Talk:BYU Mars Rover

Untitled

I am in the process of writing this article. As you can see, there are plenty of external references for it, and it should be approaching and initial state of completeness within a few days.

Fredjikrang (talk) 16:12, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

I'm not sure it's a notable organization, though. Depending on how the article looks after completion, it may still get nominated for deletion. —C.Fred (talk) 16:29, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

The rover team has been covered by at least four independent media sources, including Discovery Channel, The Salt Lake Tribune, The Desert News, and The Daily Herald, as well as some interested parties, such as BYU Radio, TV, and newspaper, and the Mars Society website. There is also expected to be additional coverage soon, as the team recently competed in another competition. I would suggest that such coverage is significantly more extensive, and hence makes the team more notable, than many other organizations that have existing pages on Wikipedia.

I do appreciate your patience with the article, and feel that it will be up to all the standards required of a reputable article on Wikipedia.

Fredjikrang (talk) 17:14, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

The page appears to have had most of its content deleted in the last few minutes. Anyone know why, or how to get it back? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Fredjikrang (talk • contribs) 17:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Corrected. Fredjikrang (talk) 17:46, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Some pictures have been selected for the page, but can not be uploaded yet as I only recently registered on Wikipedia. Fredjikrang (talk) 21:43, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Citations

I am unsure why the article was tagged as needing more sources. It currently has citations from, at bare minimum, three reputable, reliable sources, and at least six secondary sources of varying quality and reach. Some, such as Scientific American and Discover Channel Canada have national or greater audiences. There are some citations from interested parties (BYU news and the Mars Society), but these are in the minority. I do agree that the citations need to be better utilized to support the facts of the article.Fredjikrang (talk) 19:24, 19 June 2009 (UTC)

Out of the ten inline citations, three are to the Mars Society's website, one to BYU's own website, and one is a segment on a Canadan PopSci TV program that got most of it's info about the race from the Mars Society itself. That's half of the inline citations that are much too close to the subject matter. Additionally one of the citations is to an article in BYU's own student newspaper, an another by the Deseret News (which is hardly unbiased about BYU). That leaves only the the Salt Lake Trib, the InfoWeek, and the Scientific American articles as citations without the potential for positive institutional bias. One could also possibly argue a potential negative bias by the Trib against BYU. 20-30% unbiased coverage is a much too small of a percentage on an article here at WP. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 15:36, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I mean no offense, but there is no such thing as completely unbiased coverage, with the best possible coverage including a variety of sources so that all biases are presented fairly. For instance, you say that the Deseret News is "hardly unbiased about BYU," which is probably true, but something for which there is no evidence aside from colloquial opinions, and even if there is a positive bias, as you suggest (which again, I agree is likely, though unsubstantiated) even you agree that the Tribune likely has an negative slant on BYU (again, unsubstantiated) and so by presenting both articles as citations, presents as nearly an unbiased opinion as possible.

Secondly, I find your opinion that "20-30% unbiased coverage is much too small of a percentage" for a WP article a bit absurd. I could easily delete some of the "biased" articles (of which I would submit that there are fewer than you say, putting my estimate at right around 50%) in order to increase the percentage of "unbiased" articles, but in reality it would only reduce the amount of information substantiating the article. I think it much more relevant to talk about the number of good sources for an article, than the percentage that might be biased. This article has a decent-to-good number of good sources for it, and many more than a lot of other articles already existing on Wikipedia. In fact, I find the continual attention and attacks on this article to be somewhat absurd, considering some other articles that I have seen, which may have one reference, if any, and yet have never even been considered for deletion.

In short, I am more than willing to change the citations by deleting some of the more obviously biased sources, such as the Mars Society or BYU News, but I think that it would be a mistake. I also find the number of articles on Wikipedia that have fewer good sources than this article to be a sufficient reason to not consider this article for deletion, at least not at the current time or in the near future.Fredjikrang (talk) 20:27, 22 June 2009 (UTC)

I am not advocating the removal of existing citations, I'm am merely explaining why the tag is appropriate, since that was the question posed. As the tag says "Please add more appropriate citations from reliable sources" (emphasis mine). The tag advocates more citations, not less, and asks that these to meet WP:RS. This is perfectly legitimate in context of the current state of the article.

I'm not sure why you're saying that this article is being "attacked". The reason to improve WP articles should not be to make them just good enough to not be deleted; instead the goal should be to get the article to at least a WP:GA status. One does this by following WP guidelines, and collaborating with others on the article. This requires all editors not to WP:OWN, and avoid less-than-useful discussions, such as WP:OSE. The tags found an article are useful indications of what needs to improved; they are not some kind of a badge of shame, or an indictment on any editors efforts on an article. -- 208.81.184.4 (talk) 17:46, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

Thank you for your rational responses and continual work toward bettering the formating and content of the page. It is a great help, especially since I am fairly new to Wikipedia, and so do not know all of the proper formatting and the meanings of all the tags. I would also like to apologize for my somewhat hostile tone in my previous comment. I've been a been on my toes worrying about the survival of this article since I created it, as it was suggested for deletion (twice) within a minute of its creation.

Also, it seems that you are the only other person who has significantly edited this article, while it appears that having been edited by a wider variety of editors is a big step toward qualifying for WP:GA. Is this something that is more likely to occur should the article be submitted for Good Article status in the future, or is it something that could be worked on now?Fredjikrang (talk) 23:08, 23 June 2009 (UTC)

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Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons files used on this page or its Wikidata item have been nominated for deletion:

• Rover2018.jpg
• Team 40.jpg

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 22:42, 6 November 2020 (UTC)