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The Rapa Nui pronunciation of the deity is [ˈmakeˈmake]. The name of the dwarf planet is usually pronounced [mækiˈmæki] in British English, and either [mɑːkiˈmɑːki] or [mɑːkeɪˈmɑːkeɪ] in American English. Some languages (like German) use the Rapa Nui pronunciation. Also see footnote (a) in the article. Renerpho (talk) 19:46, 16 September 2023 (UTC)Reply
As discussed above, covered in general policies, and shown by this being now the FOURTH attempt by users to figure out the pronunciation on the talk page, no, there needs to be a pointer in the lead sentence for this. It isn't /meik meik/ and we need to make that clear to native English speakers. — LlywelynII12:00, 22 January 2025 (UTC)Reply
Discoverability to Tombaugh
Latest comment: 11 months ago15 comments5 people in discussion
This whole paragraph about Tombaugh possibly missing Makemake in the Discovery section reeks of original research and WP:SYNTH. I can't seem to find any reputable articles and books that discuss the possibility of Makemake being found by Tombaugh whatsoever. @Renerpho, ArkHyena, and Kheider: should we delete this whole paragraph? Nrco0e(talk • contribs)02:58, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
This book briefly describes it: Besides Pluto, Makemake is the only other dwarf planet that was bright enough for Clyde Tombaugh to have possibly detected during his search for trans-Neptunian planets around 1930, 1693 At the time of Tombaugh's survey, Make-make was only a few degrees from the ecliptic, near the border of Taurus and Auriga, [e] at an apparent magnitude of 16.0.1685 This position, however, was also very near the Milky Way, and Makemake would have been almost im-possible to find against the dense background of stars. Tombaugh continued searching for some years after the discovery of Pluto, 1694 but he failed to find Makemake or any other trans-Neptunian objects.
@Nrco0e: If you're looking for a reliable source for this, we could use Monthly Notes of the Astronomical Society of Southern Africa, Volume 67, p.108, in the article "How the Easterbunny became a Dwarf", which says: "In retrospect, Makemake is the only other dwarf planet that was bright enough for Clyde Tombaugh, discoverer of Pluto, to have possibly detected. At the time of Tombaugh's discovery, Makemake was actually only a few degrees from the ecliptic at an apparent magnitude of 16.0. Unfortunately, this position was also very close to the [Milky Way.]"Renerpho (talk) 08:08, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
On the other hand, looking at the history of the Wikipedia article, Curps has added this on 23 February 2006, in an edit that is revealed to be WP:OR by its edit summary and lack of citation. A reference [1] was added to this by Kheider on 18 July 2008, but I cannot find anything about Tombaugh in Brown's paper. Since the MNASSA article is from 2008, there's a good chance that it is citogenesis. And reading the MNASSA article, knowing that Wikipedia said almost the exact thing ad verbatim when this was published, I am pretty sure the author of that article got it from Wikipedia...
Unfortunately, given the long time that has passed, you will have a hard time finding any sources for this that are not linked to the Wikipedia article. And even if you do, proving that this is the case will be even harder. Renerpho (talk) 08:26, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
I am tagging Serendipodous, who was around when this article went through Good Article Nomination, peer review and Featured Article Candidacy between 22 July 2008 and 17 August 2008 (none of which addressed the question at hand). Maybe Serendipodous has some insights we are missing. Renerpho (talk) 08:42, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
@Kwamikagami: Are you talking about the 2006, or the 2008 addition? I am asking because you made your first edit to the article in June 2008, just before Kheider expanded that section. Renerpho (talk) 14:22, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Either way, my personal opinion is that this isn't significant enough to include in the article. It's a fun piece of trivia, but unless "Tombaugh could've been able to detect Makemake" turns into "Tombaugh detected Makemake", it's not a particularly important piece of information.
Clyde Tombaugh's own article also mentions this, but it's also synth. If we can find the source for it though, we might be able to keep it there, since it's related to his search for other TNOs besides Pluto. ArkHyena (she/they) 19:53, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
I'd rather remove it from Tombaugh's article than from the Makemake article. I disagree with ArkHyena that this is more about Tombaugh than about Makemake. But I also think that removing it from both articles is the right move, so there's no point arguing about it. :) Renerpho (talk) 21:31, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 9 months ago9 comments3 people in discussion
As a side comment for my topic above---I'm planning a total revamp of this article, as I believe it's in absolutely terrible shape with outdated info, numerous poor citations (i.e. the statement about Iapetus and 60% of Pluto's diameter is failed verification), and questionable image layout (I really don't like how the orbit diagram hogs so much vertical space). Somehow, this article is less comprehensive than the obscure TNO 307261 Máni! With all that, it's definitely not a featured article in its current state. I'm writing up my article revamp at User:Nrco0e/Notes/Makemake. Feel free to help out and give suggestions! Nrco0e(talk • contribs)03:11, 16 September 2025 (UTC)Reply
I have rolled out a partial rewrite of the entire article from my draft—I've completely rewritten the sections starting from Size/Shape/Mass and ending at Origin. Admittedly, the Origin section is still rather rough (I've been discussing it with User:Renerpho off-wiki and we're worried about possible WP:SYNTH—please do check, because I'm a bit too busy right now). And that one sentence talking about Makemake's oblate/Maclaurin spheroid shape in the Size/Shape/Mass section still needs better flow (I don't know what better way to reword it...).
I'll continue working on the rewriting the whole article and adding more graphics along the way (e.g. planning to add one for the rotation section). Next up for revamping are the Exploration and Orbit sections, and then perhaps I'll add sections talking about Makemake's Observability/2011 Occultation campaign later. Hopefully I'll have enough spare time for that...
And yes, I did completely overwrite your edit to the article, Pluto2181930. Apologies for that.
Latest comment: 9 months ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I have nominated Makemake for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)01:06, 7 November 2025 (UTC)Reply
How to spell "MK 2"
Latest comment: 6 months ago7 comments2 people in discussion
What was the discoverer's actual nickname for Makemake's satellite? As far as I can tell, the earliest sources, including the NASA reference [2] where the moon was announced on 26 April 2016, spell the nickname "MK 2", not "MK2" (examples: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6). The version "MK2" without the space only appears in non-scientific secondary sources the following day (examples: 1, 2, 3). The New York Times [3] got it right. A few, like ScienceAlert, treated the two as interchangeable. The original (official) announcement, MPEC 2016-H46 from 26 April 2016, doesn't mention a nickname.
As far as I can tell, Parker's article for The Planetary Society from 2 May 2016 [4] is the first (and only?) time he used the version "MK2". SwRI's press release from 27 June 2016 [5] followed their example. In the scientific literature, the version "MK 2" seems to have been preferred until about 2021 (1, 2; with a few exceptions: 1, 2). Since then, the version "MK2" has become a lot more prevalent (as in 1, 2). I suggest that Wikipedia is partially responsible for that:
Our article about Makemake used "MK 2" until that was changed without explanation in June 2021 (Special:Diff/1027588391). The early versions of the S/2015 (136472) 1 article used "MK 2", as proposed by the discoverers (Special:Diff/717311517). It survived in this form until that article was turned into a redirect in January 2017 (Special:Diff/767048071). When it was recreated in November 2019, the version without a space was used (Special:Diff/925154172, by the same user who removed it from Makemake in 2021). As far as I can tell, most Wikipedias continue to use "MK 2" (compare French, German, Portuguese, Italian); the English Wikipedia is the exception (alongside a few others, like Spanish).
Mentioning only the variant "MK2", and ascribing that to the discoverers, is a mistake. I think we should change it back to its original form "MK 2"; or at least present both versions side by side. Renerpho (talk) 05:10, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, I think we were taking it as 'obviously true'. But then, if it's obviously true the we don't really need to spell it out. — kwami (talk) 06:39, 8 February 2026 (UTC)Reply
(The previous comment is probably a reply to my edit summary at Special:Diff/1337220505.) @Kwamikagami: I think we better remove the explanation ("The nickname 'MK 2' simply means object 2 in the Makemake system.") from S/2015 (136472) 1.
It's plausible, but I don't think it's obvious, and it's definitely not "simple". I'm not even sure it's true. For one, MK 2 redirects to "Mark II" (unlike MK2, by the way, which has a complicated history, redirecting to both Marin Karmitz and Mortal Kombat II at some point). So, the nickname appears to be a wordplay with the general meaning "Mark 2" (suggested by the fact that "MK" is a plausible abbreviation for "Makemake"). I don't think Parker or another member of the discovery team has ever explicitly spelled out where it comes from, so this is speculation; but if it is a wordplay then that would rule out any simple meaning. It could also just mean "Mark 2", as the general meaning ("second version/variant") would still fit. Or maybe they've named it after Marc and Keith. Or they're fans of Mark II. We don't know.
Latest comment: 5 months ago8 comments3 people in discussion
There is a problem with the uncertainty of Makemake's size. There are three different versions floating around, all claiming to come from the same source, but I can't verify two of them.
When the radius was changed from 715±7 km (the number given in the reference, in the form of a diameter of 1430±14 km) to 715+19 −11 km in this edit on 14 May 2016, where did those upper and lower uncertainties (+19, −11) come from? Our reference Brown, 2013 doesn't include them, and the edit summary ("we now know that it is not viewed pole-on") makes me suspect that the user who changed this took the uncertainties for equatorial and polar diameter given in the reference. That is not how this should be done. Instead, I believe the value for the spherical diameter should have been taken, which the source gives as 1430±14 km (see Table 1 "Derived properties of Makemake"). Unfortunately, the user who added this has been inactive since 2018, so we cannot ask them.
The article to this day gives Makemake's diameter as 1430+38 −22 km, which can be traced back to that 2016 edit. I am tagging Nrco0e, who changed the diameter given in the article from "≈ 1430" to 1430+38 −22 in this edit on 30 September 2025. Did you have a source for this, or did you copy what was in the infobox?
Kwamikagami had previously made the same change to List of possible dwarf planets, in this edit on 12 June 2019. More recently, they changed it again to the slightly different 1429+38 −20 km (notice the different nominal value and the different lower uncertainty) in this edit on 19 August 2025, again without explaining the change. I am tagging My planet is Homlos, who changed the nominal diameter in that table back to 1430 km in this edit today, but who left the uncertainties at (+38, −20), which is made me notice the issue.
I do not know which lower bound (−20 or −22) is "more correct", if any.
I don't recall where I got those numbers; very likely I just copied what we had sourced in our article without double checking the source. If the best ref we have is still from 2016, I think we should just use that. If someone has a better source, they can include it when they change the number. — kwami (talk) 07:12, 7 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
The source is from 2013, and we have never stopped using that (the article has used it since about 2014 or 2015, and it still does). We just don't agree what it's saying. Renerpho (talk) 07:20, 7 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Is there any actual disagreement, or did someone just make a mistake? If 715±7 km is the number given, then that's what we should use.
I appreciate you checking with us before going through and changing everything, just in case, but I'm not sure it's worth the extra effort. Maybe easier just to make the change and post a note here on what you did; I doubt there will be many times when anyone challenges you on it. — kwami (talk) 07:28, 7 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Or did JorisvS jump to the wrong line in the text (the completely unrelated ...PDF peak and range of 19 ± 11...) and got the numbers 19 and 11 from that? Renerpho (talk) 07:27, 7 March 2026 (UTC) -- I am striking the earlier idea about averaging stuff, there's no conceivable way to arrive at the numbers that way. Renerpho (talk) 07:33, 7 March 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago7 comments4 people in discussion
Note to self: do this before this article appears on Today's Featured Article mid-June. The pages in {rp} take up way too much space and are not immediately understandable to the reader. Replace {rp} with {sfn}, like how Astatine and 243 Ida do it by putting page citations in "Notes" (should be called "References" imo) and the citations' source material in "References" (should be called "Bibliography" imo). Nrco0e(talk • contribs)07:13, 17 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Should we keep using {rp} to show page numbers?
At first, I wanted to change the citation style from {rp} to {sfn} because I've seen people complain (outside the Wikipedia website) that {rp} looks "too ugly" and takes up a lot of space between sentences. A couple days ago, an anonymous user tried removing the page numbers, saying the pages were excessive in their edit summary. So I tried converting {rp} to {sfn} on a copy of the article (User:Nrco0e/Notes/Makemake) and it turns out it is MASSIVELY TIME CONSUMING to do this. I'm not sure if I want to continue and waste my time changing the citation style.
The benefit of showing page numbers in {rp} is that it's simple to implement. As I said before, the disadvantage of {rp} is that it takes up a lot of space in the text and I've seen people complain it's ugly. I've seen people advocating for using {sfn} to cite page numbers without taking up this extra space (see 243 Ida). But as I mentioned before, implementing {sfn} is tedious, especially when you have to list all authors for each {sfn} citation (although this can be mitigated by adding a more concise refname in the ref={harvid} for each source though, converting from "refname" to "harvid" is still tedious).
According to WP:CITEVAR, it's okay for articles to have different citation styles and they should not be changed without consensus.
I don't particularly mind using {{rp}} (I did it in one of my earlier big WP-writing projects, alkali metal), but since then I remember hearing complaints about it and I haven't used it since. I think it's not really important enough to change (as, um, evidenced by the fact that I haven't done it there either); my only red line is that the page numbers should stay somehow, to make the citations complete, be they through {{rp}} or {{sfn}}. Double sharp (talk) 08:12, 19 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
{rp} always struck me as normal-looking, and I find it convenient. I'm not familiar with {sfn}, but I certainly wouldn't put any time into changing over to it. If we really want to change, maybe that could be a bot project. But that doesn't mean I'd bother to use {sfn} if I added additional refs after we switched.
Maybe I'm jaded from Wiktionary, where it doesn't matter if the content is incorrect as long as it's formatted properly. — kwami (talk) 08:18, 19 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
I removed these from Aya when I was new, but at least now I don't think they are ugly and chaotic, I don't mind using rp, I don't really have any problems with it Homlos(Message me bro)08:21, 19 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 2 months ago6 comments3 people in discussion
According to the Wikipedia Manual of Style, text shouldn't be sandwiched between image or templates on both sides, because it makes it hard for people to read the text (on small screens like phones). Currently, this article has the Samuel Oschin telescope photograph placed on the left of the infobox, which sandwiches the first paragraph of the Discovery section. I would like to avoid this issue by centering the image instead of aligning it to the left, but that it makes it look isolated, which looks weird. You can see what a centered version of the Samuel Oschin image looks like on User:Nrco0e/Notes/Makemake.
My first thought is that I can pair the Samuel Oschin image with another image and put both of them in a gallery, like how the articles for 2001 QW322 and 532037 Chiminigagua do it for their discovery sections. In that case, what should that second image be?
1. Should it be photos of the discoverers? There's three of them, and I'm not sure whether to include photos for all three or just one. Personally, I feel like if we're going to show photos of the discoverers, all of them must be shown so that we don't exclude or diminish their role. However, we can't fit 3 or 4 images in a single row when there's the infobox taking up space on the right. In that case, I don't think showing the discoverers would be a good option in my opinion.
Diagram showing Makemake's inclined orbit (gray) around the Sun, with the outer planets shown. The vertical gray lines along Makemake's orbital path mark its positions above and below the ecliptic plane.
I personally would rather see an isolated photo than one that is only there to take up space. If it's not relevant enough to be included on its own, I don't think we should have it at all.
You don't waste whitespace like that in print. But online, space is free.
If we have multiple sections where photos don't fit, then we might group them together. That would solve the problem of which to include. — kwami (talk) 08:46, 19 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
@Nrco0e: I just discovered this. (It may be old news to you, but it's new since the last time I read our image coding.) If you use "none" rather than "left", then the img will align left but won't sandwich the text. — kwami (talk) 00:27, 23 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Huh. That's news to me, neat! Personally I'm not really a big fan how it leaves a bunch of empty white space at the center on my end (I use a wider and older UI for Wikipedia instead of Vector 2022), so I'll leave as center. If anyone objects however, I don't mind. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)02:03, 23 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Page me
Latest comment: 2 months ago11 comments5 people in discussion
Since I expect to be called a vandal again...
If you insist on page numbers, try putting them in the citation(s), where a sensible person would expect to find them, rather than attaching them to the footnote number, where they have to be searched for again. ~2026-25855-98 (talk) 23:55, 19 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
@~2026-25855-98: There is an ongoing discussion about changing the display style for the page citations. See the above section (Talk:Makemake#Should we keep using {rp} to show page numbers?). We could absolutely change the page citation format, yes, but it turns out that changing it is really tedious (I've tried it myself and gave up halfway after 30 minutes...) and I'm not sure if anyone wants to spend several hours doing that. A lot of people like me are too busy to do that right now. You could do that if you want... just do it on a test page like User:Nrco0e/Notes/Makemake before you copy the changes to here (do it after you're done with the entire article that it doesn't disrupt its current state). Nrco0e(talk • contribs)03:23, 20 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
@~2026-25855-98: Okay, you're probably not going to like this answer... so somebody suggested that I could try using an AI/LLM to try reformatting the page-number citations from {rp} into {sfn}, since there's no tool to automate this. That suggestion is... uh, indeed dubious, but I'll trying experimenting and see if something like ChatGPT could do that without needing hours of humanpower to do something as monotonous as changing the format of every single citation in the article.
Before you scold me for being a lazy young buffoon (well, that description ain't wrong for a measly college undergrad like me!)---yes, I am aware that ChatGPT or any other LLM can hallucinate things. Which is why I'm not going to experiment on this article, but on a separate non-public copy (User:Nrco0e/Notes/Makemake). Luckily the Wikipedia editor does show what gets changed in an edit, so I can check whether something got altered or synthesized in the ChatGPT input.
I'll spend some time tinkering with ChatGPT and see if it can correctly change the citation style from {rp} to {sfn} without ruining stuff. I'll let you know if it works or now. If I can't get it to work, then well... we're stuck with those exposed page numbers, I guess. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)04:26, 20 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
UPDATE: ChatGPT is a total failure. How unsurprising. I've also tried Claude and it's taking forever to process the whole Makemake article. Surely the article can't be too big for LLMs to process, right..? Nrco0e(talk • contribs)06:10, 20 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Whoops, Claude hit its limit in the middle of processing the article. Damn! I guess we'll have to wait a few more days to find out if it also fails the task. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)06:13, 20 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Managed to get Claude working again. This time, it was able to successfully convert half of the rp citaitons into sfn which is good, but not perfect. I'll have to manually fix the ones it missed, but it's better than nothing. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)03:28, 21 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Whew, I've converted all {rp} into {sfn} on the Makemake article copy! You can see the results and difference here.
@~2026-25855-98, Double sharp, Kwamikagami, and Renerpho: How does it look now? Better than what the current Makemake article looks? Note that I haven't alphabetically sorted the Sources section yet, but I'll do that later (I sure as hell am not doing that manually). Once I alphabetically sort the Sources section, should I transfer these changes to the actual Makemake article? Nrco0e(talk • contribs)07:24, 21 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
{sfn} does make articles easier to edit. There may be Wikignomes who find this kind of work satisfying, though personally I don't think it's worth the effort. But if you can automate it, it would have the benefit of cleaning up the coding -- helpful for editors, but IMO less useful for the reader, as now they require 2 clicks to get to a reference rather than 1.
I think this is a good candidate for a bot project, if we believe that the convenience for editors is worth the inconvenience for readers. — kwami (talk) 10:23, 21 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
Yeah, it would be really nice to have an automated way to convert refnames into sfn-style citations. Anyways, I've managed to get Claude to alphabetically sort the references in the Source subsection, so the conversion is complete! I think I'm ready to transfer my copy to the main Makemake article. Nrco0e(talk • contribs)05:55, 22 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
It looks... Old to me, I don't know why but it'll need a bit of time for me to adapt to this, because for me it looks confusing, but at least the others don't hate it Homlos(Message me bro)02:24, 23 May 2026 (UTC)Reply
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