Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Archive 10

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template: chembox new

I have upgraded the chembox, I would like to hear comments on it on Wikipedia talk:Chemical infobox. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra T C 15:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

Commercial suppliers

Today while working on the {{chembox new}} I ran into a whole set of commercial suppliers on a set of articles. I decided to remove these commercial links, and insert, where data was available, a chembox. Within the chembox are quite some identifiers which link to external sites. After that using the linksearch facility of I reverted some other links as well (per WP:EL).

Now I know that we had this discussion months ago (I think on the wikiproject chemicals), where at that point the idea was, the links that are there can stay since they do provide extra infomation. In the meantime external, non-commercial databases have grown, and the data is also available now from non-commercial sites (and this is also true for non chemical compounds). At this point, I would vote in favour the removal of all commercial links in chemistry related pages (even when the intent is non-commercial, the linking is still biased), attempting to retrieve the data from the non-commercial sites. What are the opinions now on this subject? --Dirk Beetstra T C 23:07, 3 February 2007 (UTC)

  • I wouldn't support a complete ban on commercial links, as I think there are a few occasions where they are justified. Suppliers do sometimes provide data which it is very difficult to find elsewhere (the example of the gas data provided by Air Liquide springs to mind). Similarly, a commercial link might be justified when discussing a commercial application. Can we just go with "commercial links are discouraged" (and, of course, continue to remove the "Suppliers" sections as agreed at Chemicals)? Physchim62 (talk) 10:26, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
    • Pertaining links in the "External links"-section: I would go close to an "almost complete ban"/"strongly discouraged", there are indeed some cases where the data cannot be found on non-commercial sites, but most of it is available (especially chemicals) from/via eMolecules/PubChem/etc. (eMolecules does link to the commercial sites, probably including AirLiquide). That does remove the bias of commercial links (where the link can not be replaced, maybe add a comment <!-- no non-commercial alternative available, 08feb07-->, so we don't perform a direct kill of that link?). I do already eradicate links which are to the homepage of suppliers (I do the same for the nonspecific non-commercial links (e.g. {{ecb}} without parameters), the homepage there does not give information), but I would argue that also links specifically to the chemical on a supplier site should be removed as well (except where etc.).
    • When discussing a commercial application it is probably better to make the link into a reference to the statements in the text. There these links are OK, though it should not be misused, independent sources are of course better. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:50, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

A few logistics on subpage locations

The box at the top of this project page refers to a few subpages that are not subpages of this wikiproject. For example, the box refers to:

I'm guessing this stemed from using {{PAGENAME}} rather than {{FULLPAGENAME}}. I will take care of the moves and page deletion notices to get this all fixed, but I wanted to make sure that I am guessing the intention correctly. - grubber 00:17, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Status report?

In deference to WP:100K, you might want to add some realistic status report to the top of this project, such as:

At the start of 2007, of the five artcles that are both FA status and Top importance, four of them are elements and the other is Aldol reaction. Surely, more of the non-element, non-biography articles in Category:Top-importance chemistry articles can be brought to FA status this year.--70.231.149.0 19:06, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Featured Articles/Good Articles

In response to 70.231.149.0, I would say that there are many Chemistry articles which are not far from FAC. These are some suggestions of what we can do:

  1. Do an internal peer review for all past COTMs, fix them, and submit for featured article/good article. I'd say distillation underwent a tremendous improvement, let's submit that. Solubility too has been greatly improved, thanks to User:Walkerma's help too. Let's review it and submit it too.
  2. Find all the former featured article candidates, and fix them. That will give us greatest reward for least effort. I've cleaned up palladium, which was a former FAC. Not sure what's lacking. Let's review it too.
  3. Tweak the Chemistry COTM. Instead of going all out for one month, and then switching to the next area of interest, let us start a collaboration with the clear intention of turning it into a FAC or A class article, and then end there. Perhaps we can have 2 or 3 collaborations at the same time (because not everyone is interested in the same things).
  4. Focus on basic chemistry articles which are lacking. It is funny that we have obscure topics such as persistent carbenes being covered in surprising detail (no offence, quantock. That happens to be my area of work too, but I call it as I see it), while we have basic chemistry articles such as acid which are woefully inadequate (no good coverage on the major theories).

I've seen how an article (Military Brat) made it from being an article for deletion to FAC in an amazingly short time, by the effort of 1 editor. With so many of us around, albeit with different amounts of time to spare, I'm sure we can find more good article candidates. --Rifleman 82 20:34, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

While I don't agree with the negative tone of the original statement by 70.231.149.0 - the goal of this project has always been much broader than just producing FAs - I think Rifleman82's response is very constructive. It certainly would be nice to have more chemistry GAs and FAs, not just chemical compounds and elements. I also wholeheartedly agree with most of the points given. I don't know that we need actually to change the COTM (though we do need more votes over there!), but we should look over the articles and perhaps bring them to GA level after the COTM period is over if needed. After working with distillation, User:Beetstra collaborated with a chem engineer (User:Mbeychok) to bring continuous distillation up to GA status. Would you care to propose a specific article you want to bring to FA, Rifleman? If you were to take the lead on a specific article, perhaps some of us could focus some time onto that? I don't want to promise too much time myself, though, as my non-Wikipedia work will be taking much of my time in coming weeks. Walkerma 03:49, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Re: To bring to FA class.
I'd propose that we start with distillation. I don't see why it is not a FA or A class article, but having contributed to it I may not see the flaws. I submitted it for peer review, but nothing came out of it, unfortunately. Can we (Chem WikiProject) peer review it ourselves, and rate it? If it needs to be fixed, let's fix it; else we can move on. Perhaps a Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review, where we invite people from physics or biology etc to comment as well. --Rifleman 82 06:32, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

P.S. The next article I would suggest is the cluster of molar mass and molecular mass, etc. Since these are just definitions, it should be quick as well. --Rifleman 82 07:05, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Good choice, IMHO. I also agree that we need to set up a project peer review page- a general PR group probably can't help with much other than language. That same page could also serve as a place to discuss promotions to A-Class, as done (or not?!) at WP:Chem with page for promoting pages to A-Class, which works well except that hardly anyone has votes or comments there any more! If we actively do peer review that should be less of a problem. Walkerma 08:14, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
I had a look at Category:Chemistry articles by quality. Indeed, most of the articles in the higher classes are elements or molecules, the latter are being 'stolen' by the daughter project wikipedia:wikiproject chemicals (my fault, I guess, but we should not ignore that list since most of the people here have been working on the chemicals as well). The number of articles in classes higher than B is quite low (is that because a lot of articles are not even tagged with a chemistry template?)
But I agree, I think we should have a go at peer-reviews of a number of the 'important' pages here, I am thinking chemical element, chemical compound, chemical reaction, distillation, crystallisation/crystallography, spectroscopy, activation energy, Avogadro constant, chromatography, aromaticity, organic chemistry, organometallic chemistry, inorganic chemistry, (.. chemistry), Grubbs' catalyst, Lewis structure, Svante Arrhenius, Dmitri Mendeleev, reaction rate, .. (I'm inspiring myself now on B-class articles, I may miss quite some of them). And then indeed all those definitions that Rifleman was mentioning. Should peer-reviewing be done by people outside the projects, seen an earlier discussion where someone was asking to KISS the articles? Hope to hear more! --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:03, 5 February 2007 (UTC)
On the point of peer review, it can't hurt to have an article rate by a chemistry-project peer review group.
However, I think such a review should be a content review, with aspects of style being considered subsequently. I don’t know something like – “the chemistry group has rated the content of this article 1st class”.
This at least establishes that the content of the article is up to scratch.
This means that only style (and or interest) should stand in the way of the article being accepted as featured articles. Style is something everyone can comment on including the chemist. At least everyone knows the bones of the article are there.
If the drive of this project is to get featured articles (and I’m not sure it should be) – I think focusing on very simple topics should be the task.
e.g. past featured articles are:
Acetic acid • Alchemy • Aldol reaction • Ammolite • Caffeine • Cyclol • Diamond • • Helium • Hydrochloric acid • Hydrogen • Lead(II) nitrate • Raney nickel • Technetium • Titanium
looking at the above – topics like useful well know compounds like aspirin, Morphine, as well as elements Gold, Mercury might be targets just on interest.
However I think Dirks proposed list is quite good, I’d probably just add basicity to the list. -- Quantockgoblin 10:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Okay, the peer review site is up: Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review. I've managed to steal a lot of code from WP:PR so I think it's actually quite slick. Appearances can be improved of course, but now each peer review will have a separate page. Let's start the discussion on the criteria at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review. --Rifleman 82 14:01, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Where did Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review go? Did I miss something? -- Quantockgoblin 14:02, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
From the logs I would say .. it never existed? --Dirk Beetstra T C 14:25, 8 February 2007 (UTC)
Maybe you are looking for Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review? Itub 14:27, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Rfc on image

Hi, please comment here. Thanks: --Sadi Carnot 09:24, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

VOC

I've added EC information and more of a world-wide slant to the volatile organic compound page. This is my first Wikipedia edit, comments / further edits invited.--Michelle Carey 03:45, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Dictionary of chemical formulas/Merge

This deletion discussion covers a whole list of other sub-pages which are not allowed in article space. The likely conclusion is to userfy them all to User:Eequor. Does anyone know what this is all about? --Bduke 02:39, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Scientific peer review

It is nearly 11 months since we established this review process as a minimal process after we failed to reach consensus about a number of matters. During that time it has been largely left alone with nobody really keeping a close watch on it. A couple days ago I cleaned everything up. I archived old reviews, corrected the tags on talk pages and made minimal changes to the process based on what I had learnt. I also reviewed how it had operated. There were some reasonable reviews and some that attracted no interest what so ever, but I guess that is the case even with Wikipedia:Peer review. Some entries may have missed some attention since they were not properly formatted, or had no tag on the article's talk page and hence did not appear in the category. See Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review for my review and report on the clean up.

Of course, in hindsight, I wonder whether we, and particularly I, could have done better a year ago. In hindsight, does anyone have ideas how we progress this review process. To be worthwhile, it must attract reviews that perhaps would not go elsewhere such as Wikipedia:Peer review and it must attract expert reviewers to add to what might be achieved by the general Wikipedia:Peer review. If it can not do either, perhaps we should close it down and just encourage articles to go to Wikipedia:Peer review. Articles for review are listed on the science WikiProjects such as this one, but they are transcluded in so changes do not appear on watchlists. I have also added recent reviews to Wikipedia:Peer review in the same way that WikiProject reviews such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Peer review are added. In this way both review pages refer to the same page for the review discussion and hopefully more editors will be attracted. The key point is attracting expert reviewers who might look at Wikipedia:Scientific peer review but not look at Wikipedia:Peer review.

If you have any ideas on this, please add your views at Wikipedia talk:Scientific peer review. --Bduke 02:51, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Missing topics about chemistry

I don't consider myself an expert in chemistry, but I've collected a short list of missing topics. I've tried to purge the list o anything that could be handled with a redirect but I would still appreciate if anyone could have a look at it - Skysmith 12:18, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Thanks, that looks like a very useful list. A few of the topics could indeed be handled with a redirect, IMO this is the case for Organic cyanide and Van't Hoff's law, for example. Itub 15:24, 14 February 2007 (UTC)
Yep, on a quick look at least half of them cannot be done by redirects so deserve articles. Volonteers? Physchim62 (talk) 17:49, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I've started the electrochromatography article. Relatedly capillary electrochromatography is missing too.--Nick Y. 23:52, 15 February 2007 (UTC)
I created benzotrichloride and ethyl acrylate, plus a couple of redirects for articles that existed at synonyms. I'll try to get a couple more of the chemical compounds over the next few days. --Ed (Edgar181) 00:05, 16 February 2007 (UTC)

Image:Con polymer.png needs replacing

Could someone please replace Image:Con polymer.png with a version that has licensing and source information? I would tag it with {{subst:nld}} and {{subst:nsd}}, but I doubt whether this image can be deleted (due to technical concerns). Thanks. MER-C 08:17, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Reported at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/Image Request. --Dirk Beetstra T C 09:28, 18 February 2007 (UTC)

Chemical element is now the Core Topics Collaboration

Please help out on improving Chemical element, the current Wikipedia 1.0 Core Topics Collaboration. This project has tried to identify the most important topics on Wikipedia, and improve these up to A-Class if possible. This particular article is now around the Start/B border, it should be a lot better for such an important topic. Please help! Walkerma 15:40, 22 February 2007 (UTC)

Mediawiki SVG Bug

Hi,

many of you, who are using incscape to create SVGs of chemical formulas will have noticed that subscript and other baseline elements are not correctly rendered by MediaWiki software. There exists an appropriate bug report on Mediazilla, but there are still not enough votes to get any attention for this issue. As user on German Wikipedia I just wanted to ask you to vote for this bug, so that we don't need categories like this any more. Thanks. --TaxmandeTalk (de) 12:28, 26 February 2007 (UTC)

Heartily second! While SVG may or may not be the way forward for chemical structure images (there are problems of scaling which are unrelated to this bug), it is as good as most images we have at the minute if it is correctly rendered. Physchim62 (talk) 17:10, 27 February 2007 (UTC)
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