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Solar System

The lead falls down on a number of points:

I think this part of the article fits the "May contain nuts" description.

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria

• professional standards of presentation
• well-written: its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard;

http://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Lead_section#Introductory_text

• briefly summarize the most important points covered
• stand on its own as a concise version of the article
• more important here than for the rest of the article that the text be accessible
• avoid ... and over-specific descriptions

The first paragraph reads like the ingredients from a Walmart microwave meal:

Solar System

Ingredients:eight planets, five dwarf planets, 173 moons, billions of small bodies (asteroids, icy Kuiper belt objects, comets, meteoroids, interplanetary dust).

This is not; of a professional standard; brilliant; or even engaging.

This would be better:

The Solar System is the astronomical name for the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, and the rest of the planetary system.

HarryAlffa (talk) 17:06, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

The second paragraph is the same style, it just lists the categories of orbiting objects - dead boring.

The bullet list of planets and the other of dwarf planets looks a mess with all the trailing 000, 0000s, of distance in kilometres, and not in neat Astronomical Units. I would say that even including AU measurements is an over-burdening with detail in the lead.

The numbering of the planets I think is unique in any text, and it looks messy. HarryAlffa (talk) 17:16, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I agree with your points, but since your only problem is with the lead, wouldn't it be easier to voice your concerns on the article talk page? FAR is a fairly lengthy process and the lead problems can easily be resolved in a matter of a few days. Nishkid64 _{(Make articles, not wikidrama)} 20:16, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

As Ckatz has refered to bellow, I've described these problems before, but the Ckatz Cabal simply wouldn't listen. The lead is a terrible piece of writing - end of story. HarryAlffa (talk) 13:13, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Oh yes. Always blame the omnipotent cabal. The issue was never that the lead was good enough; it was that none of the solutions you offered were any good either, and that they in fact made the lead worse. Serendious 18:03, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

There. I've had a go at rewriting it. No doubt you'll hate it. Serendious 18:45, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Yes you have had a go. It's a first draft, but you cannot say, "its prose is engaging, even brilliant, and of a professional standard", nor can you claim that it does "avoid over-specific descriptions". My understanding of the Lead Guide is that the solar system as a whole should be introduced, not details of the intrinsic components. Something like this is much better.

Example lead

The Solar System is the astronomical name for the Sun, the Earth and the Moon, and other orbiting bodies which make up the rest of the planetary system. It is most notable for the planet Earth as the only place in the Universe known to evolve and harbour life.

The Sun determines the solar system, it makes up 98.6 percent of the mass of the system, and the gravity of this mass dominates the rest. As well as generating heat and light from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium at the core of the Sun, a continual but fluctuating, low density emission of charged particles called the solar wind "blows a bubble" called the heliosphere in the interstellar medium. This medium between the stars, most commonly thought of as outer space, is a very high vacuum but still has enough matter occupying it to interact with the high velocity (750 km/s) solar wind.

The Earth's orbit around the Sun is nearly a perfect circle, but it is more accurately described as an oval shaped, or elliptical orbit. Everything in the Solar System has an elliptical orbit, with some more elliptical than others. All of the planets orbit the Sun at different distances but on roughly the same plane as the Earth - the plane of the ecliptic. If you could look at the solar system "edge on" then all the planets would roughly be in this horizontal plane around the Sun.

I've introduced life, evolution and the uniqueness of it in the solar system. I have named only 3 components of the solar system, but have used them to explain or introduce significant structural aspects of the solar system: the gravitational influence of the Sun; the Heliosphere; elliptical orbits & their difference from perfect circles; and the plane of the ecliptic. In passing I've explained how the Heliosphere is created, and introduced the Sun's core, nuclear fusion of hydrogen, heat, light, the solar wind and that interstellar space equals outer space. All in only three, short, engagingly written paragraphs of prose, without overburdening the reader with extensive details.

Current lead

The Solar System consists of the Sun and those celestial objects bound to it by gravity, all of which formed from the collapse of a giant molecular cloud approximately 4.5 billion years ago. The Sun's retinue of objects circle it in a nearly flat disc, most of the mass of which is contained within eight relatively solitary planets whose orbits are nearly circular. The four smaller inner planets; Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars, also called the terrestrial planets, are primarily composed of rock and metal. The four outer planets, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, also called the gas giants, are composed largely of hydrogen and helium and are far more massive then the terrestrials.

Two main belts of small bodies exist. The asteroid belt, which lies between Mars and Jupiter, has commonality with the terrestrial planets as it is composed mainly of rock and metal. The Kuiper belt (and its subpopulation, the Scattered disc), which lies beyond Neptune's orbit, is composed mostly of ices such as water, ammonia and methane. Within these belts, five individual objects, Ceres, Pluto, Haumea, Makemake and Eris, are recognised to be large enough to have been rounded by their own gravity, and are thus termed dwarf planets. The hypothetical Oort cloud, which acts as the source for long-period comets, may also exist at a distance roughly a thousand times beyond these regions.

Within the Solar System, various populations of small bodies, such as comets, centaurs and interplanetary dust, freely travel between these regions, while the solar wind, a flow of plasma from the Sun, creates a bubble in the interstellar medium known as the heliosphere, which extends out to the middle of the scattered disc.

Six of the planets and three of the dwarf planets are orbited by natural satellites, usually termed "moons" after Earth's Moon. Each of the outer planets is encircled by planetary rings of dust and other particles.

Your re-written version mentions: gravity (although not the Sun's); hints at the plane of the ecliptic; nearly circular orbits (but fails to name them as ellipses); the Heliosphere; the solar wind; and the interstellar medium. Note I said your version mentions..., and not explains... . Your version took three long, overly detailed paragraphs (and an orphaned paragraph/sentence) to fail to mention quite a lot of important stuff about the solar system as an entity, while listing many objects and listing some of their attributes. You also manage to throw in the age and formation from a giant molecular cloud - wrong place for that. The lead should stick to what the solar system is, not what it used to be - that's for later. I don't hate your re-write, I just think it's no good as a lead. HarryAlffa (talk) 20:04, 23 April 2009 (UTC)

Note re: previous discussions: For previous discussions relating to these issues, please see:

• Talk:Solar System/Archive 3#Unresolved Problems With The Lead
• Talk:Solar System/Archive 3#Wording of lead. The saga continues...
• Talk:Solar System/Archive 3#Terminology section
• Talk:Solar System/Archive 3#Lead/Heliosphere
• Talk:Solar System/Archive 3#Lead/Rock, ice, gas
• Talk:Solar System/Archive 3#Lead/Possibility for mediation?

(and in fact most of Archive Three from "List In Order From Sun" on down.) --Ckatz_spy 20:52, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

• Comment - While I agree that the lead is problematic, the remainder of the article serves as an excellently NPOV and stable account of the solar system, and is extremely concise. Ceranllama chat post 22:20, 22 April 2009 (UTC)

I've re-written the lead on Solar System, with an expanded version of the one above. It is far better than anything there before I hope you agree. HarryAlffa (talk) 17:23, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

It's wrong in a few places; most notably that outer space begins at the heliopause. Outer space begins outside the atmosphere. The lead is also far too Earth-centric. Earth is mentioned three times in the lead, but the largest objects in the Solar System other than the Sun, Jupiter and Saturn, are only mentioned in the lists. The lead fails to adequately explain what a dwarf planet is and why Pluto was demoted. You also forgot the note you removed. Serendious 17:28, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

As usual, you are not worth argueing with, you misrepresent what my lead says, then you use that misrepresentation to critisise what I actually wrote. Shame on you.

The "too Earth-centric" criticism" is to imbecilic to comment on. HarryAlffa (talk) 16:07, 26 April 2009 (UTC)

Comment First, per the observations of several other editors, we should centralize this discussion at Talk:Solar System. Second, I have restored yesterday's version, and would ask that any changes to the lead be hashed out on a talk page first, and only applied after consensus is reached. Solar System is a core article, one of the most important ones in the "Astronomy" section, and we cannot have the lead going back-and-forth. Fair enough? (I was going to post a copy of the revised version here, but instead thought you could decide which revised version you wanted to start from.) --Ckatz_spy 18:15, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

No not fair at all. You and your Cabal will simply dig your heals in and call consensus when the Cabal says it's consensus. I simply do not trust you to operate in good faith. You implicitly acknowledge that the lead is a failure by asking for changes to be hashed out, unless this is just a ruse. All the changes User:Serendipodous has made simply make it fit my original criticisms! My version does not fail by the standards I listed, which you implicitly acknowledge, so I will restore that version as it MUST be a better starting point. Fair enough? Cheers. Just as I was writing this look what User:Serendipodous wrote below! Big surprise - he agrees with Ckatz! HarryAlffa (talk) 20:35, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

I think we can close this now. Serendious 20:27, 24 April 2009 (UTC)