Talk:Bisulfide

The article I believe has a typo..."In aqueous solutions, at pH greater than 7, hydrogen sulfide is the dominant species; at pH > 7, bisulfide dominates". I believe it should say In aqueous solutions, at pH LESS than 7, hydrogen sulfide is the dominant species; —Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.50.63.15 (talk) 21:24, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

"Bisulfide" name question

Hydrosulfide makes sense as a name--like hydroxide. But why is it also called "bisulfide"? What is the "bi" for? Murftown (talk) 18:02, 18 February 2008 (UTC)

For the same reason as bicarbonate, whatever that is. ;-) My guess is that it is because you need two equivalents of the bicarbonate to neutralize the same amount of acid that you would neutralize with one equivalent of carbonate. --Itub (talk) 18:11, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

Look at this old book: [1]. The idea is that the bicarbonate "contains two equivalents of [carbonic] acid". If that doesn't seem to make sense, it's probably because in the first half of the 19th century there were problems with the atomic weights, resulting in formulas such as HO for water and NaO for sodium oxide. Therefore it was thought that the carbonate had one carbonic acid and one sodium, while the bicarbonate had one sodium and two "carbonates". Even in with modern atomic weights, 1 equivalent CO₃^2- is 0.5 mol, because the ion is divalent, so the ratio of equivalents of "carbonate" to Na⁺ is still 1:1 for the carbonate and 2:1 for the bicarbonate. --Itub (talk) 18:32, 20 February 2008 (UTC)

What about moving this to "hydrosulfide"?--Smokefoot (talk) 23:02, 8 March 2008 (UTC)

Nomenclature issues with bisulfide

Claiming that the IUPAC name of hydrogeno-sulfide is sulfanide seems me quite dubious. Several years ago a contributor used an automated software specifically developed for nomenclature in organic chemistry and pushed this software to its extreme limits outside of its normal application domain to derive non-existing terms totally unknown in inorganic chemistry. His use was purely based on hypothetical-deductive reasoning, systematically omitting all the existing conventional names and totally ignoring the historic evolution in chemistry. The results was highly misleading and led to many edit wars. This page seems to still suffer from the damages of this time.

Claiming that the hydrogeno-sulfide ion, HS⁻
, is the simplest form of thiolate, R–S⁻
, is equivalent to claim that the hydroxyl ion, or the hydroxyde ion, OH⁻
or HO⁻
, is the simplest form of alcoolate, R–O⁻
. It is the world turned upside down, even if I have to admit that it is formally exact! Things must always be described from the simplest to the more complex ones and not the reverse. The basic character of alcoolate and thiolate in organic chemistry can be easily explained from the acid-base properties of hydroxyl and bisulfide anions in mineral chemistry. This is logical because acid-base concepts are born in mineral chemistry. Adopting an exclusively organic-centered view and deriving mineral chemistry from an intricate reasoning starting from organic compounds makes no sense. Although, in the best case, this might seem to be logical from the very theoretical view point of organic nomenclature, especially when blindly using automated software to derive incredible inorganic chemical names without previous knowledge of mineral chemistry, this rewrites in a dubious way the history of chemistry and its evolution. This is misleading and can have tragic consequences for the beginners and the young students.

A computer might not be chocked by such an assertion, but a normal chemist well. This represents a severe distorsion of the normal nomenclature commonly applied in inorganic chemistry and is a deviation of the output of a software exclusively centered on organic chemistry. This reflects a profound lack of inductive approach starting from observation and from the facts and evidence. Chemistry is not born in one day and created from nihil immediately in a perfect world. This is an illustration of how Wikipedia can strongly mislead its readers. No contributor should use his own edit in Wikipedia as a lever to attempt to impose personal questionable views to all the Wikipedia readers. The main rules of common chemical usages need to be respected and taken into account to avoid non-sense names. Voilà for my opinion, an unexpected rebound from an already quite ancient issue. Shinkolobwe (talk) 15:56, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Good eye. Agreed: sulfanide is a remnant of a one-time persistent nomenclature enthusiast. --Smokefoot (talk) 16:30, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

@Smokefoot:Thanks, and by the way, I just found back in around 2010 the strange name this enthusiast invented with his automatic naming software for nitric acid: Oxoazinic acid ! At this time, it drove me nearly crazy, but I fear we have now a new overcategorization enthusiast for chemical compounds. He invented and applied with the same determination the following excessively detailed category [[Category:(2,3,5,6-tetrafluorophenyl)methyl 3-ethenyl-2,2-dimethylcyclopropane-1-carboxylates]] given here just as one example amongst others of the same type. This morning, I let a kind message on his talk page to first share with him my concern about the risks and disadvantages related to overcategorization WP:OVERCAT, especially for chemical compounds, but I did not yet receive an answer. He does the same for hurricanes. I cross the fingers and I hope he will become soon more reasonable. Greetings, Shinkolobwe (talk) 17:57, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

This kind of enthusiastic editor requires tenderness and caution because they can explode. Then you are in a battle royale that lasts weeks. You just have to hope that they take their medications, will listen, and colleagues will support you. --Smokefoot (talk) 19:55, 16 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this wise remark. Shinkolobwe (talk) 11:14, 17 May 2020 (UTC)