User talk:Walkerma/Archive23

This archive covers up to the end of Aug 2008. Topics include rollback rights, CAS-Wikipedia collaboration, 1.0 (style issues, vandalism, exemplars, changes to assessment, etc), Zotero, Dispatch. For other talk page archives see User talk:Walkerma/Archives. Other close archives include: Archive10 — Archive11 — Archive12 — Archive13 — Archive14 — Archive15 — Archive16 — Archive17 — Archive18 — Archive19 — Archive20 — Archive21 — Archive22 — Archive24 — Archive25 — Archive26 — Archive27 — Archive28 — Archive29

C-class articles -- thanks

Thanks for your input on C-class articles on WP:INDIA. Much appreciated. =Nichalp «Talk»= 17:54, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

I read what you posted on /India. I'm afraid I don't think you have disposed of the B/milhist B/assessment discrepancy. I note that their standard is still becoming more restrictive and is significantly different to the assessment definition of B. I even presumed to strike out one of their assessment guidelines which made excessive claims about wiki policy article requirements, never mind assessment team criteria. You may or may not have gathered that I think article assessment should be working as a service for readers, not just editors. A number of people seem more interested in polishing articles to get brownie points, rather than making them useful to readers.

I just read on your user page your comment about validation. It seems to me people are confusing a requirement to insert references with the solution to validating articles. I distrust an automatic presumption from the existence of references that an article is better, or that it fairly represents the subject. Excessive importance is being placed upon refs. Sandpiper (talk) 18:44, 3 November 2008 (UTC)

Article Evolution Timeline

Hi I have seen the evolution timeline for "Atom" you created at Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment as a demonstration for article evolution. It is so great. May I ask how did you select the specific time for each milestone? Did you do it manually by reviewing all of the revisions and set the milestones based on the assessment criteria? Or you had any advance tools for the evaluation? Because for the former method I found it is hard to set the exact boundary for each status? I am now doing a research on Wikipedia and need to review about 100 articles concerning their evelution on quality(so tedious...). So I would be greatly thankful if you could share some of your experience and help me out. Thanks! yuzhong 16:04, 5 November 2008 (UTC)

Hey Walkerma, thanks very much for you information about the article assessment. It is very useful and I am now following the process you suggested.

I saw you and Arman went through the historical revisions of the article "Atom" and identified some critical changes and when those occurred such as:

• The article started as a stub on Oct 1, 2001.
• By 8 October, 2001 it received some additions and approached the upper bound of the definition of stub.
• On 20 September 2002, the article was enriched with some more information and it moves into start class.
• The version as of 3 June 2004 is still in start class. There is a meaningful amount of information - but it needs further structuring improvement.
• On 24 June 2004, the article receives another important addition - a useful image. It has reached the upper bound of start class, but still not good enough to get a C-class rating.

It is very nice.But I notice the "atom" article started around late 2001 when there was no wikiproject based assessment. May I ask how did you make the assessment before the start of wikiproject based assessment? Did you make the assessment yourself based on the criteria listed on Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment. Or could you please suggest some more resources for the assessment of the early development of an article started much earlier before the lanch of Wikiproject based assessment?

Thanks a lot!

yuzhong(talk) 02:39, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Organofluorine chemistry

Would you please intercede - leave advice or moderate - on this very contentious article splitting business. We are trying to spin out an article on organofluorine chemistry and two versions are contending and participants are getting grumpy.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:55, 8 November 2008 (UTC)

Jewish American

Someone has obviously put a ton of hard work into Jewish American, but it needs a lot more work still. It has many {{fact}} tags, sections that read like lists, formatting probs with the cites, and... arguably has a mild POV problem. I wouldn't include it, unless several people are willing to dedicate a couple weeks to improving it. Thanks! Ling.Nut ^{(talk—WP:3IAR)} 11:19, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Request

I noticed that you review articles for Version 7.0. I was wondering if you could do that for this article- Akshardham (Delhi). The article is on its way to being a GA after someone reviews it. It is considered one of the largest temples in the world and the largest Hindu temple. I was wondering if you could look over it for Version 7.0    Juthani1   ^tcs 19:36, 9 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for taking care of that. Could you also look at Swaminarayan. It is a sect of hinduism which has gained popularity in recent years    Juthani1   ^tcs 20:43, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Small heads up

Hey Walkerma, there is a new and considerably improved version of Horses in warfare up now, we are tweaking it for FA and made a number of mostly minor, but noticeable changes. If it is not too late to swap versions fot the 0.7 revision, here is a permanent link to the most current "clean" version: http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Horses_in_warfare&oldid=250953408 Thanks. Montanabw^(talk) 23:22, 10 November 2008 (UTC)

Apology

I just wanted to offer a general apology because I think I have been a bit too forceful in my posts on the fluorocarbon talk page. Thanks for bringing up the issue of complexity with Lemal's designation of HFCs as fluorocarbon derivatives. I am in quite a edit war (it seems) with Itub over carbon-fluorine bond, organofluorines, and organofluorine chemistry. He is alleging that my organofluorine page is a POV fork. I think a short organofluorine page is essential for Wikipedia. I feel responsible for perhaps pushing him over the edge - I think he is being illogical at this point because of my bullheaded tone on the fluorocarbon talk page (but I could be wrong, it is my impression though). Perhaps you can assist us as we work on these pages. Thanks. -Shootbamboo (talk) 04:12, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Question

Samuel Johnson became an FA on 7 October 2008. The 0.7 nom process says that FAs were automatically listed for nomination, but I never saw Johnson appear, nor any indication that it was ever reviewed. Was this an oversight? Ottava Rima (talk) 20:42, 11 November 2008 (UTC)

Q & A

You asked: "... If I were to try vandalising the CAS# on Boric acid, what would happen?".

I started a Q & A for CheMoBot, see User talk:CheMoBot/Q&A. Thoughts? --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:34, 19 November 2008 (UTC)

Happy Walkerma/Archive23's Day!

User:Walkerma/Archive23 has been identified as an Awesome Wikipedian, and therefore, I've officially declared today as Walkerma/Archive23's day! For being such a beautiful person and great Wikipedian, enjoy being the Star of the day, dear Walkerma/Archive23! Peace, Rlevse ~ A record of your Day will always be kept here.

For a userbox you can add to your userbox page, see User:EVula/Userboxes/Happy Me Day! and my own userpage for a sample of how to use it. 20 Nov for you. — Rlevse • Talk • 02:18, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

Thank you, a very kind thought! Walkerma (talk) 13:26, 22 November 2008 (UTC)

Well earned. Good idea, Rlevse! Wim van Dorst (talk) 17:24, 22 November 2008 (UTC).

Image:CrCl3 CrCl2.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:CrCl3 CrCl2.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. JaGa^talk 04:09, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Image:CrCl3 dibenzenechromium.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, Image:CrCl3 dibenzenechromium.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Images and media for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. JaGa^talk 04:10, 26 November 2008 (UTC)

Mbeychok

I learned today that Mbeychok quit wikipedia because of me (he's back now). Since you said goodbye to him, you probably read his version of things, but didn't have mine. I don't really care for comments on the whole situation as it's water under the bridge to me, but I would at least like to have the chance to clear my name. You don't have to agree with me or even reply, but I wrote on a rant on my user page, and I would appreciate if you took a minute to read it. Thanks. Headbomb {^ταλκ_{κοντριβς} – WP Physics} 10:26, 29 November 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for dropping by. Actually, I did look into the issue a little, but I don't regard you as a "demon". On the contrary, I've found your input on WP1.0 to be very helpful. I think it was just a clash of different cultures and generations that led to things getting a little out of control - so just one of those very sad things that happens here. We all need to remember that we may be talking to a 14 year-old video gamer from Long Island one minute, then a 70 year old professor from Heidelberg the next, or perhaps a 25 year old Hindu dancer, and the norms/mores of these people can be very different. What I do know is that Mbeychok has made a lot of very nice contributions, and that's what I respect him for - and that's what counts as currency within the community. So I'm very glad he's back. But from what I've seen, you're also a valuable contributor, and I hope that you will continue to be so! Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 04:27, 30 November 2008 (UTC)

Isis Draw

Heya Martin

I was wondering about your instructions a while back ([1]). Do you still use Isis Draw? Are you still scanning? Or is there a better way now? --Rifleman 82 (talk) 01:29, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey, great to hear from you! I was just thinking about sending you an email to find out what you're up to! Are you back on WP, or is this just a temporary visit?

I still use IsisDraw, but now I open the skc file in ChemSketch, which has (in the version I have) a feature for generating a PNG file directly. I've heard that there is now a free-for-educational use version of Symyx (sp?) Draw, which is the replacement for IsisDraw, but I haven't checked that out yet. See this blog entry. I'm busy finishing off my grading for the year. Keep in touch! Walkerma (talk) 02:08, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

Hey Martin, good to hear from you too. You've been scarce recently. Am travelling now; while I do get internet access where I'm staying, long days make me edit sporadically. Where time permits, I've reverted to the sort of work which first drew me here - writing articles on chems and drawing structures. I've got some heavy stuff (Itub's RFA, e.g.) to do, but I'd rather wait until I have some quiet time to do it right, rather than dash it off perfunctorily. Thanks for your reply. Looks like no fix for Isis Draw yet. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 13:37, 21 December 2008 (UTC)

And now, for Fvasconcellos' traditional nonsectarian holiday greeting!

Wherever you are, and whether you're celebrating something or not, there is always a reason to spread the holiday spirit! So, may you have a great day, and may all your wishes be fulfilled in 2009! Fvasconcellos (t·c) 14:50, 24 December 2008 (UTC)

Is this a combination of my Christmas greeting from 2006 and my New Year's greeting from last year? Why, it most certainly is! Hey, if it ain't broke...

Maintenance of the WP:CHEMS worklist details

Hi Martin, I saw you did some work on the update of the class-details of articles on the WP:CHEMS worklist. With the introduction of more automatic indexing I have not actively maintained those details in that list, and have been focussing on getting all WP:CHEMS articles at least rated. Rather than maintaining those details, I was considering to remove classification details per article from that manually maintained list, as the bot indexing is much easier. I do want to retain the grouping, and the extra comments per article for background. And of course I think we should give some effort on doing some more article upgrading too, but that appears to require much more spare time than any of the WP:CHEMS editor has. What do you think? Keep details (probably quite outdated) or clean up? Wim van Dorst (talk) 18:52, 29 December 2008 (UTC).

Yes, I think we need to discuss what to do with this page. Obviously it has a lot of sentimental value to us! I'd like to see us use it for an automated display of the articles tagged as core, but I don't know how to set that up. Walkerma (talk) 22:04, 31 December 2008 (UTC)

Assessment request

Thanks for reviewing and assessing Sidney Lumet. It reminded me to go back to some other articles, so I added them as open requests. If you get a chance, I hoped you might check them out to see if some should be rated differently. Any comments or suggestions would also be great. Thanks. Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 04:48, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

I'll take a look at those. I'm not sure that the Computing project is the right place to post these, though! Walkerma (talk) 05:17, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Woops! - just relocated them to Biographies. Never been to this part of town! Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 05:44, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks for the reviews and suggestions. I'll be on it to polish them up. Wikiwatcher1 (talk) 22:37, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

You're welcome! I had a reading from Lester Brown in a class I taught last year (on Sustainable Manufacturing), so I was glad to see his article expanded. I'll try to get to the others later, if WP:BIO people don't get to it first - I'm in the middle of building a dataset of WP articles right now. Thanks for all your work, Walkerma (talk) 22:42, 3 January 2009 (UTC)

RFC on " Astobiological Potential "

Is what is happening here what I think is happening here? 198.163.53.11 (talk) 20:52, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

IP spam from a City of Winnipeg network. Make what you will of that. . dave souza, talk 22:54, 7 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, I don't understand the point the person is making. All I ever did (I think) on that article is tag it for the 1.0 project; I don't see the need to get involved in a content dispute. Walkerma (talk) 05:04, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Categorization of pharmacology-related articles

I have started a discussion thread at WT:PHARM:CAT, and would value your input if avaliable. kilbad (talk) 19:19, 12 January 2009 (UTC)

PFOA

hello again. i was thinking about the importance of the PFOA article and thinking it might be upgraded to high importance. i remember (i think) you upgraded the BPA article to high on the basis of significant news coverage. so i thought i would run this by you to potentially avoid a potentially time consuming and burdensome back and forth on the PFOA talk page if you find my logic harmless: Here are a couple recent news articles from the Guardian (UK)[2] and Washington Post (US)[3]. New York Times (US) and BBC (UK) stories are cited in the article already. The USEPA issued a provisional health advisory recently for drinking water. It appears this chemical would be of high importance to WP:CHEMS also since it has received coverage (also from LA Times) in large national/international news agencies and now has a USEPA provisional health advisory for drinking water (in addition to Germany and other US States such as WV, NJ, and MN). Also, other environmental chemicals such as PFOS and BPA are considered as "high" importance. It appears this chemical would qualify also. Thanks for listening. =) -Shootbamboo (talk) 00:26, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

My feeling would be to say that Mid-Class is right at the moment. However, this is not my area of expertise so I'd be willing to listen to others' views. I think BPA is more important because it is very widely used, so many of the objects in your house will contain it (or its derivatives); the same is not so true for PFOA. I would have put PFOS as mid-importance myself, for the same reason. I also looked at the 1.0 importance assessments from summer 2008, which are based upon no. of interwikis, no. of links-in, and no. of page views, and are more objective than you or I! You can also look at recent nos. of hits here. These are the figures for the three you mention, along with a couple I'd consider typical High-importance:

• PFOA: IW=5, LinksIn=24, Hits=2,460, giving an overall "external interest" score of 546. 2009 hits=976 so far.
• PFOS: IW=3, LinksIn=11, Hits=2,940, giving an overall "external interest" score of 461. 2009 hits=272 so far.
• BPA: IW=10, LinksIn=74, Hits=50,700, giving an overall "external interest" score of 636. 2009 hits=20847 so far.
• Styrene: IW=20, LinksIn=131, Hits=13,980, giving an overall "external interest" score of 808. 2009 hits=8277 so far.
• Sulfur trioxide: IW=20, LinksIn=69, Hits=7,740, giving an overall "external interest" score of 768. 2009 hits=7153 so far.

I'd say that PFOS should only be Mid, but the tagger obviously thought that the Stockholm Convention issue made it really important, but if those scores are maintained it should go back to Mid IMHO. I'd also say that probably at least a quarter of our importance assessments are wrong, IMHO! I'd ask User:Wimvandorst, he'll give you a good second opinion, but bear in mind we don't have many environmental chemists active on WP, so we may tend to "undervalue" the importance of substances that environmental chemists are interested in. Hope this helps, Walkerma (talk) 02:45, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Great reply! Thanks for explaining that. Interesting to compare BPA vs. SO₃. It shows the large dependence on IW. -Shootbamboo (talk) 03:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

My guess is that if BPA keeps up that rate of hits, you will see the IW score rise. The 1.0 scoring system is logarithmic so there is much more difference between IW-2 and IW=10 than between IW=10 and IW=20, which I think is appropriate - if there is no corresponding article in Spanish or French it can't be superimportant. In the "selected" region (which is what we care about most at 1.0) the IW values are usually above 10 and have less of an impact. Walkerma (talk) 03:15, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Interesting discussion! To add my bit to it: I usually assess the importance of the chemical compounds purely from the chemical point of view. If it is a core chemical that contributes to all chemistry of the world as reactant, intermediate, or catalyst, etc, it is Top. E.g., Chlorine, sulfuric acid, ethanol, etc. The other side of the scale is about chemicals that are end-products in a long reaction chain, or the so manyeth variation of some list of chemicals, which I deem Low importance. E.g., 2,4,6-Tris(trinitromethyl)-1,3,5-triazine, and calligonine. The environmental aspect of a chemicals does not put any weight in my use of the WP:CHEMS Importance scale. This would put PFOS, BPA and PFOA in the Low-Mid, SO3 in the High and Styrene in the Top. This does allow that other WikiProject can assign other Importance ratings to the same article. E.g., cocaine, heroine, and opium may be Top in the Drugs wikiproject, but for WP:CHEMS they are merely Mid. But since I'm giving the Class most of my attention, I'm quite willing to let current Importance classification just be as they currently are. There are so many articles still totally unassessed. After we've done all that, then we'll focus on assessment updating and assessment alignment. Wim van Dorst (talk) 21:09, 19 January 2009 (UTC).

Yes, I'll pile in as well, especially as I mostly agree with Martin and Wim. The importance scale certainly isn't fixed in stone, but it is quite "conservative", especially at the higher levels, and I think that's a Good Thing. The info Shootbamboo gives for PFOA is pertinent, but it is not sufficient to make the compound one of the most important in chemistry: at least, not yet! It would make me rate it as "Mid", where it is now. That puts it on the same level as methyl isocyanate, "responsible" (as if a poor molecule could be responsible) for one of the worst industrial chemical accidents in modern history. Dioxin (chemical) is also rated as "Mid" importance.

Bisphenol A, on the other hand, is rated as "High" importance. Why is that? It doesn't quite fit with Martin's statistics, but I will hazard a guess. Not only is it a compound with a fairly notorious occupational (and public) health record, but it is also an important industrial intermediate in polycarbonate manufacture, and has been for many years: neither on its own would give it "High" importance, but the two together can swing the balance (to a WP:CHEMS assessor). Interwikis are important as well, but mostly as a check: if lots of other languages have bothered to write (or translate) and article, the chemical is probably of interest to lots of people. Hits on a given article can be very high one month and very low the next, depending on news coverage. Links in to an article depend partly on how long it has been around (this also favours BPA over PFOA, for example). The moral of the story is "don't use a single criterion", so I try not to when I grade articles! Physchim62 (talk) 22:01, 19 January 2009 (UTC)

Further to that last comment, this edit appeared on my watchlist: it seems that our criteria match those of other projects. While Chrysotile is "Mid", Asbestos is marked as "Low"-importance for geology, which probably just means they've not checked their ratings in a while. Physchim62 (talk) 00:20, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

Paraquat

Heya Martin

I don't have institutional access, so I can't find out what reported routes to this compound exist. Hoping you might help?

It seems like the most obvious would be the methylation of bipy by chloromethane, but I can't find anything to support that.

Appreciate your help, thanks! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 06:14, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Will try to look tomorrow - just off to bed now. Cheers, Walkerma (talk) 06:16, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Heya, I've finally found a synthetic route in a weird place. If you do have the first 1800s synthesis, it'd be nice, but it's really not that important. Thanks anyway! --Rifleman 82 (talk) 07:35, 3 February 2009 (UTC)

Assessment

You seemed interested in my proposals for FA: they are currently taking shape at User:Physchim62/Sandbox and I hope to publish them more widely very shortly. Physchim62 (talk) 20:51, 12 February 2009 (UTC)

Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards orphanage

An article you and I collaborated on, Chemical Facility Anti-Terrorism Standards, has been tagged as an orphan article. The tagger is correct; there are no articles whatsoever that link to the page: just a redirect from CFATS and mentions in non-article space. I suggest that the two of us find appropriate articles that should link to this. I just added a link in the Chemical plant article. I'll look for others, too. You being the chemist and me being the lawyer, I expect we'll both find articles in our respective fields of expertise, but lets not be shy about crossing into each others areas (as I just did with Chemical plant). If we can get about at least five links, I think it will be appropriate to remove the tag. TJRC (talk) 19:08, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, I'll try and find something ASAP. This is clearly a case where other articles should be linking to this, if only they knew where the article was! Walkerma (talk) 19:15, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Acyl chloride

Heya Martin

I've made some changes to this article... any comments? Anything else to improve on? Thanks. --Rifleman 82 (talk) 14:07, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

A-Class coordination

Ping. :-) Kirill ^[pf] 21:37, 22 February 2009 (UTC)

File:Cerium alkylation.gif listed for deletion

An image or media file that you uploaded or altered, File:Cerium alkylation.gif, has been listed at Wikipedia:Files for deletion. Please see the discussion to see why this is (you may have to search for the title of the image to find its entry), if you are interested in it not being deleted. Thank you. Skier Dude (talk) 06:02, 26 February 2009 (UTC)