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This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Dwarf planet article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.
This article is written in British English, which has its own spelling conventions (colour, travelled, centre, defence, artefact, analyse) and some terms that are used in it may be different or absent from other varieties of English. According to the relevant style guide, this should not be changed without broad consensus.
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This is an old FA promotion, and does not seem to have kept up over the succeeding decade. There are a couple of unsourced paragraphs and other unsourced text, and the prose in many areas has short paragraphs and small sections. Some areas appear not to have received a comprehensive update since early FA. The History of the Concept section is mostly based on 2006/2008 sources, many of which are news or magazine articles rather than higher quality sources which are certainly available. Updates since then are restricted to a brief couple of sentences, which seems insufficient (and is partially sourced to twitter). The Exploration section is paltry, it is where I would expect to find for example an explanation of the reasoning that led to the sentence "Ceres is close to equilibrium, but some gravitational anomalies remain unexplained", which is cited to a Dawn paper. The overall structure of the article has some oddities, why is "Contention regarding the reclassification of Pluto" a separate section so far away from the History of the concept section? The pie charts are causing some image sandwiching, and seem a really odd way to present that data. The source formatting needs some tightening: there's a bare url, and others lack page numbers and access-dates. Others may find more missing areas, it does feel an oddly short article for the scope involved. CMD (talk) 03:52, 14 August 2021 (UTC)
The "Contention regarding the reclassification of Pluto" isn't even there and aside from a couple of oblique mentions there is no discussion over the controversy regarding the definition of "dwarf planet" and or issues with the definition used, a continuing issue (note the last paragraph of the first section). Science demands a record with context and debate, but this article seems like it was edited by someone with an overzealous interest in burying even the idea of dissent. 216.115.235.42 (talk) 14:57, 26 April 2022 (UTC)
@Chipmunkdavis and Kwamikagami: I am circling back to this discussion because I see that there are still uncited passages in the article. Has the necessary updates been made yet? If not, is anyone interested in working on this article, or would someone like to nominate this to WP:FAR? Z1720 (talk) 03:07, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
Significant work was put into this article following my comment above, much by Kwami. Better to raise/tag any individual issues with a fresh look, rather than going into FAR. CMD (talk) 08:02, 21 December 2023 (UTC)
The IAU does not make the rules for the English language.
The IAU does not have the authority to change the meaning of words.
The term "dwarf" refers to a smaller object; for example, a dwarf star, like the sun, is a smaller star. A "dwarf" is a noun, while a "planet" denotes a celestial object.
Terminology in science, least of all astronomy, need not be (and often isn't!) strictly literal. There are several axes from which you can criticize the IAU's 2006 definition of a planet, but semantics is not one of them. ArkHyena (it/its) 15:59, 25 December 2024 (UTC)
Doubt it. That's not their job, and if they did, they'd be engaging in pseudoscience. There might be some announcement in the future that refers to one or another of those bodies as DPs, but highly doubtful that they'll try to substitute science with their authority by making an official declaration of fact. — kwami (talk) 23:39, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Tancredi advised the IAU to accept Quaoar, Orcus, and Sedna as "official" "dwarf planets" (his quotes!) back in 2010. (Gonggong had only recently been announced back then, so it wasn't considered.) They didn't respond then, so it's not likely they'll respond eleven years later. Double sharp (talk) 23:50, 12 November 2021 (UTC)
Dynamically, Pluto, Eris, and all others are very clearly a distinct type of object compared to the "big 8," and there is effectively zero dispute within the astronomical (not planetary science!) community regarding Pluto's reclassification. ArkHyena (talk) 08:45, 22 June 2024 (UTC)
Image Replacement
I would like to propose replacing the image in the Population of dwarf planets section of this article with a graphic I created. I feel as if the current image contains a bit of made up things and fails to show important things like size uncertainty. A few examples of my point are Haumea's spot, which has no precisely known color but is likely not as discernible from the surface as shown here, another example is Sedna, which the current graphic fails to represent the fact that Sedna's exact size isn't precisely known, with multiple estimates of large uncertainty being present. In addition, another point I would like to make is that these illustrations don't seem to be based much on what data of these worlds are like, and also due to the lack of much data (in my opinion at least) it'd be much better to show each object as a solid ellipse with their known color for simplicity. LunaTheSilly (talk) 23:38, 29 September 2024 (UTC)
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