Template:ActiveDiscussMC

This article was created to allow expansion of the section located in the lightning article. The knowledge of the phenomena is becoming better known and documented requiring more room to allow proper expansion. As can be seen ja:レッドスプライト other languages have started separate sprites articles. EnviroGranny 14:12, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Good work! The lightening article definitely needs to be broken up.Joelholdsworth 14:26, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, support is good as editors sometimes get cranky and over-protective when articles break up. EnviroGranny 14:33, 21 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I removed the tiny section that says:

The Space Shuttle Columbia might have been damaged by a sprite.^[1][2][3]

Because the three references do not provide any significant support for the idea the a sprite hit the shuttle, and "might" doesn't say anything anyway. I read the referenced articles carefully, and there's really not much there. No official or scientist is on record with an opinion that maybe a sprite hit the shuttle. The photo is almost certain an early bit of shuttle disintegration, and certainly doesn't look like a sprite. The fact that the SF Comical played up a local photo doesn't mean much. The middle ref doesn't even mention the word sprite, and neither does the photo. The one that does says "The lab has been listening to the sounds of ghostly electromagnetic phenomena in the upper atmosphere, dubbed sprites, blue jets and elves. For some time, scientists have speculated on whether these events could endanger airliners or returning spacecraft. ... A study conducted 10 years ago for NASA found that there is a 1-in-100 chance that a space shuttle could fly through a sprite, although it concluded that the consequences of such an event were unclear" and "Originally, it was thought that the electrical charges in the thin atmosphere 50 miles above Earth were too dispersed to create infrasound. But Los Alamos National Laboratories physicist Mark Stanley said that, on closer inspection, "we've seen very strong ionization in sprites" indicating that there were enough air molecules ionized to cause heating and an accompanying pulse -- a celestial thunderclap, as it were" and "NASA administrators confirmed Thursday that the photograph, taken from Bernal Heights in San Francisco by an amateur astronomer, is being evaluated by Columbia crash investigators. However, Shuttle Program Manager Ron Dittemore told reporters at a Houston news briefing that right now NASA is trying only to verify "the validity" of the image." Nothing there says the shuttle may have been hit by a sprite. Dicklyon 16:19, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

There is plenty of information from neutral third party sources that support it might have been "Positive Lightning" from a Sprite including the actual picture of the occurrence; therefore, the information should stay in the article. It is overzealous to remove cited information from Wikipedia, without first discussing it on the article talk page. EnviroGranny 18:36, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I'm stopping by based on the request for a third opinion. I agree with Dicklyon here; the references given are not strong enough to support keeping the statement in the article. However, that NASA considered sprites as a possible source of harm to shuttles in general might be an interesting and supported thing to add. William Pietri 18:59, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

This individual is not neutral, he is mad that I made a request at the third party opinion page and asked me to delete it, so he posted here to get back at me. See my talk page for confirmation. EnviroGranny 19:40, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I am in no way mad, EnviroGranny, and encourage people to make requests to the page. I suggested you remove the request because you hadn't actually discussed the problem with your fellow editor, and because the request was made, contrary to instructions, in a way likely to bias the answer. However, I'm glad to leave your request up for another person to look at. Good luck to all sorting out the dispute. William Pietri 19:52, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You are clearly biased, now move along and stop distracting the actual topic of the discussion. EnviroGranny 19:53, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

(Third opinion) These articles indicate it was once considered a possibility. They also indicate the investigation was ongoing and that the validity of the photograph had yet to be verified. The information from the sources would support a mention that NASA investigated the possibility, since it is a potential concern. However, saying that a sprite may have been a cause and stating that it was once considered a potential cause are very different things. It is four years since the publication of those articles about the then on-going investigation into the shuttle accident. If we wish to assert it was, or might have been, the cause of the accident, reliable sources discussing the result of the investigation into that possibility need to be referenced. We cannot seriously cite everything authoritatively as a probable or potential cause that has been considered at one point or another. This is particularly true when references explicitly state that that cause had yet to be investigated and the potential evidence yet to be verified, such as in this instance Vassyana 20:03, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, thank you for getting involved. I agree with much of what you have said. However, it has never been proven by NASA that the picture is NOT a sprite, they suggested it might have been camera wobble, who knows. It looks legitimate to me and is certainly has the possibility of a sprite, the newspaper articles provide plenty of back up information on sprites as they pertain to this picture. Should we also delete the articles on Sasquatch simply because pictures or information might be correct? EnviroGranny 21:07, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

The Sasquatch article has a tons of refs to who found what when. Attributed opinions and third-party writings are what we need. But even if you find a better example of an article with undersourced or unverifiable information, that's never a valid argument for whether we should do the right thing in the present case.

You've stated above that "There is plenty of information from neutral third party sources that support it might have been "Positive Lightning" from a Sprite." If that's true, all you have to do is to cite those sources and we'll be good. As I pointed out above, in trying to verify the statement using the provided refs, I found nothing in support of it. I think you may have been led to think that way by a headline writer, which, if you know anything about newspaper journalism, means nothing. Dicklyon 22:25, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Obviously, you refuse to intelligently read the citations, which even have a Sprite picture at the top of one. These two articles were written in regard to the photo taken showing the "bolt of light" as you call it. It might be a Sprite OR it might be camera wobble. I think that this fact is significant enough to be added to the article. It might be interesting to note that one of the tests this shuttle trip performed was the potential threat of Sprites on a shuttle. EnviroGranny 23:28, 5 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I quoted what I found about sprites and shuttles. If I missed something more important, you can help by pointing it out. I'm not refusing, but I may have missed something. Dicklyon 00:03, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I also came here from third opinion, and I don't think this story belongs in Wikipedia. Extraordinary claims require multiple reliable sources and all we have is one photo that was briefly the subject of speculation when NASA was checking out all leads as to what may have happened. NASA subsequently carried out an investigation and reported that it felt it understood what caused the breakup. Their version does not involve any form of lightning. There is no source given that anyone currently belives a sprite hit Columbia. This doesn't even make it as a fringe theory. We don't publish every speculation that ever happened.--agr 05:20, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Refs and verifiable statements

EnviroGranny, you can't just change the statement that a ref is attached to; you need to see if the ref verifies what you wrote, and if not, find a new one. I reverted to before your most recent edits, and may have lost some useful bits of other edits as well. It's hard to fix once the connection to verifiability is lost. I still insist that if you want to say someone believes that sprites were involved in the shuttle incident, the you have to attribute that belief to somebody; otherwise you're just using weasel words. I wasn't totally comfortable even with "the image led to some speculation about sprites," which I wrote, because it didn't say who speculated; but the references do at least support that the newspaper headline writer speculated about sprites and that NASA was looking into sprites; it does NOT say that a sprite might have hit the shuttle, because I couldn't find the evidence for that. I do believe that such speculators exist, but if we can't find a source for them and say who they are then they shouldn't be mentioned. Dicklyon 06:36, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I was the one who found the citations and I am the one who read the citations and I am the one who is quoting from the citations. You seem to be reading the citations with a pre-conceived notion of the facts putting your own slant on the outcome. Speaking of deleting cited information, you deleted the full section that was fully cited, which started all of this and now you are complaining ?! EnviroGranny 10:05, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

EnviroGranny, instead of focusing on what's going on in other people's heads, which you can't know, it'd be more productive to focus on the content of the article and the source material. If you think some particular bit of a reference supports you adding something to the article, just quote both the new text and the reference here and explain your reasoning. You don't own the citations or the quotes, and you will have to arrive at consensus with your fellow editors on what ends up in the article. William Pietri 15:22, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Dick Lyon - The title of this article is Columbia downed by Megalightning. The word Megalightning reflects the "Positive Lightning" coming down from a Sprite, there is even a picture of a sprite in the article as well as in the other articles. There is your citation, which was already there before you reverted it. EnviroGranny 17:00, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

You may have something in that one, though I'm still having trouble pinning it down. If you follow his link to what he origially said (here), he quotes the SF Chronicle author and then gets into the weasel words again ("Suggestions were made that the shuttle might have been struck by a 'red sprite'") in which the passive voice lets him avoid attributing it to anybody. But who is this "holoscience" writer? Is his page a "reliable source"? He refers to himself, but does he give a name? Should we, in a scientific topic, be quoting an anonymous writer who also refers to global warming as "secular myth"? Ah, found his name: Wal Thornhill. Let's attribute to him. Dicklyon 17:25, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

One more thing: what I think the picture shows is irrelevant. What matters for wp is what others think and have published. So we need to just find it and cite correctly. But unattributed assertions like "the picture suggests" or other weasel words are specifically against wp policy. Dicklyon 17:27, 6 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Envirogranny, if you have an issue with identifying and characterizing the source, please just say so. I reverted your most recent, back to the version that attributes the sprite idea to Wal Thornhill and gives a clue about who he is, from the references site (different page though; I can add that ref if you like). It's not OK to the say that the "image suggests"; a person makes the suggestion, and for such a wild and proven incorrect speculation, an attribution is at least required. Dicklyon 02:47, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure I agree with adding a comment about Mr. Thronhill's other beliefs. That seems POV. The key point is that http://www.holoscience.com/ is a self-published web site, and that makes it unacceptable as a source for this discusssion. See WP:V. To stay on Wikipedia, the claim that the shuttle may have been hit by a sptite requires multiple, reliable sources. So far, there aren't any. Also from WP:V "Be careful not to go too far on the side of not upsetting editors by leaving unsourced information in articles for too long". Finally, any well-sourced alternative view of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster should first be added to in that article.--agr 03:01, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I'm OK with removing it, but I don't think it's POV to say something to characterize the source when it is an otherwise unknown name. POV would be if I expressed a value judgement on his beliefs or statements. Dicklyon 03:10, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that it is improper to say "the image suggests". As Dick Lyon points out... objectively, images don't suggest anything; people see things in images and believe that a subjective conclusion is suggested by what they see. --Richard 04:52, 7 May 2007 (UTC)[reply]