Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry

message: For Tahoka Formation, how do I write the dot between the water and the rest of the formula? Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 09:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Don't use chem, it has ugly output, instead use chem2. Chem2 converted the * to a centre-dot · . However I prefer to use • as it is more visible. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:51, 28 February 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  How to write crystal water in the chem template 

message: I propose splitting X-ray diffraction out of X-ray crystallography, discussion started at Talk:X-ray crystallography#Split x-ray diffraction and crystallography.  The two are not the same, and there are many areas of XRD where the focus is not on detailed determination of atomic positions. Examples are powder diffraction where comparison is made to known samples, SAXS and many more. There are many areas/pages where it is relevant to say "use XRD" but wrong to say use "X-ray crystallography This would also help to improve the current rambling X-ray crystallography page. Comments to the X-ray crystallography talk page please. Ldm1954 (talk) 08:40, 14 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Split x-ray diffraction from x-ray crystallography 

message: Is there a reason the definition of chemical element seems to vary according to the date you look at the article ? Currently it is defined as a monotypical atomic substance, but a few years ago it was the "species of atom with same atomic number" that was used. I wonder why it's not even mentioned in the article now, the Goldbook cited in the introduction gives the two. frwiki, dewiki, itwiki uses the atomic one, if I'm not mistaken.
The first one seems more complicated and actually a bit dated/historical, the second one is more convenient. The first one is «  » on Wikidata and there are several wikis that have articles about that. Maybe we should sort the interwikis and move articles to the right item ? TomT0m (talk) 19:26, 22 April 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Definitions of chemical element 

message: Nucleobase is the heterocyclic variable group, nucleoside is nucleobase+sugar, nucleotide is nucleotide+phosphate. Is there a term for the parent category containing all of those? I'm working on organizing some synthetic-biology chemical pages, for which we don't have very many of any one of those three but we have some and they do form a coherent topic set. DMacks (talk) 16:39, 1 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Seems like a very worthy project.  It looks like we have a full complement of articles on the main natural nucleosides, although some articles might lack a basic ref to a standard biochem textbook. Is there a good online biochem textbook that is not behind a paywall? It would be appropriate to have articles for each of the main natural nucleotide monophosphates (and eventually all of the diphosphates and triphosphates).  I am trying to think of what core info we might want for these articles because otherwise their physical properties are probably comparable and unremarkable.  Maybe their tautomers (for the nucleobase articles), base-pairing partners, their susceptibility to modification (N- or O-methylation as in epigenetics).  Good luck. --Smokefoot (talk) 16:18, 2 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Class of DNA/RNA monomer-related structures 

message: I am asking for the support of this community to move the following page from drafts to articles: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Draft_talk:Baltic_Chemistry_Olympiad. That will help with increasing the coverage of chemistry competitions.
Wikipedia covers several major competitions, such as the International Chemistry Olympiad and USNCO. However, there should be more pages to raise awareness. I have written a detailed overview of the Baltic Chemistry Olympiad and Competitions. It is one of the oldest international competitions, which over 30 years generated over 180 problems for training students and popularising chemistry.
Olunet (talk) 10:04, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Baltic Chemistry Olympiad was why it was deleted. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 10:30, 11 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Coverage of chemistry competitions for school pupils 

message: I just found ninovium article. I think this article should either be merged with Victor Ninov or with oganesson. Could somebody please take a look? ReyHahn (talk) 13:26, 15 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Ninovium 

message: Hi all, I am a new user I was refining Draft:Fausto Calderazzo and I have moved some of the content in the article Migratory insertion. I have also enlarged the article Insertion reaction. Could you please provide some feedback? Thank you in advance.--Diegoriccio98 (talk) 13:14, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: It is valuable to mention the old work on RMn(CO)5 but not much more.  Wiki articles rarely describe how experiments were conducted.  And we do not explain very much (WP:NOTTEXTBOOK), Instead our articles focus on facts, the results of experiments, not how they are designed (we want the "baby, not the delivery"). You may consider writing an article about MeMn(CO)5 or its acetyl derivative if you feel the urge to present the details for that work.  Migratory insertion is an important step in several catalytic cycles (zero involve Mn), so we want the article to remain general.  And a lot of work has been done since the 1960's, some summarized in Hartwig's textbook.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:59, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text:  The expression "feel the urge" is unkind. I am a student who was studying the history of chemistry in his free time, I found this platform quite "rude" so far despite my goodwill and some recent development add more complication. Some replies I have received so far are too generic to be useful (not yours), so I think I should stop it here. Thank you all and see you maybe in the future.--Diegoriccio98 (talk) 15:58, 17 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Migratory insertion 

message: An insource search shows that we currently have 70 cases where Sciencemadness.org has been used in chemistry articles. Some uses (e.g. in Copper(I) phosphide, current citation #6) have that wiki as a source for our Wikipedia article, although Sciencemadness itself usually does not cite any sources and is clearly not reliable by our standards. More worryingly, it seems that many of the instances of links to that website are to books and articles which are copyright. For example, Tetrafluorohydrazine has a citation #3 to John Drury Clark's 1972 book "Ignition" with a link to a scanned copy as a .pdf. I think we need to go through all 70 instances and either remove the cite or, if the cite itself is valid, remove the links to the copyvio. Comments? Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:29, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Support Pygos (talk) 15:07, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

text: I've changed the Tetrafluorohydrazine citation to point to the Google Books preview rather than Sciencemadness.org. I can probably do the same with a lot of these links. Reconrabbit 15:22, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks, User:Reconrabbit. I was intending to do similar but was waiting a bit to see if anyone had reasons not to do that. Mike Turnbull (talk) 15:27, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Support replacing those links.  A number of dubious sources are cited in our articles, so it is a good idea to root them out.    Educational sites include Khan Academy (https://www.khanacademy.org/science/organic-chemistry) and ChemLibre (https://chem.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Organic_Chemistry) seem to present legitimate information, but they probably are not reliable sources.  The overarching problem is that most good content sits behind paywalls.--Smokefoot (talk) 15:48, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: That's a good point. Editors here who write chemistry articles should have access to paywalled sources either through their institution or the Wikipedia Library, for example. Provided we summarise such sources accurately, it doesn't matter that the average reader can't themselves easily read the sources. We must try to write quality articles and that often means citing specialist publications. Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:36, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Chemistry LibreTexts is a tricky one out of these; the attribution is terrible, but I have included them as references on some topics because I have had trouble finding online sources that define in basic terms specific concepts like crystal field excitation. Reconrabbit 16:02, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

text: In the spirit of gaining some consensus on on-line sources, another one is American Elements (https://www.americanelements.com).  Dozens or hundreds of chem articles cite this website.  Maybe someone can comment on their status as an RS. Like Sigma-Aldrich or other vendors, their physical data are probably acceptable.  But they dress up their articles with a narrative, which is not verifiable and is not reviewed in any way.  Their narratives are window dressing for the products that they are selling.--Smokefoot (talk) 22:49, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I support not using American Elements for "use" verification, as we cannot see where their info came from, and when trying to confirm, perhaps only one researcher tried that application. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 00:01, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Contents from American Elements may contain original research. --Leiem (talk) 15:08, 29 May 2024 (UTC)

text: Sciencenotes.org is another site that shows up infrequently and is written largely by two people with scientific backgrounds but no oversight. Reconrabbit 23:43, 28 May 2024 (UTC)

text: I have now replaced or removed all but one reference to Sciencemadness.org. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:36, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for doing that heavy-lifing! DMacks (talk) 02:24, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Thanks for removing the direct Sciencemadness.org cites. The insource search at the top of this thread is still giving 62 hits which are copyvios IMO. I'll start trying to replace them, and User talk:Reconrabbit will probably assist. Mike Turnbull (talk) 10:17, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: Use in Nicotine and pyridine is not a copyvio, as works are in public domain. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:46, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: OK, I'll check as I go. Mike Turnbull (talk) 13:36, 29 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: There are also several US government publications which are in the public domain. Though I am not sure about LANL publications: are they government or not? Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:48, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the LANL ones are OK. Part of the website says that's where those documents originally came from. Their library has many books that are clearly PD owing to age but also quite a few I would consider to be copvio as too recent. Anyway, those linked from cites in our articles has been trimmed down to the extent where I'm giving up on the final ones. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:04, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Sciencemadness.org 

message: Ok, maybe we transition to a related topic.  If one does not have access to basic textbooks, it is next to impossible to edit technical content.
"Crystal field excitation" is not a term encountered very often. Yes, one can imagine what it is, but the phrase is not indexed in usual textbooks (Wiberg, Cotton&Wilk, Shriver).  My somewhat obnoxious point is that if one is struggling to find a source for a topic, maybe that topic does not merit an article.  --Smokefoot (talk) 17:23, 28 May 2024 (UTC)
thread_title: Sources

message: I originally asked about this topic here in Helpdesk. It was suggested that before applying for the move of the article, there should be some discussion about how to name it.
The "Monolayer-protected cluster molecules" page is focused on the crystal structures of these nanoclusters in a list-like manner. The current tittle was generated when the page was accepted but it seems too general or ambiguous. There already exists pages like Nanocluster and Thiolate-protected gold cluster, tittles of which feel very similar, even if the contents serve a different purpose. I would call the page as "Crystallized monolayer-protected clusters" or "List of crystallized monolayer-protected clusters". In the text it was stated that "This article is designed to be a list of known structures of MPCs", therefore the new tittle would reflect more clearly the contents than the current one. What do you suggest? Iridium27 (talk) 09:28, 30 May 2024 (UTC)
replies: text: The reason I used a name like that, is that I think that a more general title is better than a narrower title. Thiolate-protected gold cluster would be a narrower topic. Nanocluster does not imply that there is one layer of ligands, or that it occurs in isolation (could be ions, or as a 3D solid), So I think this article is sufficiently different from those. Currently it is just a list, but it would be fair enough to have more introduction on why they are important, and general facts about them. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 04:46, 1 June 2024 (UTC)
thread_title:  Renaming the "[[Monolayer-protected cluster molecules]]" page