Talk:Astronaut birthplaces by US state

Incomplete page

This page is massivly incomplete and is it needed. Happy to start updating it but want people's thought's first JamesCollins (talk) 20:08, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Citations and sources are needed

Please be sure that all additions to the Astronaut birthplaces by state article are verifiable. Any new items added to the article should have inline citations for each claim made. As a courtesy to editors who may have added claims previously, before Wikipedia citation policy is what it is today, some of the existing unsourced claims have been tagged ^{{{citation needed}}} to allow some time for sources to be added. N2e (talk) 01:51, 23 December 2011 (UTC)

Randomly inserting tags is not an appropriate approach. The page has sources; it is obviously impractical to place a separate citation for each line when the entire body of information can be accessed at single sites such as SpaceFacts. The real question is whether you have any basis for challenging the factuality of the data on this page, or whether you're engaged in a different sort of activity. RandomCritic (talk) 15:25, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

I assure you it was the former. Wikipedia standard is for inline sources; I didn't see any for supporting the claims that so-and-so was from a particular state. That's all. So I challenged several claims to see if the editors who want the claims to stay have sources they can provide. Pretty simple. The article has no References section, so it is not obvious to any Wikipedia reader who happens by that this is sourced. The article does have two external links, one of them to a 2003 NASA document (which I have not cross checked against the many claims in this article) and another to a German self-published page by a space enthusiast who seems to be interested in US astronauts. In Wikipedia, external links are not considered source citations.

In general, for large lists of claims, edited by many editors in an open source encyclopedia like Wikipedia, a source at the bottom of the article is insufficient. A source at the bottom (or top) of a large list is typically added by one helpful editor to support claims in the article at the time it was added. It may support each and every claim at the time it was added to the article; but it is oftentimes not updated/consulted for the many subsequent claims added by other editors to a large list article at a later date. That is why it is good practice to provide inline citations. Cheers. N2e (talk) 17:27, 24 December 2011 (UTC)

N2e, the problem here (and elsewhere) is your deletionist approach. You tag items that are already sourced on top/below. You didn't first check in the source at the bottom - you simply tagged. Sorry, but I don't assume good faith, because if you did care to improve by adding inline citations - you could do that yourself by taking the source from the bottom/top (or in other cases - from wikilinked articles). Maybe it's easier for you to tag and delete and maybe you don't have time for checking for sources in the articles where you tag/delete and in wikilinked articles. I suggest that for your edits to be really constructive - you take the time needed to check - you will tag/delete less items (because of time taken to check for sources), but you won't be responsible for deletionist activities (deleting sourced content, even if not inline-sourced the way you prefer it) and you'll add some of those inline citations yourself. Your work will be much more appreciated that way. Currently it's kind of annoying and maybe breaching the policy. The main result of your work right now is the removal of sourced content (negative result). That's for sure. A side effect is maybe the removal of some unsourced content (maybe a positive result), but that's not sure, because you don't check for sources and in many times your deletions aren't checked by other editors (everybody is time constrained). Jeffsapko (talk) 13:52, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

That you (Jeffsapko) happen to disagree with another editor's approach to improving the encyclopedia is not a good reason to fail to assume good faith on the part of that other editor. But I shan't try to convince you further on that point; I warned you on your Talk page on that matter, and that is sufficient so that you cannot claim to be ignorant on the topic. If you keep it up long term, you'll have sufficient conflicts with other editors that the broader community will police your behavior.N2e (talk)

As for adding sources and improving the encyclopedia more generally. I support BOTH adding sources AND adding verifiability-related citation tags to articles that need improvement. I frequently add citations to articles I work on, and also on those I stumble upon that are in my area of interest or expertise. These actions however are orthogonal to other actions that I also choose to take to tag unreferenced material. WP:Verifiability is not optional. Policy is unambiguous, it is up to the editor who wants to retain material in Wikipedia to get it cited with verifiable sources; it is NOT Wikipedia policy that every editor who stumbles upon significant unreferenced material must stop their lives and endeavor to improve THAT particular article, nor ignore that the article is insufficiently sourced. So I tag it and move on. It seems to me to be a simple courtesy to flag it for a month or two to see if "the community" cares enough about an article to fix it before material is deleted from Wikipedia for being unsourced.

On this particular article, there is no References section. And the two External links have the problems of being outdated (the NASA, 2003, link) or from a self-published source. I will not be the first editor who will see these many claims as unsourced when they happen by to read the article. Thus, like it or not, this article needs substantial improvement, and per WP:BURDEN, it is up to the editor who wants the material to be retained to source it. Having said that, it is an article of very low value, and there are higher value Wikipedia articles that need improvement even more, so I won't be taking the time to challenge many of these claims right now. Cheers. N2e (talk) 15:15, 25 December 2011 (UTC)

What do you mean "outdated 2003 NASA link"? The birthplaces of astronauts don't change over time.

N2e, you just confirm that you are a deletionist. You don't admit that it's better to check for sources before applying your tag and delete approach. There are multiple examples (not only here) where you have deleted sourced content. Sometimes the sources are in linked articles (you hide behind the policy and state "I don't care, they aren't in that article where I deleted"), sometimes the sources are in the same article - in the beginning of a list or on the bottom of the page. In these cases even the policy doesn't protect you, but you still state "I don't care, they aren't placed where I want them to be placed and I ignored them". And you want others to assume good faith?

Your game of "the burden of proof is on editors who ..." is silly - editors who added the content maybe put the source in the edit-line description, in now-archived discussion section, on top/bottom of the article or taken the data from linked article. All of these are places you don't check. You want every piece of information to be sourced right behind with a ref. Nothing less satisfies your criteria. In addition you are actively pursuing this tag and delete - in contrast to the contributors, who added the information, but do not police the articles, where they contributed for deletionists like you. So, of course, over a longer time period you'll win - "editors who..." will not come to confront your actions and you'll eventually delete many information pieces, most of them sourced in one way or another. In some cases (when the source is not directly on the page) the policy protects you, fine. But your overall approach is damaging to Wikipedia and you even delete sourced content in violation of the policy. Unfortunately I don't have time to notify your actions to noticeboards and such. If damaging Wikipedia makes you happy - go along, twist the policy and continue.

Anyway, your current approach is hypocritical - you claim "good faith", but fail to admit that you engage in "tag and delete of potentially sourced content", calling it "the burden of proof is on editors who ..." if you prefer.

For others to assume you tag and delete in good faith you have to at least admit that you have been wrong in some cases and maybe even to agree from now on to check first at least on top/bottom and on linked article (let's leave edit-line, discussions or google - that will be too much to ask from you). Jeffsapko (talk) 08:34, 6 January 2012 (UTC)

Venus symbol

Why on Earth (or off Earth) are the women in the list tagged with a Venus symbol, but not men with a Mars symbol? I would be for no tagging such symbols to any gender on the list. Glasfaser Wien (talk) 17:09, 18 August 2023 (UTC)

Alright, I added all the gender symbols to all astronauts, for whatever reason. Glasfaser Wien (talk) 09:42, 19 August 2023 (UTC)