24 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete individual sols. The Timeline should probably be trimmed down so there is no real need to merge any content from the individual sol articles. Keeping the timeline as its own article, on the other hand, is probably reasonable, though with some judicious application of NOTNEWS and avoiding of recentism it might be mergeable with the main MSL article. But that's more a question of what is the best presentation than an issue for AfD. Eluchil404 (talk) 20:18, 26 August 2012 (UTC)[reply]
Delete timeline and sol articles. Information of that detail should go somewhere like Wikia, not in an encyclopedia. Kaldari (talk) 06:22, 28 August 2012 (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.