User talk:R8R/Archive 7

Nomination for deletion of Template:Element color/1

Template:Element color/1 has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Other deprecated Element color templates which you've created are also nominated. Gonnym (talk) 11:32, 26 February 2019 (UTC)

Preventing auto-archiving of talk-page discussions

This edit of yours just popped up on my watchlist. Are you aware of the {{bump}} and {{DNAU}} templates? DMacks (talk) 13:27, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

No, I was not aware of these. Thank you very much for telling me about them. I think, however, that 6 months from now should be enough to get me back into editing a little more actively and that I'll surely have read that article and generally dealt with the issue of aluminum and health by when the term expires, so I hope no more prolongations will be necessary in this case. But I'll keep this in mind in case I ever need it in future.--R8R (talk) 14:08, 3 May 2019 (UTC)

TFA

This is to let you know that the History of aluminum article has been scheduled as today's featured article for June 7, 2019. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/June 7, 2019.—Wehwalt (talk) 14:14, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for letting me know. I do indeed want to get a closer look once I have some free time available.--R8R (talk) 18:30, 19 May 2019 (UTC)

History of the periodic table

Hello, R8R. Although both of us are extremely busy in real life right now, I wanted to ask if you might still be interested in working on history of the periodic table (even though the 150th anniversary already passed) once exam season finishes, as I recall discussing that possible project several months ago. There are some interesting resources I found, but I haven't had time yet to take a closer look. Perhaps we can in a few weeks, if you're still up for it. ComplexRational (talk) 23:34, 21 May 2019 (UTC)

Hi! Yes, it would be great to get to it; my words that I'll be interested if someone joins me in this effort stand. I was actually intrigued by having encountered positive response to that call and soon thereafter (I think it was December?) I looked up quite some info and I got some ideas how the article should be structured and what might the content itself be. I was rather enchanted by the image in my head of what the article would become. Unfortunately, I didn't write my ideas down; fortunately, I can easily recall what seems to be the essentials.

So you might want to hear about when I'm ready. My assumption at the moment is that I'll have enough spare time for hobbies (something I've been waiting for for months now) around mid-June, give or take. I actually want to get back into editing Wiki and there are a few things I want to get done; I think I'll manage. So how about I write you back around mid-June and we start discussing what the end result should look like? I'll also call YBG into the discussion.--R8R (talk) 16:23, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Sounds good to me; mid-June is also when I will have enough time. ComplexRational (talk) 21:48, 22 May 2019 (UTC)

Advice for finding history

Hello User:R8R, it's been a while, hasn't it? School is wrapping up on my end, and I'm finally rediscovering the time to devote towards the Chromium article. Double sharp did some great work while I was away on the chemistry sections, and the Biological role section is more than enough filled. All that's left for me (or at least my largest hurdle) is working on the history and applications sections. Now, I have a good feel on applications (it's nothing too complex compared to college chemistry). Still, through your work on history of aluminium, I figured I'd ask you to weigh in on finding sources for the history of chromium. Now, I'm not creating a full-fledged article out of it, but there are some large time gaps that need to be filled (as well as an irrelevant image). Applications are still easy to talk about, and I had been working on and off (more on recently, more off for the last few months.) I have taken your advice in the peer review to heart, I've been adding more and more notes to the article, and I had been referencing back to your comments to see how I can write some of the other sections. I honestly think that an FAC could get pulled off relatively soon now. There are still issues that need to be addressed and fixed, but the Chemistry sections and subsections look very nice. Anywho, just wanted to catch you up. If you want to help fix the article, that would be great, but I'm really just looking for advice right now on how to right a history section (with good sources.) UtopianPoyzin (talk) 04:26, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

@UtopianPoyzin: Actually I haven't worked on the chemistry section, but I could get something out based loosely on Greenwood & Earnshaw if you want me to. Double sharp (talk) 05:05, 1 June 2019 (UTC)

Was referring to your help clarifying the electron configuration chemistry, in which my description was a lacking one. ^^ UtopianPoyzin (talk) 01:26, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

Hi! Well, yeah, it has indeed been a while. I've been gone for a three months now, but I would've come back already if it wasn't for the fact that I'm currently having exams. The last one is on Friday, so presumably I should have more spare time soon. Maybe not on the next weekend as I would love to hang out with friends and all and there's stuff I need to attend to, and I've also got a real job now, so I'm rather busy during the working week, but in two weeks, I should be back.

If you want me to take a closer look at the sections you've already completed, I'll be happy to do so.

As for advice with History: my first suggestion is that you read a few complete histories of chromium (say, G&E has one, and so does the Chemistry of the Elements, basically anything you can find will do). You'll notice that some of these stories have some details that others don't and vice versa, and you can combine them to get a better picture of what kind of history chromium has. Then you need to ask yourself about what could be missing here and think of what it could be. And look for that kind of information. It doesn't necessarily have to come from a very reliable source at first, but you should learn the info and then look up for that specific fact you cannot back yet but that you do know now in order to actually back it. Google is my main tool for this. Google Books in particular is absolutely indispensable for looking for high-quality sources, though do note that not all information that is fine for use in Wikipedia has necessarily been printed in a peer-reviewed book or that the right books are sometimes not available in Google Books but can be found, either in whole or at least in part (it is often the case that a PDF of a chapter of a book is available rather than the whole book---but who cares as long as that's the chapter you need). Or sometimes it is in documents like reports, which can often be found via Google, or sometimes it is in journal articles, which leads us to another highly prominent source, sci-hub. (Look up from here for yourself.) As you have more answers, you integrate them into the story you already have, see if it's long enough already and if it reads well now (you shouldn't be left wanting more, i.e., the story is solid and you don't feel tempted to ask any more questions after reading it). If there are any more questions, answer them to yourself, integrate the answers, read again. Repeat as many times as you need. Remember that you are at the present moment learning the story and simply writing down what you've found that you think is of interest. That you are indulging in a hobby. Have fun and try to learn the story, it will presumably become more and more interesting as you get a good taste of it. It's not the final version yet, so don't be too concerned with length as the writing goes. Write as much as you want. Trimming should be left for last. I think it shouldn't be too much a problem if a section us too long provided this is temporary and only needed for the writing process. Resist if concerns are raised on the talk page or elsewhere and ensure people this is only temporary. I will back you up if you need it. If your story becomes too good, even if too long, in the end and you won't want to lose the details you found to fit the necessary length (one 1600x900 screen is optimal), then move the overly long section to its own article and then trimming will be much easier.

By the way, this is exactly how history of aluminium was made: I simply wanted to learn more about it and share what I could find and fit it into an interesting story. I did have the feeling the story would be too long for a section in the main aluminium article but I thought I wouldn't have had as much motivation to do it if I'd had to write my findings in a separate article rather than the main aluminium article I wanted to improve from the beginning. After I was done, I copied the overly long section to its own article and it became a GA later that month already. The now safe text could be easily trimmed in the main article, and the topic was now well-researched enough so that I could make a high-quality properly-sized section of it. (Of course, the detail that I must add is that I had a separate book about aluminium, its history and uses, and it became the main driving force for me, that was how I got so much information. But the scale of the research aside, the story still goes for any other element.)

I hope this answers your question. This is basically what I do. I'll also add that I enjoy feeling smart as I learn new things, particularly (but not exclusively) from Wikipedia, and I enjoy writing texts that make readers feel the same (one important aspect of this is that the text should feel real and engaging and not like a mere textbook). Both are commonplace when you write Wikipedia articles, so with that in mind, I hope you'll be able to write interesting stories (this goes for all sections as well as the article as a whole, but it is especially no coincidence that you can't spell "history" without "story").

If you have any more questions, don't hesitate to ask.--R8R (talk) 19:27, 2 June 2019 (UTC)

"its salt"

re special:diff/900217649, what is the antecedent of "its"? Does "its salt" mean "the salt of alum" or "the salt of aluminium"? YBG (talk) 19:13, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

The word refers to alum, and alumina was often called the "salt of alum" back in the 18th century (I mention that in the article. This is particularly characteristic for writing in German, though I have seen a French paper doing the same). I think this is rather easy to read from the blurb?

I am worried about the present state of the blurb. I have seen the techniques similar to the one you used before, and this was done by apparently good speakers, ones with a better grasp of English than mine. However, I personally never particularly liked these techniques because while a text takes less space after it has been reformed, it seemingly condenses the information too closely so to speak. This makes it difficult to pay attention because there's no alternating space where attention is needed a little bit more and less; you have to be alarmed all the time. Not only natural breaks are broken, but so are the ones specifically added in order to put emphasis on certain important points. More importantly, the character count is now way below the standard. I do have a couple of sentences in mind to add, but this will likely not cover 200 characters.--R8R (talk) 19:39, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

I've used the free space you gave me and now I'm finally genuinely satisfied with the blurb, so thank you for that!--R8R (talk) 21:11, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

I've change "its salt" to "the salt of alum". If I, a native speaker and moderately knowledgeable about chemistry could not properly disambiguate "its salt", it needed to be fixed. I think the problem is that the word "its" is used twice with different antecedents and nothing to clearly indicate a change in antecedent. As far as "alternating space", I'll have to give that a bit more thought. All I did was remove what seemed to me to be unnecessary filler text. If you could point me to a discussion about this topic, it might help me understand better. Glad that the free space gave you room for improvement. YBG (talk) 21:39, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

I also added a mention of iron. If that bumps it over the character count, just delete iron, don't revert. Having the year in the middle of the sentence seemed convoluted to me. YBG (talk) 21:47, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

I also changed one "aluminium" to "it". I think this works very smoothly as "it" refers back to "aluminium" in the previous sentence and "it" (pun intended) has the same antecedent as "its" in the first sentence. YBG (talk) 21:50, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

I'll let you weigh in on the change of "salt of alum" to "earth of alum". I'm not sure it is accurate, but I think the addition of a wikilink here is definitely helpful. YBG (talk) 21:54, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

Sure, if it did puzzle you and you think it's not just you making a silly mistake, then a rewording is desired. It could be that I'm just reading the story already knowing what I should read and unable to look at it as if I was to see it for the first time. Is there a term for that in English? I can't find anything in a dictionary. Maybe you could say your perspective is blurred on this one or is there anything more specific to this particular problem?

Well, unfortunately enough, I didn't read any books on how to write, lexical analyses, or anything of the sort. But having been around in Wikipedia for so long and written a few FAs for rather wide audiences, I have read and written a lot (I guess it also helps that English is a foreign language to me, because as comfortable as I feel about it, there is an internal strive, often subconscious, to pay a little bit of extra attention---that being sad, I still sometimes make the silliest of mistakes but luckily, it seems to happen more and more rarely lately) and spotted some patterns in things that I do and do not like and I tried to think why something is good to me and something is not, what kind of information would get through to me and what would not and why, etc. It really helps that I've been on both sides of the fence of this Wikipedia reading and writing.

By the way, I messed up: of course, it was the earth of alum, not the salt of alum. First of all, there were multiple salts of alums, so no "the," and second, it was not clear at the time metal oxides are too, indeed salts; they were seen as different as nobody knew they were oxides anyway and were called earths. I've corrected that.

As for the iron bit: the problem is not with the character count (979 is fine) but with mention of the iron itself; two different metals in this short sentence sort of throw me off the track of the aluminum discussion. A longer sentence would allow them both in the same sentence as aluminum (see the beginning of the second para in the last section in the article for an example, though the context of a more detailed discussion also contributes) and that would not derail us too far from aluminum but we have no room for that.--R8R (talk) 22:13, 4 June 2019 (UTC)

No worries about iron; I stuck it in not because I'm trying to join the fan club of this really respectable metal but because it seemed an obvious question "2nd to what?". And, speaking of neologisms, no, I don't know a word for being unable to read something as though you didn't already know what it is supposed to say. It certainly is an idea worthy of a word! It is what makes the difference between good writers and excellent ones. Its more specialized than when one cannot "see the forest for the trees". it is the reason why many people - even tech-savvy ones - are better able to proofread from a hard copy than from computer screen.

As for "earth" vs "salt" -- for some reason when I saw that edit, I thought it was a completely different editor. I was so convinced of this that after you said "I've corrected that" I went back to look at the history to verify that it was you. That's another sort of forest-and-trees problem. YBG (talk) 00:07, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Well, your concern re "second to iron" is absolutely valid. I had this feeling myself (and it is a bad idea to write sentences that leave the reader hanging. It could work and even be desirable in some contexts, such as advertising, for instance, but certainly not in an encyclopedia) but I talked myself into that this was a necessary sacrifice because I could not find a better solution. Your words prompted me to think more about this, and I have found a way out of this. Indeed, a text should be whole in an encyclopedia, even if it is a blurb.

I meant an a little bit wider meaning, following the Russian phrase that roughly translates to "have your eye soaped up" which means you're too used to looking at it (whatever that "it" is, be it a text, a picture, a graph, a piece of code, etc.) you can't spot the thing you need to find. But basically, I would've taken anything if you had suggested it. There are cool concepts in some languages that don't exist in others; for instance, English lacks a bon appetit of its own :) My favorite is the Georgian word that means "eating past the point you're full because the food is so good," which is definitely something many languages could adopt ;)

I guess I have yet a road to walk to that "perfect-writer-y," don't I? Well, I certainly do, at the very least because native speakers who copyedit my writing usually end up changing quite a lot, deviating from what I had originally intended. Then again, I tend to think I write in a manner a little different than many copyeditors would expect because I think of the text a little differently than those copyeditors do. For me, engaging the reader into reading comes as important as the whole encylopedic styling. I guess other editors have a little different perspective in mind. That being said, this certainly does not exhaust the difference between myself and the copyeditors and I will easily agree they have a better grasp at the language than I do, so... well, I don't know. It's hard to judge from my position. I do think there's something to my writing, though. At the same time, I try not to be overly protective over it because if I am allowed to enjoy editing the free encyclopedia, then the same goes for anybody else.--R8R (talk) 21:34, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for sticking with it!

		The Tireless Contributor Barnstar
		I wanted to thank you for continuing to support my long, and long, and long journey towards improving Chromium. I finally have the time to work, and I wouldn't have been able to even get here without your help. Whether it be the article projects that you are working on, or giving advice to the inexperienced editor, thank you for your service. UtopianPoyzin (talk) 04:02, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

As a celebration for hitting 1000 edits (I meant for this to be 1000, but I warned a user for 2, so this is 1001), here's a barnstar! Regardless of edit count, you are always helping improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. It could be your big undertakings on improving an article's quality, or it could be you giving advice to the inexperienced editor, (well, it's been 8 months and I still feel like a newbie) about where to find sources. No matter what, tou are either providing input for suggestions, or returning output in FAs. So thanks! You deserve this! UtopianPoyzin (talk) 04:07, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much. This sort of thing is certainly very nice and as the life generally goes, even a little sign of appreciation could make a big difference. I do enjoy writing articles; I learned how to make it exciting for me specifically. An important part of this is the feeling that I help other people get better information in an accessible way. I also want to share this feeling with anybody else who is willing to try it, and so it comes as no surprise I'd be interested in helping new editors who aim for the same topic of interest that I do get this enjoyment, both from having to make some good research (which used to seem like a boring unnecessary prelude to me at first but then became particularly interesting as I figured this would also make you learn a lot of cool stuff; and then you would think about how you would put in writing what you learned, which, once you get into that, gets especially interesting) as well as having the power to put it however you want (where you get to practice your writing, help other people, rethink over and over what you had read and set questions to yourself to answer, which in turn motivates you to research more). I think it is important to enjoy your time here, rather than struggle to get a good thing done, so I'd be happy to help you and other editors get into this so they can figure what would make them enjoy the good thing they're willing to try.

By the way, one of the things that got me into WP:ELEM was that there was a specialized project for the elements in en.wiki, which seemed good because a) the scope was rather limited, so you could actually see the progress, and, more importantly, b) that writing in English would help me practice the language, if only in writing. Anyone who's been around since I think it was 2011? could tell you my English has certainly improved since then in all aspects---grammar, vocabulary, and the general grasp of the language---and I do think the reading and writing that occurred thanks to/for Wikipedia is to be thanked for this. Well, I'm a foreign speaker, so I obviously have a little different perspective than you, but presumably you could also eventually discover some new literary horizons. I also think that I got to understand how to get to people through in writing quite a bit better.

To wrap it up, there's a lot of thing to enjoy here that aid your personal skills rather than mere entertainment, so I'd be happy to help you feel it or see you understand it for yourself. And well, there's also lots of information of my personal interest I was very interested to find and am looking forward to find as well as the challenge of putting it in a manner you find appealing and fully uncovering the topic. I think I could say a lot about this, so I'll just finish off by saying this is really great once you get to do it even if I lack the words to describe it in a particularly attractive manner. Enjoy your time here and feel free to ask for advice or help any time.--R8R (talk) 22:27, 5 June 2019 (UTC)

re youtube video

Thanks for posting the video, I found it very interesting, although the narrator tends to speak at an incredibly fast clip. One interesting factoid: in the famous Lincoln-Douglas debates, the two debaters were campaigning for the US Senate, but their audience would not directly vote for them, because this was before the Seventeenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. YBG (talk) 21:14, 18 June 2019 (UTC)

Well, you have to put a lot of information in those ten minutes, so I guess the narrator's quick voice is understandable. By the way, what you mentioned is certainly interesting but not unique to the U.S. If you watch international news, the UK is currently selecting their new prime minister, and the remaining candidates in the race held a debate just yesterday. Even though the debate was public, actually only the 300-something Conservative MPs get a say in this race (for now; the final vote will be held among all Conservative members. That's more but still less than a percent of the British electorate).

When I first encountered the video, I actually waited for the narrator to speak about how you couldn't vote for Lincoln at all in some southern states. Well, he didn't. But the video prompted me to look up that election and it turns out the system back in the day was very different from the one used today. It's not just that Lincoln wasn't on the ballot; there were no ballots at all (but you still couldn't vote for him in those states).

Out of plain curiosity. I know children in your country are commonly taught about the ideas of democracy and all. Do they ever speak in such teachings that the American democracy in the times of its conception was conceptually different from what we have today? That while we now see it as a competition between ideas and solutions, back in the days of George Washington democracy was commonly seen as a call for public confirmation of an idea, rather than a challenge? Washington himself proposed there should be no political parties and the people must be whole. This really doesn't bind with the modern concept of democracy because back in those days, democracy was fundamentally different. That is because the Americans had to take many concepts of democracy from the Ancient Greeks (it's not like there were many examples to look up to in those days, so the antiquity provided some inspiration), which had democracy precisely in that way. I recall, for instance, that Washington voluntarily limited himself to two terms in part because a respectable Roman council (I recall his name was Cincinnatus?) did the same back in his days. At least that's what I've heard; I won't claim expertise on this. Do people in the U.S. have this sort of stuff in mind? Or maybe I'm simply wrong?--R8R (talk) 20:35, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Usually these days, when people compare the structures of today to those of yesteryear, the point being made is about the deficiencies of yesteryear. One classic example is the electoral college, which the popular press and school books tend to represent as antiquated but I believe is absolutely brilliant. 2nd example, the original indirect election of the senate, which is commonly seen as an antiquated idea that was jettisoned, but I rather think was a good idea.

One commonly forgotten detail: the American founders consciously created what they called a "republic" and were absolutely against the idea of a "democracy", that is to say, the idea that majority rule is goal of a good political system. Many of the political problems of the developing world today - e.g. ethnic strife and repression of minorities - are only exacerbated by unchecked majority rule. The US system has four different types of "majority" in play - one for the presidency, one for the Senate, one for the House, and yet another for the Supreme Court. Some would decry this and say that everything should be based on a one-man-one-vote majority, but that eliminate the multitudinous advantages of having multiple types of majorities.

I had heard Washington referred to as an American Cincinnatus, and I well knew his refusal to serve a 3rd term, but I had never made the connection. YBG (talk) 23:11, 19 June 2019 (UTC)

Like many people, I guess I'm also prone to confusing democracy with popular voting. I actually knew what you mentioned in a reply but I didn't remember that until you reminded me of it. Thank you for this. I thought about it and it seems like what I said (or actually read, since I didn't tell the whole story) and what you said binds together well if you spend a minute thinking about it. It could be that popular vote was indeed not trusted and only invoked when no difficulties were expected to be encountered to strengthen the backing of a decision. This, in a way, even rings close to home because this is more-or-less how I imagine the Novgorod Republic was.

One interesting thing about foreign politics is that you get a better grasp of what problems may exist. You may see how others handle theirs and come prepared better for when something of that sort occurs in your country. I, too, used to think that one voice per one citizen would be best, but watching the Brexit chaos unfold in the UK gives me certain ideas. For instance, I have noticed that many Scots feel disenfranchised and dragged out of the EU; the recent comment of the leader of the Scottish National Party fraction in Westminster expressed his strong feeling that Scotland is being underrepresented and biased against and was highly critical of the most likely future prime minister of the UK. First minister of Scotland openly wants Scotland to leave the United Kingdom and says she will launch a campaign should the UK leave the EU without a deal concerning post-Brexit relations. All of this is to say that indeed, even small states should be heard (population of Scotland is below one-tenth of that of England). In fact, many countries that do not have a strong national backbone behind them (such as many Middle Eastern countries) have written or unwritten contracts on how the highest official is Sunni and the second-highest is Shia, and local Christians often add into the mix, regardless of what the public thinks at each moment (which people are generally fine with because less questioning the order of things and less disenfranchisement of any population group means more stability; think of it as some sort of checks and balances). In some republics of Russia, there are similar unwritten contracts that concern the ethnic, rather than religious, divisions.

There are actually many things you can learn from foreign politics because not only do their problems provide some variation from your own, but also because you can observe it without any judgment, take it for what it is, and learn from it. We in Russia have had some relatively decent media lately, namely Kommersant, Vedomosti, and RBK. They do good journalism but unfortunately enough, there are some unwritten limitations for them that come from the authorities; journalists themselves note that there are certain things they are not supposed to talk about and that they'd want there to be no restrictions on them. At the same time, they manage to do a good job at keeping impartiality, so there's some hope for them. And I figured that if I wanted to see unrestricted top-class journalism and know what I would eventually want to be emulated in my country, I'd have to look abroad. The obvious decision was to try the United States and American media, given how I speak their language and they champion freedom of speech to the extent they don't even in Europe. That is how I started to learn more about the American politics and, eventually, society; that was in April or May 2016, a little more than three years ago now. And there was a lot to learn, that's for sure. This not only allowed me to take a wider perspective on things, but also helped me pinpoint some strengths and weaknesses of America, both of which provide a great lesson to learn from. (If you're curious what was it that I as an outsider found, you can ask me, and I think I'll eventually write you quite a lengthy email. There's a lot I could say about this; if you want me to, that is.)--R8R (talk) 16:47, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

@YBG: in case you miss this reply--R8R (talk) 16:55, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

A few things that immediately come to mind on a first read of your thoughtful words.

1. I recall in 7th or 8th grade hearing my Spanish teachers bemoaning the fact that their students knew so little English grammar that they had to teach English grammar before they could explain the Spanish. Upon thinking about that in succeeding years, I came to have think that these teachers had to some extent an unrealistic expectation. I now think that it is nearly impossible for one to truly learn and understand the grammar of one's native language until one studies another language. How can you comprehend the significance of placing adjectives before nouns until you come to realize that in some languages adjectives follow nouns? Of course, I recognize that taken too literally my thoughts along this line are equally unrealistic.
2. One of the advantages the US has is that from the beginning the sub-national divisions - the states - were sufficiently numerous that no one was totally dominant. One of the difficulties of the "U" in the "UK" is that England is so large that it dwarfs Scotland, Northern Ireland, Wales and Cornwall put together. I see this same difficulty played out in many countries in the developing world today, and I suspect that the old USSR had similar difficulties because the RSFSR was so much larger than the other parts. But I confess that my knowledge of your country is so woefully lacking that I haven't a clue what the actual proportions are.

I would be fascinated to hear an outsider's perspective. Gotta run now. We're expecting a crowd over later this evening, and my wife needs some help. YBG (talk) 23:31, 14 July 2019 (UTC)

Interesting comments, I was glad to hear them from you. In Russia, standard practice to teach a foreign language is to treat it separately from Russian. This has certain advantages because this, at least in theory, should help you think in English, rather than think in Russian and then translate your thoughts. (I wish this sort of teaching was consistent because otherwise a lot of teaching still revolves around Russian with tasks like translate from or into English. You are supposed to remember certain linguistic constructions, for instance. This is probably good if you want to make avid English speakers but not so much if you want people to simply be able to understand English and explain yourself in English, which should be enough of a goal in a country with such a low share of people speaking English.) It also has certain disadvantages because a few difficult things were easier for me to understand when I found a counterpart in Russian; for instance, the perfect tenses. Many foreign speakers struggle with differentiating the need to use past simple and present perfect, and it was only I figured that while there was no counterpart to present perfect in Russian, there were ones for past and future perfect, and I could extrapolate. Same was with past perfect; future perfect was easy to understand but it is rarely used anyway.

Your suspicions on the USSR are correct. As you may know, Lenin established the Russian Soviet Republic in November 1917, some enthusiastically followed this path toward the bright future, some were eager to resist this madness, and the country collapsed into a civil war. (By the way, there is nothing sacred in the word "soviet" that would prevent it from translation; it simply means "council." The idea was that the workers in each manufacture would organize themselves into a council that would run the manufacture on behalf of all of its proletariat; as you may recall, the communists saw to abolish private property of means of production. A council would also appoint representatives into a higher-order council, etc., and at the top would be the Supreme Council. Interestingly, the name of the parliament of the contemporary post-Soviet Ukraine---usually referred to in English by its native name, Verkhovna Rada---still means exactly that, "Supreme Council.") The civil war took five years, and as a result, most of the former Russian empire was still intact, now under the name "Union of Soviet Socialist Republics," proclaimed in December 1922. In January 1923, leader of the Bolshevik party Joseph Stalin suggested the expected world revolution failed for now and that socialism was not yet strong enough to be exported to other countries, so they would need to develop socialism in one country for the time being and wait for another war between the imperialist powers (namely, Britain, France, and Germany) that would bring them communist rule just like WWI did for Russia. For the time being, Stalin suggested, the country should be run as a Russian state with autonomies for other peoples. From the perspective of the inevitability of the transition toward socialism and then communism, as was advocated by the Marxists, this, as you can see, was a rather pragmatic approach. Lenin, who was sickly at the time and not heavily engaged in party work but nevertheless the highest moral authority for communists (my understanding is that without Lenin, there wouldn't have been a socialist revolution in 1917 to begin with), planned for a world revolution and obstructed any diversion from that path, arguing that communism was inevitable for the whole world, not just Russia. This, as you can see, was more of an idealistic approach. Everybody followed Lenin, of course, and the Soviet Union was preserved as a union indeed, but Lenin died the next year, and Stalin emerged as the next leader, and he fashioned the Soviet Union the way he envisioned without formally contradicting Lenin and keeping the state nominally a union. In practice, this meant, for instance, that while local languages were not specifically repressed, they had secondary roles in many everyday respects, while nominally the republics were a thing and people had the idea of them living in the Georgian, or Ukrainian, or Tajik SSR.

When Gorbachev announced glasnost (=openness) in 1986, essentially the whole population of each republic was born in that republic, not in the Russian Empire. Generally, glasnost exposed the extent of inefficiency of the contemporary state as well as brought in information about the allegedly backwards but actually wealthy Western countries; glasnost was hugely important, so much so it one of the two most important reasons why the USSR collapsed. In the 1989 elections, for instance, communist party members almost invariably lost to independents, and soon people were allowed to form other parties. In case of some republics, the other reason also emerged: nationalism. Most notable of these would be the Baltic states; Armenia and Azerbaijan (who soon degenerated into an armed conflict and a war over Nagorno-Karabakh, unresolved to this day); Georgia (who in this nationalist fervor lost its two regions, Abkhazia and South Ossetia, both long before the war of 2008); Moldova (the formerly Romanian part was eager for a reunification whereas the Slavic-populated part gravitated toward Russia; this also escalated into a war and Transnistria de facto remains a separate entity); and the Ukraine (which had a carefully worded referendum that resulted in an overwhelming support for independence or so it would seem; I was indeed myself rather surprised to learn that when the then-Ukrainian leader Leonid Kravchuk was asked a direct question on how given the political climate of 1991 this question would not be seen by many voters as a call for absolute independence but rather potentially a loose union in which Ukraine would have more freedom but still in union with Russia, Kravchuk tried to dodge the question rather than immediately refute the accusation, which says something. For some context, just nine month before then, the Ukrainians had decisively voted for preservation of the union in a renewed form. Regardless, the idea of a renewed union lost any point without the Ukraine, and the union ended). Regarding the Russian SFSR, it was, in accordance with Stalin's vision, sort of a metropole to the other republics. It meant, in practice, that there was a local communist party in the Ukraine, Byelorussia, Azerbaijan, any republic but Russia. When exposed to the local inefficiency, Russia, like most other republics, struggled to get better governance, elected independents despite all obstacles from the communists, and this led to adopting of state sovereignty of Russian SFSR on June 12, 1990, effectively putting Russia on equal footing with the other republics and giving Russians more local power; anniversaries of that date are celebrated in Russia as a public holiday to this day. Interestingly, if my understanding is correct, Yeltsin did not push for Russia's complete independence from the Soviet Union until it was clear there was no saving of it, contrary to what he is often accused of in Russia. You may also be interested in watching a video about that from the same channel as the video referred to in the title of this section; it also lasts 10 minutes and covers 1953 through 1991.

Okay, then it's settled, I'll write that to you. As you've surely noticed, I can be wordy at times, and I think this should be such a time, and I'm also going to be rather busy for some time, so please don't expect an answer to be a matter of a couple of days. I do want to write this, though, because I'd surely love to get some feedback toward what I've found from those who presumably have a better understanding than me or can offer a different perspective, possibly even stand corrected, so don't doubt I will get this done eventually, either. Also, for the record, there's no particular need for this to be an email other than that this is a convenient form of communication that allows storing drafts accessible across platforms. Feel free to share my message at your leisure if you want to. I can also send a copy to anybody or even publish it within Wikipedia if you or anybody else wants me to.--R8R (talk) 21:37, 15 July 2019 (UTC)

if you still remember Lavrukhina & Pozdnyakov from At

Does it say anything about the melting and boiling points of Fr? My search for better values has stalled at 10.1023/A:1027389223381 and I can't seem to find sources [6] and [7] from it that might help. Double sharp (talk) 12:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, my laptop that had the literature broke down, so I can't check the book right off the bat. My plan was to have it fixed tomorrow but I again find myself having my hands full. I hope I will get to this tomorrow but this promises to be time-consuming, so no promises about tomorrow specifically. In the meantime, I recall than an English translation of that book is available at Google Books for a preview; maybe you'll have your luck with that?

As for other sources: I will look them up when I can, presumably during this weekend.--R8R (talk) 14:34, 29 June 2019 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I can't find either source in digital form. As for Lavrukhina & Pozdnyakov, it mentions two sets of values: 8.0/620 and 20±1.5/640 deg C.--R8R (talk) 17:07, 30 June 2019 (UTC)

Thanks: does it say anything about the provenance of each set of values? (A quote would be nice, of course!) Either way it is still a solid of course because for us STP is 0°C and 1 atm. Double sharp (talk) 07:10, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I don't think so because I was looking for a section in the chapter on francium which would describe physical properties to me and was unable to find it at first. Then I found a table filled with numeric data on francium (in the likes of our infoboxes), where I found these values. I thought that if there was a section on physical properties in the text, I would've found it already and I had the data so I was satisfied with that. But if you want me to look more closely, I'll try to do it tonight.--R8R (talk) 11:08, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, with your help I managed to find the snippet with the table from Google Books (searching for various keywords yesterday didn't work, but searching "640" as a value did now that I know of it from you), but yes, if you have time I'd like to know if there is any more text about it in the book! It looks like each set of values comes from a different source: what are they? (And are they accessible somewhere?) I also notice that density is listed as 2.4 or 2.48 g/cm³ (which fits the trend much better than the one we have now of 1.87; it is close to the value of 2.8–3.0 suggested by Bonchev and Kamenska). Double sharp (talk) 13:07, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I see. I will check the book closely when I can (presumably tonight). I certainly recommend not to get your hopes high on finding those online. It seems that old Russian-language literature is less commonly digitized than its English-language counterpart. What a shame. I'll try, but I estimate our chances are low.

I did not recognize either source back then. I recall that one of those two sources was a candidate dissertation (the USSR, and Russia to this day, had a two-tier system of doctoral decrees. The lower decree granted you the status of a candidate of sciences, whereas the higher decree made you a doctor of sciences).--R8R (talk) 14:01, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

The book does not go into any detail about this at all; they limit themselves to "some thermodynamic characteristics of atoms and ions of francium and its compounds are listed in Table 54."

I can't find either source online. This is a disappointing outcome, but I had the feeling we would end up with that.--R8R (talk) 19:45, 1 July 2019 (UTC)

I managed to find what is probably the source giving 20±1.5 and 640 (and density 2.4) online (snippet view): alas, when you manage to coax it into showing the top of the table, it becomes apparent that they are all calculated values (and it's just that the right column was what was in the literature, and the left column has calculations from Mendeleev's method). I cannot find the other set of values' (8.0 and 620) original source, but at least others seem to be using them. (Mind you, the second one gives 299 and 411 for the melting and boiling points of At, so make of that what you will.) I suspect they are all predictions, to be honest. FWIW, 20±1.5/640 does seem better looking at the trend, if we have to choose one for tables. Double sharp (talk) 04:43, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

Good job with finding the source for the 20/640 set: this is really it (except in English translation, obviously). And also good job finding out this is only an extrapolation. As for the 8/620 set, this is the set that comes from the aforementioned doctoral dissertation. The dissertation was defended at the Institute of Geochemistry and Analytical Chemistry of the Academy of Sciences of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. I looked up what the said institute had to do with francium and found the following quote (albeit about technetium):

As a result of research conducted in recent years, new methods of concentration, separation from neighboring elements (rhenium, molybdenum, ruthenium) and determination of technetium using extraction, chromatography, spectrophotometry, and its various valence states have been developed at the GEOKHI of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In this article, along with previously published data, some new results on the analytical chemistry of technetium are given. (as translated by Google Translate)

I suspect these figures may be genuine measurement results, and I'd go with them. But let me know what you think.--R8R (talk) 22:14, 2 July 2019 (UTC)

I'd mostly agree except that I really don't see how you'd measure the melting and boiling points of Fr when it can't be accumulated in weighable quantities: the only experimental determination for the boiling point of At was itself pretty indirect, and the error bars (while small) make the ".0" in the melting point of Fr look suspicious. Do we have the title of the dissertation, at least? (Because doing the measurements for Fr would seem so amazing to me that it'd probably be highlighted.) But FWIW, the Great Soviet Encyclopedia agrees with you: it cites Lavrukhina and Pozdnyakov, but only gives the figures 8.0, 620, and 2.48 – together with a first ionisation energy value that gets the essential point (that it's greater than that of Cs) right. Even if they are also predictions, the m.p. and density do look like they have one more digit of precision, so they might be better predictions. That they don't seem to match the trend as well may be a point in their favour (although I don't think this is what lectio difficilior potior was meant for ^_-☆). Seriously, just thinking off the top of my head, the lower value also makes sense because of 7s contraction: Fr should then be more unwilling to become Fr⁺ and share that electron, so metallic bonding should be weaker (kind of like 6s contraction for Hg), whereas the destabilisation of 6d should make the Ac and Th melting points higher than the La and Ce ones (which they are). (That suggests that 700 °C for Ra might be right instead of 960 °C, if it is to follow 7s.) So I think I'm convinced, though I still think I should add an "estimated" caveat to it like the Great Soviet Encyclopedia does. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 05:27, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

P.S. Yet another value: 10.1023/A:1027389223381 (the original source I posted) gives 598 for the b.p. of Fr. Probably the m.p. they used can be estimated from the graphs and the equations (but the way I was trying it gives values larger than that of Cs, so I might be reading it wrongly). Double sharp (talk) 05:43, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I've rewritten some paragraphs at Francium#Characteristics and made Fr and At change to the grey "unknown phase" colour, as macroscopic quantities haven't been made. Thank you for all your help on this! Double sharp (talk) 16:00, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

Well, it's been my pleasure for sure but I've actually got a few words to add. I even suspect that going "unknown" might have been premature. I've looked it up and I'll write back in a few hours. Also, indirect measurements are fine; we are good enough to say that the Sun is mostly made of hydrogen even if we never sent a probe there to collect a sample. Or does that particular measurement cause you any reasonable doubt?--R8R (talk) 16:27, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I am unable to find the dissertation itself but I found that Rodin (the author of that dissertation) did indeed experiment with francium. In 1958, he (along with this very Lavrukhina) co-authored an article called "Studying analytical chemistry of francium via the radioactive isotope Fr²¹²"; in 1960, he (with these very Lavrukhina and Pozdnyakov as well as one more person) published an article titled "Chromatographic separation of francium from cesium and rubidium," which ends with something like "francium has now been separated from rubidium and cesium for the first time." This sounds like a good precursor for a claim of an mp and bp of the metal, doesn't it? I'm almost convinced it must have been measured or at least estimated experimentally. On the other hand, I cannot help but wonder why this supposedly experimental data is put alongside a theoretical extrapolation.

I wouldn't rule anything out.--R8R (talk) 18:32, 3 July 2019 (UTC)

I've undone the greying for now. I agree that indirect ones are fine, but since the only one for At was for the boiling point, we don't know if it's a solid or a liquid just from it at 0 °C. As for Fr: your second-last sentence is one reason why I'm not sure about this value. The low value of the melting point compared to the trend makes sense due to melting-point depression when you have tiny amounts, but I'm still really sceptical that you can get the melting point determined (especially accurately enough to get that decimal point) when you are measuring the amount of the substance you have in atoms – and the substance is generating huge amounts of radioactive heat. (That's why I greyed out Fm, Md, No, and Lr previously – they have to be predictions, even if they are not stated to be so, because no one has made enough.) Double sharp (talk) 07:05, 4 July 2019 (UTC)

Interim PR

Hi! I was reading through DS's talk page, and I understood that you are nearly finished with hassium. If you are taking a short break between major projects, would you be able to provide feedback at peer review for Island of stability? In addition to our ongoing work on history of the periodic table, I've been slowly working on that article for over 6 months, and hopefully I'll be able to bring it to FAC in the near future. ComplexRational (talk) 20:11, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

Hi there. Of course, I'll do this. But as I mentioned there, I'm somewhat short on time (else you would've seen more work on history of the periodic table), so please don't expect this to happen too soon. I'll read it in the meantime and try to start during the next weekend.--R8R (talk) 20:33, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

No problem, do it whenever you can. Thank you. ComplexRational (talk) 23:31, 21 July 2019 (UTC)

es

Thisd editsummary is quite absurd [1], and not helpful. Point is, and you can red taht in my post, that I need to return to the MOS page again because your reasoning is deviating multiple times in the thread. As a simple example, I think it is OK to ignore the argument "let's follow Double sharp's style" after noting such; sure that can look like "not paying attention to [your] words". -DePiep (talk) 21:42, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

It's a shame that you've decided to ignore the rest of it. But your ENGVAR quote makes a good point: one needs to keep the variety once one has been established. Please demonstrate that one was, indeed, in fact established at some, any point. That spellings, punctuation, lexicon, and phrasings in a given non-stub revision are indeed all complaint with AmE standards. All of the above, not just spellings. If you do that, then I will consider that your claim has finally been backed. As I said, I will wait for another seven days for that to happen.--R8R (talk) 21:52, 22 July 2019 (UTC)

Hassium

Thanks for the notice. I was, in fact, writing a reply for a discussion on that article's talk page when I first saw this notification (to me, that was yesterday's night). If the matters at any point seem too complicated, please don't hesitate to ask.--R8R (talk) 12:54, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Thanks R8R, this is a complex subject and it's important to be correct, so please feel free to fix any silly errors I make! :) I do have one question: is the article in British Oxford spelling (as I've assumed; we have synthesize not synthesise but favourable not favorable)? From its history I can see synthesize quite early but there's no '-our' spellings until a while later, so it could be either BrEng Oxford or American. Cheers, Baffle☿gab 20:52, 15 August 2019 (UTC)

Okay, I'll make sure to check after you to make sure :) As for spellings, it is currently a matter of debate whether there has been an established version of English at any point in the past; if it has, then it must have been AmE, whereas if it has not, then we're free to choose and I propose we use the choice of the main author, who uses BrE normally. I will check the latest standing claims on the issue and report back to you by the end of the weekend.--R8R (talk) 15:47, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

Not a problem; I'll probably finish it tonight but it will be easy enough for you to convert the spellings. You might want to add {{Use American English}}, {{Use British English}} or {{Use British (Oxford) English}} to the top when you decide to avoid future misunderstandings. Thanks for your reply. Cheers, Baffle☿gab 23:41, 16 August 2019 (UTC)

then we're free to choose and I propose we use the choice of the main author wtf. Are you still wrinting this, R8R? And then complain that I do not read and reply to your posts?

re Baffle gab1978: weird that you start this discussion at a user's talkpage, while you surely know that the discussion about this ENGVAR is matured at the talkpage (I pinged you). Why didn't you join that talk, while clearly having opinions & impressions & edits? I feel disappointed. -DePiep (talk) 20:56, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

Yes. As I said, I still have not checked the revisions you provided (I'll try to do it today). I'm sorry it's taking me so long; I have gotten sick and I've been hanging at home since last Saturday, only leaving it for another visit to a doctor. This would, in theory, mean that I have lots of spare time to put this discussion to a resolution, but as I said, I am actually sick, so simple things like this can also be a little too much. I was better once, on Wednesday, and I started to write a reply, in the process of which I intended to familiarize with your arguments and evaluate them. I got to the point B and I lost my progress since then (damn it). So as of the time being, I still have not read your message in its entirety (sorry), I am definitely planning to do so and I will only act after that. I, in fact, suggested what you quoted of me as a case-specific scenario, not as the inevitable course for the future action.

Baffle gab1978 is from GOCE, whose assistance I asked for in preparation of the FAC. I left a request at the appropriate GOCE page (you can look up the archives if you want, I didn't mention anything ENGVAR-specific in the request). Baffle gab1978 is really outside of our discussion here, so please don't blame them for not being engaged properly.--R8R (talk) 09:37, 18 August 2019 (UTC)

Get well soon!

Very sorry to hear you've been ill! Hope you recover soon and in time to scold me about not finishing my part of the Al article yet. ^_^ I keep finding myself dissatisfied over and over with the mental ideas I have of how to do it – Al is in a pretty strange place on the periodic table (p-block, but noble gas core; not quite class A, not quite class B) like Be and a lot of obvious attempts like what I did for Si and Cl (and the really obvious Ca) don't quite do it justice. But I hope inspiration will strike soon. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 15:24, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for your concerns! But don't worry too much: the worst bits of this are behind, and I'm getting better and better. I'm very keen to finally spend some time in Wiki today or during the weekend. Also, in general, you can write to me on the talk page and I'll reply fairly fast, even if I'm not really available otherwise.

Damn it, Double sharp, is aluminium not done yet? :D I hope that does the scolding bit. You've surely noticed that I wasn't sincere at that, and that is because I understand the difficulty of this. If my recollection of events is correct, I tried to do the part on Physical properties myself, and my thinking was that we're dealing not just with an element at the beginning at the periodic table, but also such a special one, and we'd need more theoretical talk than, say, for a 4d element, and thus I arranged subsections in the unusual order that I used, going from more basic details to what is formed by those basics, and I tried to keep the connections of this theoretical talk going from a basic detail to its consequence in the text as well. I think this was not a bad strategy per se, but I wasn't satisfied with the result, and I figured this would require more creativity on this part, and I thought of you as of the perfect person who could provide this creativity, and that's when I called you into this. Naturally, I do want you to finally get through this, don't get me wrong, and I'm glad to learn that you are thinking about this. Maybe this little story of mine will help you with the inspiration. (I did some more recollection of events, and while this story isn't wrong, the idea of asking you with this had floated in my head for a few months by then. I recall thinking that you would improve on anything I had to say on either of those two topics, physical and chemical characteristics--R8R (talk) 09:09, 30 August 2019 (UTC)) Also, in general, I'll note that actual writing (not just planning on how to write) is also very helpful, because it spurs your thinking and gives you more and more down-to-earth (down-to-text, so to speak) ideas, which sometimes leads to some general big-scale ideas, I hope that'll help you with inspiration as well.

If you happen to need a second opinion during sketching, I'll be very glad to try to help you with that, but otherwise, don't let me stop you from enjoying yourself during this sketching. I do believe you can make it, so, best of luck with this!--R8R (talk) 08:52, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Well, trying to start with later sections gave me some inspiration for how to tackle this, so I think we'll probably be fine after all! ^_^ Basically it's just a combination of having few electrons for metallic bonding (like most main-group metals honestly) but not having incomplete shielding but being so small (hence polarising, Li⁺ and Be²⁺ have the same problem). I still need to add more stuff from Greenwood and Earnshaw to complete the lede of the "Chemistry" section but afterwards it should be OK. For compounds I plan to just follow their plan, but not get too bogged down in describing everything and saving reactions for the really important reagents (LiAlH₄, AlCl₃ off the top of my head). Double sharp (talk) 16:08, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for keeping me updated! If you want me to take a closer look at what you have, just let me know when you're ready. I have examined your draft earlier today, but I will hold my comments for when you ask for them (oh, and by the way, please feel free to comment on every other section of the article when you feel like it). In general, it looks promising so far. Just wanting to make sure, and this is a response to this message rather the the draft itself, that the point is (this is not necessarily correct, but I figured this and it makes more sense to me this way; again, you have the final say) to show more properties or aluminum in general. It's not like I'm asking you to escape the compounds, I'm most certainly not, just don't forget this (and this is not to say you are not good at it so far, either). See, for instance, Lead#Chemistry, which sort of has the lead paragraphs for both Chemistry in general, and Inorganic (and even one lead-like para for Organic). Does this structure look good? (You don't have to replicate it, it's just food for thought.)--R8R (talk) 14:03, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, as it happens I started transferring some of the stuff to the main aluminium page already, and I noticed you had some good material there already (because I paused writing Isotopes with a distinct memory that you'd already done the important thing), so I thought perhaps tagging some of it on to the main structure would work and tried it out. As for chemistry – the way I did it for the next element silicon last year might have a case of TMI for the general reader. ^_^ Pb has some nice lead-like paragraphs indeed (heh), but I think Al might be better organised some other way as there is basically only one oxidation state. Also if I went for simple compounds I notice that while AlH₃ is the conceptually simplest compound in practice you use LiAlH₄, which seems a not ideal one to start with, so I think I'll switch G&E's organisation to put halides first, then hydrides. Then I'd go oxides/hydroxides, chalcogenides, pnictides (because of III–V semiconductors we must at least devote a bit of space to that), and then organometallics. So it'd be more like the Si organisation, well maybe without coming over as TMI (Nergaal called it "rather dense even for chemists" back in October 2017, LOL!). Double sharp (talk) 15:04, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Perhaps I should've pointed more specifically what parts of it I had in mind. You know, my thinking is, each article on an element is an article on an element, and thus should be focused on the element itself and its properties and effects it has in compounds, not the compounds themselves. That's why that article has its "lead" paragraphs for Chemistry, Inorganic, Lead(II), and even two leading sentences for Lead(IV). It seems to me that this is closer to a story of the element itself; I suppose that the big story of compounds is somewhat outside of the main story of the element. I even thought of getting rid of compounds altogether (that's exactly why the section is called Chemistry and not, say, Chemistry and compounds), but in the end, I figured that's a step too far. Still, I do think this general talk is important and this should be the main focus: how aluminum is both pre- and post-transition, how it is similar to beryllium because of the diagonal relationship, stuff like that. And that's what I was asking you to consider, not necessarily the structure itself.

Again, the decision is up to you, and I'm not asking you to go in a way you wouldn't want to go. I am asking you only to consider it but I think you might find a lot of interesting stuff down this road.--R8R (talk) 16:06, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

I think we are in agreement, so I'll keep going. ^_^ I only meant that for Al, discussing compounds by oxidation state like what was done for Pb doesn't make sense as there's only one, so I'd use different breaks to make better lede paragraphs. Double sharp (talk) 14:14, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Comparing with Pb, I think the current structure we already had is on the right track, and I've just been expanding some things. And I've also been trying to make everything seem relevant to the story of the element; amphoterism is for sure OK, fluorides will surely have to link to production, but even monohalides have gotten a tidbit now. (Chlorides will surely mention Friedel-Crafts). BTW, I also noticed that you really need a serif font for the formulae of aluminium iodides. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 15:45, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Chemistry section

Done apart from organometallics... Double sharp (talk) 07:10, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

...and I made a short organometallic section that mostly followed what was already there but cited it to reliable sources. We already have a main organoaluminium compound article, so we should be fine. (I guess we could argue that AlH₃ and LiAlH₄ should be under inorganic but the latter is most useful in organic chemistry as a reducing agent.) Double sharp (talk) 08:57, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Glad to hear this! Do you want me to take a closer look already?

Also, when you're done, please give the rest of the article a scrupulous look. I'd love you to both familiarize with the article more closely as well as to hear some feedback from you on what you think could be improved still. And after that, we still have a lead section to write.--R8R (talk) 16:59, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Certainly, you may give comments now! And I will take a look at the rest of the article too. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 12:40, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Name of tennessine: postscript

The Polish Chemical Society has made official: nihon, moskow, tenes, oganeson. (Which is consistent with how Polish usually names elements, dropping not only "-ine" but also "-ium" suffixes. Probably not that new, as the page was moved on 20 June this year.) The Russian Wikipedia article is still at ru:Теннессин, citing JINR (which used this form); so I suspect you were right in saying that JINR is in fact in charge of this. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 04:06, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

You know what, according to the Great Russian Encyclopedia, there is a Russian Chemical Society nowadays, and it stems from the one in whose journal Mendeleev published his first "experiment," as he titled it. I do not, however, doubt that if they had to do anything with anything they took the spelling from the Russian co-discoverers of the element. It could possibly be that an element would change its spelling under pressure from those who are interested in it (like the change from aluminium to aluminum in the United States) if there's a good reason to do so, but I don't see one here. Maybe in 30 years people will judge otherwise, just like when астатин became астат.--R8R (talk) 13:41, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

It's mostly matter of peevish consistency, to be honest. ^_^ It appears that some languages want the halogens to be consistent and some don't really care: as you say, perhaps some might make the changes for Ts later, as happened for At. (Both make sense as while Ts is in the halogen group it ought not to behave like one.) For example, Czech only adds -in for tennessin, leaving it off the others (fluor, chlor, brom, jod, astat are just like Polish), but Slovak leaves it off all six: (fluór, chlór, bróm, jód, astát, tenés). But I am most impressed by Hungarian, which has fluor, klór, bróm, jód, but asztácium and tennesszium with the metallic suffix of vanádium (and indeed At and Ts are predicted to be metals)! Alas, we are stuck with the "stone" radical for astatine and tennessine just like for iodine in Chinese: I, At, and Ts are 碘 diǎn, 砹 ài, 鿬 tián (if that shows up as a blank square as it does on my computer, it's supposed to look like ). Similarly Og is stuck with the "gas" radical in Chinese; metals, including Nh, Fl, Mc, and Lv, have the "metal" radical instead. Japanese simply transliterates the names of At and Ts straight from English (with "-ine"), while F, Cl, Br, I have names using native characters that reflect meaning for Cl and Br and pronunciation for F and I: 弗素 fusso, 塩素 enso ("salt element"), 臭素 shūso ("stinky element"), 沃素 yōso, アスタチン asutachin, テネシン teneshin. (But the characters in F and I are not common and are often spelt out explicitly with katakana as フッ素 and ヨウ素 respectively.) Double sharp (talk) 14:39, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for this response. I originally didn't respond because I didn't know what I could give back to this and whether I should at all, but I think I have two comments about this:

I am curious about Czech and Slovak. I'm not much of a Slavistics expert, but I've heard that the two are mutually intelligible (Czechoslovakia was once deemed a thing for a reason), and I am surprised to see them display different morphologies here.

Re Asian languages: I am most certainly grateful for the etymological bits, because I don't speak any of these languages one bit, but I've heard during the course of Russian last year that Chinese is principally different from the European languages as there is much less morphology and that in our European terms, a Chinese text could be described as many stems rather than a coherent text with clear delineations between, say, nouns and verbs, and our lecturer mentioned to us an example of her trying to translate a sentence from Chinese, and there was a problematic phrase which she tried to translate, and her Chinese student told her that her attempt was close enough but not really reflective of that blurriness of the original Chinese phrase between those parts of speech, and it took her quite a while to get a good approximation of that, and when she did tell us what it was, I was really amused by this. (I hope that as a speaker of Chinese, you can confirm what I heard there!) You know, over the last few years I gained good appreciation of history, and eventually, via this, a good appreciation of other cultures. Whereas I always thought of China very respectfully as a civilization as old and as advanced, I thought of them of so to speak a different planet, and mentally distanced myself from them. I still do think of China as of a different planet, but I've gotten a genuine interest in it, and I'd love to get to learn about them eventually (or maybe East Asia in general: Japanese is also an option, and I could finally watch some anime in original! To do that, the only thing that's left, apart from learning Japanese, is to get appreciation for anime) and the same applies to the other regions of the world as well. On that note, it's a shame we don't have much written historical evidence in, say, Swahili. This appreciation for history also manifests itself in Wikipedia in that I am curious to look after different histories of elements; without it, we wouldn't have the history of aluminium FA. (On this note now, @ComplexRational: I am deeply sorry that I can't find too much time for Wikipedia to clear the current Wiki backlog and really get back to editing. The current curriculum turned out to be much less comfortable for me than I expected, and I am afraid it may be that I'll have to postpone history of the periodic table until after this semester is over. I do want to get to it eventually though, so please don't lose your hope on me with that just yet.)

Don't worry too much. This semester will be quite heavy for me as well, so my work may be reduced to the FAC for island of stability (after the PR is finished) and maintenance/patrol. I'll see what I can compile, though, for history of the periodic table, and I'll probably still do smaller-scale article work during calm periods. ComplexRational (talk) 20:29, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Now that all of that is said, I do appreciate this insight into this niche question, because I find myself quite in the niche of those people who would find this interesting. Thank you very much!--R8R (talk) 19:53, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, Ts is a pretty newly named element, discovered and named after Czechoslovakia broke up; perhaps the Czechs and Slovaks made their own independent decisions on it?

Chinese grammar is a bit hard to describe, but WHAAOE. (The lede even showcases why it's hard to describe in Western terms; it mostly starts by talking about what it does not contain.) ^_^ We do have different parts of speech, like nouns and verbs, although it's not always clear what a "word" is. I wonder if this may have been about Classical Chinese, where there is great flexibility for using one as another. (We memorise some Classical Chinese poems but can't write in it and need vernacular explanations: it's approximately as to modern vernacular Chinese as Ancient Greek is to Modern Greek. It was the literary language till around 1919 even though it was the language of Chinese literature from about the 5th century BC to the 3rd century AD! And it was used in Japan, Korea, and Vietnam, too. Hopefully this state of affairs also interests you. ^_^) Double sharp (talk) 19:54, 1 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, that must be; still, that's strange. This is especially interesting given that unlike with Yugoslavia (another project of creating a greater Slavic nation), the Slovaks were not actively pressing to separate themselves for the Czechs or vice versa (and in the former Yugoslavia, even Montenegro is inventing its own language and got itself this fancy red-and-golden flag to be as not Serbian as possible).

Well, the point that I've heard was centered on the idea that Chinese essentially has no morphology; even what I read to be suffixes and prefixes in Chinese grammar seem to be different words that seem to be more conveniently translated as morphemes, but that they are not, are they? And I certainly wouldn't think of Russian as of a language where the exact divisions between verbs and nouns are distinct, but the lecturer still managed to do it, and that really amazed me, because I didn't expect her to be able to make it in the first place. (I wish I remembered what it was.) English, for instance, displays more morphology, though it's not perfect, either: if you didn't speak the language and merely knew the basics, could you really guess which part of speech the word "friend" is? (And in the contemporary Facebook era, the answer isn't even particularly clear anymore.) I suppose the Slavic languages must be the most advanced of the three major European families in that respect, but I've heard Finnish and Hungarian outperform them still.

Very interested about the ancient language surviving for so long. If my understanding is correct, then the only similar case I can think of is Arabic, which is also taught in the grammatical norms of the 7th century, the language of the final prophecy. To translate this onto Europe, I also always thought that Shakespeare was such a big deal for the English language because he was the first major poet to write in English, rather than in Latin, which was the written language of the time; there are must be similar vibes here with how Latin was in Europe? Also, if you're interested, Russia's Shakespeare in that regard is Alexander Pushkin, who was the first major poet to write in Russian, as opposed to the literary language of the day which is now known in English as Old Church Slavonic. And to continue this line of national poets, I know Ukraine's is Taras Shevchenko. (I also suppose Germany's is Goethe, but he seems to fall out of the line? Written German has been a thing since Martin Luther translated bible into German, and it is the dialect of his hometown that became the base for the Hochdeutsch of the present day for this very reason. Could it really be that nobody wrote poetry in German for such a long time?) But I digress.

Very curious about China's influence on neighboring peoples. I did know that China has always been the center of the Eastern world (which is evident in things like Japan being the land of the rising sun because it is east from China) and that is because the Chinese had such a deep culture that nobody could resist their influence. I also read that China had been conquered many times and it was because of its rich culture that the conquerors naturalized and became indistinguishable from the rest of the Chinese in a few generations. In Russian, we often call China Поднебесная, which roughly translates to "[the empire] under the skies," which says a lot about it.

I hope I've made the proper impression that your message was interesting to me, because that it was. Thank you very much for sharing.

But also. I'm not sure if I ever asked you this, and if I did, I forgot the answer, sorry :( How is it exactly that you learned so many languages, even if not all to the level of fluency? Around three months ago, I discovered Duolingo and nu spreek ik een beetje Nederlands, but presumably your method is a different one?--R8R (talk) 19:00, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

Well, I am admittedly speculating here, but even if the two languages are not trying to alienate themselves from each other, having two different countries must surely mean that sometimes they will just make separate decisions. I'm aware of some of the linguistic alienation some Slavic languages have been engaging in. ^_^ In fact, something I found out that might interest you for lead: at Lead#Confusion with tin and antimony, you mentioned the pair of cognates olovo (Czech) and олово (Russian), where the first means Pb and the second means Sn. Now, in Polish, Sn is cyna and Pb is ołów (the first comes from Middle High German according to Wiktionary); in Russian, Sn is олово and Pb is свинец. So, what happens in between? There are two Belarusian Wikipedias: one follows the Belarusian orthography reform of 1933 (which is still in force), while the other uses the pre-reform orthography of 1918. Usually, when Russian and Polish differ, the first is closer to Russian and the second is closer to Polish (e.g. Polish usually uses soft L in foreign borrowings, where Russian uses hard L, and the two orthographies of Belarusian differ in this way). The result is completely predictable: the 1933 Belarusian Wikipedia calls Sn волава and Pb свінец, and the 1918 Belarusian Wikipedia calls Sn цына and Pb волава, so apparently the meaning of the word волава depends on who you are talking to. As for Ukrainian Wikipedia, it throws its hands up in the air and titles the article on Sn uk:Станум (from the Latin stannum)! (If Google Translate has not led me astray, apparently Ukrainian has used both цина and олово for Sn; apparently both свинець and оливо have been used for Pb according to what I can make of their article on Pb, uk:Свинець, which leads of by calling it by the Latin name плюмбум.)

As for Chinese, I think this book review hits the nail on the head: "In Chinese the morpheme mostly corresponds to an orthographic character (a single syllable), and there is no apparent distinction between roots and affixes. Thus, Chinese presents a special problem: the notion of the word is very hard to define, and without it there is no way to study derivation or inflection...." In fact, it goes on to note that it was not until the early 20th century that Chinese had a word (heh) for the Western concept of a "word"! I've heard the same thing about the declensions of Hungarian and Finnish (in particular, I'd heard of Finnish grammar as an inspiration for Tolkien's constructed language of Quenya, or High-Elvish; I used to have a level-3 Babel box for Quenya on my userpage ^_^, but that was something of a relative 3, because while I could certainly write in it for fun with the aid of the resources of Ardalambion, it's not actually that easy to use to describe most things due to its not-quite-big-enough vocabulary, so it was more of a 1 by the standards of a natural language with really no hope of getting beyond it or maybe 2 since Tolkien is dead. So, while I still adore Tolkien, I let it go back down to 0 as it is frankly not very useful. ^_^)

Yeah, I think the use of Latin was somewhat similar. Both Latin and Classical Chinese were the languages for the elite to use and display their learning, and the displacement by the vernacular did not come easily. Then again, Latin has many descendants which are standard languages (Italian, French, Portuguese, Spanish, Romanian); Chinese has many varieties (not mutually intelligible), but written vernacular Chinese is based on Mandarin and is the form everyone learns for writing and speaking at school. There were earlier English writers than Shakespeare; Geoffrey Chaucer is often called the father of English literature. Though, mind you, he wrote in Middle English (Shakespeare is early modern English); you may look at Geoffrey Chaucer#English (his original and a modern English translation side by side) and see how much you understand without peeking. ^_^ Shakespeare has his status because he was a really great writer and dramatist, AFAIK. Often the "biggest" national poet is not the earliest (the Poles have Mickiewicz, but before him was also Kochanowski). I think the article's choice of Du Fu, Li Bai, and Lu Xun for three Chinese national poets is very good! (The first two were 8th-century contemporaries and friends; the last is 20th century. Of course the first two are Classical Chinese poetry, but this is still considered to be part of the Chinese literary tradition.) I see German literature shows many before Goethe, too; so it's not always true that the national poet is among the first to choose to write in the vernacular! What you mention about China is also completely right. ^_^

For me, English and Chinese were native (plus schooling, of course). I also took French as an extra language at school. The others I learnt mostly out of interest. I learnt some German because I love classical music and so many composers were German (so I learnt a lot from the poetic texts used by Schubert and Schumann for their songs, which unfortunately are sometimes a bit dated in vocabulary ^_^); Polish followed similarly because of Chopin. Although I have not studied either formally, I have also been to both Germany and Poland enough times to have been able to get more practice; Mussorgsky has given me some interest in Russian as well, but I haven't been to Russia for more than a few days yet. I have been to Japan as well, but I have not had quite as much interest in learning Japanese: it is pretty different from the others I know and there's not quite as much content in it I would like to see (the big motivation for learning languages, always). (Manga/anime is nice but I have mostly read what I wanted to know about it in English...I suppose for me it would mostly be useful for knowing more about the wonderful old Japanese chess variant of chu shogi, as Google Translate was still not so good for Japanese the last time I tried it.) Italian I only know a little (Mozart opera libretti in Italian is my main source of interest in it), but since it is also a Romance language like French and it is used for many fixed musical expressions it is not so hard to pick some up. But in general, I learnt most of these languages when I had more time to do this; now it is a bit more difficult to get the time to use and practice them! When I get more time, I would like to add Russian to the list (unfortunately, my pronunciation of it keeps getting unduly influenced by my currently greater knowledge of Polish T_T, but I'm sure I'll be able to fix it with time and practice when I get the chance). Double sharp (talk) 21:22, 9 October 2019 (UTC)

@Double sharp:

Different decisions can indeed occur, sure. But if it's that, it takes by surprise, that's all. It could also be not the decision not of the language per se, but rather that of the very few people who actually have anything to do with these elements, similarly to how I think JINR de facto regulates this in Russian, even if not voluntarily.

Yes, you actually did find something interesting, thank you very much! I couldn't believe at first that an orthography reform would change how an element is named, but upon more consideration, it makes sense given the historical context. So, originally, communism was seen as the future world order that all people would enjoy; in particular, it was seen that all workers would unite and this would necessitate more similarities between various peoples. So originally, there even was a plan to switch all languages of the Soviet Union to the Latin alphabet (many smaller languages, in fact, had been switched, particularly those using the Arabic and Persian writing). As the time progressed, the idea of socialism in one country prevailed, and the languages were switched to the writing of the country's main language, Russian (so some languages were even switched twice; one example is the Azeri language); again, the idea is to increase similarity between various people, which would both make them feel they're on the same team and making management of the omnipotent state easier. Along the same lines, a reform was designed for Belorussian to make to more like Russian; that's that 1933 reform. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, the Byelorussian SSR (a member of the United Nations) appealed to the UN that the country should no longer be referred to as a "Soviet Socialist Republic" and that everyone should instead use a localization of the Belorussian word, "Беларусь." This request was granted, and soon enough, the change became effective in all of the English language, since English is a UN official language (although I've seen in an American diplomatic document of 1993 use the spelling "Byelorus", and there were a few other variations over the 1990s). Like English, Russian is also an official UN language, but unlike English, Russian has a deep history of referring to the land, and the debate over whether should use "Белоруссия" (the traditional Russian name) or "Беларусь" (the Belorussian one) that continues to this day (in ru.wiki, for instance: one, >_Беларусь two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen; there also was an Arbitration Committee ruling on this one, and the decision was enshrined in the official ru.wiki policy). This, curiously enough, was not universal; German, for instance, goes with "Weißrussland" to this day. The new Belarus was originally a monolingusitic state, and they returned to the 1918 orthography, assuming that the 1933 reform was a subjugation of Belorussian. In general, this early Belarus, like many other early post-Soviet states, had a great nationalistic element in it, and as you may imagine, this did not sit particularly well with those who liked the old days of the communist rule, those who spoke Russian (who were by no means a minority), and everyone was displeased with that this new independent Belarus was in an economic malaise (just like the rest of the former Soviet states). In 1995, under the new president Alexander Lukashenko, Belarus changed its course; the people approved the change of the national flag back to that of the Byelorussian SSR, minus the hammer and sickle and plus a small national ornament, and Russian was given a status equal to that of Belorussian, as well as orientation towards Russia rather han the West. To this day, Russian continues to be more common than Belorussian in Belarus. From what I've read on Belorussian nationalism (which isn't much, I admit), a big share of those using Belorussian does it to make a form of statement. I would assume that this decision affects your thinking, and it may be useful to have in mind when reading pre-reform Belorussian Wiki. (By the way, I use "Belorussian" instead of "Belarusian" because the built-in spellcheck in my "English (United States)" language pack for Google Chrome assumes that the former is a correct word, and the latter isn't. Since I suppose this is not a political decision on the part of Google, I assume that this is the more natural form in English right now.)

And the story with Ukraine is similar, even if with some differences: the sense of Ukrainian culture being distinct from Russian was better established than in the case of Belarus, and for this reason a similar reform of Ukrainian was effectively rejected; so much so, in fact, that it achieved opposite of what intended to: the differences between Ukrainian and Russian actually widened as a result, because people would adopt words from Polish just to distance Ukrainian from Russian. This was not universal; in fact, a huge part of the Ukraine spoke Russian back in day. My understanding of it is that back in the tsarist Russia, it was assumed the were three kinds of Russian people: the Great Russians (the ones we call simply Russians nowadays), the White Russians (the word "Belarus" literally translated to "White Rus"), and the Little Russians. Many of these Little Russians would reject the idea of being a kind of Russians, hence the rise of the Ukrainanness, but not all. The Bolsheviks drew the border between Russia and the Ukraine generally along the last tsarist census, where people were counted as either Great Russians or Little Russians, but not as Ukrainians, and the former Little Russians were counted as Ukrainians during the first Soviet census. However, this didn't make them all Ukrainian in one day, and many people who didn't think of themselves as of Ukrainians now officially were, and this would manifest itself later in the political division that the post-Soviet Ukraine would experience in the first couple of decades over whether it should align itself with the West or with Russia (although this was by no means the only such factor). At the same time, many Ukrainians who did think of them that were happy with being able to protect their language, and this, in fact, became an important (even if by no means the first) episode of the establishment of the Ukrainian identity as separate from the Russian one despite being largely unknown in Russia. When the Soviet Union collapsed, the Ukrainian SSR (also a UN member in its own merit) asked the UN to not call them an SSR any longer, and also to drop the article from "the Ukraine" because they felt like this undermines the idea of Ukraine being a country in its own merit, rather than a province of Russia (the word "Ukraine" did, in fact, originate with the meaning of "borderland," even if at the time, it was a borderland of Poland and it appeared in opposition to the Polish trying to polonize the parts of Rus---I use the word Rus because that's what the people associate themselves with---around Kiev it had. After Russia reconquered Kiev from Poland in 1654, people eventually figured out there came to be differences between had been Russia and the region around Kiev over the four centuries that the people under different political control, but this only actively manifested itself clearly in the 19th century. Nevertheless, the meaning of the "borderland" soon indeed changed from "borderland of Poland" to "borderland of Russia"). English quickly followed (sort of: mostly yes, but "the Ukraine" is still to be heard sometimes to this day), and you would think that there wouldn't be such a problem in Russian, which doesn't have articles, but you'd be wrong: the question here is whether "in Ukraine" should be "в Украине" ("в" is "in," you would use that with any country) or "на Украине" (just like in "на окраине" ("in the borderland"); again, the historical usage supports this version). Again, German, still not a UN official language, happily ignores this and goes with "die Ukraine." Again, this new Ukraine was a monolingual state in an attempt to establish a new common Ukrainian identity; this again, would be met with resistance by some, except the distribution between the Ukrainians and the Russians was less uniform, and it was easy to see which regions protested the most. The most noticeable protests were in Crimea, which most certainly did not expect to find itself in a monolinguistic Ukraine, and there, a political crisis broke out in 1992 (unfortunately, there seems to be no detailed description of it anywhere in en.wiki for me to link to); during it, apart from other things, Crimea adopted a flag that had stripes of blue, with, and red, same colors as the Russian flag (not a coincidence). Even later, many continued to be displeased with the push for the Ukrainian language in the predominantly Russian-speaking region, but this was also true for a number of other ones as well. Again, a pro-Russian candidate that promised to give Russian a full status, Viktor Yanukovich, won a presidential election in 2004, but here, it was alleged that the election had been rigged (unfortunately, I can offer no opinion on whether the allegations were correct); a street revolution broke out, and there was a revote, which was won by his rival Viktor Yushchenko. Yanukovich won presidency in the next election in 2010; now, the linguistic question was to be solved by not giving Russian a status equal to Ukrainian country-wide but allowing regions to make it official at the regional level. During the course of his presidency, another street revolution broke out; long story short, Yanukovich eventually fled, and the first thing the parliament did after that was to repeal his language law; the reaction to this was mass protests in the eastern parts of the country, and so acting president did not sign this, seeing the reaction of the affected regions, but it was deemed unconstitutional later anyway. So, this is how language shapes politics in the country; but the thing is that this does not work the other way around, at least, not nearly as intensely. Despite the post-Soviet Ukrainian history being so intense with the language policy, there hasn't been nearly as much of change of the linguistic composition of the country, although there seem to be reports on the prestige of Ukrainian elevated in the recent years in the central parts of the country. The interesting part about the day-to-day language policy of the country is the the western parts speak predominantly Ukrainian, and there is no question of what language to speak, and it is that part of the country that is calm about its linguistic status; however, as you move further and further east the country, there tends to be more and more Ukrainian speakers who are generally discontent with Russian language around and pushing arguments like "you're in Ukraine, learn Ukrainian, the language of the land." The curious part about this is that many of the new converts to Ukrainian try to make their Ukrainian as less like Russian as they can, and I found it rather curious that I can actually sometimes understand Ukrainian better than I thought I could from those people who don't have to prove anything to themselves or to the people outside (it's still very difficult, though). On the other hand, many Ukrainian bilinguals are more likely to use Russian on the Internet because there is more information in it, and I suppose this also has an effect on what you may find in uk.wiki; I suspect (though am by no means certain) this has to do with Latin terms in their element articles as well.

Phew. I can spiral away far when talking about these things. I hope you've found this interesting. Actually, please tell me if you have: it came out unexpectedly long and took me more time than I had expected it would have, so if you didn't, I'll rather not bore you with this sort of stuff, at least not at this length.

Thank you for the explanation. I saw the "the was no such thing as 'word' in Chinese until the 20th century" in Chinese grammar, but now I see how exactly that is. But how do the parts of speech work then in Chinese? Character-wise? Upon some inspection, I learned there are "function words" and "content words" in Chinese, but this notion of "words" confuses me. Is the concept of parts of speech even a Chinese one, or are the Western linguists merely trying to explain the different language in terms familiar to them? From what I found over the internet, the latter seems to be the case.

Thank you for casting light onto my ignorance as well. Chaucer was hard to understand! I think I may have understood a bit more if there hadn't been a translation to peek at, but I didn't understand many parts, peeked at the translation, and thought, "ah, so that's what it was." I had heard that Shakespeare is admired because of his great works, great per se, even without any additional boosts to their greatness, though I am glad to know that he wasn't the first to write in English and that English literature had emerged before him. You know, I am actually tempted to ask you for a good classical Chinese work of writing I could read (obviously, in translation); I have only read one Chinese book in my life, The Art of War by Sun Tzu. It was an interesting one, I thought, because while it gave some applicable advice (like assume the higher position in the landscape in a fight), and a few philosophical ones (like over when and why one should and should not fight), it also often resorted to spiritual categories (which resolved to statements like "in a fight, the winner is not the one who has better arms or more men, but rather one who understands why he wants to win, understands his soldiers and his enemy, understand the landscape, and so on"; sometimes this spiraled out to abstractions but I came to think that if you really do spend much time thinking about these abstractions, it can actually enormously help in a fight, but this is not guaranteed, and you will simply be labeled as not having thought well). This is not something I had previously seen in literature, because even though I may be skeptical because of that last bit, the book does get me thinking. So maybe this change of perspective would indeed be nice to widen my horizons. Though I would love to read anything you think there is to read first and foremost. I'm afraid, however, that I haven't been reading much this year, and I've got a small queue of books that are yet to be read, and I'm just now picking reading back up, so let me get back to it in a few months.

Unfortunately, I don't know what a Polish accent sounds like, but I do know that their language often features hushing sounds; in reference to this, Mikhail Lomonosov condescendingly called Polish a "snake language" (though you may want to know or remember that Russia and Poland had had a long history of disliking each other by then; as you can see, things didn't get better after him, either). I was, of course, joking about Japanese and anime, though I think it may not be that bad of an idea, actually, because such people are out there, and you can find them and maybe even befriend them, which is certainly nice for a language practice. And maybe they're just fun people to know. I've seen an advertisement of an anime club at our university; I wonder what people out there are like and if they match the stereotypes about anime fans. I am regretful about being unable to practice my German, actually, that concerns me more.--R8R (talk) 12:13, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I just looked at the size difference between revisions: whaaaaa--R8R (talk) 12:14, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Don't know about anyone else, but I found your 20K+ contribution interesting. Part of it is an application of "a language is a dialect with an army and navy", but far more than that. It does illustrate how central language figures into individual and group identity. YBG (talk) 21:50, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

I find it immensely interesting as well. ^_^ Unfortunately, I do not have time today for an equally long response, but I plan on giving one that does justice to your contribution sometime in the near future! For now I'll just give recommendations for Chinese literature: I have already mentioned two great poets (Li Bai and Du Fu). The obvious recommendations for novels are the Four Great Classic Chinese Novels. (We had to read excerpts at school of some of them; I have not actually read any of them fully, shame on me, but there are tons of adaptations around of all four. BTW, they actually already mix classical and vernacular Chinese, to various extents; they played a big role in making vernacular literature become popular and legitimate, although the final toppling of classical Chinese as the literary high language had to wait for a few more centuries.) If you want something shorter than that: I liked the vernacularised excerpts of Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio that they gave us, and it seems from the Wikipedia article that there is a really great Russian translation by Vasily Mikhaylovich Alekseyev. ^_^

P.S. I write "Belarusian" instead of "Belorussian" just because (1) it's a regular adjective formation from the current English name of the country, (2) my browser doesn't flag it as a spelling mistake, (3) that's where our article for the language is, and (4) I have seen "Belarusian" a lot more than "Belorussian" in recent English texts, actually. I suspect (1) is the main reason for this state of affairs, plus the fact that the Belarusian authorities seem to be using this form in English. Double sharp (talk) 22:23, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

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Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

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Reversion on Hassium

Seeing as how if osmium is the densest metal we know of, wouldn't Hassium be even denser? I do have a website I got it off of but I don't know if its good.....UB Blacephalon (talk) 15:08, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

I'll try to give you a comprehensive response on this one but it may take me a few days to find the time to write it down. I should be able to respond by the end of the week.--R8R (talk) 15:51, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. I wanna major in chemistry but I'm still learning about how the compounds work. If you could help me that work be great! UB Blacephalon (talk) 16:18, 3 December 2019 (UTC)

So, here's the sentence from the contested edit, which I will add here for ease of reference:

It is predicted to be the densest metal in the world, mostly due to osmium's place on the hardness scale.

First of all, about the "predicted" part. One important part of Wikipedia is that all of its information should be accountable; that is, Wiki editors should not write their own information or findings (save for the merely trivial ones); there should always be a reference to an external credible source. In Wiki policy terms, that's called a reliable source. So, if you say that it is predicted that something, you should add a reference to that claim, and also ideally not to use "it is predicted," going instead for something like "German scientists Wilhelm Schumacher calculated that" (here's a relevant policy). This, however, is not meant to be idle bureaucracy and a particular discouragement of common people from editing, but rather aimed at making Wikipedia a more reliable source of knowledge, even if it is never to be used as the ultimate source for anything. One could simply write any nonsense and there has to be some sort of protection against that, so people organized themselves to have these rules. That's why I asked for a source in the first place.

So as a hypothesis, it is a fairly reasonable one, but it needs some actual calculations to back that up, and certainly to attribute that claim to. In our Haire source, densities for elements 104--118 are given at pages 1690 and 1724. That of hassium is indeed the highest. Citing that, one could call hassium the heaviest transactinide in period 7. If you add a reference for a work that contains densities for elements 87--103, you could say it is predicted to be the densest element in period 7. You probably won't be able to say that it is predicted to be the densest element of all for which such estimates have been made, as I think there have been some estimates for the transition metals in period 8 that have figures that trump hassium's 41 g/cm^3.

But all of this is not to mention that this had already been this sentence: "Hassium is expected to have a bulk density of 41 g/cm³ at standard pressure and temperature, the highest of any of the 118 known elements and nearly twice the highest density of an element observed to this day at 22.6 g/cm³."

Second, "in the world" may not be quite correct: there is probably zero hassium atoms in the world as of me writing this. Not to mention that this rather belittles the scope here, because the elements are not limited to the world: you may know, for instance, that the heat coming from the Sun is that released when (already very hot) hydrogen fuses to create helium; the released energy sustains the high temperature in the Sun that allows this fusion to keep going. Eventually, the star will run out of hydrogen and this fusion will stop; the Sun will die. And you need elements to describe how it lives and how it will die. (On a distantly related topic, if you happen to have spare fifteen minutes, I highly recommend The Last Question by Isaac Azimov.)

Third, "osmium's place on the hardness scale" doesn't have too much do it with density; otherwise, one would find diamond among the densest materials.

I am afraid I may be unable to really help you out with chemistry, but I would highly recommend this website. It's absolutely great if there's anything you don't understand so far. Although if anything there is hard to understand (which it shouldn't be), you can ask me a question about it, sure, but I can't commit to providing an immediate response.--R8R (talk) 19:07, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh, alright. Sorry I didn't get back to you when you wrote this, but I understand. I get that I do need to put more citations in, but the thing is, I'm not that great at coding. I only understand what Wikipedia does for me. When it comes to Hassium, it would make sense that Hassium would be the densest metals. If, like you said, a sun does supernova, Hassium atoms would appear for a short time. However, we don't know what isotope that would be, maybe even one scientists haven't discovered. Honestly, there wouldn't be any atoms, well not for long anyway, to be found. If Osmium is the naturally densest element in the earth and the trend continues (which i get it doesn't always do), then theoretically shouldn't it should be even denser than osmium?

And I guess it should be noted that when I said "hardness scale", I meant the density scale (I couldn't come up with the name).

I see more predicted stuff than anything else and it somewhat confuses me on whether it is confirmed or not. When I see "predicted" stuff, I think of unconfirmed info and if most of it is predicted, what are the facts about it? I don't think its clear enough but maybe that's just me. I get that it's hard to study due to its short half-life, but there's got to be some actual info about it other than things we can hypothesize about it.

I want to be a nuclear chemist or a scientist that does this kind of stuff. That's why I want to know the facts so badly because I find this kind of science fascinating, and if Wikipedia isn't reliable, how do we know what were looking at is true? If we have sources to cite our claims, wouldn't Wikipedia be reliable?

Thanks for the website! If my school computer allows it, I'll definitely check it out. And again, sorry for the late response! UB Blacephalon (talk) 16:43, 16 December 2019 (UTC)

I’m glad to be of assistance. I’ll try to give you a comprehensive response next week.--R8R (talk) 21:40, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

OK thanks! UB Blacephalon (talk) 12:47, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

(this absolutely slipped my mind, I'm very sorry. I'll try to write an answer in a few hours)--R8R (talk) 17:12, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

I was writing a reply and I lost it in the middle of writing. I'm sorry, I'll try to answer in early January then.--R8R (talk) 19:46, 30 December 2019 (UTC)

First of all, you don’t need to be able to code to add citations. When viewing an article (note this doesn’t work with talk pages yet), you have options “Edit” and “Edit source”. If you use the former, you’ll see a user-friendly interface, in which you can click or tap the button “Cite”; it should be simple from there.

Shouldn’t hassium theoretically be denser than osmium? The short answer is yes, it should; that’s what the expectations are. Again, we did mention back then that a predicted density of hassium is 41 g/cm^3, quite an increase from osmium’s 22.6 g/cm^3, and we do already mention now that hassium is expected to be the densest of the 118 elements.

Whether hassium would appear in an event of death of a star, I cannot tell, for I don’t know whether there are pathways that would lead us there and the possible yield of the intermediate reactions. My answer would be, “who knows.”

We do actually only know so much about hassium. There is a good reason why that section is titled “Predicted properties”: if we had enough actual data to write a section, of course, we wouldn’t need any predictions. But we don’t have it, and so we do need predictions. The yield of hassium generation is very small. The first chemical compound was only created only twenty years after the discovery, and generally, it’s chemistry that interests superheavy element researchers more. So once again, we do know very little. There are few confirmed predictions.

Is Wikipedia reliable? Mostly, but far from absolutely. People usually write Wikipedia in good faith here. But even those who do write in good faith and add sources can be wrong at times, because Wikipedia policy is that you cannot paraphrase the source too closely, and so this involves interpretation from the writer, who may misunderstand the source, especially if it’s on a complicated subject. I reckon this happened a couple of times to me. Not to mention that there is the “reliable source” standard, which, as you can imagine, exists for a reason, and not all sources meet that standard. And not even all sources considered reliable get things right, and a mistake there can be transferred to the article (I had a couple of such cases recently when writing history of aluminium).

More broadly, what is reliable? I have a few words to write about that, but either I’m going to switch to a laptop or write it later.—R8R (talk) 08:20, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

So, what can one rely on? Ideally, of course, you are expected to review each thing individually: see what data it is that supports it, how strong the evidence is, whether one could reproduce it, whether there are other possible explanations for your observations. That's the scientific answer. In reality, however, people tend to simplify things: you don't always have the time to check on everything that pops up in your life, but it's not just that. Scientists are people, too, and they get to not only make mistakes, but also to dismiss good ideas that are not trendy in science these days. Perhaps you've heard about Einstein, who invented an absolutely ground-breaking theory and it was quickly accepted; but it is just as often that worthy ideas do not get proper acceptance in science and fade away. Science often has a certain fashion in it. One thing about science is that you very often don't even have complete understanding of what's actually going on---and you often have to rely on your presuppositions to make any sense of it. This often leads to errors. One example is Lord Kelvin, whose biographer wittingly said of him, "during the first half of Thomson's career he seemed incapable of being wrong while during the second half of his career he seemed incapable of being right." Such mistakes happen to this day, and even predominant views in certain areas appear to me to have some gaps that require presuppositions to make anything resembling a complete picture, but these presuppositions come at the expense of actual knowledge which one would have to fill in yet. So to answer your question, don't say, "science says"; say, "evidence shows" (and think about the nature of that evidence and if that evidence is enough to make that conclusion). Trust what has this factual backing behind it. This may sound daunting because this is hard, very much so, in fact. At some point, almost all, if not completely all people completely give up on this or let something slip (because it is unbearably hard for a human being to have so much uncertainty around). Many intelligent people make terrible mistakes and are then unable to see them as such even in light of new evidence.

Perhaps one of the wisest things I ever heard was during the first lecture of a philosophy course, when the professor randomly asked one of the students about her opinion on the question of whether there should be a right for abortion for women. The student confidently replied that there should be such a right. Then the professor asked why she would even want that. And this question seemed to have never entered the head of the student and she couldn't get it out, saying that this was simply right. After her struggle to find an explanation, from time to time interrupted by the professor's critical questions on what was coming out as an attempt, the professor explained that she wasn't making a point against abortion, she simply selected a topic and pressed against the answer she received, and she would've done the same if the student had given her a different answer; the thing was that (and here comes the wisdom) one should always be able defend their opinion before they get to claim to have one. This works not only in philosophy, but also in science, and essentially everywhere---you'll be better off admitting you don't know something rather than saying you know something you don't. Try not assessing critically what you hear---it's often a great idea to take a note of that you've just read something, rather than to immediately embrace the ideas therein and wait if you'll see any further confirmations or contradictions of that. Even writing a good Wikipedia article sometimes requires editorship and choosing what otherwise reliable sources are to be trusted and which are not, not to mention any more complicated decisions.

It's simple and appealing to do so, but don't blindly trust anything. I hope I've given you a good impression of how difficult it is, but despite that, try to see where exactly the information comes from before making any conclusions.--R8R (talk) 20:10, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Regarding RIKEN's search for 119

Hora hora!

BTW, I need to get back to you on Talk:Hassium; you may expect a response shortly. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 11:50, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Great news! Thanks for sharing. (I must admit not immediately understanding the “hora hora” reference; I can only say it sounds like something from Oceania to me. Turns out there are a few places in New Zealand of that name and a Jewish dance. Most intriguingly, however, the first two Google results lead to Know Your Meme, but to my great disappointment, neither opens with the WiFi I’m currently using in the subway. I can’t help but wonder what it was precisely that you were referencing.)

There’s no need to hurry with hassium; take as much time as you need, I’m not really going to be around for another week or so anyway. If you do, however, happen to have the time, I’d rather suggest you help ComplexRational first by reviewing island of stability at the FAC. It would be such a shame if there simply wasn’t enough people to show up the the review.--R8R (talk) 21:56, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

It's just Japanese, originally: seems that the meme status came from...somewhere not very safe for work o_O, but it just means "hey", "look", that kind of thing to attract the listener's attention. Double sharp (talk) 05:08, 18 December 2019 (UTC)

It was rather funny to me in itself that the search for the origin of “hora hora” would bring me to a meme, and I laughed at that already, because I didn’t think of you as a particular fan of memes; I believe the memespeak goes, “a man of culture.” I was rather curious myself why the municipal WiFi wouldn’t allow me to see the meme thing. When I came home, of course, I’d try to check it out once more, and when I saw what I did, I burst in laughter, just because I was so confident you didn’t mean that but we ended up in this funny situation. The meme page, by the way, also explains that “hora” is that, a call for immediate attention. At least I see I wasn’t exactly wrong with my initial Oceania hunch given those hits from New Zealand.—R8R (talk) 03:01, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

And JINR too! Double sharp (talk) 16:07, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Oh yeah, it’s been in their plans for a while now. Very glad to hear they’re actually getting to it.—R8R (talk) 03:01, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Happy holidays!

Merry Christmas and a Prosperous 2020!

Hello R8R, may you be surrounded by peace, success and happiness on this seasonal occasion. Spread the WikiLove by wishing another user a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, whether it be someone you have had disagreements with in the past, a good friend, or just some random person. Sending you heartfelt and warm greetings for Christmas and New Year 2020. Happy editing, ComplexRational (talk) 01:10, 24 December 2019 (UTC) Spread the love by adding {{subst:Seasonal Greetings}} to other user talk pages.

Why, thank you! I see you already got one of this kind yourself, so I’ll have to restrain myself to a written response. Thank you and happy holidays for you, too!

But it’s not holidays for me just yet. We over here have working days all the way up to December 31 inclusive. Our Christmas is on January 7 because the Russian Orthodox Church still follows the Julian calendar. To oversimplify a bit, that is because it was the Bolsheviks who introduced the Gregorian calendar in Russia, and while the church has traditionally been second to the state, the church and the Bolsheviks were really hostile to one another, believing the other was a menace that was fooling the people and leading them right into a disaster, so this time the church didn’t follow the state policy and kept their calendar).

In fact, for this very reason, the religious celebration of Christmas was eventually abolished for half a century, and it was replaced by celebration of the New Year, which remains the main winter celebration in Russia to this day. I haven’t had the opportunity to learn if you’re the kind of person who is interested in history and customs of other countries, and I think it’s fine if you’re not, but if you are, I wrote to Double sharp, whom I believed to be such a person, a while ago about how this came to be, and so if you’re interested about that, you could read about it here. In general, I’ve acquired this interest in history just when I got to see the complexity of history of two actual contemporary events that both matter around in my country. And I tried to do those stories justice and actually understand the other side better, and the resulting complexity has so much intrigued me that I’m intrigued by this to this day and became more interested in what I don’t understand in general—open to broadening my horizons, if I am to add more color to this. I could tell you more, but again, I don’t know if you’re interested and I’d hate to be presumptuous. In fact, I’m telling you this rather than simply accept the good wish merely because I’d like to know if you’re interested about this sort of historic things I have described and possibly give you a concept of this perspective if you’re not. So I mean to get you something possibly interesting back, not at all to brush off your wish in any way.

So yeah, it’s not the holiday for me just yet. (I am, in fact, in Wiki for the last few weeks mostly when I’m traveling back home after a hard day, and even that is because I have no room for a book in my bag with how much I need to carry these busy days.) But it’s the good faith in this that matters, and it is certainly appreciated :) Once again, happy holidays! —-R8R (talk) 21:09, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

I am most certainly interested to hear more, so feel free to continue. It's always very enlightening for me to learn history and customs of other cultures; this sounds like a very complex story, and such stories that often answer (or at least try to answer) longstanding questions about the world while providing good food for thought and a very interesting conversation, so don't feel like any of this will fall on deaf ears. Actually, things like this are what have gotten me more interested in history in recent years, and I still have considerable gaps to fill; there's always something new to learn or a new story to be told. For that matter, I can relate in that I've been growing interested in topics I never would have thought about several years ago—broadening my horizons in hopes of better understanding the world.

In general, the stubbornness that leads to seemingly illogical things never ceases to amaze me—why would the Russian Orthodox Church want to remain (consistently) out of sync with the world, especially seeing how much has changed in only a few decades? At least New Year's is still January 1 and not January 14. However, at least for us, things go back to normal on January 2, so officially the festivities barely continue a week after Christmas and we don't get to celebrate all 12 days. For both of us, we just have to enjoy it while it lasts, and get back to studying once our schedules demand it (which for me will be soon after Christmas because I have some exams next month). Perhaps holiday traditions are growing less and less important in a world increasingly dominated by politics and business? ComplexRational (talk) 22:08, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

@ComplexRational: I'm sorry for not being able to read your original message correctly. As silly as it sounds, I somehow managed to misunderstand your message at first. I did not exactly understand what you meant by "feel free to continue" and what I could write after that, so I thought you meant you wanted me to expand on the point about the two events that made me interested in history. It was only the first message (at the length of 11k+ characters) when I realized that you might have meant something else (like about the actual Christmas, or maybe this is merely an abstract point to encourage me to write such things to you in general) and that it would not necessitate such lengthy writing. But since I had already started, I figured I'd have to write the story in full. There's a slight chance that you'll actually like the story (of 27k+ characters in total..I did say I can be wordy, didn't I?) and want me to write on the second event. But since I take it you didn't necessarily subscribe to this, I won't unless I hear from you you'd like me to.

So, to answer your actual questions. The answer for why the Russian Orthodox Church does thing its way despite the ever-changing world is in the name: it's orthodox. Since the church did not recognize the authority of the impious Bolshevik government, it had no incentive to follow their calendar. Now, I know changes are being discussed within the high clergy of the church (however, my knowledge on the subject is maybe two articles), but this does not seem to be the moment for big changes: not only is the church not keen to make big changes (being orthodox), but also the state policy is that Russia is to follow a traditionalist society model, and the church itself benefits from this traditionalism, because it is clearly in the national tradition. So it's not the time for any big reform from that perspective. I would also think that a reform might be needed if the position of the church within the society was being threatened, a reform may be needed then, but things are running relatively fine now, and there's no real discontent with this calendar mismatch by the common people (mostly because very few are actually invested into the church life or attend services), and there is no real pressing for modernization.

When I was a kid, there actually was a date called the Old New Year, and it was on January 13. It didn't feature any particular celebration, though, and it is essentially forgotten by now.

Also, I never heard about 12 days of Christmas in Russian; I learned about that from the American and British cultures.

I do think that people are getting more and more indulged in everyday problems to leave increasingly less room for ones that require you to take a step back, such as religion, and I believe that religion will in general become increasingly less important; this view is also shared by some individuals more credible in the area than myself, such as Pope Benedict XVI.--R8R (talk) 06:11, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Okay, so the section sort of split into two independent discussions and I will need to attend to both of them. I’ll start off by beginning to respond to you.

First of all, I do think that the discussion in DS’s talk page archives should be very interesting, so go ahead and give it a read. I think it’s there where you can get some good cultural context for how the New Year came to be the main celebration and what the new thinking of those times that never materialized and that is absent from anything resembling a large-scale discussion, and there’s more.

Second, I presume the logical place to continue would be to mention what those two events from contemporary history that drove me to consider history were. The first one was the war in Donbass. The simple thing would be to say that there are international borders that have to be respected, but stopping there would cut you short from understanding the conflict, how it came to be, and how, if at all, it could be resolved. I wrote a portion of the context on this page, just a few sections ago, about how many in the region feel affinity towards Russia—-in fact, if there was a referendum to be held today in Donbass on whether it should stay in Ukraine or go to Russia, there is no doubt to my mind that those who remain there today would choose Russia. However, the population of the territory now is something like a million people; in 2013, it was three million. Roughly speaking, one million people fled to Ukraine and one million fled to Russia. The million that fled to Ukraine is not likely to return in big numbers, and probably the same is true for the million that fled to Russia.

So while I could add some more details from the past history: how the geographical locations of Ukraine and Russia are responsible for a small difference between an average Ukrainian on one hand and an average Russian on the other (by the way, the average Belorussian would be on the second hand), about why Ukrainian and Russian have different words for “Russian,” how there almost was a Polish-Lithuanian-Ruthenian Commonwealth, what effect the annexation of western Ukraine in 1939 had on Ukraine, talk about the brief independence of Ukraine during Russian Civil War, once again mentioned the failed language reform of the Ukrainian language (you can find this a few sections above), and the post-WWII resettlement of the depopulated industrial region of Donbass and what effect it had on Ukraine, about the famine in 1932-33 and whether it was a genocide or not and what effect it had, and what the national policies towards the Ukrainians here were in imperial Russia and in the Soviet Union, (I hope I’ve given you by the now the impression that there is a lot of depth in this), I’ll focus here on the part that has to do with the recent events that made me learn about all of that stuff later. For the most of Ukraine’s post-Soviet history, there was a big East—West divide in Ukraine, evenly splitting the country into two; the eastern half sought alignment with Russia and, for the most part, spoke Russian, and the western half sought alignment with the EU and NATO and, for the most part, spoke Ukrainian, although the linguistic boundaries are not quite as certain. There were already grievances in the eastern half of the country in 2004, when the Orange Revolution, as it seemed to some, snitched the victory from the eastern candidate in the presidential elections, and there were even more grievances in 2014, when Yanukovich had to flee Kiev and, soon enough, Ukraine at all. Since Double sharp mentions Snyder below (man, Snyder is something. For one, I am still amazed by his description of the post-WWII Western Europe), I believe I could also mention him and say that according to him, the protests that erupted in Kiev in fall 2013 over (initially) Yanukovich’s last-minute decision not to sign a treaty of association with the European Union, which was disliked by many in the country, particularly, in big cities. The first and foremost of such cities was Kiev, and that the people attending those protests were largely Russian-speaking Kievans who sought better governance of their country, and the EU was associated with that, better governance. The protests themselves became known as Euromaidan (“maidan” is the Ukrainian word for “square,” particularly, the Independence Square in Kiev, where both the 2004 and 2013-14 revolutions took place; already after the former, the word also came to denote a generic street revolution in both Ukrainian and Russian. In Russian, the word usually has a stark negative connotation; in Ukrainian, not necessarily so). In general, this was the most sour tragedy of all of the post-Soviet history of Ukraine, at least to this point—-that despite its great potential, the country was never effectively managed, and this is said to have peaked during Yanukovich’s presidency (in fact, this trend would continue into the future and arguably the most serious reason why Ukraine’s next president Petro Poroshenko decisively lost his re-election—-lost, in fact, to a comedian whose political experience was limited to having played a president in a comedy TV series; people wanted change that badly—-is that he failed to deliver on the hopes of the people of a better governance, and because people believed he was corrupt just like the system he was supposed to fix). Few people liked Yanukovich by then, but for the eastern half, it was their guy nonetheless in that east-west divide. There was an agreement signed on February 21 that delivered a compromise between him and the parliamentary opposition leaders: Yanukovich wouldn’t leave the office just yet, but there would be a snap election (I think it was understood he wouldn’t run), the 2004 constitution would be restored, the repressive laws introduced during the months of street demonstrations would be reverted, and other things along these lines. This agreement was also signed by the foreign ministers of the Poland, France, and Germany; the agreement got support from the United States and across the European Union (Russia did not sign, not liking the bit about constitutional change). The matter was settled.

Except armed nationalists (there had, in fact, been deaths already in Kiev during those protests; those people would later be honored as the Heavenly Hundred; both sides blamed the other for these deaths and I simply never looked into it) decided that this would not do, they wanted him out now, and so that night they went to physically remove him from the office. There wasn’t already anybody in Kiev loyal to Yanukovich by this moment, and so he had to flee for his life. He went to Kharkiv and termed it as the state visit of the head of the state to the country’s second-largest city, but everyone knew what was going on (in fact, the mayor of Kharkiv advised him to get out of the country; Yanukovich was transported to Donetsk on the same day and to the already effectively Russian-controlled Crimea on the next. You can read this extremely descriptive article from The New York Times about Yanukovich's last days in power and his escape, which shows how more and more people abandoned him) and so the parliament declared Yanukovich had dodged his presidential duties and declared him to be no longer the president. And the United States and some European countries welcomed the new government, and this made the Russian elites furious, who had heard just the previous day a promise to protect the agreement. They concluded (had, in fact, concluded this long before the outcome) that it was a western plot against Russia again (this opinion had been in minds of many in the Russian elites since December 2011, when a parliamentary election was held; that election was unprecedentedly rigged and protests erupted, something the regime had never had before, and they caught them completely off-guard. It was then that the U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton something that was understood by many in the elites to be a signal to the protest to rise up against the Putin regime, and so the Russian elites took it that the U.S. was scheming against them and took a hostile approach towards the U.S., and soon enough, the hostility was returned. It was then when the reset effectively ended. So far, my personal understanding has been that the United States was not trying to remove United Russia and Putin from power, but they figured otherwise), and of particular concern was Crimea, the base of the Russian Black Sea fleet—-if they, the argument went, removed forcefully Yanukovich to get their people in Kiev, the the Russian fleet could be the next to go, and it had nowhere to go, so the Russia would need to control the peninsula. This was a security threat, the argument continued, and desperate times call for desperate measures (you can, in fact, recall how the United States reacted to a security threat from missiles in Cuba). To add to that that there was a particular regret that Crimea was no longer Russian (I’ll say with confidence that of all territories missed after the collapse of the Soviet Union, this peninsula was missed the most) both in Russia and in Crimea. To many in the eastern part of the country, the events in Kiev were nothing less than a foreign-inspired armed coup, and later protests would erupt in much of the east of the country, particularly in Crimea, which had been particularly pro-Russian, which is easily explained by the census results and how the Russians make up a majority of the population.

On February 23, the polite people came onto the streets; they bore no insignia, were armed, and didn’t say anything, but were otherwise friendly, smiled and allowed people to photograph with themselves. They also separated the peninsula from the mainland Ukraine. Everyone understood where these armed people could possibly come from, and many people were worried about this at first, when it was not clear yet how the interim leadership in Kiev would react; there was a fear that also Ukraine would also commission armed people, and that there would be violence. In a few days, it became clear Kiev wouldn’t do much, and for the most part people were happy that this would actually happen, and most people gladly played along (though one notable exception was the Tatar minority, who had their reasons, too: the Crimean Tatars, the entirety of their people, were deported by Stalin during the Great Patriotic War either in caution that they may side with the Germans or because they had already done that; they were only allowed to return in 1989, and since it was then when Ukrainian statehood really began to grow, like elsewhere in the USSR, the Tatars were a part of building Crimea as a part of Ukraine, and both the Ukrainians and the Tatars on the peninsula saw each other as at least tactical allies in an attempt not to be outweighed by the Russian majority on the peninsula). The Ukrainians, of course, didn’t use the moniker “polite people,” they went with “little green men,” and it should come as no surprise that English adopted the latter term. A new referendum was planned in May on the restoration of the 1992 Crimean constitution; a few days later, the plans changed to an referendum on joining Russia in March. In a few weeks, Ukraine lost the peninsula for good.

As I said, protests erupted all across eastern Ukraine. The thinking within the Russian elites was that this was a flame for unification with Russia that would cover half the country and paralyze it (there hardly ever was a plan to annex those territories, the plan was to immobilize the country against a wrong move again), but this was a miscalculation. While there had never been a widespread lust for Ukraine in many eastern regions, for the most part, those people had already mentally separated themselves from Russia. Annexation of Crimea turned away from, rather than to, Russia many people. As the soon-to-become-the-unifying—president Petro Poroshenko (who would become a hardcore nationalist less than a year into his presidency) would notice, those people were not unified by the idea of Ukraine; they were unified by the common borders. This affects the east—west balance in the country to this day in that there is no balance anymore; the country is now titled toward the West. Still, this didn’t speak for all people, and there was genuine support for a cause for unification with Russia from many in the specifically easternmost regions of the country. Ukraine lost control over some eastern parts, although Russia didn’t intervene directly because there never was a point to take these lands and finance them; again, the plan was to make them a burden on Ukraine. There, too, was a referendum, which Ukraine, of course, denounced as illegitimate and Russia did not formally recognize it either even if supporting the sentiment behind it in general. Soon enough, this escalated into a war, to which Russia aided first indirectly (by providing weapons) and in August, as Ukraine seemed to be able to win the war, directly, and then again indirectly. There was the Minsk I accord as a peace settlement as it was clear that there was no military solution to this conflict (which didn’t mean that two sides would stop to bomb each other), which was soon replaced by Minsk II, which would have been a diplomatic victory for Russia if Ukraine was going to implement it. And so that’s where we are, at a stalemate. One can see Ukraine’s new president Volodymyr Zenensky trying to break the stalemate, but we have yet to see where this will go.

And that’s it from me for today. I did not exactly aim for a balanced story in every aspect of it (but I hope it’s at least mostly alright) because a) I would never get this done otherwise and b) I think I tried to tell the story in the most engaging way I could think of, that would be interesting and where you would see that I’m lacking some bits so that it’s clear that, again, there is more to learn—-one could see I have omitted the parts on why people didn’t like Yanukovich in the first place, how corrupt he was and how poorly the country was run, or how repressive his January laws were, or how I did not mention that the negotiator for Ukraine in Minsk Leonid Kuchma would sign the document that says that, among other things, Ukraine should amend its constitution and then publicly declare that Ukraine must not, in fact, do that. There was also the Crimean consensus, the Western sanctions, the collapse of oil prices, etc. History is complex, and that’s why it is so fascinating (I also show affinity towards the concept of learning foreign languages for the same reason—-they are complex and beautiful).

I will reread (I’m sorry in advance if the text quality is subpar grammatically) tomorrow and I’ll also try to fact-check it tomorrow. I will continue with my response in a few days.—R8R (talk) 00:03, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

fact-check myself and possibly continue tomorrow.—R8R (talk) 00:03, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

I have had no time to proofread myself, I just added a few things that I figured I had forgotten. It was not as bad as I feared at that yesterday’s late hour it would be (though I will appreciate any criticism, and, in fact, any feedback for such a long text). In fact, I hope that I’ve described the events interestingly enough to see why I would want to look into the background of them or that I at least provided a good read. If you want me to continue, I’ll describe the other big event that made history so appealing to me, and it had a greater impact on me, but probably it’ll have to wait a few days (the proofreading will come first).—R8R (talk) 23:10, 26 December 2019 (UTC)

In general, I've tried to tell this story more from the perspective of a common person; tried to tell how the conflict was viewed by the common people rather than assigning blame for anyone or go too far into geopolitics. I have, however, managed to miss the most important point.

It was a disaster for both parties involved. First of all, like in any war, people, including civilians, died. And if you didn't die yourself, then you may to know someone who has. And even if you didn't, you still invariably heard the sound of fighting, how people, buildings, everything were bombed on either side of the military conflict, you still lived in a situation where you building may be bombed every next day. You cope with this eventually, but this coping is a great trauma you can't get over. Some people have relatives in there. The economy of the region is in ruins.

Second of all, it put the strongest strain on the relations between the Ukrainians and the Russians, and this was a disaster for both. As for the Ukrainian side, the Ukrainians are (and this marks my opinion) a nation in making: there is no simple acceptance in them just being Ukrainians yet, they feel the urge of proving that, and often what better way than opposing themselves to a different nation (of nations closer to yours, the Irish nation forged in opposition to the English) and denouncing the misdeeds of that other nation, especially the ones oppressive to yours, and it's not like there was nothing to denounce in this case. It was indeed the case that the imperial government in St. Petersburg would not recognize the Ukrainian people as such and the Soviet government would for the most of its history inspire Russification. (In 1991, I think it was in Belovezha, as Ukraine's leader Leonid Kravchuk was pushing for Ukrainian independence, according to Kravchuk, Russia's leader Boris Yeltsin asked him, "imagine we go out today onto the Red Square and ask one hundred people, non-tourists, if they wanted to see Ukraine separate from Russia. Out of one hundred, one hundred would want Ukraine to stay with Russia." Kravchuk finished this story by saying he couldn't imagine to what extent Yeltsin was right.) Ukraine's second president Leonid Kuchma, even wrote a book during his presidency titled, "Ukraine is not Russia"; notably, the book was written in Russian and presented in Moscow. And Russia, the story for western Ukrainians went (now I'm switching from my opinion back to the storytelling), was sure to try to subjugate Ukraine once more and was consistently doing so (in fact, much of what Russian television showed in the news in those Maidan months and soon thereafter was aimed not only at Russians, but also at eastern Ukrainians who watched Russian media) and who were opposed to the very notion of Ukraine and Ukrainianness. And they, the argument went, were poor at running a state for the people and were exporting this mindset of ineffective planning to the Ukrainians. This helps explain why many Ukrainians are eager to have only one language as official, one that would unify all Ukrainians and separate them from the invasive big brother.

At the same time, the Russians were just as unhappy. There is a recurring theme of insecurity going through a great length of Russian history, insecurity of being invaded. The German invasion, the French invasion, the Polish invasion, the centuries-long Mongol yoke, countless smaller invasions created a certain atmosphere of a background fear of a hostile invasion. Who would be the invader now? Well, the story went, it's clear as day: the Americans. They promised, the argument went, there would be no expansion of NATO in 1990 (this is a really big deal in Russia: ru.wiki even has an article titled Question of existence of an agreement of NATO non-expansion eastwards, for which there are no equivalents in other Wikipedias, including en.wiki), and yet there it was, one hundred miles from St. Petersburg now, and they were trying to snatch Ukraine with false promises, exposing Russia to the greatest security threat yet. In doing so, they were breaking one of the strongest bonds: the Russians, Ukrainians, and Belorussians are closely interconnected, with common history going back to the times of Kievan Rus. It, the argument went, constituted a certain betrayal of those western Ukrainians, separated from the Russians the longest (the two have continuous antipathy to one another), who wanted to pull their central and eastern brothers from Russia. It is hard to overstate what kind of grievances and perhaps even hatred this video (or this one) caused. These are demonstrations in western Ukraine, in vicinity of Lviv, in November 2013. Among other things, people chant, "москаляку на гиляку"; in English, that would literally be, "Ruski on a birch," but in its essence, this means, "hang a Ruski on a birch" (this meaning is unambiguous. For a second, imagine a protest today in vicinity of, say, Houston, with people chanting, "hang a Mexican"). They were among those things that defined how the protests and their outcome were viewed in Russia, even though neither event happened in Kiev.

And so, with these pre-contexts, grievances only flourished. In Russia, the word "fascist" was even used to describe the new Kiev government (this is the greatest insult one can think of in Russian, because the Nazis were known as fascists in Soviet times for ideological reasons, and now common usage simply follows the established standard. I'd say it's like "Nazi" in English, but that word is used in English so extensively nowadays that it seems to have lost a part of its original value). Everyone I knew, literally everyone, complained to me in 2014 about this misdeeds of the Americans and how they would side even with those fascists in order to hurt Russia. And when the first sanctions against Russia were introduced, people thought, "ah ha, yes, they were at us and we knew it. Well, we'll take on anything they throw at us!" While Putin's ratings were falling up to that point, people saw the incentive to unify around him now, and his ratings skyrocketed. And the Ukrainians, of course, were either hostile from the beginning or did not understand they were being fooled, that they wouldn't be allowed neither in NATO nor the EU, but, of course, this could not continue. Hostility raged now from the Russians towards the Ukrainians. One could see, for instance, cars with such stickers (the sticker reads, "1941-1945. We can repeat." Never mind that 27 million people died in that war!) All TV talked about was how Ukraine is a failure. This sets a very high standard of craziness.

And Ukraine managed to beat that. They dreamed of the day Ukraine would punish Russia by not only restoring its 2013 borders, but taking away Kuban (Ukraine's military is, of course, weaker than Russia's, there is essentially no Ukrainian population there now, and Ukraine does not make an example of a successful state someone might want to join---but who cares since Russia is going to collapse anyway? This is not even entirely thing of the past, since this photo of Ukrainian MPs was made in Verkhovna Rada just two weeks ago; these MPs are from the opposition, the party of the former president Poroshenko). But even this aside, Ukraine, it was seen, was invaded by Russia, so of course they will be fought back, will be forced to retreat, will of course return everything stolen and add a compensation to that. What would happen to those who wasn't keen on Ukraine in the first place and why they would want to go back and what would await them upon return is usually not discussed. Of course, the West will help them against this evil terrorist force, and they will prevail even if not. The term "terrorist" is official---the war is officially termed an "anti-terrorist operation" in Kiev. Hostility raged now from the Ukrainians towards the Russians.

And this severely cut the links between the two countries. Crossing the Russian--Ukrainian border became much harder (air and railroad routes between the two countries were closed, paperwork increased, males aged 16--60 (thought to be capable of fighting alongside the "terrorists") were banned from entering the country altogether unless for a very good reason. Friends and relatives across the border found themselves in a stark disagreement over this extremely important matter, and they often could not overcome just because how close this issue was to the heart in both countries---and so countless friendships and relationships were broken, at least temporarily. And all of this really begged one question: how did all of this come to be?

And that's when I began to look at history. I had by then established that a general rule in a conflict is that you should always try to understand the other side and think from their perspective. And so I did. And that's how appreciation in history really began. In a few years, I'd encounter another contemporary problem which made me think of history even more highly.

Phew. I think I'm finally done with this one, and I think I did a better job now explaining what it was that engaged me into history so much. I get it my writing is too long and that I can't put a pen down even when it's long overdue but if you've made so far (anyone who made this far), I'll really appreciate any reply, even a mere signal that you've read the thing and hopefully not too appalled by my writing here. This is a very sensitive subject, and so I generally tried to write this things without any particular preference or antipathy towards any side of the conflict, as well as I tried not to focus on any third parties (I didn't even mention China once), except when it's perception of their actions rather than the actions themselves were to be discussed (I could indeed discuss the actual role of the United States and European countries in this conflict, but this is out of the scope of what I wanted to write). I am eager to share this sort of thing, but I am also very afraid that I might have inadvertently written this in such an appalling manner because of my failure to appreciate the sensitivity of the question that it might turn you from this piece, and it's because of this that I ask for feedback. So please let me know if I managed to write this not too appallingly and if I did not, please tell me how so, and if I somehow did manage that, please tell me if I wrote it interestingly enough. I also believe that I owe ComplexRational an apology, but I will make one in a separate edit.--R8R (talk) 04:22, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I was cleaning my browser from extra tabs and I found this one among them. You may have seen it; Double sharp certainly has. Why I wanted to add it here is that it mentions (albeit very briefly) how that war almost interfered with our story of superheavy element research.--R8R (talk) 19:42, 16 January 2020 (UTC)

(I am, in fact, still such a person. ^_^) Double sharp (talk) 03:45, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Count me in with the group fascinated about such differences. I see that according to the table in Julian calendar § New Year's Day, in 1700 Russia shifted the first day of the numbered year to Jan 1, and in 1918 they adopted the Gregorian calendar. I understand that the Orthodox church opted out of the 1918 change, but what about the 1700 change? YBG (talk) 08:02, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

It's not only the first day of the numbered year that changed; the numbering of the years also changed! Before 1700, Russia (and before it, Kievan Rus) was using the Byzantine calendar, with an Anno Mundi era and the year beginning on (Julian) 1 September. Peter the Great changed this, according to his article. I don't know if this was only for the civil calendar, or if the church followed suit, though.

BTW, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was using Anno Mundi dating too in the 16th century: its official documents were written in Chancery Slavonic, in a form that contemporaries in Muscovy were calling "Lithuanian" or "Belorussian". This is probably familiar to R8R already, but since we have gotten a good-sized tea party going ^_^: the GDL was more or less an Orthodox Slavic country even before the Krewo Union with the Polish Kingdom in 1385, having already gathered many territories of Kievan Rus after the Mongol invasion. What rather happened afterwards with the baptism of Jagiełło was that Roman Catholicism was introduced to an already mostly Orthodox country, rather than that a pagan country was Christianised. Since Polish and Chancery Slavonic were already mutually intelligible, there followed a lot of linguistic influence, such that language shift towards Polish happened among the gentry (and was largely complete during the Renaissance; the acts of the 1569 Lublin Union were written in Polish only) even in the absence of large-scale Polish immigration. (Source: The Reconstruction of Nations by Timothy Snyder, chapter 1: this is a very interesting book, BTW!) Double sharp (talk) 12:33, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

I was far from implying you weren't one any more! It's just that this phrasing seemed better at that point to me.

I am certain that Peter's decree was effective both for the state and the church, because Peter was superior to the patriarch (see caesaropapism). This very Peter also later abolished the very position of the patriarch.

Thank you for sharing! Generally, Poland is another country I'd love to learn more about one day, and I'd also like to learn about those times even in Russian history a bit better, so this is a nice reminder to get to that someday.--R8R (talk) 07:01, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I personally got into Polish history before Russian myself, because Chopin. ^_^ But the two are very interrelated when you look at them closely, so when you know one I think it is not so hard to get into the other. Obviously part of this is because of how much they were fighting each other (all the way since the Muscovite–Lithuanian Wars), but some more of it also really helps explain what was going on between the two countries. Like you said, the history sheds a lot of light on the current goings-on in Ukraine.

Regarding this, incidentally: one very interesting theme that I keep finding in this history (and Snyder points out a lot of these) is when the current outcome looks totally unexpected from the historical perspective. For example: in 1863 what you said regarding the average Ukrainian and Belorussian would apparently hold – the other way round (p. 119):

“ The 1863 rising, a national turning point in the Russian empire’s Lithuanian and Belarusian lands, left little trace in Russian Ukraine. Whereas tens of thousands of Polish and Lithuanian gentry fought in central Poland and Lithuania, in Ukraine Polish landlords collaborated with Russian rule.²⁸ In Lithuania, the gentry fought to revive the institutions and traditions of the Grand Duchy, a cause inapplicable in Ukraine, since there were no analogous Ukrainian inheritances. Whereas Lithuanian and Belarusian peasants took part in the old Grand Duchy, Ukrainian peasants were more likely to betray gentry conspirators to the tsar’s police or even to fight with his armies. Russian generals sought to portray the rebels as Poles who wished to enserf the Ukrainian peasantry. It is nevertheless too soon to speak of a clear division among modern Polish and Ukrainian nations. The most successful Polish general of the 1863 uprising in Ukraine was Edmund Różycki, whose Volhynian troops called him “Bat’ko” (Ukrainian for father) and marched into battle singing Ukrainian songs.²⁹ Language was not yet a dividing line between nations, the goals of the uprising were political rather than ethnic, and some Volhynian gentry were willing to die for the idea of a restored Commonwealth. ”

How this turned into the exact opposite just over 150 years later is quite something astonishing, even if once you dig into the history you say "ah, it all makes sense now". And that's the kind of thing that keeps me fascinated about history as a hobby. ^_^ In fact, let me quote Snyder again for his explanation of why we have the current result:

“ The historical maneuvers that build modern nations are carried out by elites created in definable institutional circumstances. Here we recognize the most serious barrier to a Belarusian national revival: the scale of destruction in Belarus during Stalin’s purges of the 1930s and during the Second World War. Stalin murdered most of the Belarusian intelligentsia in the late 1930s. One in four inhabitants of the territory of the Belorussian SSR in 1941 was dead by 1945. The Germans destroyed Minsk, its university, and its academy of sciences. Minsk was rebuilt in an era of Russification, its astonishing postwar growth creating a massive Russophone capital. There was one telling move in the opposite direction: the incorporation of formerly Polish territories in 1945.¹⁴ The western expansion of the Belorussian SSR encompassed millions of people with different political experiences, and thousands of people with distinct connections to traditional institutions. The Uniate Church, for example, was established under the old Commonwealth in 1596. Although there was no Uniate Church in Soviet Belarus, it had been reestablished in interwar Poland. Thousands of Neo-Uniates from western Belarus became Soviet citizens after 1945. Just as many Belarusian activists in the 1880s and 1890s were of Roman Catholic background, so in the 1980s and 1990s many had some connection to these formerly Polish territories. Pazniak, the leader of the Belarusian National Front, was the grandson of a Belarusian politician active in interwar Polish Wilno. Pazniak’s grandfather was among the hundreds of thousands of Belarusians murdered at Kuropaty and similar sites. Pazniak’s ideas of Belarusian nationalism were consistent with an elite tradition, but alien to the Belarusian population educated in Soviet schools.¹⁵ ”

Double sharp (talk) 11:30, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

I'll definitely want to find out about that one days. With my current little knowledge of Polish history, it feels that the relationship between the Russians and the Poles was always adversarial at best. (I recall how fascinating it felt in the brief moment of presidency of Medvedev in Russia and Kaczyński in Poland that the two countries might begin to make it up among themselves, and opinion of the other began to improve in both countries. Relations would improve even with Poland! Medvedev even denounced Soviet killings in 1939-40 and invited Kaczyński to commemorate the Katyn massacre, something completely new in the relations between the two; as you probably know, the plane to Smolensk crashed, taking Kaczyński and much of the Polish elites, Kaczyński's successor wasn't as eager to improve relations, and those were poisoned by the question of who should investigate and keep the remnants of the plane. And nowadays, the relations are back to adversarial again.)

Yes, history does shed this light. It amused me at first how little understand there is for the Ukrainian point of view in Russia. Come to think of it, it must be the other way around in Ukraine. If there is one lesson to be learned from what I wrote, it's this: people do crazy things when they feel insecure, so it's better to try to keep them from feeling intimidated when possible. However, even this simple suggestion has so many implications and follow-ups that it can't be just taken as a rule of thumb. Yet I believe we would live in a different world today if people understood each other's concerns better and saw them as valid and worth attending to. However, from what I learned, this is often not the case among the decision makers, not to mention the common people.

I did not precisely mean the difference bit in terms of political thinking, like you describe; rather, I meant about the terms of general thinking. I first got any substantial ideas on this when I read about a study on China, which made a clear point about the difference between southern and northern China. In the former, the study said, the main crop was rice, which required a lot of water and thus a lot of cooperative human labor to grow it, whereas in the north, the main crop was wheat, which is easier to grow on your own. The study concluded this attributed this thousands-years-long experience accounted for the fact that the southern Chinese were extremely collectivist in nature, whereas those in the north were also collectivist, but not as much so. I was talking about this kind of difference. This case even has a similar kind of explanation: in southern Russia and Ukraine, you would grow wheat, and in the center and the north, you would grow rye (wheat made its way to central Russia only relatively recently historically).

Thank you for these quotes, they're very interesting. I'm getting more and more inclination to read this book eventually myself. Unfortunately, as I said before, I've got a list of books to read yet. (Let's see later, though.)--R8R (talk) 01:59, 3 January 2020 (UTC)

I had in mind to revisit this discussion sometime later to look at it with anew. I'm generally pleased to notice that I didn't go too far with anything as I was afraid I would. Those were crazy times indeed and I think I captured that.

@Double sharp: Since you're reading the book, maybe you could explain to me one bit. You quote Snyder saying that the formerly Polish territories were incorporated in 1945; were they really? I cannot say I know that bit of history particularly well, but I recall some people saying otherwise, that those territories were incorporated in 1939 and that, in fact, the defense lines that were established prior to that were removed to account for that and that new lines had not been built by 1941, which is a partial explanation of the quick advances of the Germans in the first months of the war with the Soviet Union (there are also different assessments about the latter as far I know).

Yes, those territories were incorporated in 1939 (see Soviet invasion of Poland; in fact, more was taken in 1939 than was eventually held on to, including Białystok and Przemyśl, which are in Poland today). When Nazi Germany invaded the USSR in 1941, they took these territories and held them until 1944. Territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union mentions that the postwar Polish authorities only formally ceded those areas to the Soviet Union in 1945 (alas, not cited); perhaps that's what Snyder means. Double sharp (talk) 19:47, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

I see. Well, that much I could deduce on my own, since the official reasoning of the Soviet participation in another division of Poland was that the Polish government had collapsed and that it was the Red Army that restored the notion of a Polish state later (so it would only formally have treaties that would have Polish acceptance of loss of those territories with that new government at the earliest). From a historical perspective, however, formal recognition doesn't seem as important as the actual standing of matters. Did you know that Peter the Great moved his capital to Saint Petersburg over a decade before Sweden formally ceded that territory?--R8R (talk) 20:00, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Also, if you happen to be curious as for why there was so much readiness to assume that whatever misfortunes came, they came from the Americans (about which you could read earlier in this section), I'll tell you that that's also been very interesting for me. It's not hard to find the specific events that were actively disliked in Russia (such as the 1999 NATO bombing of Yugoslavia), but I've rather been curious to find where that whole line of thinking came from and why it was so strong, it seems to have been around for as long as I could understand anything about these matters at all. The last few pages of this chapter, I think, perfectly summarize the origins of that thinking, if you're curious about that. And you might find the whole chapter interesting too, which might help understand why Russia did not become a Western-style democracy back in the 1990s. Perhaps Yeltsin was right in the 1991 interview where he said he wasn't a democrat and that it takes decades to have those. The chapter itself is from this book; the page also features a few notable receptions, all very complimentary, including those from former Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev and former U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Strobe Talbott.--R8R (talk) 19:27, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Happy New Year!

• 
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Happy New Year!

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  MMXX Lunar Calendar

R8R,
Have a great 2020 and thanks for your continued contributions to Wikipedia.

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Send New Year cheer by adding {{subst:Happy New Year 2020}} to user talk pages.

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Thank you very much! Happy New Year for you, too!--R8R (talk) 18:15, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

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A barnstar for you!

		The Barnstar of Diligence
		Thank you for your thorough reviews and support along the entire journey of bringing Island of stability to FA; I greatly appreciate your hard work on this! ComplexRational (talk) 20:35, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

As I said on your talk page, the pleasure was indeed all mine :) I'm glad you have a sense of how an article should be written that is similar to mine, with the obvious difference being that you're much more eloquent than I am (I'll try my best to catch up).--R8R (talk) 20:42, 23 January 2020 (UTC)

Wishing you

... a restful and/or productive wikibreak whichever is needed. YBG (talk) 03:24, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Count my best wishes in as well. I look forward to resuming our work when we are ready. ComplexRational (talk) 21:43, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

+1 See you soon! ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 21:50, 3 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all very much! I hope it won't have to take too long and I hope we'll be ready for a Hs FAC this March.--R8R (talk) 02:58, 4 February 2020 (UTC)

standing

I guess this is not relevant for the Hs talk page, so I'll answer here: this is understandable in English, though it sounds a bit weird. (It's understandable because "stand" can be used in the sense of "to be positioned".) As you say, this usage is like German stehen. Double sharp (talk) 22:05, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the clarification; I appreciate it, I really do. This is not the first time I've wondered whether one can in principle say that or not, and I recall my brief attempts to clarify that were inconclusive.--R8R (talk) 22:28, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

You're welcome! It sounds more or less OK (if odd to me) because "let it stand" is a rather standard phrase (it's the usual translation of stet, which is a bit of proofreaders' jargon). So I know the meaning passively, and understand it when I see it; it just looks a bit unusual (which may be why the results you got trying to clarify this were inconclusive). Double sharp (talk) 00:50, 23 February 2020 (UTC)

SHE-Factory

Hora! ;) Double sharp (talk) 22:14, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

Might be the same as this. Double sharp (talk) 12:13, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Can't access either, unfortunately :( But here's what I found when looking for info for the introduction for hassium (machine translation ahead):

For the synthesis of 119 elements, it is supposed to use the reaction of titanium-50 and Berkeley-249. Here, according to Popeko, it will be necessary to solve many difficult problems. “Until now, no one has managed to get a good - that is, with high intensity - titanium-50 ion beam. We are working on this technique together with French colleagues, ”he explained.

It is not easy with the target either: Berkelium-249 with a half-life of 320 days can be synthesized from Curium-248 in specialized reactors - for example, in the HFIR reactor in the USA or SM-3 in the Russian Research Institute of Atomic Reactors in Dimitrovgrad.

“If there are no political complications, then we can get part of the Berkeley from the USA, part from Dimitrovgrad,” the scientist says. The first experiments of this kind can be started before the end of 2019, he believes.

And already at the next stage, it is possible to begin the synthesis of 120 elements in the reaction of titanium-50 and the heaviest isotope of California-251.'

From here (in Russian; you'll need more magic of machine translation).--R8R (talk) 17:31, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

Oh, and by the way, I like your hyphenation in the title, das gefällt mir sehr gut ! XD --R8R (talk) 19:59, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

A barnstar for you!

	The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
	For creating the Atomic Barnstar. Very nice! Jerm (talk) 23:15, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

I didn't expect that making a barnstar to award a person would yield a different one for myself, but I'm not complaining :) thank you, it's much appreciated!--R8R (talk) 17:36, 4 March 2020 (UTC)

moscovium

Well, Popeko claimed it was the capital. This might be another of those things like for Fl where officially it was for something and really it was for something slightly different, although I wonder myself what the problem would be here with honouring Moscow vs. Moscow Oblast. Double sharp (talk) 12:18, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Well, I'm not eager to take that too seriously, because this was still just the brainstorming phase, so you don't expect precise wordings, and because he doesn't expand on this, and I think it can occur alright in running speech that you conflate the two if you don't think too hard about it (Moscow Oblast is named after Moscow anyway). Again, I recall Oganessian's intention was to thank the government of Moscow Oblast for their financial support; you'll recall Dubna is in located in Moscow Oblast, so it occurs to me that both the official wording and the real intent were not to specifically honor the city any more than it already is given that Moscow Oblast is associated with Moscow anyway. On a similar note, I have long wondered how Samara had gotten into the periodic table, and even though I later learned the element was technically named after a mineral that was named after a person, the association with the city remains in my head. The same will undoubtedly happen to Moscow on a wider scale.--R8R (talk) 12:50, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

Also, I just checked flerovium; it has a RIA Novosti ref, a quote in which the name moscovium is explicitly said to honor the region, not the city (although they thought of element 116 at that point). Another curious thing is that the thing mentioned about Flerov is how he noted that the other countries may have classified information on nuclear fission; in terms of science, I'd say a more notable thing about him was his discovery of spontaneous fission or his tremendous involvement in the race for the superheavy elements.--R8R (talk) 10:16, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

No

No, it's a template. That is how we work. FFS. -DePiep (talk) 18:59, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Stop it. -DePiep (talk) 19:35, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

@DePiep: Can we continue this thread at WT:ELEM, preferably without remarks such as these? Unless this was done in bad faith (which I have every reason not to believe), this attitude won't go anywhere and could land you another months-long block—by someone else's judgement—so I advise you to stay focused on the content.

That all said, we still don't understand precisely the reason for your revert or which guideline(s) you are invoking (which I kindly ask you to explain). Personally, I still believe this should be in article space with the {{transcluded section}} template, so readers do not question identical sections and editors find their way around more easily. But if there's a good reason not to do this, or to keep it in template space, I'm all ears.

R8R, I'm sure your line of reasoning was something similar to this, so I invite you to justify (besides this reasoning that I agree with) or leave it be (depending on whatever DePiep's logic is).

Either way, let's discuss this, and do so with dignity. ComplexRational (talk) 21:17, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes we can. It's just your silly silly move [2] that spoils it. Stop it. -DePiep (talk) 21:25, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

To be more precise: yes discuss it, after the revert. ComplexRational. -DePiep (talk) 22:10, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

I have responded at WT:ELEM. Let's keep the discussion in one piece.--R8R (talk) 23:02, 4 April 2020 (UTC)

Finding articles

Just wondering: do you have access to 10.1051/jcp/1979760630 and 10.1051/jcp/1979760645 ? Double sharp (talk) 07:18, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

I'm afraid not.

But, speaking of access to literature, are you by any chance familiar with Libgen?--R8R (talk) 07:43, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes. ;) Double sharp (talk) 10:08, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

Double negatives

Since you asked at WT:ELEM:

Double negatives are OK in English, and resolve to a positive, but they do not quite have the same meaning as an unadorned positive. So, I think the general consensus for writing is that you should avoid using them unless you're using them to make a point, in my experience. The reason is that "I don't disagree", while logically equivalent to "I agree", has a rather distinct connotation. The first one makes it sound like you'd like to moderate the lack of disagreement with something, such as "I don't disagree, but I think your presentation of the point needs work", but that out of politeness you're not going to say exactly what that "something" is. Similarly, "he's not incompetent" has rather a different connotation from "he's competent". The idea is that it makes the listener say "well, why did he go out of his way to say it that way, rather than direct praise?" It can be thought of as a form of litotes: two negatives cancel to form a positive, but the positive is weakened by the indirect route you used to get there. (Well, that and the fact that having lots of negatives is a good way to make your sentence really confusing. And sometimes funny; I am not sure if you know the joke that runs "This paper fills a much-needed gap in the literature". XD)

You may be interested in the history of the double-negative construction in English. Before the 18th century (so, the language of Shakespeare and Chaucer), double negatives resolved to a negative; but as English's star rose further beyond Latin as the educated language (remember, even though there was great English literature before then, Newton still wrote the Principia in Latin ^_^), prescriptive grammarians started frowning upon it because it was considered illogical (and also because it didn't follow Latin). This change went into Standard English, though in non-standard dialects you will often still hear double negatives resolving to negatives. (That usage now, however, strikes most speakers as uneducated.)

So, I guess I have to ask how double negatives work in Russian. I trust Double_negative#Slavic_languages is right, since it's cited, and double negatives also cancel each other in Russian. But is the connotation different in any way?

BTW, something I've been curious about that is vaguely related (the intersection of logic and language): how does Russian handle yes-no questions? The point I'm curious about is best illustrated by the examples here: in English, if you're asked "Don't you have a class?" (note the negative question), the answer "yes" would mean "yes, I have a class", and the answer "no" would mean "no, I don't have a class". It is just the opposite in Chinese, where I will quote that article for elucidation:

“ Q: 你不上课吗？ Nǐ bu shàng kè ma? ("You not go-to class yes-or-no?") — "Don't you have a class?" OR "Aren't you going to class?"

A: 对。 Duì. ("Right.") or 是的。 Shì de. ("Is (so).") — "Right / yes." (I.e., "No, I do not have a class." OR "No, I am not going to class.")

N: 不对。 Bu duì. ("Not right.") or 不是。 "Bu shì. ("Not is (so).") — "Wrong / no." (I.e., "Right / Yes, I do have a class." OR "Right / yes, I am going to class.")

” — Victor Mair

Needless to say, since I have these two as two native languages, this particular headlong collision in usage resulted in much confusion when I was a kid until I figured out that the languages were using slightly different logic: in Chinese you answer to the question, in English you answer to the verb. Well, no wonder child-DS kept getting misunderstood when answering such questions, because he was answering in English following the logic of Chinese! ^_^ Well, in French you have si to contradict a negative question, and in German you have doch, so that's a three-way system. And in the 14th (Chaucer) through 16th (when Tyndale got it wrong, and More scolded him for it) centuries. there was even a four-way system(!):

Will they not go? — Yes, they will.

Will they not go? — No, they will not.

Will they go? — Yea, they will.

Will they go? — Nay, they will not.

Actually, let me quote More from that article. I think it should not be too hard to read! ^_^

I would not here note by the way that Tyndale here translateth no for nay, for it is but a trifle and mistaking of the Englishe worde : saving that ye shoulde see that he whych in two so plain Englishe wordes, and so common as in naye and no can not tell when he should take the one and when the tother, is not for translating into Englishe a man very mete. For the use of these two wordes in aunswering a question is this. No aunswereth the question framed by the affirmative. As for ensample if a manne should aske Tindall himselfe: ys an heretike meete to translate Holy Scripture into Englishe ? Lo to thys question if he will aunswere trew Englishe, he must aunswere nay and not no. But and if the question be asked hym thus lo: is not an heretike mete to translate Holy Scripture into Englishe ? To this question if he will aunswere trewe Englishe, he must aunswere no and not nay. And a lyke difference is there betwene these two adverbs ye and yes. For if the question bee framed unto Tindall by the affirmative in thys fashion. If an heretique falsely translate the New Testament into Englishe, to make his false heresyes seem the word of Godde, be his bokes worthy to be burned ? To this questyon asked in thys wyse, yf he will aunswere true Englishe, he must aunswere ye and not yes. But now if the question be asked him thus lo; by the negative. If an heretike falsely translate the Newe Testament into Englishe to make his false heresyee seme the word of God, be not hys bokes well worthy to be burned ? To thys question in thys fashion framed if he will aunswere trewe Englishe he may not aunswere ye but he must answere yes, and say yes marry be they, bothe the translation and the translatour, and al that wyll hold wyth them.

— Thomas More, The Confutation of Tyndale's Answer, pp. 430

This is still present in Shakespeare, but by then not being used consistently, a symptom of the system simplifying down to the two-way distinction we now have.

So, I'm rather curious how Russian would handle something like this, and you seem a good person to ask. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 11:01, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for this message. I generally knew how this more or less; what really had me wondering was that when, if at all, this was considered good style. Your response, including the linked pdf, gives a good answer to this question. Thanks again. The reading was also genuinely interesting.

Double negatives in Russian effectively cancel each other, yes. Note, however, some difference between Russian in English when the negation is also reflected in the subject or the adverb. The phrase "I never liked tea" would be "Я никогда не любил чай" (=I never not liked tea). A particular stumble for a Russian learning English is the word unless, because its equivalent in Russian (если только не = if only not) has a grammatical negation that is absent from the English word.

The Russian negative questions are not straightforward :) I think it effectively depends on what you really mean by asking. Think of the question "Вы не хотите чаю?" (=You not want tea?). It can imply an expected positive answer, as in "I want to offer you a cup, please say you do so I take it you accept the offer," or a negative one, as in "We're really short on tea, and I don't want to go to the store, and my paycheck only comes next Friday anyway, so I'm just being polite, please don't take advantage of that." (Consider possible English translations: "Don't you want (some/a cup of) tea?" vs "You don't want tea (do you)?") My guess would be that in the former case "yes" would mean "I do" and no means "I don't," whereas in the latter case it would be the opposite. However, if somebody answers such a question with a mere "yes" (or a mere "no"), it may be a good idea to ask what that answer actually means, just to make sure.

For this reason, I've liked the German three-way system. As for the four-way system of English of the old: I actually know that in the American parliamentary votes, "yes" is "yea" and "no" is "nay." I always wondered why that was. I was willing to describe that as American congressmen being fancy by using rare words. Then I learned that in the British House of Commons, "yes" is "aye," which only strengthened the idea in me that parliamentarians are super keen on that "showing off" by using some ancient words :) now the American words at least make sense; I'll still need to look up that aye, though. (By the way, I remember listening to an explanation of how the British parliament works on YouTube. The most liked comment said something like, "the ayes to the right, the noes to the left... sounds like a Picasso painting" xD)

More is actually understandable, yes :) thanks for sharing.

Also thanks for bringing up Chinese again. My reading queue is slowly getting done with (just this Monday, I finished great a book on Yegor Gaidar that's been standing on my bookshelf for more than a year now; feels like I'll need to revisit it later). I still really want to get to the book you've recommended to me, so thank you for reminding me of that!--R8R (talk) 08:03, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

References

Hassium FAC

Hi, I remember you said you should have time from the current weekend onward for the Hs FAC.

Now I have a little problem: as of today my RL workload has just become high again. So while I could start it now, I would probably not be able to do more than a few small fixes for about the first month of the FAC. Or, I could start it in approximately a month, but then I would feel really bad about keeping you waiting this long for it when I've already done that over the past few months.

Since in the last phase this really ended up being more your work than mine, I therefore ask on your talk page which option you would prefer. Or you could start it yourself, it's fine with me too. Thank you for all your help with this, I should add! ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 13:58, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@ComplexRational: Pinging you too, of course. Double sharp (talk) 13:58, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: Thank you for the ping. I can join in whenever both of you are ready, but I can't promise full engagement and investment until 16 June because of RL matters. So it seems that we should likely start around then or perhaps 1-2 weeks afterward (or whenever you have more spare time, DS). But the final call is still yours, R8R. ComplexRational (talk) 22:30, 31 May 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp and ComplexRational: I mentioned a couple of times it's most important that we enjoy our time here, and I stand by that. I don't want to hurry all that much if you feel bad about not being able to fully participate. I suppose I could carry the team, but not at the expense of the others feeling bad about not being there in the first place. It won't hurt to wait another couple of weeks or a month. Double sharp, please start the FAC when you're ready.--R8R (talk) 05:52, 1 June 2020 (UTC)

@ComplexRational and R8R: I have some time now: so if both of you are fine with it, we should be good to start the FAC. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 14:29, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: Me too, maybe even a bit much, for the next five weeks or so. I'm ready for the FAC. I think, though, that I'm still more a reviewer than a contributor/nominator? ComplexRational (talk) 21:13, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: If you’re good to go, then so am I. Last few weeks have been rather hectic; today has been particularly hectic. There’s a number of things that preoccupy me at the moment but I can definitely find enough time for an FAC. I’ll get engaged in it during the weekend, but there’s no reason to wait to start.

@ComplexRational: as far as I am concerned, suit yourself and take whatever role you find yourself most comfortable in.—R8R (talk) 23:59, 1 July 2020 (UTC)

And we launch! Double sharp (talk) 14:06, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

Copying within Wikipedia requires attribution

Thank you for your contributions to Wikipedia. It appears that you copied or moved text from Superheavy element into Introduction to the heaviest elements. While you are welcome to re-use Wikipedia's content, here or elsewhere, Wikipedia's licensing does require that you provide attribution to the original contributor(s). When copying within Wikipedia, this is supplied at minimum in an edit summary at the page into which you've copied content, disclosing the copying and linking to the copied page, e.g., copied content from [[page name]]; see that page's history for attribution. It is good practice, especially if copying is extensive, to also place a properly formatted {{copied}} template on the talk pages of the source and destination. Please provide attribution for this duplication if it has not already been supplied by another editor, and if you have copied material between pages before, even if it was a long time ago, you should provide attribution for that also. You can read more about the procedure and the reasons at Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. Thank you. If you are the sole author of the prose that was copied, attribution is not required. — Diannaa (talk) 12:29, 14 June 2020 (UTC)

@Diannaa: thanks for the ping. I'm generally aware of the rule. However, there is no requirement that I can find that states that it is necessary to provide attribution in an edit summary. I did quite openly say where the text came from: it was not a mere copying from Wikipedia, but also some variation of a Wikipedia text, and it also came from a different article than the one you've established to be the source. And, to be clear, I named the origin article in the hat note of the new page in the very first edit. I understand the general desire to help and to maintain the legal status of Wikipedia article as unquestioned, but everything was fine in this particular case.--R8R (talk) 19:39, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia is the place where it states that " At minimum, this means providing an edit summary at the destination page – that is, the page into which the material is copied – stating that content was copied, together with a link to the source (copied-from) page". I didn't see such an edit summary, and hence this notice. — Diannaa (talk) 22:04, 19 June 2020 (UTC)

I get it, my point is that the attribution doesn't have to be provided there or there and elsewhere, at least Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia doesn't say so; it just provides one simple low-effort way to do it (the minimum in terms of required effort indeed) but doesn't say this particular way is a requisite. Again, no hard feelings, just saying there are other ways of fulfilling the requirement.--R8R (talk) 13:14, 22 June 2020 (UTC)

Shchukarev SA 1974, Neorganicheskaya khimiya, vols. 1 & 2, Vysshaya Shkola, Moscow (in Russian)

Hi R8R

Would you be able to find a used copy of these two volumes in Russia, and send them to me? I can't find a source for them via e.g. abebooks.com. If this would be doable/agreeable could you please let me know the best way to cover your costs?

thank you, Sandbh (talk) 23:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: do you specifically need these books in print? I've been able to find them in djvu and I could send them to you by email.--R8R (talk) 09:18, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Email would be excellent thank you R8R. Sandbh (talk) 12:42, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

It's nothing really, I'm glad I was able to help.

Check your email, I sent the books to you. Please write back to me if you haven't received them.--R8R (talk) 18:06, 9 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you R8R. The international loans desk at the National Library of Russia advised that this item was not for loan! First time I've been refused an ILL from an overseas library. No idea what's going on there. They did provide a table of contents. Sandbh (talk) 01:45, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

As I said, no problem at all, you're very welcome. In case you're wondering, I found it via Library Genesis. The resource has been useful to me even during my university education and I've used it a couple of times to aid my Wikipedia work, too.

Unfortunately, I don't know what exactly happened either. Maybe the library has funding problems in the midst of the ongoing economic crisis, for instance. Anyway, I'm glad I could help you so easily.--R8R (talk) 17:08, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Sandbox for new periodic table template

Are you able to take up my suggestion of sandboxing the main {{periodic table}} template? My skills simply are not yet up to that but I'd be really grateful if we had something tangible to discuss that was similar in concepts to {{compact periodic table}} as we've been doing on the periodic table talk page. I'll keep an eye on your reply here, so no need to ping me. Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 15:33, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

No problem; here you go.--R8R (talk) 19:58, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Thanks! I wish I could do that just as quickly. A steep learning curve I'm just starting off on. I've now got -DePiep on side and he's already implemented part of what is being discussed on the periodic table talk page. He won't of course alter the {{periodic table}} template until we reach consensus and what he's done so far maintains consistency (see bottom of Neon). Actually, he's against moving La out to the "strip" below, so it will be interesting to see how things turn out. For that reason I won't introduce the specific sandbox case you've just created on my thread quite yet. Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 16:34, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

No problem at all. It's not very difficult once you have learned the markup. I've made you another one just in case (asterisks could use some work but it'll do for giving you a basic impression). Undo the last edit if you don't like it.

I pretty much don't have an opinion on this (I've seen this discussion a few times and participated in it, too, and by now I've grown somewhat weary of it), but if you feel like going for it, I don't see why not. This is a place where people seek to apply themselves in a constructive manner in their free time, I'd rather aid that. Please don't feel obligated to expose these little works of mine, they're easy to make anyway, no problem if they end up unexposed.--R8R (talk) 16:48, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Actually I decided to put a brief comment on the thread just below where I had asked you to act. When I saved this, I noticed you had updated the sandbox to my "version 3", so I'll go back now and fix my typo that said you had produced version 2! As to being "easy" that depends on whether one has the skill, which I certainly don't (yet) :-) Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 17:10, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Another favour

R8R

I've not been able to source this via an overseas interlibrary loan request:

• Luchinskii, G.P., Trifonov, D.N.: Some problems of chemical elements classification and the structure of the periodic system. In: Uchenie o periodichnosti. Istoriya i sovremennoct’. Nauka, Moscow pp 200–220 (1981) (in Russian)

Would you be able to please send me a copy? One day I hope to be able return these favours.

thank you, Sandbh (talk) 01:56, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi! Unfortunately, I can't find this one in digital form. But if you really need it, I see that the publisher has an old copy of the book for sale. Is it worth the trouble for me to get it?

Don't worry about having to return the favor, I am happy to help you without expecting a favor in return.--R8R (talk) 12:21, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes please. Hard copy would be fine. Sandbh (talk) 05:30, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: in that case, I'll try to visit the Russian State Library on Saturday or if I'm unable to do so, the next Saturday. If I am in luck and they have the book (which they should), then I can photograph the article you need and send the photos to you. If they don't have it, I'll go visit the publisher. Is this plan good or should I head straight to the publisher?--R8R (talk) 18:17, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@R8R: Could you please go to the publisher. Sandbh (talk) 22:23, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I can do that, sure. That'll still happen on Saturday. Unfortunately, they won't deliver to where I live and I'm stuck at home during the working days.--R8R (talk) 05:59, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: I went to the publisher yesterday. They told me the book had to be transported from their warehouse. I'll pick it up next Saturday.--R8R (talk) 10:51, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@R8R: Thank you! Sandbh (talk) 12:40, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: I have picked up the book. Now I could scan it and send you the scans, have it shipped to you, or both. If you want it shipped, I'd prefer we discuss this via email, so please write me a letter.--R8R (talk) 15:07, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much. I'll pm you. Sandbh (talk) 00:13, 16 August 2020 (UTC)

Does the book have some editors? That citation I listed above seems incomplete. Sandbh (talk) 10:56, 5 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, Trifonov is listed as the editor-in-chief.--R8R (talk) 16:55, 7 September 2020 (UTC)

The book arrived yesterday, and very cool it is too! Could you PM me about costs etc?

Would you be able to look up a reference mentioned in that book? It is:

• Kononov AM, Shemyakin FM, Karapetyans M. Kh. On the similarity of hydrogen with elements of the P group in the periodic system. In the book: Collection of scientific methodical papers on chemistry, Moscow. 1977, no. 5, pp. 25 to 33.

thank you, Sandbh (talk) 04:34, 21 November 2020 (UTC)

Chemists not losing their sleep

Re the comment on CR's talk page:

I can't agree with that characterisation. Chemists have been losing enough sleep about it to give arguments since 1921. And to bring the issue to IUPAC's attention. And for IUPAC to endorse the Lu form in 1988. And for Jensen and Lavelle to have been arguing in articles from 2008 to 2015. And for a IUPAC project to be set up. And for the percentage of La tables in the textbook literature to dwindle from a very strong supermajority in the 1990s to just a plurality in the 2010s.

This seems to tell me that it is, in fact, rather a big deal at the moment. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 16:30, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

I happen to think it's indeed a dig deal but it only is in a narrow circle of Jensen, Lavelle, Scerri, and perhaps a few more people. As for the general chemical public, recall that source I posted on CR's talk page. Would you count it as -La-Ac or would you say the authors didn't really care that much?--R8R (talk) 20:49, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

To me it sounds a bit more like an attempt to be neutral by self-contradiction and saying it both ways, really. And to me it still also comes down to:

1. Why contradict ourselves when we don't have to? Self-contradiction is not just bad when trying to teach a topic. It's also just poor writing in general.
2. We are waiting in the first place for what IUPAC says. So, in the meantime, why not use what IUPAC actually endorsed in 1988 and put in the 1990 Red Book? Particularly when that happens to be Lu under Y and solves problem 1?

I mean, yeah, it's not a big deal for most of chemistry, but when explaining chemical periodicity and how it comes from Madelung's rule: it's a big deal. The 1990 Red Book is redundant. The *-** periodic table in the 2005 Red Book is not actually a part of the Red Book recommendations.

Not to mention that the share of textbooks showing La under Y fell from 82% in the 1990s to 48% in the 2010s. Surely that implies that chemists lost some sleep about it. Double sharp (talk) 02:08, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

It really depends on what position you find yourself in. You most certainly can use any form on your talk page if you like, for example. As for Wikipedia, there are a few questions:

1. Do we have to follow anything IUPAC says by the mere virtue of them having said so? I'd argue most certainly not. Perhaps you remember my strong opposition to WP:ALUM, another rules inspired by IUPAC (this rule of ours is particularly easy to oppose since it's not even up to date with IUPAC itself, but I would still be opposed to it had it not been the case). That being said, there is great weight of credibility behind an IUPAC recommendation, but to quote the report you linked, "IUPAC can only make recommendations, not laws." If they get it, so should we.
2. What is IUPAC's position anyway? They don't have one, it's been said many times before. The 2005 Red Book supersedes the 1990 Red Book.
3. The IUPAC survey gives only 33 books for the 2010s, that's not very much. And if you look at the list of those books, you'll learn that all 33 are in English. So much for the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry. Then again, in our specific case, where we discuss the English Wikipedia, that's fine, but this stat is questionable still. Why track only university books? (these question just popped up in my head, I noticed I didn't have them before and that somewhat casts a shadow onto my earlier support of -La-Ac for en.wiki right now. However, I don't think we have any other data yet? it seems we'll have to do for now with what we've got, even if bearing in mind the limitations of this data)--R8R (talk) 16:55, 3 August 2020 (UTC)
4. What happens when IUPAC takes a position? Hard to tell. I presume nobody will really care and the -Lu-Lr version, if that's what they settle on, will start to spread slowly the same way the -*-** has spread since 2005. But what if there's a strong opposition in reliable sources to that?
5. The -*-** has been gaining traction due to the IUPAC table. Yes, it's not a recommendation from them but it seems to work as if it were one anyway. The 2010s haven't made -Lu-Lr any more popular, so it's hard to say there is a case of using it now any more then there were then based on that data. I'd say it's a prime example of how chemists don't lose their sleep over this.

Again, this boils down to what position you find yourself in. Personally, you can make any decision you like. But the more people are influenced by a decision, the stronger the need for critical thinking and for house rules. It seems to me that you're seeing what you want to see. That's fine, all of us do this to some extent. The question really is, how can I (in this case, you) be wrong and what could the situation look like for the other side? Am I consistent in applying my criteria? et cetera. Some of these questions could be dismissed in favor of better teaching practices elsewhere; if you're a teacher, more power to you to design a course how you see fit. However, Wikipedia is first and foremost an encyclopedia, not a textbook.--R8R (talk) 16:17, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

The 2005 Red Book only has an 18 column table. The 1990 one has 8, 18, and 32 column tables. In the first two they neutrally give Sc-Y-*: still no support for La. In the last one they cannot be neutral. They put Lu under Y. Not to mention that in the Red Books they don't recommend a specific form: it's the 1988 report that does that and is for Lu.

The limitations of the data are exactly why I feel something like WP:ALUM is needed. If you look at that limited sample of textbooks, La gets a plurality. If you do a Google image search, * gets a 2/3 majority. If you count articles discussing the matter, Lu gets a strong majority. Of course all these measures have limitations. But the fact that they give three different answers is exactly why I think the old IUPAC endorsement must be brought in. There isn't a newer one AFAIK.

The fact that this would avoid a large bunch of needless self-contradictions, and contradictions with sources, is a definite plus to me. And yes, I know how it would be from the other side, as I used to be on it. If IUPAC's new project recommends La under Y, I will accept it for Wikipedia (if grudgingly). So I hold to a consistent standard: follow the last actual IUPAC endorsement. Double sharp (talk) 03:02, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Context is important. Compared to the vast mass of the academic literature, effectively zero chemists have lost sleep over the group 3 issue since 1921. The periodic table on the inside cover of the 2005 Red Book does not form a part of the actual red book recommendations. In the preface it says, "Lesser omissions [from the 1990 edition] include…the several different outdated versions of the periodic table. (That on the inside front cover is the current [internal] IUPAC-agreed version.)" Even Scerri has acknowledged this.

Re IUPAC endorsement of the Lu form, this did not occur. Fluck's mention of the Lu form was a 230-word afterthought in a 4,300 word paper. The report that the afterthought appeared in was neither expressed as a formal recommendation of IUPAC nor did it feature or include any form of formal IUPAC endorsement. The abstract tells you what it is limited to:

"In 1985 the IUPAC Commission on the Nomenclature of Inorganic Chemistry circulated for public comment a proposed new notation for the groups of the periodic table. This gave rise to worldwide discussion in the chemical literature. This article reviews the historical process that led to the IUPAC proposals, and discusses them in relation to the response within the scientific community."

His afterthought refers to the chosen *-** form as a compromise.

That Scerri said, "Thirdly, I should also mention that figure 3 [Sc-Y-Lu, 32 column] that I call an optimal table, was already endorsed in an earlier IUPAC report, E. Fluck, New Notations in the Periodic Table, Pure and Applied Chemistry, 60, 3, 431-436, 1988" was a misinterpretation and an error of wishful thinking. Sandbh (talk) 06:11, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

User:Sandbh claims that Fluck's afterthought refers to the Sc-Y-* form when it never mentions Sc-Y-* explicitly at all. He also prefers his own WP:OR analysis to a statement by the chair of the current IUPAC project about a past IUPAC decision. Double sharp (talk) 06:53, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: Yes, here is what Fluck wrote:

"In the "Red Book" which will appear in 1988 the same arrangement was chosen for the elements of the scandium group as in the periodic table as originally proposed by CNIC and subsequently published by VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheini.

It is a compromise. According to the electron configurations of the elements, the scandium group consists of the elements

Sc, Y, Lu, Lr."

When he says it is a compromise, what do you think he might be referring to? What is the PT that ended up in the main body of the 1990 Red Book, rather than in an appendix? Sandbh (talk) 08:15, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: What I think is not relevant. That would be WP:OR. All I note is that the head of the current IUPAC project says this endorsed Lu and that Fluck never mentions *.

There is no such PT AFAIK. There's only one at the front and three at the back, none in the main body. Double sharp (talk) 08:26, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: p. 42: the answer to life, the universe, and everything ^_^

PS: Here is a VCH Verlagsgesellschaft, Weinheim table *-** (1985) as mentioned by Fluck. And here is a *-** Ultimate PT authored by Fluck (2007). And here is a nice 32-column La table (2007). Sandbh (talk) 08:39, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: OK, that's at last a relevant source rather than your own original research. So, OK: maybe Fluck means *-** as his compromise, but one must put that against Scerri having possible access to relevant documents. Therefore I have modified the statement at Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Periodic_table, and listed 3 options that I could support (including the old * under Y form). Double sharp (talk) 08:58, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Oh, I see some kind of agreement has been reached without my participation, isn't it great :)

On a more serious note though, how do we know if this hypothetical access Scerri might or might not have is real? The reasonable thing would be to wait if such information emerges for us to see and to act if it does. I expect us to make informed decisions (again, for a tertiary source), not guess based on hypothetical information which may or may not exist (and whose relevance, it appears to me, would be questionable anyway until it's open for the wider public).--R8R (talk) 16:46, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't know. That's why I just said that Scerri says it means something and that we don't know if he's right. And that's also why my case for it is mostly now based on (1) IUPAC showing Lu when it shows a 32 column form and (2) all those articles in reliable sources from 1921 to 2020 arguing for Lu.

P.S. I should also say that Polish Wikipedia presents a compromise I could definitely agree on: * under Y in 18 column, Lu under Y in 32 column, just like the 1990 IUPAC Red Book. Double sharp (talk) 04:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

That's the point of what I'm saying: we can't use information to make an informed decision here if we don't know it. Once we do know it, we may consider it but not before then. Informed decisions are not always needed, but they are needed for Wikipedia. Sandbh has demonstrated well that Scerri is in error on his assessment on the 1988 Fluck report.

Personally, I like way the Polish Wikipedia tackles this issue, too. As a Wikipedia editor, I have nothing to say on that because of my lack of knowledge on kind of sources there are in Polish.--R8R (talk) 08:05, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

I don't think it's that clear-cut precisely because of what I said, but I don't need the argument anyway, so I cut it. BTW, I am drafting a new RFC question (+ my initial vote) at User:Double sharp/RFC, so maybe you want to comment on neutrality of the question I give.

Well, I am in agreement with Scerri that 18 vs 32 column is a matter of pragmatics. I do not see them as two independent forms of the periodic table, so I would prefer they be consistent. However, to me, anything that gets rid of La under Y on Wikipedia is an improvement and more consistent with latest understanding, so I'm prepared to accept the Polish Wikipedia compromise. Double sharp (talk) 08:25, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

As for your question, I think what's missing is the current state of affairs. There are two reasons for this. First, if you're making a case for a change, you should also for the sake of your readers' convenience help them figure what is the default form that you're trying to replace. Second, both -La-Ac and -Lu-Lr are going to be options on the table, so it would make sense to introduce both of them. From there, you can make your case.

I've been thinking about this because I'm planning to try to get rid of WP:ALUM when aluminium is either a GA or an FA. I'll want the reader not to get the feeling they're being swayed towards one option in a place where they're not supposed to be so that they don't feel the whole notion is rigged and get defensive where they should not.--R8R (talk) 18:33, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Notice of Dispute resolution noticeboard discussion

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The thread is "Periodic table".The discussion is about the topic Periodic table.

Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you!

--Double sharp (talk) 08:36, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Regarding aluminium

My greatest apologies, but I've come to a decision.

I am soon going to have no time to edit WP chemistry anyway, and the long group 3 discussion has more or less sucked out all my present desire to contribute to WP chemistry. It just makes me feel unhappy. Therefore, I feel it is best that I stop.

As for aluminium. I gave all the comments I could think of for the sections where I know something, they are maybe more FA material than GA material. And even they themselves are too close to the whole thing about generalities of periodicity, which is a large part of why this time I decided to stop for good. The remainder of it, I do not know so much about, I read that like a layman. With the exception of one minor thing that seemed repetitive (I edited it already), and one citation needed tag I saw, everything looked all right. So I think you're mostly good to go.

Right, that's it. I need a long break. Double sharp (talk) 09:52, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: It's been fun being a part of the same project with you. It's a shame that it must now come to an end.

I've got a few words to say but seems you're gone already. In that case, have fun, enjoy yourself, keep safe, and I hope to see you here once more.--R8R (talk) 15:45, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Huh, I still had this open in my tabs. So, the same to you, and you can say the words if you want. ;) Double sharp (talk) 16:06, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Well, if there's one thing I have learned from the British, it's that when somebody bids farewell, you simply wish them well in return. In this particular case, it wasn't hard because it was you whom I was wishing well to :)

Seriously, though, this discussion we're having is like you're standing at a doorstop, waving goodbye on your way out, and that's not the time to say any serious words. I could write you an email instead---provided, of course, that you want me to.--R8R (talk) 17:33, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: I meant to ping you in my last message, it just slipped my mind.--R8R (talk) 17:34, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, please send me an email! In fact I should've said that explicitly. Double sharp (talk) 01:50, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: sent you an email; I forgot to mention but I'd love to see some confirmation that you got it, so if you've read this message, please let me know if you got it, here or by email.--R8R (talk) 09:41, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

A link you might like re superheavies

This (from 2018) is quite something, although rather about the latest four (Nh, Mc, Ts, Og). Right, back to lurking. Double sharp (talk) 13:20, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's very interesting. Thank you for sharing.--R8R (talk) 15:08, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations!

...on Hs being promoted to FA! I'm glad I could help out along the way (even though unfortunately RL matters came into play nearer the end of the FAC), though the bulk of the credit goes to you and DS. And once things settle down a bit, I'll probably be able to work more consistently on History of the periodic table. ComplexRational (talk) 19:37, 31 August 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much, I'm, too, glad we've finally reached a conclusion. I haven't applied for TFA yet, but I presume that either I will later, or it'll be picked up with one of the TFA coordinators anyway.

By the way, I'd like to ask you a question. At the present moment, the article has 27 notes. That's a lot. I've been wondering if that's not too many? I recall suggesting to Double sharp you shouldn't have too many notes in an article (he was editing thorium) and I followed this rule, too (when I was editing lead). Maybe in this case the article is more technical, and it's fine, but in those two articles, it was not? I haven't made my mind on this, and a second opinion is welcome.

I hope that those things keeping you busy are not unpleasant in character ;) I'm not likely to be very active either, though only time will tell.--R8R (talk) 10:31, 1 September 2020 (UTC)

It's mostly academic-related, but it's a transitional period so I just have to adjust. And let's of course not forget that Wikipedia has no deadline, so I'm happy with whatever pace is comfortable for both of us.

Regarding notes, it's mostly a matter of preference as I understand it, but I generally prefer to provide as much information in article text as possible and only use notes when the only alternatives are a serious disruption in the flow or absence of important context. My experience with island of stability taught me to provide enough information to make the article accessible to a layperson without going over all the basics or irrelevant technicalities. I'll have to take a closer look; most seem to have a pretty clear purpose, but some could possibly be shortened or removed altogether. I'll get back to you soon about the details. ComplexRational (talk) 01:01, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, having no deadline is rather helpful; if there were deadlines, I feel I'd be failing them all otherwise :)

Yes, this has been more or less the idea I've had all along, although I've had some taste for notes that are not needed in the main article text. You see, my consideration is that a Wikipedia article is an overview article. Therefore, some thing don't fit into an article but could be useful to enhance understanding of an article (one prominent example is note e of Introduction to the heaviest elements, although I'd say the same about every note there). And the last review in the last FAC for hassium really did show me that enhancing readability is an important thing... just to what extent things should be spelled out is something that I'm still considering. I agree there are other ways to write an article, but I've always preferred to make them as accessible as reasonably possible. On the other hand, an encyclopedia is not a textbook, either, and there's a fine line between improving accessibility of writing for an encyclopedia and writing for a textbook, not to mention that we should not stray too far from the topic at hand. I'm still figuring out what exactly the constraints are that would allow to explain as much as possible but not too much. I'll be waiting for your comments.--R8R (talk) 10:42, 2 September 2020 (UTC)

@ComplexRational: do you think you could give me those comments during this month? Turns out hassium will be the TFA on October 9, so I’d like to improve the article, if such improvement is necessary, by then.—R8R (talk) 08:31, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I should be able to within the next few days. Thank you for reminding me. ComplexRational (talk) 12:43, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Hassium scheduled for TFA

This is to let you know that the Hassium article has been scheduled as today's featured article for October 9, 2020. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/October 9, 2020, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.

We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 12:40, 9 September 2020 (UTC)

Seems a bit of a problem to say the most stable isotope is 269, while giving (270) in the picture. Double sharp (talk) 08:39, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Thanks for bringing my attention to this. I will fix this shortly.--R8R (talk) 09:31, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

I apologize if I'm missing something obvious, but which picture are we talking about? ComplexRational (talk) 13:06, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

We're talking about the picture in the blurb. I have already fixed it.--R8R (talk) 13:11, 11 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you today for Hassium, saying "We return once again to bring you another superheavy element, after dubnium and nihonium back in 2018, and tennessine (then ununseptium) back in 2015. After the first FAC, we did some more work on the article (chronicled on the talk page), and I think we're ready to try again now. Hopefully this is a pleasant enough read for the subject matter while we sit back and wait for element 119 to reveal itself!"! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 07:42, 9 October 2020 (UTC)

Cooperation

Hi R8R. I remember our good & helpful cooperations. But by now, there seems to be a disconnection. I can appreciate your contributions, but also there are these negative/uncooperative actions you make. What is going wrong? Is there something I do not see? I'd like to hear & learn from you. -DePiep (talk) 23:24, 18 September 2020 (UTC)

@DePiep: Frankly, yes, I do think there is something you don't see, and that particular something is a perspective of yourself and your own actions. I do think that if you were more critical of your own actions around here, you could both take others' actions more lightly and not make actions that cause others disagreements with you.

I remember you identifying my personal attacks on you some time ago. That identification was incorrect, and I've paid extra attention since then to make sure that any subsequent identification of such attacks was equally incorrect. However, on this particular occasion, I must make an exception to make sure my point gets across. I do want to see better discussions myself, and I'm only doing this in hopes that this will stimulate reflection of your actions in you; I'll make sure this is the first and last exception.

The main problems as I see them is that you refuse to take no for an answer and that you don't pay attention to what you do and what consequences your actions may bear. Walking away in defeat gracefully is a sign of a great person; it's something I want to learn to do better myself. This, to say the least, is uncharacteristic of yourself. When someone enters a discussion like the ones we have around here in our Wiki-!democracy, their ultimate goal should be making the strong logical arguments that will convince others to follow them in a consensus. If the consensus is against them, there's that; after all, they are just one person, and they could be missing a legitimate contrary argument or worse, inadvertently or advertently refuse to recognize that legitimate argument. You displayed this well in the Charles Martin Hall argument, where not only did you gather no support, but also had other editors (not including myself) call out the way in which you conducted yourself in the discussion. Generally, if your argument didn't work, you either leave it at that or if you really feel like it, you could try to bring more attention or appeal to a higher court or ask for arbitration. You could make peace with that case where your argument didn't work, as I did when we moved to an -La-Ac group 3 or as Double sharp (eventually) did when he realized he couldn't have it back -Lu-Lr easily. Even if DS made a mistake in the way he behaved during that debate at some point, he has recognized it since then and learned from it, which is only welcome; that's how we people grow stronger. In contrast, not only did you not show any signs of having learned from the Hall dispute, but when there was one occasion where you seemingly did learn something, it didn't become the last time you run into this sort of disagreement.

A different kind of how you don't pay attention to what you're doing and what consequences your actions may have was earlier this year, at Talk:History of the periodic table, when you said the article after all ComplexRational's work was "chaotic, deviating, lack structure and is not an improvement." Not only was that rude, you also decided you could determine---not suggest---for us the people who actually write articles, what is to do done first and what not. If you had formulated the same thing differently, it could very well have been taken as a suggestion that could be considered. The order-like tone was only met with rejection seemingly because you did not pay attention to your words, and when given the chance to show good will and say you were sorry, you didn't take it. It's moments like this that make me think you never admit you're wrong and therefore they don't make me want to seek more conversations with you.

And now this little thing. I was really appalled by the picture you added at first. It was a chaotic mess of different fonts and colors that on its own looked disorganized. I did want to remove it but I didn't do it right off the bat, in great part because I expected you'd revert my revert. I didn't act upon this expectation because I wished to act in good faith and I knew about the standard modus operandi around here, WP:BRD (and I knew you knew about it, too), and that your revert would violate it. So I didn't act as if I thought you would violate that, and I even gave you a ping to indicate that you were free to get to the discussion part of BRD if you had disagreed with me and that I'd listen; but it came as no surprise to me that you did just what I thought you would and violated it. Not only that but then you came to my talk page and said you were looking for cooperation but you had just called out my "habits" on a public page without even having had a long unyielding discussion that would excuse that and I am left to either see no currency in that call for cooperation or assume you don't watch what you're saying. (By the way, I'd love you to see you substantiate the claim that I, as usual, "simply deny arguments": what exactly argument did you put forward that I denied?)

And as for why I revert other edits relatively easily: it may come as a surprise to you, but I actually picked this sort of behavior from you. I always try to explain myself, however. If it did come as a surprise, then this only serves as more proof that you don't pay attentions to your actions.

Now I'll repeat myself and say all of this was written with the sole purpose of getting to a better place in future interactions. If you think that I need to learn something about my behavior around here, then don't bother because I, unlike some people, am perfect and need no corrections. And if you don't agree or think this came out arrogantly, then I suggest you capture this thought and take another read of what I wrote in the previous paragraphs.

I've been around here for almost a decade now. I don't think I've ever had a long heated quarrel with either Double sharp or Sandbh, both of whom have been around for roughly as long, or in fact, anybody at all other than yourself, and I know that the same doesn't hold for you, which is why I think that my words are worth listening to. That being said, if you do think there's something wrong about my behavior, I'm very willing to listen. Let's take this chance to improve future discussions. I'm willing to listen and I expect you to be willing to listen what I just said as you indicated in the initial message of this section.--R8R (talk) 11:58, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Regarding longest-lived isotopes

The whole 269 vs 270 issue for hassium is maybe arbitrary anyway because of measurement uncertainty. CIAAW says why:

“ For some elements, there is no single isotope which could be regarded as the most stable (longest lived). This is because the half-lives are measured with asymmetric uncertainties whereas the recommended values have mathematically calculated symmetric uncertainties. Thus, for example, technetium-97 and technetium-98 could both be considered as equally stable. ”

So maybe we should say that. OTOH, since it is something of a tradition in many places to show the most stable isotope's mass number anyway instead of a standard atomic weight, this would be difficult to actually reflect. Double sharp (talk) 16:23, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much for bringing my attention to this, it made me refresh my understanding of statistics and it will probably aid readers' understanding, too. I added a note in the infobox and corrected another note in the article; I doubt more could or should be done.--R8R (talk) 15:07, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I like what you did. ^_^ I agree that nothing else could really be done here. I've sometimes seen tables that refuse to give atomic weights at all for such elements (e.g. IUPAC themselves), and it makes some sense from a puristic standpoint (since we really don't know), but it's just not the ordinary thing to do. Anyway all these heavy-element atomic weights are provisional till we find longer-lived isotopes or find that there aren't any (probably the former), and in some sense they are not pointful (if you are really working with Bk and need its atomic weight, it will probably be the 249 isotope and not the 247 isotope because the former is easier to make even if shorter-lived). Double sharp (talk) 15:29, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

The general idea of having a 1σ (68%) confidence interval here is correct, but the wording used is not. A 68% confidence interval does not mean that there is a 68% probability that the true value lies within the interval; rather, it means that with repeated sampling, one would expect 68% of the computed intervals to contain the true value. This is a fine detail and common misunderstanding that I learned in basic statistics. I'm not sure how to give a short and simple explanation of this in a note, though. It may be better to leave out the details and say something along the lines of the 1σ error margins overlapping and thus the possibility that either isotope is more stable than the other cannot be ruled out. ComplexRational (talk) 21:10, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

My bad, didn't read R8R's note carefully (I saw he'd added a note and just skimmed it as I was busy). CR is indeed right, and I think his idea of leaving out the details is better. Double sharp (talk) 21:19, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It's a relief to know that there is somebody who understand the subject better than I do. You're indeed right; it should be good now, I think?

Still needs a bit of work. Even with many intervals, it still doesn't mean the probability of the true value falling within the interval (in other words, once you know the true value, it either is or isn't, so probability is meaningless). The technically correct formulation is that 68% of the confidence intervals so constructed (for a large number of trials) are expected to contain the true value. This is a distinct concept from any one interval having a 68% probability of containing the true value—that would indeed a credible interval, so I see how confusion can arise. ComplexRational (talk) 12:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

By the way, one additional level of complication I had with this in university is that in Russian, both "confidence interval" and "credible interval" are called the same.--R8R (talk) 07:03, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

FWIW, my statistics class never mentioned them, despite highlighting common misuses of confidence intervals. And curiously, I've never encountered the term in all the articles I read on SHEs (unless I missed it when I wasn't attentive...). ComplexRational (talk) 12:50, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I got it when you said so, I re-read confidence interval a bit more closely. If I somehow missed this, would you point it out directly?--R8R (talk) 17:00, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry if I sound confused, but what exactly do I need to point out? Are we talking specifically about credible intervals, when one or the other is used, or something else? ComplexRational (talk) 21:40, 21 September 2020 (UTC)

You said that my note in its present state needed some more work. I don't see how exactly, and that's what I need your help with.--R8R (talk) 14:34, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

As it is, the note reads (such an interval based on an equal number of future measurements, whose result is yet unknown, contains the true value with a probability of ~68.3%).

Regardless of the number of measurements, a confidence interval does not give the probability of containing the parameter (as the current wording suggests). The definition of a confidence interval instead dictates that out of a large number of intervals (not the number of measurements in only one interval) similarly calculated, a certain proportion (here ~68.3%) of these intervals are expected to contain the parameter. Alternatively, a confidence interval can be interpreted as "we are 68.3% confident that the value falls between X and Y". Although it sounds similar, this is a distinct concept from probability because this interpretation is from the researcher's point of view considering experimental constraints and available data, not a mathematical probability (which, as I said above, is inappropriate here).

That said, I would reword the parenthetical definition to focus on interpretation, because I feel that giving the whole technical definition and trying to clarify common misunderstandings would be very wordy and digress from the main point. One way to do this would be (for this constructed interval, researchers may be ~68.3% confident that it contains the true value), but I'm open to other ideas as long as we don't confuse interpretation with probability. I hope this is clear enough for you. ComplexRational (talk) 15:50, 22 September 2020 (UTC)

@ComplexRational: Hmm. I don't get it. The thing is, if we're talking about future measurements, it means we don't know them yet, and that's where probability comes in.

To quote confidence interval: "Various interpretations of a confidence interval can be given (taking the 90% confidence interval as an example in the following). [...] The confidence interval can be expressed in terms of a single sample: "There is a 90% probability that the calculated confidence interval from some future experiment encompasses the true value of the population parameter." I think I said just that, didn't I? If not, could you have the patience to explain to me how so?--R8R (talk) 13:36, 26 September 2020 (UTC)

Sorry for not getting to this sooner, I've been extremely busy this weekend. I can give a full response by the end of the day on Tuesday; if not, please badger me about it. ComplexRational (talk) 00:15, 28 September 2020 (UTC)

@ComplexRational: the requested prompt.--R8R (talk) 09:03, 2 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the reminder. I was going to write a full reply tomorrow, but here goes:

After a third look, it does in fact appear that you are making a probabilistic statement about the interval rather than the parameter (half-life), which is correct. I would, though, recommend trimming it to "such an interval based on a future experiment..." (more closely reflecting what you quoted) because the number of future measurements is irrelevant to the concept of the confidence interval and "equal" is not contextualized very well. (The number of measurements or sample size might impact the size of the confidence interval, but not the probability of it containing the true value, as that is something that we define beforehand.) Other than that, I think we have a working explanation in place; it looks good to go as far as I see.

On another note (no pun intended), I haven't seen any other areas of concern before TFA in any other notes, but I haven't had time to very closely examine them since the FAC. If you have specific questions, I'll take a look, but I can't do any broad reviews right now. My workload has gotten rather larger the past week or two, and I can't yet say when or how much it will subside (well, by mid-December it should, but I'm thinking more short-term). I'm very sorry for the poor timing of this, but I'd rather not make commitments that I can't keep. ComplexRational (talk) 01:14, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much for your reply. I corrected the note as you suggested, except I used "future experiments" instead of "a future experiment": one could say both have the same meaning here but I decided using plural would be better because there are clearly multiple previous experiments, so it's better to have multiple future experiments, too.

Thanks for letting me know. Best of luck with anything that requires your attention here and now!--R8R (talk) 21:20, 3 October 2020 (UTC)

Superheavy chemistry

Might interest you. This too. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 17:58, 19 September 2020 (UTC)

I absolutely like how Duellmann says under the pretenses of a person who asks questions that his field is interesting and then agrees on his own account :) thank you very much indeed for sharing, I have yet to read that "Q&A" more closely. I'm sure it'll prove useful later. Thanks for the presentation too; I feel like in this case too, it'll be later when I understand all of it completely.--R8R (talk) 15:17, 20 September 2020 (UTC)

ANI

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. Thank you. (here) DePiep (talk) 21:16, 6 October 2020 (UTC)

Help on short translation, please

Hi R8R Usually we are engaged somewhere in chemistry articles but on this occasion I'd like your help with a small bit of Russian translation, please. Today I added to an article about a pensioners' protest in Donetsk, in the section on Ed Gold. The reference is a .pdf magazine article in Russian but I need an expert to see what the article actually says and improve the text I inserted to reflect any other useful information suitable for this WP:BLP. Thanks! Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 16:32, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

I've had a translation from another source, now, so I think the article is fine. You could give-it the once-over if you have time. Michael D. Turnbull (talk) 17:37, 15 October 2020 (UTC)

@Michael D. Turnbull: it's mostly fine, except the protesters did not lose their pensions entirely; the pensions were cut but not canceled. It may also be interesting that the protesters launched a hunger strike.--R8R (talk) 17:21, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll change the text to reflect that. One pensioner did die while on hunger strike, as the article has been updated today to say. Mike Turnbull (talk) 10:47, 17 October 2020 (UTC)

I'm glad I could help. Feel free to write if there's ever something else I could help you with.--R8R (talk)

WP:BARN

Hello R8R, I've been adding and organizing barnstars @WP:BARN for a while now. I was wondering if I can change the criteria to your Atomic Barnstar. The current criteria states: "may be awarded to an editor who makes outstanding contributions to articles on atoms and atomic nuclei." I would like to change it to: "may be awarded to an editor who makes outstanding contributions to Chemical element-related articles", and seeing that WikiProject Elements does not have a barnstar yet, your Atomic Barnstar would be perfect for the project. Jerm (talk) 02:35, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

@Jerm: I feel it's not really the same: chemical elements are not exactly best represented by atoms, and my original intention for the picture I created was somewhat different. But I could craft an element-related barnstar that suits the purpose you've outlined better, or so I think. I have added a barnstar to the list.--R8R (talk) 17:14, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

R8R Thanks, your barnstar is perfect. I'll add it to Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Participants. Jerm (talk) 17:18, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

		The Graphic Designer's Barnstar
		Thanks for making the Elemental Barnstar. It looks awesome! Jerm (talk) 17:38, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Thank you very much!--R8R (talk) 17:56, 16 October 2020 (UTC)

Notification (ANI)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is Trouble at WP:ELEM, round 3: conduct of User:Sandbh. Thank you. Double sharp (talk) 21:53, 23 October 2020 (UTC)

Post at WT:ELEM

Hi R8R,

I note this post of yours at WT:ELEM, directed at DePiep, to which he understandably objected. I have been trying to help make the discussions at WT:ELEM more productive, in part by trying to separate comments on content from comments on other editors. It is fine for you to seek clarification from DePiep about his perspective, comments that he has made, etc. Your last paragraph, however, goes beyond that and was counter-productive. It meant that DePiep responded to being painted as an obstruction to progress and that the questions that you posed were overshadowed. Please, if you want to have a conversation with DePiep about such topics, do it on one of your talk pages. Further, I strongly recommend adopting a tone consistent with collegial cooperation / collaboration rather than one that appears to be accusation, if for no other reason than it is more likely to be fruitful.

Thank you.

EdChem (talk) 04:40, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

@EdChem: I support all of R8R's comments. It is a fair summary of the situation, including the last paragraph. Your recommendation re adopting a tone consistent with collegial cooperation / collaboration is reasonable. It takes two people for this work however. As summarised by R8R this has not been case for the other party. I know, since I was looking forward to a new colour scheme, as put forward by R8R many years ago, and which was favourably viewed by other editors. Nothing has happened since this time for the reasons put forward by R8R. Sandbh (talk) 06:29, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

Sandbh, I recognise that there is baggage brought to the current discussions and that there have been problems in the past. However, the situation at WT:ELEM has been improving and I believe it is in part because I have been commenting on problematic edits / comments. R8R's final comments were not helpful to advancing the discussion of content issues, IMO, and I stand by my decision to come here and say so. I don't want to get bogged down in concerns (justified or not) about past actions if it can be avoided. I hope that R8R will take on board my comments in the spirit in which they were intended and we can all focus on content. EdChem (talk) 22:24, 26 October 2020 (UTC)

EdChem What you refer to as "baggage" is relevant contextual history. The incivility bandwidth at WP:ANI, let alone on a project talk page, following DePeip's expletive laden contribution is, how can I put it, "astonishingly wide". You are of course entitled to your opinion and to express it anywhere you like. I have no expectation for you to justify that, and am surprised you felt a need to do so. R8R's last comment, viewed in the context of 4 years of inaction by the other editor, does not register on the incivility meter (IMO, of course). I do agree with you about not wanting to get bogged down in concerns (justified or not) about past actions if it can be avoided. In this csse, as R8R explained, past inaction has led to where we are today. As such, the contextual history is a relevant consideration if we wish to avoid making the same mistakes, heading into the future. Sandbh (talk) 00:37, 27 October 2020 (UTC)

@EdChem and Sandbh: Hi, sorry for this delay. I was generally surprised that editors took my words as an outburst against DePiep because there was no intention on my part to write anything like that and because I don't believe I have written anything that warrants such a reaction. One can see that from both the tone of the paragraphs that are not in question and the edit summary, too. However, I eagerly accept that I should've tried to express myself more clearly, however, since several people reacted to it differently from what I had expected. I'll try to explain what I did have in mind.

What happened a few years ago and why bring it up now

Several years ago, we started a discussion on how to recolor the periodic table scheme we used; there was a general agreement the coloring scheme used at the moment wasn't very good. I thought that improving that would be an easy task, so I suggested another coloring scheme. DePiep gave some constructive and actionable criticism which helped improve my scheme. It was clearly better than what we had at the moment, so I thought it could do, but DePiep asked not to introduce the new scheme saying it wasn't perfect, and expressed a desire to invent their own coloring scheme. I thought back in the day that the matter was in capable hands and I should sit and wait (although I found it hard to believe back in the day that the new scheme could be significantly improved).

Four years passed, and DePiep hasn't produced a new scheme so far. We didn't get an improvement that was at hand back then and we didn't get one later, and it is therefore not too hard to see that the decision to wait for a perfect scheme, as illusionary as the concept of a "perfect" scheme is, was a wrong one. I'm not, and was not, assigning blame for that wrong decision; this doesn't help us get anywhere. (If I were to do that, I'd have to assume a part of the guilt too, since I supported the wrong decision, and I'm conscious of that.) What matters is that we get things done. We should, I thought, recognize that waiting alone without a deadline was not enough, and we had to change our approach. I did see that DePiep was still suggesting we wait for an undetermined period of time again, and there was little explanation of what we should be waiting for. We've been there, it didn't work out the first time and there was no guarantee it would work the second time; a deadline is meant as a guarantee we'd get at least something. We should learn from past mistakes and that why I brought it up, fully conscious of my part in that past mistake, too.

What I intended to say and what I did say

While DePiep's words were generally driving the reader to assume that we, again, should wait for a result in an undetermined future, there was no explicit "Stop, don't" yet, nothing that one could take as direct obstruction of the process. That is precisely why I didn't say that. I said, "I do want you to help us create a better scheme, possibly even create the one we'll go with; by all means, please go ahead. However, if, all things considered, you can't aid that, then I'll ask you to at least not obstruct creation of such a scheme by other editors" -- noting that this position could potentially evolve into obstruction in the future. It is also clear from the quote I gave this was not the only scenario I considered.

I have consulted the Oxford dictionary (the one Google uses). The first meaning of the word "obstruct" is, "block (an opening, path, road, etc.); be or get in the way of"; I take it from here this word does not necessarily imply poor will---something I did not mean to suggest---on behalf of the one who impedes something, merely the consequence of such impediment. My standard dictionary of choice, Merrian-Webster, also does not hint that poor will is a necessary part of this word. Therefore, I take it what I said does not amount to a grievance against DePiep's actions nor does it imply poor will on their part, and I didn't intend to say either of those things. Is there something I'm missing?

(When Double sharp expressed his concern about the word "obstruction," I was genuinely surprised but tried to downplay it by saying that I'd take it back if DePiep resolves my concern about indefinite waiting. DePiep has done that, and I'm happy to conclude my concern is resolved, and as I promised, I'll retract it shortly, even if I still don't see what precisely the problem here was in the first place.)

I hope this answers all of your concerns; if not, please let me know why not. I would've loved to say that I could see how I was wrong and this wouldn't happen again, but I genuinely don't see what I should do differently the next time to not end up in a similar situation other than making myself more clear.

@DePiep and Double sharp: FYI.--R8R (talk) 10:31, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: Thank you. I think, yes, this might be an English thing: when you use "obstruct" regarding a person's behaviour, it tends to have the connotation that the obstruction is deliberate. That is, that difficulties are being caused for other people when they didn't have to be, so there's some connotation of poor will indeed. So that's why I was concerned about the word. Sorry, I sometimes forget that you are not a native speaker because your English is so good. ^_^ I think we'll be fine as long as we remember that. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 10:38, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I do not accept that R8R is pushing a WP:OWNership upon me. Framing me this way is bad faith. Doing so four years later, and repeatedly on multiple pages so, is strengthening the bad smell and also forumshopping. I will not tread into 'arguments'. -DePiep (talk) 11:21, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@DePiep: It's rather disheartening to see such a jab at myself, since there is, and was, no ownership concern raised in this instance whatsoever, and, in fact, I stated the opposite in my reply and recognized my share of responsibility for ending up where we are now. Can I expect either a substantiation of the claim that I pushed ownership on you, or a retraction of it?--R8R (talk) 11:57, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@Double sharp: thank you. I indeed was not aware that this subtext was rather pronounced, and this only shows how much I have yet to learn. I'll definitely have it in mind in the future, and I'll try to make it a habit to double-check if there is room for misinterpretation of my words.--R8R (talk) 12:32, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

I don't feel the need to redo my TL;DR perception of your post. It should not be my job or responsility to analyse and interpret excessive posts. If you think there is a misunderstanding, try preventing that by writing less meandering, or less long. -DePiep (talk) 13:10, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@DePiep: Of course, you don't have to analyze and interpret anything. However, you didn't have to write what you wrote, either. If you do want to write a reply to something, you should read it carefully. That post wasn't even aimed at you, and you didn't have to respond, yet you did. Mistakes may happen, and admitting them is one thing; not reading carefully something you respond to and not admitting a problem with that is another.

I don't feel the need for you to redo your perception of that post, either, the need is to get the facts on the table. I do feel the need that you answer this question: what was the basis for the claim that I was pushing ownership upon you? If you want me to change my behavior, you could point out what was the specific thing I have done wrongly so that I don't make the mistake again. I will stress the need for an answer by citing Wikipedia:No personal attacks: "some types of comments are never acceptable: [...] Accusations about personal behavior that lack evidence. Serious accusations require serious evidence, usually in the form of diffs and links." Saying that I pushed ownership upon you is a serious accusation, one that I might seriously need to work on if it is correct (and wrong on my part), so I expect that you can back it up with something and expand upon it, or that you recognize you made a mistake and retract this comment. Either of these will be fine; however, failure to accomplish either of those will mean that claim was nothing but an unfounded personal attack.

Seriously, I tried hard to write a somewhat reconciliatory post that would at least relieve at least some of the current tension, in which I didn't attack you once, admitted I was a part of why we ended up where we did with respect to the issue at hand, and admitted what good behavior you have shown. In response, I only get a personal attack I can't act upon because there is no justification provided for it. It is disheartening, I didn't say that the last time to look smug or anything. Can you back up the claim you have put forward?--R8R (talk) 13:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

You wrote it, I read it in your post. I don't want to spend any time on this. Then adding blame to me that I did not "have" to reply (while you pinged me) is adding more to the pile.

Instead. I suggest if you don't mean to say it, then don't write it. For tomorrow: again don't write it. Stop it. -DePiep (talk) 14:50, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

• R8R, I also read "obstruction" / "obstructive" as having connotations of either deliberate action or something that causes significant irritation / annoyance or both. English has many words where the denotation from a dictionary can fail to convey the connotations that a native speaker is highly likely to infer (and assume was implied). I do not have the skill in any other language to know the extent to which this applies in other languages – my guess is that it is similar – but it is something that I have seen come up at en.WP on other occasions. I admit this presents you with a challenge, and one that is complicated in your case by your fluency in English as your writing does not immediately make me recognise that you are not a native speaker. Someone whose writing makes it clear to a reader that they are not a native speaker triggers me to consider whether what seems to be being said is actually what was meant, especially when it is something being said indirectly or by the connotations of language.
• I'm glad to read that this was not what you intended.
• The posts since then make it clear that there remains tension between you and DePiep, which leads me to ask: what useful outcomes for the future do you see as coming from continuing that line of discussion? Rightly or wrongly, DePiep is clearly annoyed, not keen to engage, and responding to aspects that do seem accusatory – so is pursuing this productive? Whether fair or not, it seems to me to have reached the point where the user talk page discussion is not productive and so you face the choice of dropping it or pursuing some other form of dispute resolution. EdChem (talk) 20:24, 1 November 2020 (UTC)

@EdChem, DePiep, Double sharp, and R8R: Knowing R8R for as long as I have, I was disappointed to see R8R's comments interpreted in any way other than WP:IGF. We all know of R8R's non-English speaking background, yet some of us feel inclined to interpret what says in the worst possible way. Why, other than to impute malign intent rather than WP:IGF? I declare a WP:COI since I supported R8R in his ANI v DePiep. Sandbh (talk) 04:06, 3 November 2020 (UTC)

@Sandbh: I appreciate your concern, but don't worry about it, it's fine, really. I'm glad to be treated by default in the same manner as other editors, and if anything, I'm flattered to hear my English did not make either Double sharp or EdChem think I could have missed something. I have provided an explanation and I take it they have accepted it. To me, that's the end of it. (I wish this section had stopped at that, which I thought it would when I was writing the said explanation.) There are no hard feelings on my part about either DS or EdChem.

@EdChem: I was going to end the discussion on this note even before you wrote your last post, so I'm obviously not going to continue it now. I simply want to summarize what I have seen so far and my thoughts about it.

While my original post was, as I see now, up for a different interpretation than the one I had intended, I tried to relieve the tension other editors have sensed by explaining how I didn't mean what people seemed to have thought I meant. I also tried to show some good will with my interpretation of DePiep's actions in the course of such a reply, which I thought I have done rather well by both pointing out what positive actions DePiep had undertaken and by accepting I was a part of the reason for ending up where we are now with respect to the topic at hand (PT recoloring). Again, both Double sharp and yourself seem to have taken my response positively. DePiep, however, said a nasty thing about my behavior (by claiming I had pushed ownership upon them, even though this directly contradicted what I had actually said: I accepted I was a part of the explanation why we ended up where we did) and didn't provide an explanation. This is the sort of thing that is never acceptable per Wikipedia:No personal attacks (I provided a specific quote in the previous post). I tried to give DePiep benefit of doubt and asked what it was the led to such a comment against myself. I didn't get an answer. I pointed out that an explanation could help me change my behavior if there was behavior to be changed, and I pointed out that a failure to do that would constitute a breach of an official policy, and this sort of accusations is generally unpleasant to deal with. The response was, "I don't want to talk about it, stop it." There is no point in asking any further questions, no answer it is then. I am (once again) left in a situation where I hear a bad accusation against myself, I don't get any substantiation of such a claim, and I have to live with that. I will take no further action for the time being.

I understand it there was hope during the last ANI that we wouldn't run into this sort of thing again. I thought these hopes were ungrounded, but I agreed to play along and not to try to be a part of the problem, at least not on purpose. I think I wasn't a part of the problem this time, or even if my words could be interpreted otherwise, I have tried to make sure my words were interpreted the way I had intended them to be, and this attack happened after such an explanation on my part. If my assessment is wrong on that, you're very welcome to correct me. I fear this may not be the last time something like this happens; there is no indication something's going to change.--R8R (talk) 09:40, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

I appreciate your good will, hopefully things will improve over time. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 12:14, 4 November 2020 (UTC)

R8R, I draw your attention to the thread at User talk:Sandbh#Recent post at WT:ELEM and note your recent contribution at WT:ELEM directed at DePiep. I want to emphasise that much of the advice I just gave to Sandbh could also be offered to you. In the context of an ArbCom case, and with attempts at settlement occurring, your actions are not only making the case more likely, but will draw additional scrutiny on to yourself. I note that I am not alone in holding this view – Guy Macon's post shortly after yours gives some excellent advice. As I have noted at Sandbh's page, DePiep has recognised that change and self-reflection is needed, along with a willingness to consider criticism. You might want more from him, but this is a meaningful offer to adapt and one that you can best judge by waiting for DePiep to show you by his actions that he meant those words. We are at a point where you have a choice – to force an ArbCom case that will likely see you sanctioned (along with some others) or try to avoid four or more weeks of unpleasant and contentious dispute resolution in favour of rebuilding a functioning editing community at ELEM. I hope that you will choose the latter. EdChem (talk) 04:35, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Related: User talk:Guy Macon#My entry at Elements ArbCom case. --Guy Macon (talk) 05:49, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

@EdChem: you're right. Guy Macon's interjection from Monday cleared things up for me. It is indeed up to me to be a collaborative editor. I will not fuel the conflict any further.--R8R (talk) 06:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)

Arbitration

Please comment here Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case if you wish, as a witness. Jehochman ^Talk 02:50, 13 November 2020 (UTC)