Talk:Alpha Pavonis

"(contains Life)" was a recent edit to this page. The planet does. Is there a proper way to annotate this? Are star pages even supposed to keep track of this? --Shiver 23:18, 23 April 2009 (CEST)

Good questions - I was debating reverting the edit since the larger majority of star pages don't keep track of this. Ideally, IMO the planet page is where this should be indicated. The earliest instance that I can find of someone including "harbors life" is on Alpha Andromedae back in early 2006. Later in 2006, it was included on some of the Centauri stars. However, the more common pattern has been to indicate significant artifacts/points of interest on the star page. IMO this does not necessarily include whether or not a planet contains life. I do see why someone would find it useful to put this information here - a quick reason for visiting or not visiting (or perhaps visiting and taking off in panic at the sight of a swarm of Fungal Squids) a planet. However, I don't like this reason since we don't have pages for every single star - if we did have pages for all the stars, then I might be more amenable to this.

One alternative that would try to address this need would be to create a Table/List of planets with biology or something similar (personally, I prefer this to tracking "Life" with the star pages). We could then include a number of bio units, and maybe even include the icons of the present life-forms. I think this would be more useful than indicating on the star pages which planets have life since it would be a truly comprehensive list. Another alternative, if people think that the star pages should track "Life" would be to use a standard icon rather than words so that it's easier on the eyes and distracts less from the more essential information. I have no idea what icon would be appropriate though. --Fyzixfighter 01:26, 24 April 2009 (CEST)

A list of planets with lifeforms sounds best to me. I'd prefer to remove all references to lifeforms on the system pages, and will do so with your permission. --Shiver 01:55, 24 April 2009 (CEST)

Give it a day or two more to see if anyone else responds. After that, have at it I say. --Fyzixfighter 17:52, 25 April 2009 (CEST)

I've found the whole idea of describing star systems just because they have one interesting planet on it unnecessary in itself. I don't think many people are even going to look at the page. But as long as it's there, we might at well try to make it useful. But then giving the exact amount of life would be more helpful than just saying that there is any.

A complete list of planets according to some specification could be quite easilly generated, and I guess it could be useful. But it would also be quite easy to make some sort of search form (outside of the wiki), which could give lists according to the user's specification, which would be of more value. — SvdB 04:50, 1 May 2009 (CEST)