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Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Archive 12

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Latest comment: 17 years ago by Belg4mit in topic elements past 124
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'Stub of the Day'

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Dear all,

Can I have your opion on the following.


I've posted a request for a bot that will feature a 'Stub of the day'. For more background please see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Bot_requests#.22Stub_of_the_Day.22


The idea is that a user drops template onto their user page (should be simple and tweakable) e.g.:


{{Stub-of-the-Day|[Category:Chem-stubs]}} <-- this is just by way of illustrative example.


That simple template will then generated a box with a link to a random stub e.g.


"Stub of the Day" = Thioether

The idea being that this will inspire the user to write somthing on the topic.


User:BetacommandBot is kindly working on this, but wants to know what stubs are of interest to us chemists ... it seems a good idea to open this question up to the rest the chemists - below is a list of all the chemistry related stubs - your comments please on which ones you want to be included (you could simply put an "x" next to a topic of interest?)!



-- Quantockgoblin 09:22, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I happen to like this idea and will put the template on my userpage if implemented. --Ed (Edgar181) 15:09, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
Me too! Just look at Thioether it has had quite a few edits today just because it appeared in the 'Stub of the day' box! If and when this bot/template is made, it could be place on the chem project page! I Also I like the idea as there is no reason why this general idea can't be applied to all wiki categories - i.e. people interest in music stubs etc can modify the category input to suit them etc! -- Quantockgoblin 17:39, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
There is working prototype of the "Stub of the day" (I think it is the prototype as it is living in Betacommand (talk • contribs • Bot) sand box) see:
Use the Template: {{User:Betacommand/Sandbox|Chem}} which produces:
Please test it out and see if it works ... many thanks -- Quantockgoblin 10:15, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Skeletal formulae (again)

Latest comment: 17 years ago36 comments9 people in discussion

Attention chemists! What do you think of structural formulae such as those below?

  •  
    Exhibit A
  •  
    Exhibit B

I much prefer standard skeletal formulae, with no explicit CH3 labels and more importantly, without colour. Yesterday, I was browsing and saw that Exhibit A was in the chembox in caffeine. I created a replacement (Exhibit B), but it was removed from caffeine because it was inconsistent with some other diagrams within the article which were also drawn in the style of Exhibit A.

Which do you prefer? Can we allow both to coexist, even within the same article? Should the style guide be updated to cover such images?

My personal opinion is that:

  1. it seems a bit ridiculous to have 99% of chemical articles using normal skeletal formulae and the odd few like caffeine using fairy formulae
  2. most contributors are unable to create structures exactly like the colourful one at the top
  3. most contributors are able to add colour to skeletal formulae, but choose not to do so because it is not standard in outside of Wikipedia
  4. when colour is used in structural diagrams in chemistry, it is to accentuate a particular part of a molecule that is about to react etc.
  5. using colour for the reason given in (4) is fine, but not otherwise
  6. there's normally no need to label methyl groups as CH3 - the end of a line works fine for that purpose

Much more importantly, though, what do you think?

Ben 12:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I'm ambivalent about this. You are right about how structure diagrams are drawn "in the real world", of course. While the use of color in the diagram you question is arguably gratuitous, it could also be said that it looks kind of cute and may be more "user-friendly". In particular, including the explicit methyl groups doesn't hurt and tends to be more clear to beginners not well-familiarized with skeletal formulas. In any case, I think that consistency of style for all structure diagrams across Wikipedia is hard to achieve anyway and would be a very low priority for me. Consistency within an article is more important IMO. Other than that, I'd rather spend my time drawing structures that don't exist already, or working on the text of the articles, rather than polishing the existing figures. Also because I'd like to avoid emotional discussions about whose picture is the best and so on. --Itub 13:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Good points. I think we should strive for consistency across Wikpedia. I also think that encyclopedias, including WP, shouldn't aim for cute and user-friendly structures. I think we should use whatever academia uses.

I'm not fussed about whose picture is best - Exhibit B is just someone else's SVG that I modified a bit. I don't draw skeletal formulae much anymore because I can't make SVGs very easily. I tend to stick to 3D models. I just felt this issue was important because I don't like to see proper chemistry replaced with shiny things by magpies.

Caffeine is one of those topics that every man and his dog wants to have their say on because partically everyone drinks coffee. I feel we should apply the same consistency rules to articles like caffeine as we do to all other chemistry articles.

I accept that it is productive to draw new structures rather than quibbling over ones that already exist. But I think in the case of caffeine, it is important to have a standard skeletal formula as this is an article that chemistry students of all ages are very likely to read and should therefore be an example of good practice and standard notation. We wouldn't want to send out the message that skeletal formulae are supposed to look like Exhibit A. It just seems a little bit WP:OR.

We're here to report what verifiable, reputable sources think, not what we think. Should that not therefore extend to how we draw structures?

Ben 13:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I believe that some recent college-level textbooks in chemistry and biology tend to use color more than in the old times, so I wouldn't be too surprised to see a figure like exhibit A in one of them. The same can be said for the explicit carbon atoms. Maybe it's a matter of thinking about the audience. I don't think that all the figures in Wikipedia need to match the style of the Journal of Organic Chemistry, for example; the style could well depend on the article. The fact that everyone thinks they have something to say about caffeine should be an indication that this article cannot be addressed only to organic chemists. The topic is too interdisciplinary. It's a bit like gold, which also discusses topics like the history and economy of gold, gold jewelry, etc. (although in some cases a split seems to be preferred, as in water vs water (molecule)). I'm not saying that the article should be dumbed down, but anything that can help make it more accessible without detracting from its accuracy should be welcome. Since this is an article about a molecule, and not an article about structure diagrams, I wouldn't consider the figure "original research", but only "original graphic design". --Itub 13:57, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I would greatly prefer not to have atoms in 2D structure colored by element. As already mentioned, color in structure drawings is usually reserved for highlighting certain features. With respect to methyl groups, in scientific publications, they are almost always written out when attached to heteroatoms. I know this deviates from a strictly skeletal drawing, but it is standard practice. You'll almost never see a methyl ether or methyl ester without the "CH3". Take a look, for example, at these abstracts from J. Org. Chem. link. Many older organic chemists will go even further and insist that skeletal formulae should always be terminated with text - putting -CH3 at the end of a long alkyl chain, for example. (All my graduate school publications are this way because my prof insisted on it. I sometimes lapse into doing this too, out of habit, even though I think it looks awkward.) --Ed (Edgar181) 14:26, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I was looking at the J. Org. Chem. table of contents, and, curiously enough, there were a couple of graphical abstracts that colored the diagrams by element (red O, blue N)! [1], [2]. --Itub 14:37, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't like colour or CH3, but that's my problem. I think I will go to find an island to sit on and do chemistry on my own without either. As far as WP is concerned, though, CH3 attached to heteroatoms should be OK but colouring atoms by element should not. As far as I can tell from Itub's link, most articles are not colouring atoms by element.

Ben 14:54, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Yes, it's unusual to have coloring by element in journal articles. Online graphical abstracts, as linked above, may be about the only exception. --Ed (Edgar181) 15:04, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the colored one above and in the cafeine article looks ridiculous. What's worse, when viewed close-up, there is a gradual transition between blue and red! Didn't we agree to use ACS settings in the structure drawing workgroup? I notice that some members of the biological group are also accustomed to coloring the atoms for X-nuclei. Somewhat in the style which pubchem uses. Also, didn't we have a discussion on wikilinking and coloring in-line formulae not too long ago?

My arguments are:

  • articles like caffeine should prevail to our style guide, which should be definitive. Deviations should be for a good reason. We should not let non-chemists hijack the discussion/dictate to us what is "proper" or not.
  • color should be avoided unless they are used to prove a point. I have used it on occasion such as in isophorone and mesityl oxide, but only to aid explanations.
  • terminal CH3 for small moleucles or X-nuclei are fine; otherwise they are distracting. In more complicated molecules, such as what my own work, terminal CH3 will start to overlap with each other, making quite a mess.

With regard to caffeine. I suggest that we (perhaps Ben may be so kind) prepare non-color versions of the mickey mouse structures and replace them all at once for consistency. -- Rifleman 82 16:18, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks Rifleman for saying what I wanted to say but better! I'll gladly prepare new images for caffeine if we agree to change them here.
Ben 16:33, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
It seems that some of what I was going to say has been said by Rifleman 82. However, since I've already typed it, here it is anyway even if it repeats some of the points made above ....
To be fair the author in this case, if you want to replace the heading image, you will have to be prepared to re-draw all of the diagrams, otherwise I think the article will look a mess (said above). I think in some ways his picture is nice as it helps explain the colours used in the 3D-diagram for those that don't know the standard colour code for atoms. However, I don't like the shading effect - make oxyens red, and Nitrogens blue, but not shading of the bonds also.
However, saying the above, I'm pretty strongly in favour of B-W images. I think coloured images impose too big a burden on the drawers - 99% of the molecular images would have to be redrawn. Colour is good, but think only to add emphasis. I think the style guide should be adhered to if possible. -- Quantockgoblin 17:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
PS I have noticed that sometimes a 3D-image exist on a page, and later a 2D images is added. Sometimes this 2D-iamge is drawn at a very different angle to the 3D-iamge. This will not help a non-chemist link the two structures - i.e nitrogens are blue. I think the 2D-image should be drawn at an orientation to try match that 3D-image - the above applies to the caffeine molecule on that page -- Quantockgoblin 17:27, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I think there are some "standard" colors... red for O, blue for N, yellow for S, black for C, white for H. Can anybody find a list somewhere? --Rifleman 82 17:31, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
 
Ben's colour palette for 3D models
When making 3D models, I mostly use the same colours as Molymod plastic models and Jmol for main group elements. A table is available here. For elements less frequently seen in organic compounds, there's less agreement over colours. I just use the default colours in DS Visualizer for such elements.
Ben 18:05, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
It's definitely a good idea to show the 2D and the 3D from the same angle. However, in some cases there are conventional orientations for 2D diagrams. These conventions are very noticeable for steroids, for example. In the case of caffeine, I believe that the convention is to draw the six-member ring on the left, as in Ben's black-and-white diagram, so arguably it would be better to redraw the 3D picture... --Itub 17:46, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

If anyone is eager to redraw ugly structure diagrams, here are some that could be replaced with higher resolution versions:

Hope this helps. --Itub 18:00, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

Done 2 --Rifleman 82 18:44, 2 April 2007 (UTC)
I've tagged the above jobs with reasoned image request tags. -- Quantockgoblin 09:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Done two more. I should really be watching this page... Fvasconcellos 15:46, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
  • I think colors are helpfull in reaction schemes. My McMurry of 1988 uses colors extensively so there is nothing new there.
  • I note that 2 of the so-called ugly images presented above by Itub have my signature so let me respond. Agreed the in-methylcyclophane pic is damn ugly but this one should be done in 3D. On the other hand there is nothing wrong with the Hemicucurbituril image. It is the basic output of the one chem editor freely available and many images are done that way. Take for instance the (it-should-be-a-featured-article) persistent carbene page which is done using this basic format. Only by using a very weird image conversion sequence described in Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry/Structure_drawing the output can be converted in something more fancy. Try to keep this in mind, I do this work for a hobby and I am not prepared to dish out 1000 euro for some professional chem editor. It is not like my employer gives me one for free.
  • Sometimes it helps to explicitly show hydrogens, methyl groups or carbons (for instance in allenes) when there are involved in some chemistry

V8rik 21:10, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

I think colours indicating the elements are redundant, so I would vote "NO" to such use, though I don't feel too strongly. I really like the use of colours to indicate things like the biochemical origin or the strategy in a synthesis - so I love V8rik's use of colour in images like Image:TaxolTotalSynthesisColor.png. Colours are also great for indicating electron flows, new bonds made, things like that.
As for use of skeletal methyls and the like, I do not think there is one dominant system. Common styles I've seen include:
(A) Simple skeletons, no explicit methyls or other carbon groups.
(B) Methyl branches to be indicated by explicit CH3 groups, but long branches have only skeletons used.
(C) All methyls - even at the end of long chains - are indicated with Me (I call this the Nicolaou system - look at the "Classics" books and you'll see it used throughout).
I personally like (B) because a simple line in space can sometimes indicate "any old group", not just a methyl, but I dislike (C) for some reason - it looks ugly to me.
Thumbing through a 2005 copy of Organic Letters that's next to me, I see system (A) used on page 4165 (Shinada's synthesis of Kaitocephalin) (B) used on page 4161 (Williams synthesis of Kendomycin), (C) used on page 4157 (Crimmins, Apoptolodin sugars). Thus three consecutive articles in a leading organic journal use three different styles - how are we at WP supposed to come up with standards!? Walkerma 03:09, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, I've stroke out "ugly" from the heading of my list. It was not the best word; what the figures I listed have in common is that they would better if available in higher resolution. You don't need to worry about drawing perfect figures (I know I don't), you can keep drawing something useful that illustrates the article and let people with the time, tools, and inclination worry about details (sometimes I have the feeling that the WP chemical diagram style guide is harder that that of J. Am. Chem. Soc...). Now that I check, I also have figures that could be replaced by higher resolution versions! (trans effect, Curtin-Hammett principle, Bredt's rule, and Crabtree's catalyst). --Itub 06:12, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Walkerma has hit on the crux of the problem: there is little consistancy in the world at large on this issue. To look at an analogous problem in other places on Wikipedia, look at the issues of American vs. British spellings and terminology. Here, Wikipedia is clear on how to handle it: In topics that deal with Britain, use British spellings, in topics dealing with America use American spellings, and here is the key to this discussion, in topics where no clear cultural connection exists, defer to the spelling of the article's primary author, but above all, remain consistant within an article. To make the analogous arguement here: In situations where a non-ambiguous diagram exists, leave it, even if it upsets your personal taste. Sure, I would favor the Exhibit B caffeine formula above, but Exhibit A isn't that different, it mostly (other than the color) complies with a structural formula one might find in an actual journal, and it is unambiguous. Defer to the author of the article. It seems a waste of time and energy, with the hundreds of articles in MUCH worse state than the caffeine article, to spend much energy replacing a mostly acceptable diagram. Instead, why not add structural formulae to articles with none at all. That would probably improve the project the most. If we ever get to the point that all of the articles are adequately diagramed, THEN we could go back and fix minor stylistic differences like this. But I don't see that happening anytime in the next few days... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 06:36, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

There's a crucial difference between spelling in an article and skeletal formulae: the same image of a skeletal formula can and will be used in multiple articles. While Exhibit A may be consistent with the other figures in caffeine, it would look out of place when compared to the formula in theobromine. If you were illustrating the structural differences between caffeine and theobromine in an article, you'd get a much better look with two skeletal formulae that both conformed to the style guide.

Yes, the Commons provides dozens of variants on the caffeine skeletal formula, but I suspect most editors of WP would not check Category:Caffeine there to find the most suitable image. They'd simply use whatever was used in caffeine. Therein lies the problem.

Ben 10:14, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I hadn't thought of that. Very good point. In that case, we need a Project Standard. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
It is interesting to see this topic still running. I agree is not a good use of time to check every compound for compliance with the style guide. I think there are only a few hard-core people who make most of the chemical images, if we can get consistency with them, then most of the images will look the same on wikipedia. I also think if you see a molecule with a 'if-ish' image then tag it with {{chemical drawing needed|with e.g. image would be better at higher resolution etc - ~~~~}}. I think V8rik raises a interesting point about software. I have an old version of chem-draw that lets me do the basic features only (e.g. no PNG format). I wonder on the style guide whether we could have a recommended freeware drawing package (e.g. ACD/ChemSketch 10.0 Freeware) with set-up instructions compatible with the style guide. I note this has been done for chemdraw.
PS V8rik, I'd also like to get the stable carbene article into shape to be a featured article, it still needs some a-whooping to get it into shape especially in the metal-coordination and application in organo-metallic chemistry. I guess if it where submitted for review then we could see what others think need fixing. I suspect some might think it a little too detailed in places! -- Quantockgoblin 09:28, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Often the length of the discussion is inversely proportional to its importance. For an example, see Talk:Aluminium/Spelling. --Itub 10:50, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Qgoblin raises some good points. If this group here can agree, and we put it in the style guide (perhaps as a "recommendation"), that will set a style for most images at least. One key person missing from this discussion is ~K, but his style is to use simple B/W images such as [:Image:Gramine From Indole Scheme.png|this one]]. I'll try to write up something on IsisDraw soon - that is free to those in education, and I often prefer it to ChemDraw. Walkerma 14:07, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia is not a democracy (apparently) but I'd like to do a straw poll - sign your name under the appropriate heading below:

No colour

  • sign here
 Colour for emphasis only Don't care/irrelevant
  • sign here
 It's a free world use colour as you will

if you want to vote, thanks for your cooporation -- Quantockgoblin 09:55, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

I decided to change my vote to the consensus column, after noticing that actually I agree that color should be used for emphasis. The disagreement is whether emphasizing the atom types using color, despite being redundant in principle, is acceptable. I would call that a borderline case. But I would certainly disagree if the molecule were colored pink for no reason related with its chemistry! I must also clarify that I would have never advocated active change towards this questionable use of color in an article with an existing b/w figure. So maybe the right column for me is "don't care" then (similar to the standard position on English spelling)... --Itub 14:45, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Proposal: Style guide for chemical compounds

Latest comment: 17 years ago11 comments5 people in discussion

Given Ben's comments above, I noticed that what we need to create a style guide for skeletal/structural formulae; this might be best as a general style guide for writing about chemical compounds. It should be something we start out as a proposal, advertise in all of the right locations like Village Pump and Wikipedia:Community Portal and the like. That way we can build a good guide through collaboration and consensus. We could then have it added as a suplemental guide in WP:MOS, and would give us something to use when trying to solve, or better yet prevent, these problems in the future. I propose: Wikipedia:Articles about chemical compounds. Anyone else think this is a good idea? --Jayron32|talk|contribs 18:19, 3 April 2007 (UTC)

Do you mean something like this style guide? It's listed at the top of the WP:Chem page, it's also linked from WP:MOS, but maybe it needs to be more heavily publicised on this project as well? Walkerma 18:47, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
Or rather Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Structure drawing? --Itub 19:01, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
OK, I am a total idiot. I could have looked first, eh? Sorry all! One thing we need to do, as I see it, is update the Structure drawing page. What is really needed there is examples of good and bad drawings, like we are hashing out above. If we have a clear exampel on what a good skeletal formula will look like, and have it in the guide, then when we make or request a change to an article, we have somewhere to point to if our changes are objected to or reverted.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 23:57, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
I quite like the idea of good and bad examples, might help people key into the major dos and don'ts - or rather prefered and disliked -- Quantockgoblin 00:10, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
Another thing we could do is to create a cleanup template (like {{wikify}} or such) that would tag the article as containing a non-standard chemical structure diagram, that would also add the article to a cleanup category like "Category:Articles with nonstandard chemical diagrams" or something like that. It would help us tag articles in need of work, and give us a list of structures that we need to create using perhaps the ACD ChemSketch software as noted below. I am terrible with template coding, but is this something we want to do?--Jayron32|talk|contribs 00:46, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

A little bit like this, you mean? {{reqchemstructure}} It is coded as a talk page template, for wikipolitical reasons, and adds the relevant page to Category:Wikipedia requested chemical structures. Enjoy! Physchim62 (talk) 02:48, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Can you tell I'm a bit new around this Project. Sorry all and thanks for the help... I suppose every worthwhile idea HAS been thought of by someone else... --Jayron32|talk|contribs 03:45, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
No they haven't. I created the template, category etc. in response to your idea! For the record, I took a look at Wikipedia:Requested pictures and saw what was there. Your idea wasn't really covered, so I took one of the other templates ({{reqdiagram}}) and changed it around a bit, created the category (again, by taking the text from the top of Category:Wikipedia requested diagrams and editing it to fit) and added a link on the other picture request pages (which reminds me, there's one link I forgot to do...). See WP:BOLD for more details :) Physchim62 (talk) 03:57, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
You ROCK. Well, maybe I am good for something around here :)! --Jayron32|talk|contribs 04:11, 6 April 2007 (UTC)
Well maybe someone else did think of this idea first... Thank-you Beetstra for {{Chemical drawing needed|parameter}}, created on 2007-03-04 and which gives

{{chemical drawing needed}} without a parameter and {{chemical drawing needed|a parameter}} with "a parameter", and sends pages to Category:Chemistry pages needing pictures. See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Image Request. Even admins (especially admins...) screw up sometimes! Physchim62 (talk) 04:15, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

Francium

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I've been working on Francium, and I've requested for scientific peer review here, though as of yet, I have seen no comments. If y'all would like to add your thoughts, I'd greatly appreciate it. --Cryptic C62 · Talk 18:12, 2 April 2007 (UTC)

ACD ChemSketch - the company is willing to make a Wikipedia Template on their Freeware

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Dear all

This is message regarding the recent posts above concerning consistency in the drawing of chemical images and a style guide. In the above post I suggested that maybe we could recommend some chemical drawing freeware program. The problem still being how to tell people how to customise the freeware to our style guide. I took it upon myself to send an email to ACD who make a freeware program called ChemSketch (it's quite good) to see if they would make a Wikipeida template on their program. They said they would be willing in principle. For more on this see:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemistry/Structure_drawing_workgroup#ACD_ChemSketch_-_the_company_is_willing_to_make_a_Wikipedia_Template_on_their_Freeware Please post your views on the page linked above.

-- Quantockgoblin 17:24, 4 April 2007 (UTC)

Wow. I didn't even know Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Structure drawing workgroup existed. I put it on the front page. --HappyCamper 04:43, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

Database of chemistry pages

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I recently asked someone on the French Wikipedia to prepare a collection of all chemistry pages (i.e., all pages found under the Category:Chemistry umbrella), and he generated & sent me a file later that day! The list contains 22795 pages. I can send it as a CSV file to anyone who would like it - but be warned, it's over 1 MB! Just email me using my Wiki username and my institution, potsdamDOTedu. Walkerma 07:55, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

wow. --Dirk Beetstra T C 08:17, 5 April 2007 (UTC) <-- impressed!

Alkane

Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments3 people in discussion

I think all the existing concerns of alkane have been addressed. Is it ready for promotion to GA class? --Rifleman 82 17:43, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

I think so -- Quantockgoblin 18:03, 5 April 2007 (UTC)
As a frequent GA reviewer, I am going to have to disagree with that. I found some more issues that I cleaned up myself, but there are still some writing issues that may need clean-up for clarity. Also WP:SCG aside, the article will not likely pass GA for its level of inline referencing. I know what you are going to say, and I won't say that you aren't right, I am merely recognizing the fact that the Good Article project sets the bar higher than SCG does for requiring inline references, and reviewers tend to, in almost all cases, fail an article with the level of referencing this one shows. Again, without assigning "rightness" or "wrongness" to the two guidelines in question (WP:WIAGA and WP:SCG), I can only note that this will probably not pass GA. Does that mean it is not a great article? Nope, but it still won't pass GA. --Jayron32|talk|contribs 19:33, 5 April 2007 (UTC)

References and EndNote

Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I wrote a template for wikipedia for Endnote, to generate {{cite journal}} templates. However, I've hit a snag - they use pipes as their delimiters, as do we, and so it's missing all the | in the output. Does anybody have any idea how else to fix it? Is anyone willing to help me fix it, and share with the group? --Rifleman 82 20:00, 6 April 2007 (UTC)

This would be a very valuable tool - if you can get it working, please let me know! Walkerma 01:02, 7 April 2007 (UTC)
As it stands, it ALMOST works now. This is the output generated:

{{cite journal author = A. d. Meijere and F. E. Meyer title = Fine Feathers Make Fine Birds: The Heck Reaction in Modern Garb year = 1995 journal = [[Angewandte Chemie International Edition in English]] volume = 33 issue = 23-24 pages = 2379-2411 url = http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/anie.199423791 }}

What I do is that I copy it into notepad, and replace all double spaces with "_|_", fix the url --> doi (because the DOI is stored as a URL in EndNote), then paste it wherever necessary. But it's not elegant, which irritates me greatly!

To get this template you can email me. Or, you can wait til its really fixed, though I don't know when that might be. --Rifleman 82 05:49, 7 April 2007 (UTC)

Project member/participant categories

Latest comment: 17 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Has anyone else noticed that there are two categories - Category:WikiProject Chemistry members and Category:WikiProject Chemistry participants. The former has more entries, but the latter come from using the Template:Participant on the user page. Should we have just one category. There is a related discussion at Wikipedia talk:User categories for discussion#Category:Wikipedians by WikiProject. --Bduke 07:14, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Gabriel Tojo, presentation

Latest comment: 17 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

I would like to introduce myself. I am Gabriel Tojo, a professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain, Northwest) and one of the founders of two small chemical companies (www.galchimia.com; www.greensolutions.es). Furthermore, I am the editor-in-chief of a new series from Springer entitled "Basic Reactions in Organic Synthesis." At the moment, we have published two books from the series: "Oxidation of Alcohols to Aldehydes and Ketones" and "Oxidation of Primary Alcohols to Carboxylic Acids." You may download a sample article from http://www.springer.com/west/home/chemistry/organic?SGWID=4-142-22-55007504-detailsPage=ppmmedia%7CsamplePages

I think that I could distill both books to the bare essentials and write several articles in Wikipedia. In the future, as more books are published, I could write more articles.

By the way, I am looking for prospective authors for more books in this series.

Regards

Gabriel Tojo

This sounds great, Gabriel. When my final exams are over (late May), I'd love to work with you on this sort of thing, which I think it is currently a weak area on Wikipedia. I think that "unnamed reactions" often get less treatment than named reactions, if only because no one quite knows what to call the article! I've been meaning to write an article on Oxidation of alcohols for about a year now - I already have notes and references, just no time to sit down and write it. Please go ahead and get started, we'd really appreciate your contributions. Walkerma 17:52, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

New proposal.

Latest comment: 17 years ago6 comments3 people in discussion

Please can we have a new proposal that rather than dumping a formula and a small line of text that, if not already done, either:

  1. Link it properly to the text
  2. Explain the process literally before illustrating with a formula
  3. Not blindly copy formulae out of textbooks
  4. If possible, reference everything added?

  ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 17:51, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Would you like to give an example (i.e. a specific article) so that we understand your point better? --Rifleman 82 17:54, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
Well, for instance -- it seems in a lot of cases, people tend to just say things like "In the case of..." and then whack in a formula that vaguely describes the point they are trying to make -- rather than doing this, it'd be easier to explain the derivation or "how you get to" the point.   ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 16:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I doubt many editors are going to scour through the thousands of chemistry articles to look for such cases. Would you please specify which articles you would like improved, so that we can go fix them? --Rifleman 82 16:56, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

It sounds like what you are proposing already represents Wikipedia policy. To make a difference, the proposal would have to provide tools that would help people contribute more effectively (for example m:Wikicat). Do you have something specific in mind? If not, then at least a list of problem articles would help, as Rifleman82 suggests. Walkerma 17:47, 10 April 2007 (UTC)
Nevermind, it was just a suggestion -- i didn't know if it was policy. Any problems i see i'll just clean them up myself.   ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 20:36, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Category:Chemical engineering topics

Latest comment: 17 years ago8 comments5 people in discussion

I've noticed a user has been tagging many articles with this category. See here. I have mentioned this to him here. I disagree with putting some of the articles being in this category, because they have a very weak link to chemical engineering. Going by this trend, anything related to the physical sciences deserves to be in this category.

It also appears to have overlap with category:Unit operation. Comments please? --Rifleman 82 18:57, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Completely redundant with Category:Chemical engineering, as far as I can see. The creator says that he/she is trying to replace List of chemical engineering topics, which may or may not be a worthy aim but I don't think this is the way to go about it. Physchim62 (talk) 19:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
While I agree many of his tags may go too far, some of them are bread-and-butter chemical engineering topics (Unit operation, Transport phenomena, Process design, Process control, Mass transfer...). More importantly however, is why this category is being created while Category:Chemical engineering already exists. —Brien ClarkTalk 20:00, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Thanks to Rifleman 82 for cleaning the category out. I've now done the easy bit of category deletion (clicking the tabs)! Physchim62 (talk) 22:06, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

List of chemical engineering topics has been moved to Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Chemical engineering worklist. I wasn't sure where to put this or what exactly to say, but here is the deletion discussion for you. ~ thesublime514 • talk • sign 22:33, April 9, 2007 (UTC)
1. Many of the topics in this worklist are not mainstream chemical engineering topics. 2. Also, There is a Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemical and Bio Engineering. Does anybody think the list should be moved over there?
H Padleckas 20:43, 16 April 2007 (UTC)
It probably makes more sense to move it there. The chemEs can merge the list into their category as they see fit. —Brien ClarkTalk 18:05, 17 April 2007 (UTC)
I have no objections. I just thought the list might be of use for project management (once it had been edited, of course). There are still some redlinks on it. Physchim62 (talk) 21:15, 17 April 2007 (UTC)

Subscripts in chemical formulae

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

In a discussion over on project math we've discovered that a recent change to the version of Tidy used to clean up the HTML coding of WP pages has exposed problems in some articles in which authors wrote <sub> ... <sub> ... where they should have written <sub> ... </sub>, etc. That is, the slash in the close subscript tag is missing. Previously, the software would catch and automatically repair those errors but now it does not. The result is that a lot of pages are now malformatted, not just in math but also in chemistry (where subscripts are frequent for obvious reasons). If you want to help, there's a list of problem pages at User:Mets501/Pages that need to be fixed. —David Eppstein 20:21, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I repaired the Endohedral fullerenes just a few days ago and I am sure that initially there was not a <sub> ... </sub> mistake made. Errors like that immediately show up in html. Are you sure the <sub> ... </sub> error was not introduced by an automated background process in the first place? V8rik 21:00, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I'm not certain, but the WT:WPM discussion seems to have concluded that the errors have been there all along, but have been masked by the Tidy software and are only appearing now. Certainly, the pages used to look ok, now don't, and viewing the edit history as it appears now seems to show that the errors have been present for a long time. Also, Wikipedia:Village pump (technical)#Tidy upgraded discusses a change to Tidy that could have caused this behavior. So while we initially thought that some rogue process had somehow changed the pages while falsifying the histories, we eventually settled on the explanation above. —David Eppstein 21:12, 9 April 2007 (UTC)
I am blasting all 816 through AWB, hope to have them finished soon. --Dirk Beetstra T C 21:38, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

User Category

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion

Currently there are two user categories for this WikiProject: Category:WikiProject Chemistry members & Category:WikiProject Chemistry participants. It is requested that you choose one or the other and request a merge of these categories. --NThurston 21:15, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

See above, where I raised this question yesterday and gave a reference to a related debate. --Bduke 22:36, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the problem is use of Template:Participant. This userbox puts the user in the "participants" category. I think the Project decided on "members" and only a few people who have used this template are in the "participants" category. I have suggested on Wikipedia talk:User categories for discussion that this template be edited so it does not put the user in any category. I also suggest that we have a userbox that puts the user in the member category. --Bduke 02:04, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

I have added a template - Template:User Chemistry Project. --Bduke 02:14, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Awarding chemistry barnstars

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Following the discussion of a few weeks ago (quickly archived), I created a barnstar template for chemistry and chemicals wikiprojects, {{chembarn}} with an optional personal message:

  The Chemistry Bond Star
I award you this chemical Bond Star for your unrelenting contribution to Chemistry and Chemicals on Wikipedia.

Comments? Support? Shall we use it? Wim van Dorst (Talk) 21:26, 10 April 2007 (UTC).

Looks good to me -- Quantockgoblin 21:42, 10 April 2007 (UTC)

Copyvio in chloroform article

Latest comment: 17 years ago5 comments2 people in discussion

On November 7, 2006 (!), an anonymous editor placed a comment on the Chloroform Talk page regarding a possible copyright violation. He/she cited this website as a possible source for the following paragraph:

Chloroform was discovered in July, 1831 by the American physician Samuel Guthrie, and independently a few months later by the French chemist Eugène Soubeiran and Justus von Liebig in Germany. Soubeiran produced chloroform through the action of chlorine bleach powder (calcium hypochlorite) on acetone (2-propanone) as well as ethanol an application of the process now known as the haloform reaction). Chloroform was named and chemically characterised in 1834 by Jean-Baptiste Dumas. Its anaesthetic properties were noted early in 1847 by Marie-Jean-Pierre Flourens and James Young Simpson.

Some of it (though not all) has certainly been copied, either into WP or onto the aforementioned website. I can't tell which, though, so I've commented out the relevant section. As this is a core chem article, this should certainly be taken care of. Thanks, Fvasconcellos 00:41, 11 April 2007 (UTC)

The edit looks like a genuine copy-edit by user:Folajimi back in 2005 here. I'd say the text was copied FROM wikipedia. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 20:01, 11 April 2007 (UTC).

Unfortunately, the Wayback Machine suggests that the aforementioned website has been in place since October 16, 2004, text and all. I hate to accuse someone of plagiarism, and I may be wrong, but I don't think we can prove this conclusively either way. Maybe a rewrite is in order, even if just to "shake things up" a little with our text? Fvasconcellos 22:05, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Yep, you're definitely right: this can hardly be considered a genuine copy-edit based on the same source material, and not even an edited copy of source material. I strongly support your rewrite recommendation. Wim van Dorst (Talk) 23:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC).
How about
Chloroform was discovered independently by three researchers—U.S. physician Samuel Guthrie, French chemist Eugène Soubeiran and German Justus von Liebig—in 1831; the three made their findings within a few months of each other.
Not great prose, and maybe not different enough, but a start. Fvasconcellos 00:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Stereocenter and chiral carbon

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments3 people in discussion

I wrote the latter article without checking if anything similar existed (stupid me). Seems to have a large degree of overlap with the former. Should we merge? --Rifleman 82 16:24, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Support merge, you also forgot that you can have stereocenters at atoms other than carbon :P Physchim62 (talk) 17:24, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I agree that merging with stereocenter and/or chirality (chemistry) would be best. Sorry that it means extra work for you. :/ --Ed (Edgar181) 17:29, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
It's okay. I've done the merge. Would you please help me check two things:
  1. 2^n or 2^n - 1? I've always remembered it as 2^n -1 because (if i remember correctly), if you reverse every single stereocenter, you *should* come back to the identity.
  2. Chiral center versus stereogenic center - the article states a distinction. I must admit to playing fast and loose with these terms; is the article correct now?
  3. More discussion on the difference is probably in order. Also, the discussion of cis/trans and Δ/Λ chirality needs to be written?

--Rifleman 82 18:04, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Journal references: will we drown in them?

Latest comment: 17 years ago12 comments6 people in discussion

IMHO we need to discuss some goals (not absolute laws, just guidelines or hopes) about journal references for Wikipedia articles. Each of us can overwhelm any WE-Chem article by including all of the pertinent journal references. In other words, the very actions that seem well intentioned can be damaging. These tiny nuggets of knowledge can distort the perspective or dilute the big picture with trivial detail. Of course, at this early stage, the unrestrained inclusion of references is tolerable, possibly useful. But ultimately, it seems IMHO, the inclusion of references might need to be justfied or WE-chem will drown in its own success. I think that most of us aim to cite books (monographs, texts) and major reviews (ChemSoc, Angew, Chem Rev, Org Rxns, Progress in...). For chemical articles, a specific reference to the discovery seems notable enough for a journal reference. So does the structure, usually crystallographic for inorganics. I'd be interested to hear what others think.--Smokefoot 18:02, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

Part of the reason might be WP:GA and WP:FAC requirements which might seem ridiculous as one editor remarked in #Alkane. That said, these are my comments:
  1. reference first discovery for the topic of the article, e.g. Arduengo's first crystalline carbene
  2. reference only review articles or reliable textbooks thereafter, and only the relevant ones; a discussion on oxidation of alcohols need not include the original Jones paper (there must be one?) since it is a well-established procedure
  3. reference "original content" such as X-ray data for bond lengths, angles, reaction mechanisms

-- Rifleman 82 18:11, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I think journal references are useful, but it depends on the topic and purpose of the reference. I tend to add them to historical statements, for data, to some very specific statements that are not well-known or could be questionable, and for opinions. When I want a more general reference about the topic, I tend to cite reviews. I'm a bit biased towards citing journals as opposed to books, because usually the journals are more accessible to me (use the web vs walking to the library, lazy me...). But in general I don't feel like we are drowning in them. Very rarely do I see a reference that I think is actually bad for the article. --Itub 18:36, 12 April 2007 (UTC)

I think Smokefoot is right. In the wider WP community there has been a strong move towards citing lots of sources. If you look at a recent FA like Anton Chekhov, you find more than 100 inline references, and a long list of general refs. We've seen many of our GAs delisted for lack of refs - perhaps if I go in and sprinkle them with gratuitous refs they'll pass? But in chemistry we have a convention of not citing the same paper many times. For an article like carvone, I found a great 2006 review and I plundered it mercilessly for information - after all, how often will you find a review of a specific compound like this? However, you can run foul of the "Citation needed" people with this, see User_talk:Fuzzform#Citation_in_carvone. The main thing protecting us is that many editors don't understand our content! But the pressure to conform to the general WP style will be relentless. And after all, it's hard to argue against more rigorous citations - yet will we drown in references?
I believe that the current "best" system is less than ideal - we have no way of knowing if all 100+ footnotes in an article have been read thoroughly, or even read at all. I think we need to move towards a new system which is more rigorous and transparent, but where the casual reader does not see this and get overwhelmed. We need a system that allows an article to evolve, by making it really easy for editors to add refs in a few seconds - I really like the sound of Rifleman82's EndNote tool for that. We had a discussion on article validation at Wikimania, and this was the result. In this we envisaged a system where the casual reader would see something simple, but someone wanting to challenge any assertion in an article could click and see more - not only a reference, but also that User:Joe had verified on March 20 that the reference was correct. We have great power in this online format, a power unavailable to a traditional paper encyclopedia, and we've barely started to take advantage of it.
If others are interested, we have a chemistry wiki at Potsdam (wikichem.org, currently closed) where we are going to install (a) All 22000+ chemistry articles from Wikipedia and (b) a sophisticated new citation system called m:Wikicite and m:Wikicat. We are going to "pilot" the citation system using the WP chemistry article collection as the content for the trial. If we can get it to work, we plan to try and get Wikipedia to adopt the same citation system. If I have any say whatsoever, it will be to try and make sure we don't drown in refs. If anyone from WP:Chemistry is interested in helping with this project, send me an email.
I apologise for the long answer, but as you see, this is a pet interest of mine, even though it stops me writing chemistry articles. :( Walkerma 21:53, 12 April 2007 (UTC)
I think these moves are great, though Martin didn't really give his 2 p about whether more cites are truly of use... and whether general or specific cites are better.
I think the Arduengo reference[1] in particular, and others of this nature go somewhat toward the "checkability" of the articles. The nice part about the cite journal style here, is that contradictory to most major chem journal styles, the article title is compulsory. Thus instead of a cryptic reference to a name (which may or may not mean something), and a journal title (ditto), the title is displayed. And in Arduengo's case, it tells you exactly WHAT the paper is about (i.e. a stable crystalline (free) carbene).
I am increasingly sympathetic of some comments which have been made for a while - that our articles are getting too specialized and unaccessible to the general reader. How many of the lay public would have institutional access to 90 % of the DOIs we cite? --Rifleman 82 00:14, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Sorry, sometimes I get focussed on a long term viewpoint, as I'm working on that side of things right now! I think your guidelines are very good, Rifleman82, and maybe if we get consensus we could even write them into our style guide. You're also right having article titles. I like to use broader sources that foster a style more "readable" for a lay audience. But there is still an inherent problem. If you use books & review articles, you either fill up the article with multiple footnotes to the same article/book, or you get criticised for "too few refs" and "unsupported statements". The other alternative is to use the more specialised refs from the book or review to get 20 different refs, but then many of the refs are getting obscure - and the fact is that you found all the information originally in the one review!
All this is taking place in the context of a revolution in chemical publishing - what I think is an inevitable move towards open access, already under way. Maybe we should have a policy formally encouraging cites from this list of open access journals? I happen to think that within five years all of our readers will have access to 90% of the newer DOIs, when JACS and Tet. Lett. become open access. There I go again, getting all "long term" again...! Walkerma 04:05, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
I think it's optimistic to think that JACS and TL will become open access within 5 years, but we'll see... ;-) I'm afraid that in most cases we don't have the luxury of choosing the journal based on its accessibility; especially when citing the original discovery or data, we must cite it regardless of where it was published. Regarding "how many of the lay public would have institutional access to 90 % of the DOIs we cite?", I don't know. I'm always very skeptical about speculations regarding who the "average wikipedia reader" is. It varies so much depending on the article, that the question is almost meaningless IMO. For example, I can imagine that articles such as Lewis structure will be read by many high school and beginning college students, silly putty could be of interest to kids of all ages, but Crabtree's catalyst will probably be of interest only to advanced college students, graduate students, and practicing chemists. In this latter case, I think it's not unreasonable to think that many of the readers will have access to the references. In other cases, well, we don't want to write the silly putty article so that only PhD's in materials science can read it, but on the other hand a few footnotes referring to the scientific literature don't hurt either. I believe most "lay" readers will ignore the footnotes anyway. But they can still be useful when they make the article more reliable because at least the interested readers who want to verify the facts can in principle do it. It's a bit like open-source software, which gives you the possibility of checking out and modifying the code; even if 99% of the users don't use (or can't use) that possibility, it's good to have in principle. :-) --Itub 09:24, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

Something I forgot to address: I think we will never drown in references as long as they are added for the right reasons (that is, to make the article more useful) and not just to satisfy the wishes of the "FA/GA zealots", who reject articles based on reference counts without even reading the article. That's why I try not to care about the "status" of the articles and just write something that I think is useful. --Itub 09:46, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

  • I have this to add:
    • I do not find books to be generally accessible in a library , I have a preference for the original journal texts
    • I am dissatisfied the way reviews are run, they tend to be very specialised and often focus on a certain period, lets last the 5 years because an earlier review already exists. For instance for the Sonogashira coupling I only used the bit on mechanism in the 2007 review in chemical reviews but nothing of the long long list of like-reactions
    • We should continue citing with full title and dois, dois have the benefit that statements can be checked with the abstract
    • The only disadvantage of inline-citation is that editing becomes tedious: you have to read past all the references. Wikipedia should solve that by introducing a skip-inlinereferences in the edit mode, from a programming point of view a piece of cake.
    • I agree with Smokefoot that just dropping a bunch of references without context will do the reader no good. V8rik 17:56, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

I would like to defend the moderate inclusion of references from original articles published in scientific journals. This serves to give proper recognition to the actual researchers making the discoveries. I mean, I think that the original papers from Jones must be cited in an article about Jones oxidation.

On the other hand, the Chemistry Wikipedia is already very specialized. Somebody reading an article on reduction of nitrocompounds has good chances to actually perform one of these reductions in a lab. This person would need an original article to find the precise reaction conditions.

Finally, I have noticed in Wikipedia several examples in which reactions on concrete molecules are included without citing the original source. Again, these concrete reactions were performed by actual people who deserve proper recognition. Including a reaction without citing the author is like including an painting without mentioning the artist.

On the other hand, I do agree that excess of references are not convenient. I hesitate about the need to include the title of the articles. Gabriel Tojo

I have something to add. Right now, I am writing a book on oxidation of aldehydes to carboxylic acids. Digging in the library, I have found a paper in Annalen der Chemie from Liebig describing the oxidation of acetaldehyde using silver oxide. It was published in 1835! with no knowledge about the connectivity of acetaldehyde! This is a gem. I am planning to include it in Wikipedia in an article on oxidation of aldehydes.

The intellectual beauty of some original sources is simply too great to be ignored.

Yes... I do agree that very few readers will have access and check the dusty journal. Gabriel Tojo

Actually, the use of Journal references should be limited, specifically BY the WP:RS guideline, and other such policies, which are often used at by the "zealots" at GA and FA (and as the user noted above, seem "rediculous"). They aren't. One needs to recognize the difference between Primary, Secondary, and Tertiary sources. Professional journals are a primary source, as they are the first source of publication of novel discoveries. However, while primary sources can report the facts of a scientific discovery, they cannot establish context and importance and notability. Primary sources, by WikiPedia guidelines and policies, should be used sparingly. Whenever possible articles should be referenced to secondary sources, such as journal reviews, textbooks, etc. etc. Secondary sources contain something that primary sources don't: Interpretation. They say why a nugget of information is important, what it means, and how it can fit into established fields of knowledge. Thus, since THAT is the information we need to include in an encyclopedia article, THOSE are the sources we should use.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:30, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I would disagree that journals are a "primary source" as intended in the guidelines. First, the whole concept of primary sources comes from historical scholarship, and I would hesitate before extrapolating it to chemistry. I think that the closest to what historians consider a primary source would be the laboratory notebook. A journal in an edited, peer-reviewed scientific journal is already pretty far from the original data, includes a lot of interpretation, and should be considered a secondary source. Finally, I don't think we need to have commentary and interpretation by third parties to justify the "context, importance, and notability" of every little fact in a scientific article (maybe once per article is OK). The fact (pardon the pun) is that the reader mostly cares about the hard facts, and those are found in the journal articles. Exceptions apply, of course. For some data, such as atomic weights and fundamental constants, the measurements have been repeated so many times and reported in so many different articles that only a critical review or book (typically of the sort published by IUPAC and similar organizations) can be used to back up the current accepted value. --Itub 06:42, 14 April 2007 (UTC)
I would like to add one more thing. The reason the guideline discourages "primary sources" (whatever they are) is that it is possible to do your own original research or advance your own position by cherry-picking suitable primary sources and ignoring others. But can you show me one example where this has occurred in a chemistry article? I think it would only happen in "media-popular" controversial topics such as drugs, CFCs and global warming. But even in those cases, the hard chemistry references are almost never the problem, but often the "interpretations" which are more often "secondary", or even worse, the newspaper accounts. There can also be problems with the "primary" sources in more "complicated" fields such as climate and medicine (where you can always find one study somewhere that agrees with your position, regardless of the consensus, if there is one). Regardless of the fact that I dispute that chemistry journal articles should be considered "primary sources", I would invoke WP:IAR, which says "f the rules prevent you from improving or maintaining Wikipedia, ignore them". You are throwing the baby with the bathwater by applying rules that are intended to avoid controversy to articles where there is none. --Itub 07:03, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ A. J. Arduengo, R. L. Harlow and M. Kline (1991). "A stable crystalline carbene". J. Am. Chem. Soc. 113 (1): 361–363. doi:10.1021/ja00001a054.

Endnote settings

Latest comment: 17 years ago4 comments4 people in discussion

I think Martin is really looking forward to getting his hands on my protypical endnote settings.

Here they are:

 

 

Since I cannot get it to output pipes (|), it output two spaces between each field instead. I copy into notepad, find and replace a double space with a pipe. I also fix the url into doi (Endnote doesn't handle DOIs natively). Then, I copy it into wikipedia. It'll be great if anyone can solve this problem.

An alternate idea I have is for someone to write a program which can read RIS files and output the text in the proper format. You can download the RIS file from most journals at their websites, and open with that little program. Hope this helps! --Rifleman 82 09:28, 13 April 2007 (UTC)

There already exist a small easy-to-use program to properly reference articles : User:Dmoss/Wikicite. JoJan 18:00, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Yes, but the point is that many practicing chemists already have Endnote libraries, or can export the citations to Endnote easily from CAS or ISI without having to type in the details, which is the main hassle. --Itub 18:38, 13 April 2007 (UTC)
Thank you! Both of these tools will find a place in my work here! I really find the formatting of cites on WP very tedious, this will simplify things considerably - and encourage people to add a useful example to an article, know they can pop in the reference easily. We should have a collection of such useful tools somewhere, I think. Thanks to you both, Walkerma 02:00, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Timeline of Chemistry - Featured!

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Many thanks to Itub and Sadi Carnot, as well as anyone else that contributed, to the list Timeline of chemistry. It was promoted as a Featured List this week.--Jayron32|talk|contribs 01:34, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Congratulations and thanks to all concerned! This is a nice overview of the history of chemistry, and gives us a different kind of chemistry article from the usual. Thanks, Walkerma 03:03, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

Forking?

Latest comment: 17 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

I was looking at Wikiversity and Wikibooks... seems like a lot of duplicated time and effort... to what end? I doubt that the other two projects have the breadth and depth of editors and expertise which we have here, because of the lesser exposure. Would it be better to concentrate our efforts here and have redirects from there to prevent content forking? --Rifleman 82 21:59, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

No, Wikiversity and Wikibooks have different objectives and it is not our business to tell editors there what they should do. --Bduke 22:46, 18 April 2007 (UTC)

elements past 124

Latest comment: 17 years ago7 comments5 people in discussion

I was trying to create articles on the higher number elements... and they all are redirects. How much information should I have until I can recreate the article? W1k13rh3nry 21:46, 19 April 2007 (UTC)

IMO, there's no reason to create articles about elements that don't exist. --Itub 05:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I'll elaborate now that I have more time. Look at the articles for the heaviest discovered elements. They are all about the history of their discovery, the etymology, and well as a little bit of data about the known isotopes. Elements after 118 don't have this information for obvious reasons. They have practically nothing. The existing pages for elements for elements 117 and 119-124 only have uncited speculative statements and a cookie-cutter paragraph about the systematic name. In some cases it is conceivable that, with enough references to reliable theoretical publication, one could construct a meaningful article about some of these elements. But the existing versions of the articles for elements 117 and 119-124 are worthy candidates for deletion or merging IMO. See WP:CRYSTAL. --Itub 07:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Unquadnilium is a perfect example what these articles are good for. All of them should be a redirect to a yet unknown elements with a strong emphasis on the island of stability and the faster than light electrons of some of the never coming elements.--Stone 09:41, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
Umm... interesting. Looking at the AFD log for element 125, I see the same cookie cutter paragraph about element names, etc. The element that was linked by stone (140?) has the same paragraph and not much else. Why does that stay when 125 and a ton of other elements have to go? And off subject kind of... redirect to systematic element name? A more sensible redirect would be to Extended periodic table. W1k13rh3nry 10:56, 20 April 2007 (UTC)
I beg to differ. The peridoic table is just a tool for visualizing relationships between properities and has nothing to do with nomenclature. --Belg4mit 20:50, 12 May 2007 (UTC)
The Afd results for elements 132 and 122 both show a general consensus against having seperate articles for undiscovered elements. They should all redirect to systematic element name, as this was the best redirect target at the time. If someone would like to expand and/or rename this article, they should feel free, but there should not be seperate articles for each undiscovered element (except, I would say, element 117 which was at one point claimed). The redirects can be protected if necessary. Physchim62 (talk) 15:19, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Put an end to silly tags

Latest comment: 17 years ago11 comments8 people in discussion

I have retracted my support to chemistry, Aldol condensation and Overman rearrangement. Are we committed to Wiki chemistry at university level or not? I am not prepared to spend much time with non-chemistry people overrunning chemistry with irrelevant tags. it is unfair to people like ~K (on extended leave) who have spent much time on chemistry articles which now get tag-slammed. V8rik 21:53, 25 April 2007 (UTC)

Try doing what I do - just ignore these tags! I regard them as a very ugly intrusion, but I also think they're part of a transition stage, and they'll fade away in time. You do a great job of adding wonderful chemistry content, and that doesn't change just because someone (usually a non-chemist) sticks a stupid tag on things from time to time. I don't think a chemist will see that tag and say - "Oh, I won't read that article, then!" So, I'd say just keep doing what you do so well, be sure to add inline cites with your new content, and remember that the chemistry world (including WP:Chemistry) loves what you do![1][2][3]
I ignore the tags too! And I think that often that's a perfectly healthy thing to do. --HappyCamper 19:35, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

References

  1. ^ "Chemical Citizen of 2006: Wikipedia User "V8rik"". Chembark. Retrieved late April some time. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  2. ^ "Beautiful, beautiful". HappyCamper. Retrieved Thursday. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)
  3. ^ "Twelve Free Chemistry Databases". depth-first.com. Retrieved yesterday. {{cite web}}: Check date values in: |accessdate= (help)

Should a section be added to the Wikipedia:Scientific citation guidelines to address the use of such tags within scientific aritcles? I can understand how it can someone without much scientific experience might honestly add these tags. It would be nice to have an explanation to direct them to that has been discussed and addresses the reason why such tags are not helpful and can be disruptive. M stone 07:47, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I don't know if that's the best place, but I agree that we should have a guideline somewhere explaining clearly that it is impossible for articles on many scientific topics to be "self-contained" and addressed to the mythical "average reader". An yes, also explaining why slapping on those silly templates causes more disruption and ill-will than anything else. --Itub 09:43, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia operates on a pyramidal basis, which means that many scientific (and historo-political) are not comprehensible to a reader who doesn't know "the basics". It is perfectly acceptable to remove {{technical}} tabs from articles which are meant to explain a specifc phenonenon from a technical point of view. Wikipedia editors are not requirered to leave their intelligence, nor their technical competence, at the door when the edit the encyclopedia! Neither is Wikipedia "responsible" for the "dumming-down" of university level syllabi, in any case. Wikipedia exists to be a source of information about a wide range of subjects, science included. Editors should do their best to explain the material which they include, but should not feel constrained to be the best teachers in the world! If any "new" technical tabs are applied to chemistry articles, I undertake to discuss the problem with the user that applies them. Physchim62 (talk) 13:15, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I really like your statement. Could something like this be placed somewhere so that it can be referenced in the future? I am not sure where is appropriate, but sometimes it would be nice to have something to point to during a discussion if this type of issue arises. M stone 18:04, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Put it in here: /editorial wisdom from the WikiChemists :-). I think part of this tagging problem comes from the push to edit so we have more featured articles - very often, the standards for featured articles are not necessarily the best for the subject at hand. --HappyCamper 19:33, 26 April 2007 (UTC)

I have modified the comment above by Physchim62 and placed a statement at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/editorial wisdom. I would appriciate if others would review and edit the statement so that it represents a concensus. I think that it puts into words what is already apparent to most editors of scientific and technical pages. I know I will make use of it if such a tag is inappropriately used in the future. M stone 07:29, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

I like it! I tweaked it a bit to clarify the distinction between target technical audience (for whom "normal" standards still apply) and lay audience...previous could be read to mean that articles needn't even be comprehensible to experts in the field:) DMacks 07:49, 27 April 2007 (UTC)
I think I would still like to see us attempt to introduce the topic in simple terms - and the editorial wisdom should reflect that. I didn't edit it - I want to see what others think. If I were to tell my mother (someone who's never taken a chemistry class, I suspect) "I'm working on the XXXX" she could perhaps gather some meaning from the Wikipedia article like, "Oh, this is used to make the pharmaceutical YYY" or "It connects a carbon to another carbon." I agree that we can't avoid being technical, and we do have wikilinks to explain the terminology, but we should definitely do our absolute best to make it as accessible as possible, at least in the intro. Having said that, I think the aldol condensation article does try to do that. Walkerma 05:52, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
Well, that's more or less just wikipedia policy; if we ensure that the "ramp" into the topic is sufficiently gradual, then we can ensure that the user/reader develops understanding as they read the topic. That is how we can allow non-chemists to read chemistry articles; it's my opinion that if you tag an article, you may as well TELL the user personally they can't understand it, or on a lesser term it'll be a cue for someone to move away from something which may otherwise be quite readable. If non chemists want to learn chemistry, then i suggest they do exactly that and not waste time tagging things; leave that to Jet Set Radio ;-)   ♥♥ ΜÏΠЄSΓRΘΠ€ ♥♥ slurp me! 19:17, 2 May 2007 (UTC)
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