The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by PFHLai (talk) 17:05, 14 November 2015 (UTC)

WT1190F edit

  • ... that WT1190F is a small temporary satellite that will impact the Earth on November 13, 2015?
  • ALT1 ... that WT1190F was a small temporary satellite which had impact with Earth on November 13, 2015?
  • ALT2 ... that WT1190F was a small satellite that impacted the atmosphere near Sri Lanka on November 13, 2015?

Created by Exoplanetaryscience (talk). Nominated by Bharatiya29 (talk) at 12:16, 28 October 2015 (UTC).

  • Seeing that the expected impact date is coming soon, I started to review this nomination in hopes of it being able to hit the main page on 12 or 13 November. However, in checking the creation date, I noticed from edit comments that there is apparently a dispute about whether the object is an asteroid or merely "space junk", complete with a talk page discussion and multiple reverts by different editors. Exoplanetaryscience (or Bharatiya29, if you're keeping track), feel free to ping me when consensus is reached about how the object in question should be referred to, and I'll be happy to complete the review. —GrammarFascist contribstalk 19:50, 29 October 2015 (UTC)
  • The issue seems to have been resolved while I was working on other things, so, moving on...
General: Article is new enough and long enough

Policy compliance:

Hook eligibility:

  • Cited: No - While less serious an issue than plagiarism, the element of the hook calling WT1190F a "temporary satellite" does not seem to have a by-end-of-sentence citation in the article to a source which uses that phrase. If one of the existing sources uses the term, that's easily fixed.
  • Interesting: Yes
QPQ: None required.

Overall: Two specific instances of copyvio from here found by Earwig are:

  • The International Astronomical Center (IAC) and the United Arab Emirates Space Agency will host a team of veteran U.S. and German observers of spacecraft re-entries to study the predicted [re-]entry
  • The IAC has chartered a Gulfstream 450 business jet to bring the researchers to a location over the Indian Ocean south of Sri Lanka that should offer a prime view of the entry above clouds and haze.

There also may be copying from here and/or here. —GrammarFascist contribstalk 13:24, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

  • @BlueMoonset, Gatoclass, Victuallers, and Yoninah: We're running out of time on this nomination (admittedly this is partly my fault as I failed to follow up with Exoplanetaryscience or Bharatiya29 in a timely manner after neither responded to my initial ping). Is it still realistically possible for the hook to run on 12 or 13 November? If so, should I perhaps invite another editor to take over dealing with the copyvio rather than continuing to wait for the nominator or article creator to do so? Thanks in advance, —GrammarFascist contribstalk 23:24, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
  • So far, the general consensus among astronomers is that it is space junk- for one thing, the density of it is is far too low to be anything solid - it effectively has a density just a bit more than that of Styrofoam. Additionally, it has been shown that to have entered orbit of the Earth it would have had to have a very close approach to the Moon, which is quite unlikely considering we have only observed that happen only once previously. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 01:24, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Hi, Exoplanetaryscience, thanks for responding. I saw that the question of whether it was a natural satellite or space junk had been settled since I left my above comment on 29 October. The issue now is that there are a few sentences in the article that have been copied exactly from sources without being attributed as quotations. The DYK nomination can't proceed until the copyright violation issue is corrected. As the reviewer for the nomination, I can't just fix the article myself (conflict of interest). Would you be able to rephrase, remove or put quotation marks around the problem passages? Two are listed above; you can use Earwig's Copyvio Detector to find the others. Thanks, GrammarFascist contribstalk 02:14, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Based on from what I can tell, there are no intentional copyright violations. While about 50% of the similar text that was identified by the tool was written by me, the most similar sites for content are instead directly copied off of the Wikipedia article- the only similar text I had included was from the ESA and MPML reports. the astronomycenter report was added by @Odehjas: on the 9th. Either way, I will attempt to correct these. exoplanetaryscience (talk) 20:05, 11 November 2015 (UTC)
  • I appreciate you cleaning up after another editor's errors, Exoplanetaryscience. Please ping me when you think you're finished, so I can complete the review and we can hopefully get the nomination promoted in time for the impact tomorrow. Thanks, GrammarFascist contribstalk 00:08, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

Hooks of next 2-3 days are fixed. This will not appear on main page within our expected time. I will provide alternative hook.

  • ALT1 ... that WT1190F was a small temporary satellite which had impact with Earth on November 13, 2015?

--Human3015TALK  03:41, 12 November 2015 (UTC)

  • That's disappointing, even though the object did turn out to be space junk rather than an asteroid. Well, lesson learned. So that this hook can be run on the main page eventually (the grammar on ALT1 is a bit awkward, but I'll refrain from altering it while I'm still mid-review) some remaining copyright violation will need to be rephrased, quoted or removed. For example, "observational campaigns to collect as much data as possible on this object" and "to better understand the re-entry of satellites and debris from high orbits" remain in the article, although it does appear that at least most of the plagiarized text has been dealt with. Exoplanetaryscience, I know you only created the article and did not nominate it for DYK; you're more than welcome to recruit other editors to help with the cleanup. Another issue is that, unless I've overlooked or misunderstood something, none of the sources cited for statements about the impact actually state that the impact occurred — they either talk about the re-entry, or they date from before the object began its descent and merely predicted when the impact would occur. There needs to be an unambiguous source stating that the impact happened cited in the article to support the ALT1 hook. If necessary the hook could instead be changed to refer to WT1190F's re-entry rather than its impact. Thanks in advance for your continued assistance, GrammarFascist contribstalk 18:59, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
  • It is an atmospheric impact. Very little material would make it to the ground as 99% of the object will vaporize. -- Kheider (talk) 19:07, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Okay, thanks for clarifying that, Kheider. Would you consider contributing an ALT2 which includes the distinction that it was an atmospheric impact? The word "impact", unmodified, suggests to me (and, I would think, to most non-astronomers) a ground-level impact. —GrammarFascist contribstalk 19:32, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Peter Jenniskens website uses the word "impact" in 3 places in the 2015, October 22 section. A better layperson version might be ALT2 ... that WT1190F was a small satellite that impacted the atmosphere near Sri Lanka on November 13, 2015? Perhaps these edits addresses some of your copyright concerns. -- Kheider (talk) 19:45, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
  • Hello again, Kheider. Again, predictions about the impact from before it happened cannot be used to prove that the impact in fact happened later. However, I consider "impacted the atmosphere" to be reasonably equivalent with "made re-entry", and I think the presumed Wikipedia audience would consider those phrases equivalent as well. And Earwig's analysis is now down to just 13% likelihood of violation, which I think is good enough.
  • That leaves just one issue: the phrase "temporary satellite", which is not used by any of the sources cited in the article. As apt a description as it may be, it's unsupported. You may change the wording of ALT2 to one of the phrases used by the sources, such as "space debris"; that would resolve the issue. Adding a source to the article which does use the phrase "temporary satellite" would be another solution. (I can't rewrite hooks, as the reviewer, as it's considered a conflict of interest.) Thank you for your assistance (and thanks again to Exoplanetaryscience for theirs). I copied your ALT to the top of the nomination so it's easily found by the nomination promoter. This nomination is nearly ready for promotion. —GrammarFascist contribstalk 21:15, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
  • GrammarFascist, do you also want "temporary" before satellite or "temporary satellite" removed from the article? It was a satellite (moon) directly orbiting Earth. The term "temporary satellite" / "temporary satellite capture" is so common to astronomers I guess no one got around to using it. -- Kheider (talk) 22:27, 13 November 2015 (UTC)
  • A satellite is an object orbiting a larger object, and if it had been permanent it wouldn't have entered the atmosphere, so I think using common sense lets the article continue to say "temporary satellite". DYK rules are persnickety about substantiating any asserted or presumed facts in the hook, though. I think the latest version of ALT2 ("small satellite") passes muster, so I'm calling this DYK GTG. Thanks again for lending a hand, Kheider! —GrammarFascist contribstalk 23:37, 13 November 2015 (UTC)