Talk:SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket blasts Elon Musk's personal Tesla into solar orbit

Headline
Recommend avoiding "blast" in this context. Rocketry folks don't use that term (should be clear why not). Try "lift". --Pi zero (talk) 16:16, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Not going to fight you on any of this if you're adamant, but you just said things didn't have enough punch. "Lift" is what one does to a newborn baby or a partner in ice dancing. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:40, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * carries, sends, takes … there are many options better than blasts. I agree with pizero and would suggest not to use blasts. 223.237.249.43 (talk) 12:28, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Not punchy, not punchy, not punchy. Darkfrog24 (talk) 04:00, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
 * You think current headline is? What the heck is a “Tesla”, one would ask — it would not make sense for those who don’t know who is Elon Musk and/or what is Tesla. •–• 06:08, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Lede
The first sentence doesn't deliver punch. It doesn't sound interesting; that doesn't come in until the second sentence.
 * "Never forget that if you don't hit a newspaper reader between the eyes with your first sentence, there is no need of writing a second one." &mdash;

--Pi zero (talk) 17:03, 6 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Hohmann transfer doesn't sound sexy to you? Okay.  I moved a few things around but the bit about the Tesla looks better in the second sentence to me. Darkfrog24 (talk) 22:40, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

Both and  have Wikipedia articles. ( redirects to the latter.) Yngvadottir (talk) 17:32, 6 February 2018 (UTC)

status
if the article is not ready for review (since you are editing it) -- remove review and make use of develop and/or editing •–• 03:09, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I'm sorry, I was asked to make those 2 edits by Darkfrog. :-( Yngvadottir (talk) 03:15, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yngvadottir was just updating the article because of a minor new development--they found out what happened to the third booster. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:39, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

"Established unit of measurement"
"The length of a football field" is indeed not an established unit of measurement, but it is an extremely common way of getting people to visualize distance. We could say that Tyrannosaurus Rex was NUMBER feet tall or we could say "Tall enough to look into a second-storey window." It gets the idea across much better. The question is whether people will know what we're talking about. I say keep it in unless there's a copyright issue. Darkfrog24 (talk) 11:53, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * there are countries where they do not play/or have American football field. There are people who don’t know how big is an American football field. I don’t know how big it is, so I can not even visualise it. I know size of football field is variable. And we write for global audience, not for Americans. 223.237.249.43 (talk) 12:25, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * regarding to Green Giant’s comments, if something is not crucial to the story, it should not be said at the first place. Do not confuse between what is not crucial and what is written in the lower part of the pyramid. 223.237.236.144 (talk) 13:46, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * What is crucial is that the booster failed to land on the ship and instead went into the water. What is not crucial is the distance it missed by. The source gives an estimate using a very common term in the US, but it doesn't gain anything by leaving it out. Anyway I've added the yards and metres for the rest of the world so they can understand it. Now, if it was a proper football pitch (soccer field for those who don't understand), that might be a different case, although there are some fairly standard measurements in use. Green Giant (talk) 13:52, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * If the information is "not crucial" then there is no need to mention it. And tbh, it is interesting to know by how much distance it missed. BTW, saying the football field's size first, it appears as if it was primarily written for the US citizens and now, I am going to remove it. Make use of standard/well known units, and do not encourage non-standard units as the first choice. •–• 15:20, 7 February 2018 (UTC)
 * What I mean, Acagastya, is that the problem is not that a football field isn't a precise unit of measurement. It's fine in a news article to say something like "as tall as the Pyramids" or "as far apart as two telephone poles" or "as big as an ocean" because the reader will be able to translate that into a meaningful image than a number.  You might take issue the specific metaphor that Y chose&mdash;you seem to think it's too American&mdash;but the fact that it is a metaphor isn't itself a problem.  Am I correct in thinking that if the metaphor had been something more international, you wouldn't have minded? Darkfrog24 (talk) 18:46, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

Again, Pyramid comes in various shapes and sizes. Not only the Egyptian ones; but the glass pyramid, Mayan pyramid, Sudanese pyramids — I was surprised to learn about Nubian pyramids back in fifth grade as they were more than the number of pyramids in Egypt. (And I was really interested in Egyptian civilisation that time) but even if there is one unique monument, there would be people who did not see it — consider Taj Mahal, Quyub Minar, Char Minar — people who haven’t heard of it would not know. And some, who might have been there might not remember how big it was. 223.237.233.76 (talk) 23:29, 7 February 2018 (UTC)


 * &lt;dropping in&gt; Btw, I did look into football field lengths when I first saw this discussion. I'm a US native and wouldn't have known, without looking it up, that an American football field is 120 yards long; I know that the space between the two goal lines is 100 yards, that being a big deal with announcements of the ball moving across the yard lines of the length, and would have tended to take "football field" to mean 100 yards if it were said by someone I was sure was USian, while I'd be uncomfortable with what it meant if it came from someone from elsewhere (and Elon Musk is originally from where?).  According to en.wp, Canadian football fields are a different length; association football fields can vary within a specific range, with UEFA having chosen a standard figure; and Australian rules football fields vary more widely... and are oval rather than rectangular.  --Pi zero (talk) 01:05, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't think I've ever watched a whole football game in my life and if you'd asked me how big one was in yards or meters, I wouldn't have known. However, I do know how big they are because I've seen them.  I went to a high school that had a football field and we did gym class there.  I've seen other football fields on TV and in movies.  So there's knowing the arbitrary number that human beings have put to something and then there's knowing how big it is.  Like if I say "I discovered a strange new animal.  It's the size of a cat," the idea will get across faster than if I say "It's about 40 cm long not counting the tail." Frankly, if the source material says "40 cm" and we translate that to "cat," that's a great way to avoid plagiarism concerns.
 * The important information isn't the number. It's the distance.
 * And for pyramids, there's a reason I used a capital P and a "the." People read that as the famous ones. Some places are more famous than others. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:44, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I don’t know if you are active on Commons, but if you were, you might be aware how famous glass pyramid and the copyright problems involved. I have never seen an “Egyptian Pyramid” and actually, I have not seen any type of pyramid, so I can not imagine how big it would be. If you are telling me, people don’t know how long 40cm is, and you want that way to solve the problem, I should advice you to stay away from reviewing, honestly. If possible, I would upload a photo to explain why your idea is terrible. •–• 04:01, 8 February 2018 (UTC)
 * just as big as a cat; right? Or maybe ostrich's egg -- the largest cell in this world is as long as a banana? •–• 18:01, 10 February 2018 (UTC)

Metaphors are useful devices for conveying number. I can't visualize 40 cm in my head without first thinking of it in visual terms I understand. I know a foot-long ruler is about 30 cm, so it's about a ruler and a third (or a foot and a third, for those inclined). When use that cat example, we're not imagining a mega-cat, but it's likely someone would imagine an average-sized cat being about a 1–1.5 feet in length sans tail. Another example: A human egg cell is about 100 microns in size. A hundred millionths of a meter is not easily imaginable, but a salt grain is about that size and one can imagine that.

For what it's worth, an American football field and an association soccer/football field are around 90 meters long. Football field suggests around 100 meters is around the length for the footballs of the world. It may not have been precise, but I certainly think it conveys the point to have used the original phrasing. —mikemoral (talk) 07:47, 11 February 2018 (UTC)
 * look at the second photo, of the bananas and tell me, when there are varieties of the same thing, something that is not universally constant, not even known to everyone — how can one possibly use it for writing articles for the global audience. •–• 08:12, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Note for SpaceX articles
SapceX releases photos under Public Domain on Flickr (previously on pixabay) which could have been used for this article. From the next time, check if the most recent image is available (they are quite interesting). I would be using them for WN:PE edition 18.02 •–• 17:39, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * This is an interesting example of advice we would like a semi-automated assistance system to help disseminate. --Pi zero (talk) 17:41, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * I noticed the images on Commons the day after the article was accepted. When I looked for images (I added the one we are using, by request), they weren't yet available. I thought of asking whether it was too late to change the image, but decided it probably was. Yngvadottir (talk) 18:05, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Substantial changes after the 24-hour mark is not permitted. Don't wait for someone else to upload it on Commons. It was available on February 8, yes. Always look out for images -- don't divorce the articles before the 24 hour mark. •–• 18:15, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
 * Yes, I didn't see much when I checked Wikimedia commons. I've never uploaded an image to Commons.  It's not something I currently know how to do or had time to learn how to do this past week.  I might take an interest some day but not right now.  Good thing there's more than one person on the team. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:53, 11 February 2018 (UTC)

Formats for song titles
Just in case anyone didn't know, quotation marks are the long-established acceptable format for song titles (because they're short-form works). However, more recently, italics have come into favor as well. They are both correct. The Wikinews style guide currently says to use italics. I'm not sure why. Darkfrog24 (talk) 03:49, 11 February 2018 (UTC)