Wikipedia:Good article reassessment/Astronomy/2

Article (edit | visual edit | history) · Article talk (edit | history) · Watch • Watch article reassessment page • Most recent review

Result: Kept. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 17:02, 9 September 2025 (UTC)

This level-2 WP:Vital article was promoted back in 2006. It has since been through GAR in 2010 and 2023. The main issue in the latter was uncited material. Since then, the article has yet again accumulated a number of maintenance tags related to uncited material, and as such does not meet the WP:Good article criteria (in particular, 2b). Pinging editors involved in the previous GAR and some additional major contributors: @AirshipJungleman29, Onegreatjoke, XOR'easter, Iazyges, Vsmith, and Materialscientist:. TompaDompa (talk) 12:04, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

Keep: I've added some refs, removed some uncited material, and done a little copy-editing. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:11, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

The physical cosmology section had quite a few dubious bits which I worked on. I hope others will take a pass at other sections. Johnjbarton (talk) 22:30, 10 August 2025 (UTC)

I've cleaned up several sections for you. The main issue I've addressed is the presence of descriptions of the findings of astronomy, rather than descriptions of the science itself. An analogy is describing what an animal is rather than saying what zoology is: obviously, we have articles of both kinds, but they're different. Chiswick Chap (talk) 02:16, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

@Johnjbarton and TompaDompa: are you satisfied with the edits? ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 14:42, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

I have made a couple of spot-checks and added additional maintenance tags related to sourcing. TompaDompa (talk) 21:48, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

I've fixed those to date. Chiswick Chap (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2025 (UTC)

Thank you for that. In the meantime, I have continued spot-checking a bit. I have found a number of additional issues and tagged them accordingly. I suspect that further spotchecking would reveal even more issues. If this were at WP:GAN rather than WP:GAR, I would at this point have probably gone for a WP:QUICKFAIL on the grounds of serious WP:Text–source integrity issues. This article has turned out to be in a much worse state than was apparent at the surface level. TompaDompa (talk) 00:15, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Please tag the article and post when you feel that your review is complete. Multiple cycles of "all fixed" followed by "here's more" is discouraging. Johnjbarton (talk) 03:38, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Indeed. I've removed the unneeded accretions, added several refs, and tagged "citation needed" for the useful bits. There are some "page needed" tags also. Chiswick Chap (talk) 05:54, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

That's one way of avoiding a WP:FIXLOOP, and probably the easiest way when there are only a handful of discrete issues. Another way, considering that this particular article pretty much needs to be rewritten to deal with the widespread issues, is to wait until the article has been rewritten before checking again. Resolving this much WP:Text–source integrity issues requires determining what needs to be sourced better and what can be removed entirely, which means that the overall WP:WEIGHT of the article is highly likely to shift. Adding sources to material that was originally added without any always runs the substantial risk of not reflecting the balance of different aspects in the overall literature on the overarching topic correctly. TompaDompa (talk) 12:13, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Weight has indeed shifted. I've cut, as mentioned above, a large amount of material that concerned findings rather than the astronomical method, and I've restructured quite a bit to make this clear. The remaining text mainly concerns either history or types of astronomy, and those are certainly the correct subject-matter for this article, so I don't think we need worry too much on that front. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:58, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Sorry I should have clarified. You are right: a re-review after major changes is useful. The only reason to complain about drip-drip reviews is that once I located and loaded sources it much easier to get several fixes at once. So reviewing and reporting a section at a time is perfectly fine. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:02, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

I have spot-checked a sample of sources, and found serious issues in something like three quarters of my checks. Now this wasn't a random sample but a targeted spot-check where I deemed issues to be likely, so it very well may be non-representative, but it is still enough for me to say that fixing issues identified via spot-check is highly unlikely to be sufficient to bring this up to snuff. I believe this article needs to be overhauled basically from the ground up to ensure that there are no WP:Text–source integrity issues. Now I can always keep doing spot-checks for straightforward verification and WP:Close paraphrasing issues (as long as I'm able to access the sources, at least), but when it comes to the more subject-specific things (e.g. whether the sources used are appropriate for the material they support, ensuring that everything that should be covered in the article is covered, avoiding overemphasizing WP:Minor aspects, and so on), that's where more familiarity with the topic and sources is required. TompaDompa (talk) 17:01, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

TompaDompa, I've overhauled the text, removing a large amount of off-topic description, including many "minor aspects", and restructuring; and I've asked Johnjbarton to check he's happy with that in terms of the science. He and I have added or replaced numerous references. We are thus doing quite a root-and-branch reform of the article: it's still in progress.

BTW You just found that Forbes 1909 had gone missing, flagging up multiple maintenance issues: I've reinstated it, and checked and documented each individual ref to it. That was a single small error (probably mine some while back), now fixed. Chiswick Chap (talk) 20:03, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Sounds good to me. I suppose I'll check back later. Forbes 1909 appears to be available at the Internet Archive with proper pagination (but different ones depending on the edition), by the way. TompaDompa (talk) 21:51, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

I've been through the whole article, sorted all the citations you flagged and checked many others. The text is far tighter (and shorter). I've removed one or two images either for reasons of space or of relevance to their sections, and added one or two new ones. The remaining statements, which cover all the major areas of the science, will be seen as broad and obvious by astronomers; they are well attested by the sources. Chiswick Chap (talk) 12:51, 13 August 2025 (UTC)

Johnjbarton - I've done all but 7 or so of the citations needed; if you can fix those and satisfy yourself that the reworked article, minus a lot of off-topic text, covers what it should, that'd be very useful. Chiswick Chap (talk) 15:00, 12 August 2025 (UTC)

Keep I completed a pass through the entire article with special attention to the History. That section still has too much early and not enough later history, but adequate for GA. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:48, 21 August 2025 (UTC)