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good point. i replied at the article talk page. --Steve, Sm8900 (talk) 21:38, 9 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

OK, I found a very clear reference to why the probability goes up, then down, from Spaceguard UK. I've added it to the article. LouScheffer (talk) 03:11, 15 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you, this reference is great! (sdsds - talk) 06:51, 15 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

		The Technology Barnstar
		For your contributions to space-related articles, and the spaceflight portal. GW_SimulationsUser Page | Talk 00:27, 20 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wow, thank-you! (sdsds - talk) 21:54, 21 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey see on my edit to your sandbox how I put that "__TOC__" in. Well that puts the Table of Contents to wherever you put the __TOC__ in the code. So if you have a page where the Table of Contents is somewhere unusual (like in the comments area on that template) then just use that word. —Zachary ^talk 07:41, 24 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks, that's a great work-around for the problem! Ultimately a solution would somehow come from a change in the template, so that whenever a Comments subpage was modified to include section headings, the TOC of the Talk page continued to be in the correct place, without adding anything to the Talk page itself. But for now ... your suggestion works! Thanks again for suggesting it. (sdsds - talk) 04:41, 27 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As a current or past contributor to a related article, I thought I'd let you know about WikiProject Robotics, a collaborative effort to improve Wikipedia's coverage of Robotics. If you would like to participate, you can visit the project page, where you can join the project and see a list of open tasks and related articles. Thanks! - Jameson L. Tai talk ♦ contribs 23:39, 28 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Probably best if we use ((launching/STS)), as this can be re-used more. Also, I forgot to send you a note about WikiProjects, so I've put that below. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 07:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, I noticed that you are a member of the Human Spaceflight WikiProject. A couple of weeks ago, I proposed that the Space missions and Space travellers projects, which both appear to be inactive be merged into the Human Spaceflight project. Whilst this is being done, the capitalisation of the Human spaceflight project's title would also be corrected (ie. Human Spaceflight → Human spaceflight). The projects are all doing the same/very similar things, and in my opinion, a single, larger, project would be more effective than three smaller, and somewhat inactive projects.. In light of very little response to messages on the project talk pages, I am now sending this message to all members of all three projects, inviting them to discuss the proposal on the Human Spaceflight project's talk page. I would appreciate your opinion on this. Thanks. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 07:47, 29 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes. We'll need to check at WP:SPACE. We'll also have to drag it through CFD as well, because we are moving categories. It would probably be a good idea to leave notes on the project talk page, and Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team as well.

In reply to your comment at the CFD for the member category, I think the best way to minimise self-references would be to merge the members into the main project category, and Category:WikiProject Spaceflight seems the best place for this to go. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 22:19, 31 January 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It's an option, but it could be seen as WP:CPM. I suppose we could try requesting a speedy move, or if we have any administrators in the project, asking for their help. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 08:10, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey SD, I saw you've made some edits to the WPSpace template, and I was wondering if you'd fancy adding an entry on it for WP Human Spaceflight? We could start doing some assessment within the project then - the banner that I made is a bit useless, as it doesn't go in the main template and won't allow for assessment of the articles. What do you reckon? All the best, Colds7ream (talk) 13:11, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi! As it happens I was just thinking about that! But then I realized I didn't even understand the assessment process for WikiProject Spaceflight. What does it really mean to e.g. have Talk:Vostok 1 tagged "Importance to Spaceflight: High"? Are there any objective, written-down criteria for that? What does any "importance" rating (much less specifically the Spaceflight one) signify? I have looked at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Release Version Criteria#Importance of topic and at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Work via Wikiprojects but I'm still not sure I understand (or maybe agree with) the intent. (It sure seems like there's work to be done on WikiProject Spaceflight article assessment! See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Spaceflight#Category:Unknown-importance space exploration articles.) Short term, for work on human spaceflight, I'm wondering if all the articles related to the subject at least have the Category:Human spaceflight tag, or the tag of one of its sub-categories...? (sdsds - talk) 16:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Categorisation like that sounds like a grand idea, and I'll work on some draft importance criteria to put forward for everyone's dissection. Colds7ream (talk) 13:25, 2 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Done - have a see what you think! Wikipedia:WikiProject Human Spaceflight/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance Colds7ream (talk) 19:10, 2 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wow, this is a great start! I've started a discussion about it at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Human Spaceflight/Wikipedia 1.0/Importance. (sdsds - talk) 21:05, 2 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Per Talk:Space_law#Re-organized, it looks a little different than when you saw it last. Let me know what you think. Franamax (talk) 10:02, 3 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Many, many thanks for reading the article. As you may gather, it was something of a braindump when I needed to refer to FID in another article. Your point about improving the lead is well-taken, and your comment gives me encouragement to go back to work on the article. If you'd like to put it on your watchlist, you should see changes.

There is, incidentally, some related content I took out of the article and put in my userspace, although I'm embarrassed to say I have forgotten how to search in userspace and find the pages I've created. Hopefully, I'll remember in the next little while, or find it in the documentation. Anyway, there is an area that is clearly US-specific. It's entirely possible that it is too much OR for the mainspace, and can go into the Military History Project essay space. Essentially, it deals with several conflicts over the use of US special operations forces. The first article, which is not more developed than text yanked out of the FID article, deals with whether Special Operations forces, especially United States Army Special Forces, should principally be "door-kickers" doing special reconnaissance and direct action for counterterrorism, or whether the units that understand local language and training (primarily but not exclusively Army Special Forces) should have working with local countries, as in the FID mission, as their principal responsibility and other units, reinforced if necessary, should be door-kicking.

Thanks much for the interest.

Howard Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 11:53, 3 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, and thanks for your quick response! Thank-you also for the work you have already done clarifying the lead of the foreign internal defense article. Also, I found User:Hcberkowitz/Sandbox-IntelOversight by using the Special:Prefixindex search function. Is that the page to which you refer above? (sdsds - talk) 20:04, 3 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Frustratingly, there's another page somewhere, I hope, in my userspace, which discusses the controversy in the US special operations community about misusing Special Forces people, qualified to teach in other cultures and languages, as "door-kickers" in direct action and special reconnaissance. Is there, perhaps, a text search that might come up with "kicker"? Perhaps if I go far enough back in the history on Foreign Internal Defense, I can find that text, which I removed as being to US-centric. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 20:07, 3 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I was able to find the missing section, and have incorporated some of your suggestions into the lead. I'm starting to wonder about the proper relationships between the main counterinsurgency article, which I haven't looked at recently, and the FID article. FID is one way of carrying out counterinsurgency, and I wonder if some of the counterinsurgency models I have in the FID article belong elsewhere. Howard C. Berkowitz (talk) 02:53, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've responded at Talk:Foreign internal defense, trying to get at the question of what makes sense to include in the article. Do we want it to help the reader understand the theory behind the doctrine, or merely to understand what kinds of activities the doctrine expounds? (sdsds - talk) 03:41, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have decided to remove the "launching" template from the NASA page. If have had doubts about this usage in the past, and have only seem them grown. I'll explain my reasons, and perhaps you can comment with your ideas.

1. NASA launches stuff every week. This opens a precedent to having the template included year round
2. I can see the point in having the template on payloads, sattelites, the general "Space Shuttle" article, the mission article, because those are all search terms that might lead people to wikipedia looking for that information. In my eyes anyone that looks for a "launchschedule" on the NASA page is just not using google correctly.
3. It needs and invites constent updating troughout the week simply to fix the "countdown" which really shouldn't be in Wikipedia at all. We say "something happens within the next" week, but we should not be "counting down".
4. Combined I think this is starting to violate WP:NOT in that wikipedia is not a TV guide, and it isn't a launchschedule or countdown either.

I'm interested what your opinion on this is, and what we should do address these concerns --TheDJ (talk • contribs) 01:27, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi! Thanks for leaving me a note about this here. I understand much of what you have written, but I am a bit confused by "NASA launches stuff every week." What do you mean by that? Would you like to discuss this here, or someplace more central? (sdsds - talk) 02:19, 4 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, I have made two major changes to Template:Launching (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs). Firstly, the launch information now uses the named variable "info" rather than the first unnamed variable. Secondly, the time to launch is not automatically calculated, using information entered in the format "DD|MM|YYYY|HH|MM" (separating each with a pipe (|) symbol) into the first five unnamed variables. This can be overridden using the named variable "time", but this should not be required. If you have any questions, please let me know. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 14:09, 9 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A tag has been placed on Template:Launching/GLONASS requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section T3 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a deprecated or orphaned template. After seven days, if it is still unused and the speedy deletion tag has not been removed, the template will be deleted.

If the template is intended to be substituted, please feel free to remove the speedy deletion tag and please consider putting a note on the template's page indicating that it is substituted so as to avoid any future mistakes (<noinclude>((tranclusionless))</noinclude>).

Thanks. --MZMcBride (talk) 05:48, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

And I have removed that tag as it is a template subpage used to enable correct and effective usage at a later date. As a subpage, not a template itself, I doubt if it meets the criteria anyway. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 08:01, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No, starting late this year, or early next, we are going to see GLONASS launches on Soyuz, and even a couple on a GSLV. There are four Proton pads, and Russian pad turnaround times are pretty fast, so it is not unusual to have two Protons going within the reccommended two week period for this template (Today's Proton launch, and the one on 28 January, for example). As for STS-400, I would advise not using a tag unless it is called up (by which time the main ((Launching/STS)) tag would have freed up. --GW_Simulations^{User Page | Talk} 09:07, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wow, there are four Proton pads? So one re-used sub-template per launch system really won't work. I suppose we could get some re-use by standardizing on one sub-template per launch pad.... But I see your point: given that there will certainly be future GLONASS launches the GLONASS sub-template will potentially get re-used a number of times! And who knows what valuable reminders and hints can be stashed in the <noinclude> section of the sub-template between launches? (sdsds - talk) 15:45, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Yes, there are four. Areas 81/23, 81/24, 200/39, and 200/40 at Baikonur. I think Soyuz has six or seven, two at Baikonur, one under construction at CSG, and the rest at Plesetsk. I think if we stick with the tags we've got for now, and create more when needed, that would be the best policy. I can't see any point in deleting used templates unless the rocket is retired, or in the case of satellite-specific tags like GLONASS, the last such satellite is launched.

On a different note, I was considering preloading some of the general information (timeline of spaceflight, spaceflight portal, etc) into the template, using a parser function to only display when in the template namespace. What do you think of that? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 16:23, 10 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Done, with a slight contrast adjustment. Might I ask where you got the illustration? It would be better loaded as a .png, and I'm not sure that this is the original resolution; it looks upscaled. thegreen J Are you green? 01:10, 11 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Thanks. The original resolution was actually 298 by 222, so I've re-uploaded it as a .png at Image:Image-CONTOUR SRM configuration.png. thegreen J Are you green? 21:42, 11 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

That looks great. Nicely done! (sdsds - talk) 21:45, 11 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi. I've proposed that the article you started, NRO L-21, be merged into USA 193. Both articles are about the same satellite, and the USA-193 one is more established, so I think merging that way would be a good idea. Do you have any comments? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:22, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I've redirected the page; I believe USA 193 contains most of the same information. However, I'm seeking a good source for U.S. officials or NASA previously claiming that the satellite posed no danger. I'm sure this is the case but can't find a good source. Evercat (talk) 23:01, 14 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks to you both for fixing this. FWIW, I chose to create "NRO L-21" only because that was the (red) link in the launch table of 2006 in spaceflight. Are we now consistently using "USA" designations for articles on individual NRO launched satellites? (sdsds - talk) 05:35, 15 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

There's no policy that I know of, I just started the article at USA 193 some time ago. But if it's felt NROL-21 is a better title I'd be perfectly happy with a move. Evercat (talk) 14:28, 15 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

L-21 is the launch designation, 193 is the satellite designation. The L-21 designation is technically and officially obsolete, but is just still used by a few people who got used to it. 193 is the official designation, and is the only official designation for the satellite itself. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 15:36, 15 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Please could you take a look at Wikipedia:Templates_for_deletion#Template:Launching.2FSM. You would probably be better at explaining the core purpouse of these templates than me. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 08:26, 18 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I tried to explain them. Sometimes it is difficult to explain why something is a "good thing." (sdsds - talk) 06:59, 21 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 13:11, 21 February 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I realized today with the ((Launching/Sea Launch)) delay that we need never remove these templates from the articles once they have been added, but can instead merely put all the content into <noinclude> sections when it shouldn't appear on the article pages (as you have already done a few times and did again with the Sea Launch delay). This is great because there's no hit on the article history at all for each subsequent launch. Possibly even better, to the casual observer the template never appear to be unused! (sdsds - talk) 21:21, 4 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I totally agree that where, for example, the name of a Pop group is Cesium-137 then that remains as spelled. Similarly where publications are quoted in which the author spells the element Cesium then that too stands. However, when referring to Caesium clocks, it is indeed the element being referenced - what other sort of Caesium is there in this context? There is not a different Caesium for physics from that in Chemistry - just two properties of the same material - hence the appropriate change in spelling. Will you revert or shall I ? Velela (talk) 15:11, 17 March 2008 (UTC).Reply[reply]

Hi again! I am perfectly happy discussing this here rather than on your talk page, if that is your preference. But maybe there's a better place to build a community-wide concensus? It might seem like that would be Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemicals, but my concern would be the inherently biased sample of editors who would become aware of the discussion. The specific article in question, Global Positioning System, is not even claimed to be within the scope of WikiProject Chemicals! (And as you'll note, that's pretty much my entire point about why the policy you quote is not the spelling policy that is relevant to the GPS article.) So perhaps the best place is Talk:Global Positioning System? Shall we continue the discussion there? (sdsds - talk) 01:31, 18 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I have moved the whole discussion there as suggested Velela (talk) 15:13, 18 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for beginning a list of companies that perform Jewels! Robert Greer (talk) 20:41, 20 March 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Your page has been vandilised by 96.235.113.20 and reverted by Freshbakedpie ^{(Wanna talk?) \'_'/} 22:08, 15 April 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A new May 2008 issue of the WikiProject History of Science newsletter is hot off the virtual presses. Please feel free to make corrections or add news about any project-related content you've been working on. You're receiving this because you are a participant in the History of Science WikiProject. You may read the newsletter or unsubscribe from this notification by following the link. Yours in discourse--ragesoss (talk) 23:38, 2 May 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Since you are a member of WikiProject Economics, I would like to direct your attention to Wikipedia:WikiProject Economics/Featured Article drive. We are currently deciding on an economics-related article to bring to Featured Article status and we would like your input. Thanks! Gary King (talk) 15:12, 12 May 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

It is a similar issue to the Long March issue which we discussed last year (User_talk:GW_Simulations/Archive_2007#Variant_spellings). I have absolutely no problem with either dialect, but seeing as both are used, it sometimes looks a bit scrappy. It is always best to use a "neutral" dialect - ie. words which are spelled the same in both British and American dialect (your suggestion, I believe). I think that without realising it, I sometimes use words that are not in the American dialect, so if you notice any of those on the portal, feel free to change them to make them neutral. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 08:50, 27 May 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Just to let you know, with regard to the launch date for Chinasat 9 (which you changed from 6 to 9 June in Portal:Spaceflight/Next launch), it is not clear whether this will occur on 6, 9, or 22 June. All three dates were mentioned at around the same time. --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 06:59, 3 June 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey, thanks for the note. I'm pretty busy right now for photos (got a 49 megapixel panorama in front of me at the moment), but I should be able to do something with it in the next day or two. Just some preliminary notes: Part of the exhaust plume is blown, i.e., there's digital clipping, so there's not much I can do about that, but I will try to do what I can to remove the washed out look and clean up some scanned dust and scratches while I'm at it. Also, do you have an idea as to what you want for the crop? It looks like the photographer was trying to avoid cutting off the exhaust, but any cropping is going to do that, which could make the image look a little awkward. I was thinking of ending the crop just left of the smaller water tower and below the launch pad; does that sound okay? Thegreenj 02:38, 8 June 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Image:STS31 carries Hubble to orbit edit.jpg. Sorry about the halos around the fumes and shuttles; someone's got there before me about sharpening and did a rather poor job, leaving artifacts all over the place. And I'm afraid I'm just no Monet—but that's not to say it's not possible! Thegreenj 01:18, 10 June 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi there! I just saw your article on LOCAD. Were you part of the original group of researchers working on the PTS at MSFC? Dognap (talk) 04:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello -- I'm glad you found the article! I was very curious about the research topics the LOCAD work addresses, but don't have any affiliation with the people working on the project. All the content of the article came from the sources it references. If you know of any others, particularly anything more current, please don't hesitate to add them to the article! (sdsds - talk) 05:16, 27 June 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Nothing new I'm aware of; I lifted the templates trying to find something appropriate. (I wish, again, there weren't about 800 diff ones...) If they need changing, I'll leave off adding new ones, but there's a bunch of redlinked Mars projects that could use it (if I haven't already hit most of them...). TREKphiler 09:12, 5 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh my God. That is... not intentional. I have to access to the Chinese Wikipedia through an IPv6 proxy server ( "sixxs.org" ), so when I jumped to the English version the system added "sixxs.org" to the images' URLs automatically. I have added the Chinese entry's link again, by normal IPv4 this time. --Douglasfrankfort (talk to me) 09:05, 7 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

• Fixed. What do you think of the new feature I added to disable transclusion? --GW_Simulations_{User Page | Talk} 22:17, 8 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Conversation continued at User talk:GW_Simulations. (sdsds - talk) 03:59, 9 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

March 2009 commissioning

As you may not know, the official commissioning of the JDS Hyūga on March 18, 2009 was widely reported:

A. RTTNews (link) noted interest in the event:

• "Anticipating international concern over the launch of the mammoth destroyer, the Japanese government insisted the vessel would not carry fighter planes and that it was different from an aircraft carrier."

B. AvioNews (link) reports that Japan has commissioned the helicopter carrier Hyūga:

• "The Ministry of Defense underlined that, even if it resembles a light aircraft carrier, the "Hyuga" is an helicopter carrier and respects the pacifist constitution imposed to Japan by the United States after World War II. The Country renounced to use force in international disputes, but anyway it has one of the best organized armies in the world."

C. The Straits Times (link) published an Agence France Presse (AFP) news story which explained that the Maritime Self Defense Force (MSDF) "stressed that the destroyer complies with the country's post-war pacifist constitution."

• The Straits Times news story included a AFP photo.
• China Daily published a smiliar Xinhua photo

D. iStockAnalyst.com (link) posted a Kyodo News report mentioning "concerns about its resemblance to a light aircraft carrier":

• "Despite the Hyuga's look and feel of a light aircraft carrier, the MSDF says it is anything but."
• "'An aircraft carrier, I believe, has a fair degree of offensive functions. Based on that definition, this Hyuga falls a little bit outside of the frame,' MSDF Chief of Staff Adm. Keiji Akahoshi told a news conference on Tuesday."
• "The acquisition of a destroyer that could project the force far from Japan's coast, however, raises concerns in Asia. It may even spur rivalry with countries like China, which is rumored to build an aircraft carrier of its own."
• "Japan denies itself offensive capabilities under its war-renouncing Constitution. But the government interprets the supreme law to mean that it can possess the minimum level of armed force necessary for its self-defense."

• The Japan Times news story included a Kyodo photo.

I wonder if you might be willing to share some thoughts about how to go about incorporating this relevant information into an article -- Hyūga class helicopter destroyer -- which was the subject of controversy some months ago?

A constructive step might be to re-post what I've written here -- perhaps just after this now-timely diff or this diff which were contributed by Nick Dowling on the Hyūga talk page?--Tenmei (talk) 17:11, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi again, Tenmei. You're correct: I hadn't been following the Hyuga news. Thanks for pointing it out to me! (sdsds - talk) 21:07, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

The implied question in the last paragraph of my post above? What if I were to re-post what I've written here after this talk page diff or this alternate talk page diff? My intention is to avoid controversy by beginning to move forward constructively on the talk page?

In preparation for this inquiry I created Takes two to tango (idiom). --Tenmei (talk) 22:15, 20 March 2009 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi, I just started a new article: ESRO. There's a tonne of stuf that needs to be done on it that I don't know exactly how to do (and what exactly to do). Could you take alook and help me out?

Thank you. U5K0 (talk) 23:28, 26 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wow, this was great work -- thank-you! I wasn't familiar with the history of European space exploration organizations, so reading through your article was very helpful to me. After I read it again in more depth, I'll leave comments on the article's talk page. Thanks again for making such a great start on this article! (sdsds - talk) 23:43, 26 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Somewhat urgently, please see Talk:ESRO#Source_of_the_article_text. (sdsds - talk) 00:07, 27 July 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Robotics/Outreach/Newsletter July 2008

Hi Sd

In response to your request at MOSNUM talk, one of the pages that may interest you is the two-and-a-half-year-old saga at Bugzilla. (You'll need to register and log in if you want to comment.) Despite the 88-person petition about halfway through, the discussion has gone around in circles and has shown that developers, particularly volunteers with little direction from atop, are generally unwilling to make major technical changes, particularly if the way to do it is unclear. You'll see that there are quite a few suggestions as to the syntax and programming method, despite my plea to keep it as simple as possible and to let the developers do it as they saw best. The whole thing wasn't helped by the fact that Brion Vibber has never really been onside, and that WP is only one of a huge number of sites that uses WikiMedia's system. How to avoid syntax, programming, that doesn't conflict with all of those environments?

We gave up some time ago. In the meantime, the community appears to have gradually evolved a more skeptical attitude to the blueing of dates and date fragements. The argument over 1989, 1960s, 19th century and other absurdities is largely over. The numerous disadvantages of DA, and the utter triviality of the differences it purports to iron out, are now the motivation to get rid of it, or at least to empower editors with the right not to use it.

I hope to convince you to support moves to see DA in a different light. Tony (talk) 05:39, 12 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi Tony. Thanks for your response! The transcript for bug 4582 does indeed make good background reading for this topic.

Of course the "right" solution long-term will be a move to wiki software that supports an "autoformat" markup syntax that doesn't overload the syntax for wikilink markup. (That is, the <<angle brackets>> suggested early in bug 4582, rather than the [[square brackets]] currently in use.) But moving in that direction, as you suggest, is almost impossibly difficult. The question we should ask for MOSNUM is, "What's the best suggestion we can give today to editors who are creating or modifying articles?"

The best solution available today is also mentioned in bug 4582 -- markup using the <span> mechanism, simplified for editors by wrapping it in template syntax like ((Date)). The difficulty with this might be explaining it to editors who frankly "don't want to know" about the ugly details. Or is there some other difficulty I don't yet see?

The major trouble with your idea of allowing editors to do no markup of dates whatsoever, is that we will lose valuable meta-information when they unlink dates without using markup that allows that text to be later identified as dates that could be formatted according to per-user preferences (or per-article settings, or whatever).

Without any major change to wikimedia software, enwiki could impose arbitrary date formatting for readers who don't set a preference, including all anon-IP readers. (Note that if anon readers dislike the arbitrarily imposed format we can tell them, "One advantage of creating and logging into an account is that you can select your own preference for this.") This proposal could be implemented in days (minutes really, eh?) and would immediately alleviate one of the major concerns driving this, i.e. the anon-IP readers seeing inconsistently formatted wikilinked dates. But by encouraging unwikilinked dates this immediately avaliable solution is being made less valuable! (sdsds - talk) 06:14, 12 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sd—Sorry, I didn't watch your page (got a bloated watchlist already, as I'm sure you do too). Can you buzz if you reply here further? To take your points para by para:

Well, my overriding reaction is: do you really think it's worth bothering with? The order of month and day seems as trivial as the or/our spelling, or the traveling/travellling couplet. All very recognisable by all anglophones. My own daily newspaper uses [month day, year], when the prevailing format in my country is the international: I suspect that few readers have consciously notice it, and indeed I didn't myself until I had to grapple with the fuss at WP! The US military sector uses international, and many Canadians do. Doesn't seem to be an issue to me. I suppose if I were a computer programmer I might be motivated by the technical challenge of "fixing up" the function, but it would be such a tangled business to make it flexible (date ranges too, please) as well as devising the right syntax to render it plain black. Someone will always have a better way at Bugzilla pages, you've noticed too. That makes developers wary and turns them off, typically. A "right" solution needs a "right" problem, which is missing.

"Some other difficulty?"—removing the ungainly square brackets and avoiding them when first writing an article is simple in concept: everyone can understand it, including newbies. Yes, it's harder to get people to substitute another syntax (although, to argue your case, a script could easily be written to change them over and/or add them). Apart from getting people to agree on a new syntax—no easy thing—remember that WikiMedia software is used by a huge number of sites worldwide. Any new syntax proposal has to avoid interfering with locally registered syntaxes and local usage. We'd need to be sure that no one was using <blah> with functional meaning in their text. Someone objected early on to <blah>, didn't they?

Losing valuable meta-information. I'm not even a script-writer, let alone a programmer, but I can see how dates can easily be identified in a text by a simple script, if required in the future (in fact, a script that picked up faulty and inconsistent date formats would be easy to write, too, I suspect—that could be done at the same time. The loss of square brackets appears to be inconsequential in that respect.

Arbitrary formatting imposed on IP users: I think many users and readers would object, just as they would to a dictum that only British spelling is to be used on WP. The binary spelling and date-formatting arrangement does two good things: it's the minimum that will calm ruffled feathers across the Atlantic; and (2) it's simple enough to manage.

I still think simple wins out: remove it, since it's a solution chasing a non-problem. Let me know of any further thoughts you have. Tony (talk) 00:23, 16 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A proposed deletion template has been added to the article Shavit 2, suggesting that it be deleted according to the proposed deletion process. All contributions are appreciated, but this article may not satisfy Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and the deletion notice should explain why (see also "What Wikipedia is not" and Wikipedia's deletion policy). You may prevent the proposed deletion by removing the ((dated prod)) notice, but please explain why you disagree with the proposed deletion in your edit summary or on its talk page.

Please consider improving the article to address the issues raised because even though removing the deletion notice will prevent deletion through the proposed deletion process, the article may still be deleted if it matches any of the speedy deletion criteria or it can be sent to Articles for Deletion, where it may be deleted if consensus to delete is reached. Zack Holly Venturi (talk) 23:31, 20 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I think I overlooked this :/ Did you get any answer to this from anyone else? I'll have a look if you like, but it's totally not my area of expertise ... - Alison ^❤ 06:06, 22 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No worries! I know there are mechanisms (email, irc, bug databases, etc.) to which some members of the community have access off-wiki where they can request server software configuration changes. I wish a similar mechanism existed within the wiki, but if it doesn't, I won't champion the crusade to create one. (That is, I wish the English language Wikipedia were a democracy, yet recognize it is instead controlled by a fearsome cabal. ;-) (sdsds - talk) 06:24, 22 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

My edit here expresses my sentiment about this. (sdsds - talk) 22:03, 24 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I'm unsure why you're going to ANI. You did put your case, but people generally didn't agree with it. Given that there is overwhelming support for the deprecation of DA, what do you hope to achieve by posting a note there? I can't really see how I can participate there at the moment—nothing substantive to defend or comment on. Tony (talk) 10:56, 25 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Tony, you as an active participant in the debate attempted to close the debate and assert there was consensus. This is not in keeping with Wikipedia convention for closing debates. (sdsds - talk) 11:01, 25 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You make it seem like a one-person campaign. Yet the most substantial changes came today and were not my doing. Aren't you flogging a dead horse? The consensus was overwhelming and you don't agree with it, that's all. It's not as though people didn't engage with your point of view; look at my effort on your talk page. And please do not post negative comments—any comments—within someone else's post, as you've done at GA talk. I've relocated it to where it belongs chronologically, with a note in square brackets. Tony (talk) 11:28, 25 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you, Sd, for you note on my talk page; however, in the spirit of collaboration and consensus, I'm still keen to know whether you feel differently after a few months or so. Do keep in touch. Tony (talk) 04:42, 26 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

My note at AN/I was directed at anybody who could explain exactly what the thread was intended to achieve. I still don't understand why this discussion of a minor disagreement over date formatting has been posted on a noticeboard used for requests for urgent admin intervention. Tim Vickers (talk) 04:56, 26 August 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Moved to Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Spaceflight#Craters_and_spaceflight. (sdsds - talk) 05:11, 5 September 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I wanted to alert you to my comments here. --IvoShandor (talk) 13:47, 11 September 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

You had participated back in February in this CfD regarding the Category:Documentaries alleging war crimes, which ended in no consensus. A new proposal has been made to eliminate this category and merge its contents to Category:War documentaries which is now going on at Wikipedia:Categories for discussion/Log/2008 September 24#Category:Documentaries alleging war crimes. You are encouraged to reconsider the original CfD, revisit your opinion in that discussion and participate again in this latest CfD. Alansohn (talk) 20:21, 24 September 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey, just a heads-up, I moved your new article Feitian space suit over to Feitian spacesuit, as that is a more common spelling. So you might want to add the new one to your watchlist as well. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 02:56, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Oh...whoops. I didn't think to look at those. I guess they are pretty interchangeable, and if "Space suit" is the de facto standard for WP articles, I can see why it would be better to keep things that way for consistency. If you want, you can move the new article back to its original location; personally, I don't really have a preference. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:11, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

I just moved it back. As far as I know, moving over a redirect page works the same as moving to any other pages. Let me know if you see anything in the article that's gotten messed up through the moving back & forth. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:19, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

No problem! Sorry I jumped the gun with the first move. —Politizer^{( talk • contribs )} 03:26, 1 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thanks for assessing Gerard K. O'Neill. It help me to improve the article if you could let me know which of the B-class criteria the article did not meet. Wronkiew (talk) 16:17, 2 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for spending the time to reassess the article. Wronkiew (talk) 03:39, 8 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hi - the article starts out with: "The Eastern Range (ER) is a rocket range that supports missile and rocket launches from the two major launch heads..." -- The term "launch head" is not used anywhere else in the article, and is not defined. Could we Wiki link to a (new) article, simply defining what a launch head is, or perhaps even listing some? 63.75.83.149 (talk) 15:09, 21 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Sorry, wasn't logged in when I posted the above comment -- MithrasPriest (talk) 15:10, 21 October 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Thank you for experimenting with Wikipedia. Your test worked, and the page that you created has been or soon will be deleted. Please use the sandbox for any other tests you want to do. Take a look at the welcome page if you would like to learn more about contributing to our encyclopedia.

If you think that this notice was placed here in error, you may contest the deletion by adding ((hangon)) to the top of the page that has been nominated for deletion (just below the existing speedy deletion or "db" tag), coupled with adding a note on [[ Talk:Talk:International Space Station/Comments|the talk page]] explaining your position, but be aware that once tagged for speedy deletion, if the article meets the criterion it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself, but don't hesitate to add information to the article that would would render it more in conformance with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. Lastly, please note that if the article does get deleted, you can contact one of these admins to request that a copy be emailed to you. Colds7ream (talk) 16:37, 21 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

In view of your edits at Marriage, please consider commenting at Marriage Privatization DRV. If you know where in Wikipedia that the idea of marriage privatization is covered, please post that in the DRV as well. Thanks. -- Suntag ☼ 17:18, 28 November 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hey Sdsds, just a quick request - I've put up a proposal at Wikipedia:WikiProject Human spaceflight/Taskforce proposal as to as possible structure for some taskforces for WP:HSF. If you could take a look and see what you think, I'd very much appreciate some feedback! :-) Thanks in advance! Colds7ream (talk) 18:48, 3 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

A special message, just for you! → → → →

Happy holidays, Sdsds!

May your holidays be filled with family, friends, and fun, and may the new year bring you much joy. Ariel♥Gold 21:24, 25 December 2008 (UTC)Reply[reply]

As with many designs on Wikipedia, this one was of course, inspired by the wonderfully talented Phaedriel, the "design Obi Wan".

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Shirik (talk) 06:08, 14 December 2009 (UTC) Reply[reply]

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Shirik (talk) 18:28, 14 December 2009 (UTC) Reply[reply]

Jezhotwells (talk) has nominated Seattle Children's Theatre, an article that you created, for deletion. The editor does not believe that this article satisfies Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion, and they have explained why at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Seattle Children's Theatre. Your opinions on the matter are welcome at that same discussion page; also, you are welcome to edit the article to address these concerns. Thank you for your time.

Please contact me if you're unsure why you received this message. -Tracer9999 (talk) 19:48, 6 April 2010 (UTC) Reply[reply]

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The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 0, December 2010
Welcome to The Downlink · Reorganisation of Space WikiProjects · User Activity Checks Welcome to The Downlink Welcome to The Downlink, a new monthly newsletter intended to inform members of WikiProject Spaceflight about the latest developments in the project and its articles. Future issues will contain information on issues under discussion, newly featured content, and articles written by members of the project to appear in the newsletter. All members of WikiProject Spaceflight are invited to contribute any content that they would like to see in the newsletter. If you were not aware of being a member of WikiProject Spaceflight, membership of the former Human spaceflight, Unmanned spaceflight, Timeline of spaceflight and Space colonization WikiProjects was merged into WikiProject spaceflight during the reorganisation of the spaceflight projects, for more details, please see below. Reorganisation of Space WikiProjects The ongoing discussion of the future of Space WikiProjects has been making progress. WikiProject Space was abolished on 5 December 2010, with the Spaceflight, Astronomy and Solar System projects becoming independent of each other. On the same day, an assessment banner, ((WikiProject Spaceflight)) was created for WikiProject Spaceflight to replace the generic space one which had been used previously. On 9 December, WikiProject Space Colonization was abolished, with its tasks being subsumed into WikiProject Spaceflight. On 12 December, the Human spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight WikiProjects became task forces of WikiProject Spaceflight, whilst WikiProject Timeline of spaceflight became a working group. A number of issues are still under discussion: Introducing better defined assessment criteria and an A-class review process Setting clearer importance criteria for assessing articles Establishing a joint task force with the Astronomy and Solar System projects to cover space telescopes and planetary probes Defining the roles of projects, taskforces and working groups, and processes for establishing new ones Improving the profile and activity of the project Much of the current discussion is taking place on the WikiProject Spaceflight talk page, however there is still some discussion on the original proposal page. User Activity Checks A series of checks are underway to establish the numbers of users who are still active within WikiProject Spaceflight, its task forces and working group. All usernames on the members lists were struck out, and members were asked to unstrike their own names if they were still an active member of the project. If you wish to do so, and have not already, please unstrike your name from the master list, plus the lists on any applicable task forces or working groups Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 1, January 2011
Welcome to The Downlink · Project News · News from Orbit · Article News · Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics · Salyut 2 Welcome to The Downlink Welcome to the first full issue of The Downlink, a new monthly newsletter intended to inform members of WikiProject Spaceflight about the latest developments in the project and its articles. Below you will find information about happenings within the project, our recognised content, spaceflight in the news and events needing to be covered in articles. You will also find an editorial about the first concerted effort to develop featured topics related to spaceflight, and an article in need of your help and improvements. Project News will provide details of discussions about and changes in the organisation and structure of the project, newly recognised content, and changes in membership. News from Orbit will summarise spaceflight news and upcoming events, and list suggestions for articles in need of updating as a result. Article News will give details of requests for assistance within articles, and discussions regarding content. All members of WikiProject Spaceflight are invited to contribute any content that they would like to see in the newsletter, and we would particularly welcome the submission of editorials, or an article about an area of spaceflight which you are working on, or particularly interested in. Please see The Downlink page for more details. Project News A new working group has been formed. The space stations working group is expected to work towards creating Featured topics related to space stations. It currently has three members. Discussion within the project is still dominated by the reorganisation proposals. A discussion over the formation and roles of working groups and task forces has led to some clarification regarding working groups, however the roles of the task forces remain vague, and several proposals to abolish them have surfaced. The Human Spaceflight to-do list has been merged into the main project to-do list, with the combined list currently located on the Tasks page of the Spaceflight portal. A discussion regarding opening relations with the Aerospace biography task force of Wikipedia:WikiProject Aviation was held, but no conclusions were reached. The Article Alerts bot has resumed operation, and a problem with the information the bot had been delivering was discussed and resolved. New assessment criteria for importance and quality have been implemented, and refinements continue to be made to the importance scale. The scope of the project was redefined to exclude astronomical objects explicitly. Although A-class criteria have been defined, a review process is yet to be discussed or implemented. Colds7ream conducted an analysis of open tasks related to the reorganisation which four major issues remain unresolved: Discussion concerning the existence and roles of task forces within the project; recruitment of new editors; updating guidelines and whether the project or the task forces should be responsible for maintaining them; and the continued existence of the Human spaceflight portal six weeks after consensus was reached to abolish it. Discussion about the structure of the project is ongoing, with several proposals currently on the table. One proposal calls for the abolition of task forces in favour of increased emphasis on working groups, whilst another calls for the task forces to become a list of topics. The idea of a formal collaboration system has been suggested, however opposition has been raised. One of the main open tasks at the moment is replacing the older ((WikiProject Space)) and ((WikiProject Human spaceflight)) banners with the new ((WikiProject Spaceflight)) banner. Articles which need to be retagged are currently listed in Category:WikiProject Spaceflight articles using deprecated project tags. ChiZeroOne is doing a very good job replacing them, but as of the morning of 31 December, there are still 1,424 left to be converted. Additionally, the implementation of a new B-class checklist built into the template has necessitated the reassessment of former B-class articles, which the template has automatically classified as C-class. News from Orbit On 3 December, USA-212, the first X-37B, landed at Vandenberg Air Force Base after a successful mission. On 5 December Proton-M with a Blok DM-03 upper stage failed to place three Glonass-M satellites into orbit, the first of three failures in less than forty eight hours. The NanoSail-D2 spacecraft was supposed to have been ejected from FASTSAT in the early hours of the next morning, however it does not appear to have separated. Finally the Akatsuki spacecraft failed to enter orbit around Venus in the evening of 6 December. The Proton launch was the maiden flight of the Blok DM-03, which does not currently have an article. On 8 December the Dragon C1 demonstration mission was conducted, with the SpaceX Dragon making a little under two orbits of the Earth on its maiden flight, before landing in the Pacific Ocean to complete a successful mission. The Falcon 9 rocket which launched the Dragon spacecraft also deployed eight CubeSats: SMDC-ONE 1, QbX-1, QbX-2, Perseus 000, Perseus 001, Perseus 002, Perseus 003 and Mayflower. The CubeSats do not currently have articles. On 15 December, a Soyuz-FG launched Soyuz TMA-20 to the International Space Station, carrying three members of the Expedition 26 crew. It docked two days later. The Soyuz TMA-20 article is currently short, and could use improvements to bring it up to the same level as articles for US manned spaceflights. On 17 December, a Long March 3A launched Compass-IGSO2. There is currently no article for this satellite. 17 December saw Intelsat regain control of the Galaxy 15 satellite, which had been out of control since a malfunction in April. The Galaxy 15 article is in need of serious cleanup and a good copyedit. On 25 December a GSLV Mk.I failed to place GSAT-5P into orbit. A Proton-M with a Briz-M upper stage successfully launched KA-SAT on 26 December. Barring any suborbital launches at the end of the month which have not yet been announced (a NASA Black Brant was scheduled for December but does not appear to have flown), 2010 in spaceflight concluded on 29 December when an Ariane 5ECA launched the Hispasat-1E and Koreasat 6 spacecraft. These do not currently have articles. Four launches are currently scheduled to occur in January 2011. A Delta IV Heavy is expected to launch NRO L-49 on 17 January. The satellite is expected to be an Improved Crystal electro-optical imaging spacecraft. Two launches are planned for 20 January, with Kounotori 2, the second H-II Transfer Vehicle, being launched by an H-IIB, and the Zenit-3F making its maiden flight to deploy Elektro-L No.1, the first Russian geostationary weather satellite to be launched since 1994. On 28 January Progress M-09M will be launched by a Soyuz-U. 28 January will also be the twenty-fifth anniversary of the loss of the Space Shuttle Challenger on mission STS-51-L. Article News It was requested that the article Walter Haeussermann be expanded. Haeussermann, a member of the von Braun rocket group, died on 8 December. Although the article has been updated following his death, a user requested that more information about the engineer be added. Another user requested that the articles Commercial Space Launch Act and Launch Services Purchase Act be created, to cover laws of the United States concerning spaceflight. Articles related to methods of taking-off and landing were discussed. The term VTVL currently has an article whilst VTHL and HTHL do not. It was suggested that the existing article should be merged, and each term be covered by the article for the equivalent aviation term, however some distinction between use in the fields of aviation and spaceflight should remain. Concern was raised that a large scale deletion request could cause many images to be lost from articles, help was requested to investigate whether any of the images were not subject to copyright, or if they were then whether they could be uploaded to the English Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. Concerns were raised about a large amount of content in the newly-created article deorbit of Mir duplicating existing content in existing Good Article Progress M1-5. A proposal to merge deorbit of Mir into Progress M1-5 was made, however objections were raised, and discussion has since stalled without reaching a consensus. It has also been requested that the article Mir be copyedited. The existence of separate categories for "spaceflight" and "space exploration" has been questioned, with a suggestion that some of the exploration categories, including Category:Space exploration iteslf, should be merged into their spaceflight counterparts. Missile Range Instrumentation Ship is currently listed at requested moves, with a proposal to rename it tracking ship. The only open good article nomination is of the book Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet, which is currently awaiting review. Editorial – Space Stations and the Push for Featured Topics There has recently been much talk about trying to increase the activity of the project. To this end, a major reorganisation effort has been undertaken, which has seen the space WikiProjects separated into the Astronomy, Solar System and Spaceflight groups, with WikiProject Space being abolished. We have also seen the child projects of WikiProject Spaceflight being abolished, with Timeline of Spaceflight becoming a working group, and the Unmanned and Human Spaceflight projects becoming task forces for now, with some suggestions that they should be abolished outright. The problem with the previous structure was that there were too many different groups of editors, and nobody was sure which projects were supposed to be doing what. Now there is only one project, this is somewhat clearer, but spaceflight is still a huge topic. Another way to improve the activity of the project is to attract more editors. Spaceflight is a topic which many people have at least a very casual interest in, and therefore it is strange that there are only about four or five people regularly participating in discussions on the project talk page. Evidently action is needed to raise the profile of the project. One way in which the project's profile can be raised is to have a major success associated with it. The creation of a featured topic could be one such success, and would also be hugely beneficial to articles in the area that it relates to. Space Stations are one of the most high-profile and notable areas of spaceflight, and are therefore a logical choice to spearhead such an initiative. To this end, in late December a working group was established to concentrate and coordinate efforts to establish featured topics related to space stations. An initial proposal calls for topics on Skylab, Salyut, Mir and the International Space Station, as well as one on space stations in general. There is currently an effort to get Mir promoted to Good Article status; the article currently requires a copyedit, after which it will be sent for peer review and then to GAN. This is by no means a short-term project. There are many articles, particularly for the larger space stations such as the ISS and Mir, which are currently nowhere near becoming recognised content. Skylab is the smallest of the proposed featured topics, but it still requires that three C-class articles, two Start-class articles and a redirect all reach at least Good Article status, with at least three becoming Featured Articles. The ISS topic is so large that it may have to be subdivided. I don't expect that we will have any featured topics by the end of the year, but I believe that a Good Topic, which requires all articles reach at least GA status, but does not require any featured articles, may be possible. I also believe that several articles on the subject can easily be improved to Good Article status, and some articles may be at featured level by the end of the year. In the long term, having featured topics will benefit the project and its content. Selected Article – Salyut 2 Salyut 2 was an early space station, launched in 1973 as part of the Salyut and Almaz programmes. It malfunctioned two days after launch, and consequently was never visited by a manned Soyuz mission. The Salyut 2 article describes the station: “ Salyut 2 (OPS-1)(Russian: Салют-2; English: Salute 2) was launched April 4, 1973. It was not really a part of the same program as the other Salyut space stations, instead being the highly classified prototype military space station Almaz. It was given the designation Salyut 2 to conceal its true nature. Despite its successful launch, within two days the as-yet-unmanned Salyut 2 began losing pressure and its flight control failed; the cause of the failure was likely due to shrapnel piercing the station when the discarded Proton rocket upper stage that had placed it in orbit later exploded nearby. On April 11, 1973, 11 days after launch, an unexplainable accident caused the two large solar panels to be torn loose from the space station cutting off all power to the space station. Salyut 2 re-entered on May 28, 1973. ” The article is currently assessed as start class, and is in need of attention. It consists of the above paragraph, along with a list of specifications and an infobox. The article needs to be rewritten in a more encyclopaedic style, and with more information about the space station. It has not yet been determined whether Salyut 2 would have to be included in a featured topic about the Salyut programme, or whether since it was never manned it is less integral to the topic, however if its inclusion were necessary then in its current form it would be a major impediment to this. Downlink readers are encouraged to improve this article, with a view to getting it to B-class and possibly a viable Good Article candidate by the end of the month. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 2, February 2011
Project News · News from Orbit · Article News · The Charts · Yuri Gagarin Project News A report on popular pages from December 2010 revealed surprising trends in readers' interests. Boeing X-37 was the most popular article within the project's scope, with SpaceX Dragon in second with Global Positioning System in third place. The top seven articles were all assessed as C-class, with the remainder of the top ten being Good Articles. It was noted with some concern that moon landing conspiracy theories was more popular than moon landing. A discussion regarding whether missiles warranted inclusion within the project scope was conducted, and resulted in the continued inclusion of missiles. The last remaining articles tagged with the banner of the former Human Spaceflight WikiProject were re-tagged with the WikiProject Spaceflight banner. The last banner was removed on 8 January, and the template has since been deleted. The project is thankful to ChiZeroOne for his work in this field. Concerns were raised that the new article reporting system was not working correctly, however it was noted that there is sometimes a delay before articles appear on the list. Discussion regarding the existence of the separate spaceflight and space exploration category structures led to a mass CfD being filed on 10 January to abolish the space exploration categories, merging them into their counterparts in the spaceflight category structure. This was successful, and the exploration categories have been removed. Several other categorisation issues remain unresolved. A proposal was made to standardise some of the infoboxes used by the project, the future of Template:Infobox spacecraft (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was discussed, and design work began on a replacement. Template:Rocket specifications-all (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs) was nominated for deletion and subsequently kept due to extant substitutions, however it was noted that the template had been deprecated by WikiProject Rocketry. Concerns were also raised that the existing infoboxes were not well-equipped to handle spacecraft which operated in more than one orbit, or whose orbits changed over the course of their missions (which in practise is most of them). Five members of the project gave interviews for the Wikipedia Signpost, and a report on the project, authored by SMasters (talk · contribs), is expected to be published in the 7 February edition of the Signpost. It is hoped that this will raise interest in and awareness of the project. News from orbit Four orbital launches were conducted in January, beginning on 20 January with the launch of Elektro-L No.1 on the first Zenit-3F rocket. This was followed later the same day by the launch of a Delta IV Heavy with the USA-224 reconnaissance satellite. The articles for USA-224 and the Zenit-3F rocket could use some expansion, whilst the Elektro-L No.1 satellite needs its own article. On 22 January, an H-IIB launched the second H-II Transfer Vehicle, Kounotori 2, to resupply the International Space Station. It arrived at the station on 27 January. Less than a day after its arrival, another cargo mission was launched to the station; Progress M-09M departed Baikonur early in the morning of 28 January, docking on 30 January. In addition to payloads to resupply the station, the Progress spacecraft is carrying a small subsatellite, Kedr, which will be deployed in February. Kedr does not currently have an article. Progress M-08M departed on 24 January to make the Pirs module available for Progress M-09M, and has since reentered the atmosphere. Its article needs to be updated to reflect the successful completion of its mission. The NanoSail-D2 satellite, which failed to deploy from FASTSAT in December, unexpectedly separated from its parent craft and began operations on 18 January, with its solar sail deploying on 21 January. Nine orbital launches are scheduled to occur in February, beginning with the launch of the first Geo-IK-2 satellite; Geo-IK-2 No.11, atop a Rokot/Briz-KM, on the first day of the month. Articles need to be written for the Geo-IK-2 series of satellites, as well as for Geo-IK-2 No.11 itself, and the Briz-KM upper stage that will be used to insert it into orbit. A Minotaur I rocket will launch NRO L-66, a classified payload for the US National Reconnaissance Office, on 5 February. The payload has not yet been identified, however once more details are known, it will need an article. Iran is expected to launch the Rasad 1 and Fajr 1 satellites in February, with 14 February the reported launch date. The satellites will fly aboard a single rocket; either the first Simorgh or the third Safir. Once this launch occurs, the satellites will need articles, and the article on their carrier rocket will require updating. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, is scheduled to launch on 15 February to resupply the ISS. Docking is expected to occur on 23 February. 23 February will also see the much-delayed launch of Glory atop a Taurus-XL 3110 rocket. This will be the first Taurus launch since the launch failure in early 2009 which resulted in the loss of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory. In addition to Glory, three CubeSats will be deployed; KySat-1, Hermes and Explorer-1 [PRIME]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. On 24 February, a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket will launch the first Glonass-K1 satellite; Glonass-K1 No.11. Articles are needed for the series of spacecraft, as well as for the specific satellite being launched. It is likely that a Kosmos designation will be given to the payload when it reaches orbit. In the evening of 24 February, Space Shuttle Discovery will begin its final mission, STS-133, carrying the Permanent Multipurpose Module, a conversion of the Leonardo MPLM, to the ISS. Other payloads include an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier, and the Robonaut2 experimental robot. The first manned mission of 2011, Discovery's six-man crew will transfer equipment to the station, and two EVAs will be performed. The launch has already been scrubbed five times, before Discovery was rolled back to the Vehicle Assembly Building to inspect and repair cracks on its External Tank. At some point in February, a Long March 3B rocket is expected to launch two navigation satellites; Compass-M2 and Compass-M3, as part of the Compass navigation system. The date of this launch is currently unknown. Both satellites will require articles once more information is available. A PSLV launch, carrying the Resourcesat-2, X-Sat and YouthSat spacecraft, is expected to launch from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre towards the end of the month, probably between 20 and 23 February. Stop press: The Rokot launch was conducted at 14:00 UTC on 1 February, and at the time of writing it appears to have ended in failure, due to a suspected upper stage malfunction. The spacecraft is in orbit, it is not clear at the time of writing whether it will be salvageable. Article news Reaction Engines Skylon is currently undergoing peer review, its discussion page can be found at Wikipedia:Peer review/Reaction Engines Skylon/archive1. A user requested feedback on major changes which had been made to the article, however at the time of writing no responses have been offered. Following up on the issues covered in the last issue, the requested move of Missile Range Instrumentation Ship to Tracking ship was successful, with the article being renamed. The discussion concerning types of launch and landing resulted in a proposal to merge VTVL into VTOL, however this has been met with some opposition. Several other options have been suggested on Talk:VTVL. The large scale deletion of mis-tagged Soviet images on Commons went ahead, with most of the useful ones having already been backed-up locally under fair use criteria. Discussion was held regarding the naming of spaceflight-related articles. Concerns were raised regarding inconsistency in article titles and disambiguators. A project guideline was adopted to standardise titles, with the parenthesised disambiguators "(satellite)" and "(spacecraft)" being adopted as standards for spacecraft, and the exclusion of manufacturers' names from article titles was recommended. Issues regarding Japanese spacecraft with two names, the correct names for early Apollo missions, and dealing with acronyms and abbreviated names remain unresolved. A large number of articles were moved to conform to the standard disambiguation pattern. In addition, several Requested Moves were debated. A proposal to move SpaceX Dragon to Dragon (spacecraft), which began prior to the adoption of the standardised disambiguators, was successful. Atmospheric reentry was subject to two requested moves, firstly one which would have seen it renamed spacecraft atmospheric reentry, which was unsuccessful, however a second proposal shortly afterwards saw it moved to atmospheric entry. A proposal currently under discussion could see Lunar rover (Apollo) renamed Lunar Roving Vehicle Questions surrounding the transliteration of Russian names resurfaced, with a proposal to rename Vladimir Chelomey to Vladimir Chelomei being closed with no consensus, and a proposal to rename Yury Usachov to Yuri Usachev ongoing. Several long-standing merger proposals were closed. A proposal to merge Venera 15 and Venera 16 into Venera 15 and 16 was closed as no consensus, with the combined page being moved to Venera 4V-2 to reduce the overlap in the articles' scopes. Returnable satellite was merged into Fanhui Shi Weixing. Experimental Assembly of Structures in EVA and Assembly Concept for Construction of Erectable Space Structures was nominated for Good Article reassessment due to concerns over the article's quality. Doubts were also expressed over the thoroughness of the original review conducted upon its nomination for GA status. It was also suggested that the article's title may not be the most common name for the experiment, and that it might be necessary to move the page. Concerns were also raised regarding whether Space Interferometry Mission was up-to-date, however these are being addressed. Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet looks likely to be promoted to GA status. Help was requested for adding citations to List of Mir spacewalks. A request was made that STS-88 be reviewed against the B class criteria, and suggestions for improvements made. Another user requested improvements to the article Yuri Gagarin, with a view to having the article promoted to featured status in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his Vostok 1 mission. As a result of this request, Yuri Gagarin is this month's selected article. Questions were raised as to whether an article or category should be created to cover derelict satellites. The categorisation of spacecraft by the type of rocket used to place them into orbit was also suggested. In another categorisation issue, it was questioned whether Space law should fall under space or spaceflight. Stop press: Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet has now been promoted to GA status. The Charts There is no editorial this month as no content was submitted for one. Instead, we present the "top ten" most popular articles within the project, based on the number of page views in January. Space Shuttle Challenger disaster was the most popular article of the last month, up fourteen places from 15th in December. Space Shuttle Challenger was the highest climber in the top 40, up 42 places from 50th. December's most popular article. Boeing X-37, dropped 57 places to 58th. On a happier note further down the chart, moon landing is now ahead of moon landing conspiracy theories. № Article Movement 1 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↑14 (15) 2 Richard Branson ↑5 (7) 3 Neil Armstrong ↑2 (5) 4 Space Shuttle Columbia disaster ↑16 (20) 5 Global Positioning System ↓2 (3) 6 Apollo 11 ↑2 (8) 7 Satellite ↑4 (11) 8 Space Shuttle Challenger ↑42 (50) 9 Apollo 13 ↓3 (6) 10 NASA ↓1 (9) For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or the archived record for January). Selected Article: Yuri Gagarin Yuri Gagarin was the first man to fly in space, aboard Vostok 1 in April 1961. He was subsequently awarded the title Hero of the Soviet Union, and was training for a second flight at the time of his death in 1968. His article describes him and his spaceflight experience: “ Yuri Alekseyevich Gagarin (Russian: Ю́рий Алексе́евич Гага́рин, Russian pronunciation: [ˈjurʲɪj ɐlʲɪˈksʲeɪvʲɪtɕ ɡɐˈɡarʲɪn]; 9 March 1934 – 27 March 1968), Hero of the Soviet Union, was a Soviet cosmonaut who on 12 April 1961 became the first human to journey into outer space. On 12 April 1961, Gagarin became the first man to travel into space, launching to orbit aboard the Vostok 3KA-3 (Vostok 1). His call sign in this flight was Kedr (Cedar; Russian: Кедр). During his flight, Gagarin famously whistled the tune "The Motherland Hears, The Motherland Knows" (Russian: "Родина слышит, Родина знает"). The first two lines of the song are: "The Motherland hears, the Motherland knows/Where her son flies in the sky". This patriotic song was written by Dmitri Shostakovich in 1951 (opus 86), with words by Yevgeniy Dolmatovsky. ” The article is currently assessed as C class, and had been assessed as B class prior to the criteria being redefined. Although a full reassessment has not yet been made, it seems close to the B class criteria, however details on his spaceflight experiences are somewhat lacking. It has been requested that the article be developed to Featured status by April, in time for the fiftieth anniversary of his mission. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

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The Downlink
Your source for news on WikiProject Spaceflight	Issue 3, March 2011
Project News News from Orbit Article News Direction of the Project The Charts Europa Project News There have been very few discussions relating to the administration of the project in the last month, as things start to settle down after the merger. An invitation template has been created in an effort to attract new users to the project. Discussion was also held regarding the creation of a list of common templates, however no conclusions were reached. A proposal was made to implement an A-class assessment process, however editors are undecided about whether it would be best to copy the system used by another project such as WP:MILHIST, or to develop one specifically for the requirements of this project. User:ChiZeroOne has set up a collaboration page in his userspace, initially focussing on articles related to Skylab. Collaboration pages were at one point proposed as part of the structure of the Spaceflight project itself, however no consensus was achieved on the issue. If this collaboration is successful, it could open the door to a reevaluation of that situation. News from orbit Five orbital launches were conducted in February, out of nine planned. The first, that of the Geo-IK-2 No.11 satellite atop a Rokot/Briz-KM ended in failure after the upper stage malfunctioned. The Rokot has since been grounded pending a full investigation; the satellite is in orbit, but has been determined to be unusable for its intended mission. A replacement is expected to launch within the year. A general article on Geo-IK-2 satellites is needed, to supplement those on the individual satellites. A Minotaur I rocket launched USA-225, or NROL-66, on 6 February following a one-day delay. The second Automated Transfer Vehicle, Johannes Kepler, was successfully launched on 16 February to resupply the ISS. Docking occurred successfully on 24 February, several hours before Space Shuttle Discovery launched on its final flight, STS-133. Discovery docked with the ISS on 26 February, delivering the Leonardo module and an ExPRESS Logistics Carrier to the station. Following several delays, a Soyuz-2.1b/Fregat rocket launched the first Glonass-K1 satellite; Glonass-K1 No.11, on 26 February. It is currently unclear as to whether the satellite has received a Kosmos designation or not. Seven launches are expected to occur in March. On 4 March, the Glory satellite will launch atop a Taurus-XL 3110 rocket. Three CubeSats will be also be deployed by the Taurus; KySat-1, Hermes and Explorer-1 [Prime]. KySat and Hermes require articles, whilst the article on Explorer-1 [PRIME] needs to be updated. This launch was originally scheduled for February, but following a scrubbed launch attempt, it was delayed. 4 March will also see the launch of the first flight of the second X-37B, atop an Atlas V 501. An article is needed for that flight, which will probably receive a USA designation once it reaches orbit. On 8 March, Discovery is expected to land, bringing to an end the STS-133 mission, and retiring from service 27 years after its maiden flight. On 11 March, a Delta IV Medium+(4,2) will launch the NROL-27 payload. Whilst the identity of this payload is classified, it is widely believed to be a Satellite Data System communications satellite, bound for either a molniya or geostationary orbit. An article for this payload is required. 16 March will see the return to Earth of Soyuz TMA-01M, carrying three members of the ISS Expedition 26 crew. A Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle is expected to deploy the Resourcesat-2, X-Sat and YouthSat spacecraft during a launch in March. The flight has been delayed several times, and was expected to have launched last month, however it is currently scheduled to occur no earlier than 20 March. On 29 March, an Ariane 5ECA will launch the Yahsat 1A and New Dawn communications satellites. Both currently require articles. On 30 March, a Soyuz-FG will launch the manned Soyuz TMA-21 mission to the International Space Station carrying three Expedition 27 crewmembers. On 31 March, a Proton-M/Briz-M launch will carry the SES-3 and Kazsat-2 spacecraft into orbit, in the first dual-launch of commercial communications satellites on a Proton. Several other launches may occur in March, however their status is unclear. Last month, a Long March 3B rocket was expected to launch two navigation satellites; Compass-M2 and Compass-M3, however this launch did not take place. It is unclear if it has been delayed to March, or further. The launch of the Tianlian 2 communications satellite on a Long March 3C may also be conducted in March, or possibly April. Both the Compass and Tianlian launches would occur from the same launch pad, which requires a turnaround of almost a month between launches, so it is unlikely that both will happen in March. A Safir launch, which had been expected in February, now appears to have been delayed to April, but given the secrecy of the Iranian space programme, this is unclear. Article news Discussion regarding the merger of articles on launch and landing modes seems to have stagnated, with no consensus being reached on any existing proposal. A discussion regarding changes in the sizes of Soviet and American rockets during the 1950s and early 1960s was conducted, with claims that rockets became smaller in that period being dismissed, however it was noted that smaller rockets were developed with equivalent capacity to older ones were developed, as well as much larger ones with increased capacities. Category:Derelict satellites orbiting Earth was created as a result of discussion surrounding the categorisation of derelict satellites. Concerns have also been raised that satellites are being listed as no longer being in orbit whilst still in orbit and derelict, and a discussion was held on how their status could be verified. An effort to categorise spacecraft by the type of rocket used to launch them is underway, however the categorisation of satellites by country of launch was rejected. It was reported that a sidebar has been created for articles related to the core concepts of spaceflight. Editors noted that it should only be used for core concepts, and not where it would conflict with an infobox. An anonymous user requested the creation of an article on moon trees. It was pointed out that the subject already had an article, and a redirect was created at the title proposed by the anonymous user. Concerns were raised regarding the quality of the article Japan's space development. Editors noted that the article appeared to be a poorly-translated copy of an article from the Japanese Wikipedia, although there have been some signs of improvement. Discussion regarding moving the article to Japanese space program is ongoing, however a move request has not yet been filed. A particular concern was raised regarding false claims in the article Van Allen radiation belt. In one case a scientist to whom one of the claims had been attributed was contacted, and clarified that he had made a remark to that effect as a joke in the 1960s, but was not entirely sure how or why it had been included in the article. Other concerns were raised before the discussion moved to WikiProject Astronomy. A question was raised regarding the copyright status of images credited to both NASA and ESA, particularly with regard to images of the launch of the Johannes Kepler ATV. The discussion reached no general conclusions, however it was found that the specific images that were suggested for inclusion in the article could be used, since they were explicitly declared to be in the public domain. A template, Template:Spaceflight landmarks (edit | talk | history | links | watch | logs), was created to cover landmarks in the United States that are related to spaceflight. Several sources of public-domain NASA images were also discussed, and it was noted that almost all NASA images are public domain, however there are some exceptions. It has been proposed that Leonardo MPLM be merged with Permanent Multipurpose Module since the two cover separate uses of the same spacecraft. A review of the article STS-88 has also been requested. Three new Good Articles have been listed: Mission: Earth, Voyage to the Home Planet, Bold Orion and SA-500D. Orion (spacecraft) was delisted after concerns that it contained out-of-date content. SA-500D is currently undergoing good article reassessment, using the community reassessment method, after the review of its good article nomination was criticised for being lenient and not sufficiently thorough. Mir, Mark E. Kelly and Reaction Engines Skylon have been nominated for Good Article status and are awaiting review, whilst List of Mir spacewalks is undergoing a peer review with a view to it becoming a featured list. Editorial: Direction of the Project Well folks, its now been more than three months since the discussion that reformed the space-related WikiProjects, and in that time we've had a number of achievements we can be rightly proud of; we've gathered members up to a total of 43, improved awareness of the project via an interview in the Signpost, and refreshed the spaceflight portal into an attractive, up-to-date and useful page. Meanwhile, User:ChiZeroOne has made a sterling effort in clearing up talk page templates belonging to prior projects, we've managed to sort out various policies, started work on rearranging our templates, and User:GW Simulations has begun this excellent monthly newsletter for us. However, there are a few areas of the project that seem to be passing by the wayside, specifically the areas dedicated to fostering collaboration on articles and article sets between the project members, so here I present a call for more collaboration on the project. Presumably, the lack of collaboration is due to folks not being aware of what's going on, so here's a quick rundown of some of the ways you get involved in the group effort. Firstly, and most importantly, it'd be fantastic if more members got involved in the discussions ongoing at the project's main talk page, found at WT:SPACEFLIGHT. There are several discussions ongoing there, such as the relaunch of the spacecraft template, requests for assistance with various assessment and copyright queries, and conversations regarding category organisations, which affect many more articles, and thus editors, than are currently represented in the signatures so far. Secondly, it was established earlier on in the project's formation that a great way to attract more editors would be to develop some good or featured topics. There are a couple of efforts ongoing to try to see this idea to fruition, such as the Space stations working group and ChiZeroOne's own collaboration page, currently focussed on Skylab-related articles. These pages, however, have been notably lacking in activity lately, which is a shame, as their aims, given enough editor input, would really see the project furthering itself. Similarly, there are a number of requests for assessment for articles to be promoted to GA class, among other things, on the Open tasks page, which lists all of the activities needing input from members. If everyone could add this page to their watchlists and swing by it regularly, we could power through the good topics in extremely short order! Other things that could do with being added to people's watchlists include Portal:Spaceflight/Next launch‎, the many templates at Template:Launching/Wrappers and the task list at Portal:Spaceflight/Tasks. Finally, I'd like to try and get people involved in finally settling the organisational problem we have with reference to the task forces and working groups. Whilst the Timeline of spaceflight working group is a continuation of the old Timeline of spaceflight WikiProject and thus is ticking over nicely and the space stations working group has been mentioned previously in this editorial, the task forces (Human spaceflight and Unmanned spaceflight) in particular are currently dead in the water. I'm unsure as to whether or not this is because people are unaware of their existence, they clash too much with one another and the rest of the project or because people don't see a need for them, but if interested parties could make themselves known and others voice suggestions for getting rid of them, we can decide either if they're worth keeping and get them running again, or do away with a layer of bureaucracy and close them down. Any thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated. In summary, then, we've got a great project going here, with a nice set of articles, a good editor base and lots of ways of getting involved. Thus, a plea goes out to everyone to get involved, get editing with the other project members, and hopefully we'll see ourselves take off in a manner not dissimilar to the trajectory dear old Discovery took last week. Many thanks for everyone's hard work so far, and poyekhali! :-) The Charts Since it is useful to keep track of the most viewed pages within the project's scope, it seems like a good idea to continue this feature, which was originally included in last month's issue as a one-off. Satellite was the most popular article of February, up six places from seventh in December. STS-133 was the highest climber in the top 10, up 78 places from 88th. January's most popular article, Space Shuttle Challenger disaster, dropped seven places to eighth. Moon landing remains ahead of moon landing conspiracy theories for the second month in a row. Of the top ten, two articles are featured content, two are listed as Good Articles, and the remaining six are assessed as C-class. № Article Movement 1 Satellite ↑6 (7) 2 Space Shuttle ↑11 (13) 3 NASA ↑7 (10) 4 Neil Armstrong ↓1 (4) 5 Apollo 13 ↑4 (9) 6 Global Positioning System ↓1 (5) 7 International Space Station ↑5 (12) 8 Space Shuttle Challenger disaster ↓7 (1) 9 Apollo 11 ↓3 (6) 10 STS-133 ↑78 (88) For the full list of the top 1,500 popular pages within the project, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Spaceflight/Popular pages (or the archived record for February). Selected Article: Europa Europa was a rocket developed by a multinational European programme in the 1960s. Consisting of British, French and German stages, it was intended to provide a European alternative to the US rockets used for the launch of most Western satellites to that date. Although the British Blue Streak first stage performed well on all flights, problems with the French and German stages, as well as the Italian-built payload fairing, resulted in the failure of all multistage test flights and orbital launch attempts. The programme was abandoned after the failure of the Europa II's maiden flight in 1971. The article Europa (rocket), describes it: “ The Europa rocket was an early expendable launch system of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), which was the precursor to the European Space Agency and its Ariane family of launchers. The programme was initiated by the UK and the first launch occurred in August 1967. Tasks were to be distributed between nations: the United Kingdom would provide the first stage (derived from the Blue Streak missile), France would build the second and Germany the third stage. The Europa programme was divided into 4 successive projects : Europa 1: 4 unsuccessful launches Europa 2: 1 unsuccessful launch Europa 3: Cancelled before any launch occurred Europa 4: Study only, later cancelled The project was marred by technical problems. Although the first stage (the British Blue Streak) launched successfully on each occasion, it was the second or third stage that failed. ” The article is currently assessed as start-class, and is missing a lot of information. It also lacks some basic features such as inline citations. Since Europa was a fairly major programme, enough information should be available to produce a much higher quality article, and it could probably be brought up to GA status with enough effort. Published by WikiProject Spaceflight, if you have any content you wish to include in future newsletters, please contribute

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World Digital Library Wikipedia Partnership - We need you!

Hi Sdsds! I'm the Wikipedian In Residence at the World Digital Library, a project of the Library of Congress and UNESCO. I'm recruiting Wikipedians who are passionate about history & culture to participate in improving Wikipedia using the WDL's vast free online resources. Participants can earn our awesome WDL barnstar and help to disseminate free knowledge from over 100 libraries in 7 different languages. Multilingual editors are welcome! (But being multilingual is not a requirement.) Please sign up to participate here. Thanks for editing Wikipedia and I look forward to working with you! SarahStierch (talk) 21:20, 29 May 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

Hello, Sdsds. You are invited to join WikiProject Invention, a WikiProject and resource dedicated to improving Wikipedia's coverage of inventions and invention-related topics. To join the project, just add your name to the member list. Northamerica1000(talk) 10:12, 29 August 2013 (UTC)Reply[reply]

An article that you have been involved in editing, Human-rating certification, has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. JustinTime55 (talk) 16:38, 9 February 2015 (UTC) Reply[reply]

An article that you have been involved in editing—RD-107 —has been proposed for merging with another article. If you are interested, please participate in the merger discussion. Thank you. Baldusi (talk) 19:52, 3 September 2015 (UTC) Reply[reply]

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