Jump to content

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry

Page contents not supported in other languages.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
    See also: Chemicals talk page, image request page, {{Chembox}} (talk).
    Article alerts

    Did you know

    Articles for deletion

    (20 more...)

    Proposed deletions

    Categories for discussion

    (5 more...)

    Templates for discussion

    Redirects for discussion

    A-Class review

    Good article nominees

    Featured article reviews

    Peer reviews

    Requested moves

    Articles to be merged

    Articles to be split

    Articles for creation

    (28 more...)

    Draft:Enos Kiremire

    [edit]

    Will someone please take a look at this draft and see if they agree with me? I moved it from article space to draft space because the description of his contribution to theory, Discovery of natural laws of chemical clusters doesn't seem right. I first wondered when I read that the discovery of the atomic number Z let scientists put elements into rows and columns. The atomic number clarified the discovery of the rows and columns that Mendeleev had made based on the atomic weight, but you all knew that. Then it says that the discovery of the skeletal number K in 2015 made it possible to arrange compounds and elements into groups. I had just retired in 2015 and hadn't mostly been doing chemistry, but I think I would have known about any major discoveries in chemistry. The only number called a skeletal number in chemistry that I have found is the number of carbon atoms in a chain, which has nothing to do with water.

    Can someone put a positive spin on this draft, or is this an effort to confuse non-scientists by misusing scientific terminology? Robert McClenon (talk) 05:29, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I strongly support your draftification. With an h-factor of 10, 290 total citations and no major awards there is zero evidence of a pass of WP:NPROF. If in the future the community accepts his ideas his citations will shoot up and he can be revisited. I am 100% certain the current page would die a quick death at AfD.
    N.B., for fun I checked source [7] which is standard ab-initio. I could not find "skeletal" anywhere in it. I also don't see any RS for the claims of his discoveries. Ldm1954 (talk) 10:31, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree that WP:NPROF is unlikely to be met. His books are available through Amazon but are published by Lambert Academic, which our article calls a predatory vanity publisher. One of the citations in the biography (based on an interview) claims that over 10 million copies of his books sold internationally but that he has received nothing: both claims seem very dubious to me. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:08, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thirding a lack of WP:NPROF. Reading an available paper of his, doi:10.5539/ijc.v8n4p78, shows nothing particularly special about "skeletal numbers" - which just count the CO:M ratio of a homoleptic carbonyl complex. Certainly nothing comparable to periodisation. That he treats quadruply bonded dicarbon as a "simple example" also... does not fill me with confidence. Fishsicles (talk) 11:32, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This case looks open-and-shut but is thought provoking in some ways Looks like he's (self)publishing low level maths on stuff (clusters) that was dealt with many decades ago. That style is what people do when they are very ambitious and very deprived (read: Namibia). Weepiness is no route to notability. However, Wikichem probably has no profiles of any black chemist practicing in Africa. So, maybe we give some thought to Chemistry in Africa or Science in Africa. Sounds awkward, I know. --Smokefoot (talk) 15:11, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you. We are all in agreement that the article does not belong in article space, although we have different concerns. My concern was that his stated advance sounded like pseudo-science. My reading of the paper that was linked to reinforces that assessment. I don't know what he is saying in the paper. My degree in chemistry was 56 years ago, but I don't think that the field has changed so much that I wouldn't understand the basics of a paper, unless I recognized that it was a highly specialized area that I know I don't know, and this is not that. I have read pseudo-scientific physics papers and biology (usually anti-evolution) papers, but I think that this is the first such paper that I have read on chemistry.
    I wasn't concerned about whether he satisfied academic notability, because I was concerned about the technical gibberish.
    If the article goes into article space again, it should go directly to AFD. An article should only be sent back to draft space once; any subsequent concerns should go to AFD. We shall see what happens. Robert McClenon (talk) 20:49, 30 July 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There are quite a few practicing African chemists here already, looking through the categories. Oluwole Babafemi Familoni and Marian Asantewah Nkansah being among them. While not shining examples of Wikipedia biographies they are in better condition than this draft. -- Reconrabbit 14:06, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Oxycations and editor Johnjbarton

    [edit]

    I noticed that this article was nominated for deletion by the named editor a short time ago. From that discussion it is clear no one else really supported his view (which he articulated vehemently) and that the concept and specific instances were verifiable. I therefore decided it ought to be restored, and that I would start an outline, taking the lead from Oxyanion and giving an order list of examples, linked to the article we already have on that ion if possible (this was how it once was).

    The article now, indeed, is a useless stub, but it is so only because of Johnjbarton's continued deletions of matter he doesn't consider to meet his idea of proper sourcing; the removal of the list of wikilinks in his last edit may have been by mistake, but it would be very careless not to notice. Certainly here there is no need here to have sources on everything immediately, a demand that clearly frustrated the creation of a useful article on a topic we should have, thus harming Wikipedia. There is no doubt of the existence of sources, though I only kept those already there; I deliberately did not add any more at this time. From now until further notice, any deletion of material by Johnjbarton from the article will be reverted without further explanation; anyone else is free to discuss and edit.

    It is not as if Oxyanion is perfect, either, the lead states "Oxyanions are formed by a large majority of the chemical elements." sourced to Greenwood&Earnshaw with no page given, which I wouldn't consider well-sourced. This was followed by a plainly wrong statement I just removed. Finally I should mention, with regard to the title, that oxocation, oxycations, and oxocations (which I searched first) should certainly redirect to it, as the corresponding terms do for Oxyanion. 73.228.195.198 (talk) 12:28, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    As a participant who ultimately !voted Keep, I think this is an egregious misreading of @Johnjbarton's contributions to the article / deletion discussion. It also reads dangerously close to a personal attack, stapled to an assertion that you'll disregard WP policy on edit warring. I would recommend against doing this if you want to maintain edit access. WP:BRD describes what you should do instead: have a considerate and patient discussion with John on the article talk page.
    I would also advise against adding unsourced information. In my view, it should be possible to improve the article using four of the sources previously identified by @Cyclopia: Porterfield (1993), Deeth (1991), Selbin (1964), and Selbin (1966). Preimage (talk) 14:35, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I have run into John several times already since I started editing in this area, and while I would, certainly, prefer that discussion be resolved that way, have found him impossible to have a productive discussion with. Others may have had different experiences, but probably I should not be judged that harshly when I have already tried. I agree that those sources are probably appropriate, but I can't realistically access most sources not available free online, and don't think I should try to add citations to sources I haven't seen. 2601:441:8500:B870:0:0:0:D13A (talk) 05:03, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Certainly here there is no need here to have sources on everything immediately, a demand that clearly frustrated the creation of a useful article on a topic we should have - As another keep !voter, nope: there is a need for material to be sourced when it is inserted. We give some leeway sometimes, but if something isn't sourced usually it does not belong here. WP:V is one of our core policies. Removing unsourced stuff is good, and for the love of what's holy do not add unsourced material. cyclopiaspeak! 14:42, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I was a bit too combative in my wording, I admit, because I was still thinking of Johnjbarton and not others that might reply, which I didn't expect to get immediately. I do try to avoid adding unsourced material (at least by my definition) and the word 'deliberately' may have given the wrong impression. But as you acknowledge there is some leeway, a page does not have to be in a perfectly sourced state all the time (that's why we have [citation needed] and similar), and I think this is one such exception since something is better than nothing. I didn't add a whole lot of unsourced material, I meant only to make the page presentable, so that it would look better than not having it - which, as you voted Keep, I assume you do not desire. I did not think that this (the version that had been in place since the AfD) gave a good impression, and the state of sourcing is not the main reason; that's not the first thing someone is going to see; the version I put in its place is surely an improvement in that regard. I can find sources for specific ions that don't have any yet, but in general I hoped that others such as you would expand it, once I got it started and raised the issue, or at the least would not allow it to return to such a state.
    I am focused right now on completing the isotopes update, which is tedious even without dealing with sourcing, and was not anticipating devoting a lot of time to this - and as your time is not infinite either, I think I can stop here, having made the main points.
    I also must thank the person that immediately added the redirects! 2601:441:8500:B870:0:0:0:D13A (talk) 05:03, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The outcome of Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Oxycation was no consensus to delete. I don't understand what the issue is now. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:02, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Oxycation is terminology used for some inorganic compounds, often by non-inorganic chemists. It is harmless but we might as well include it. Only few binary molecular oxycations are used much (NO+ and NO2+ come to mind as biggies). Most so-called oxycations have ligands glommed all over the metal (like titanyl, vanadyl), hence the terminology is almost mirthful or misleading in some ways. Also notable are the non-binary oxycations like MeCO+ (acylium) and ClCO+ invoked in Friedel-Crafts. Some astrochemists might have identified some binary oxycations in the interstellar medium. --Smokefoot (talk) 15:49, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Your edits are strongly objectionable. First, they completely change the focus of the article, which, for an article you knew was under discussion, should not have been done without notification first. And they appear to be promoting your personal view on what 'oxycations' are over anything sourced - on the respective pages we have sources explicitly acknowledging the existence of vanadyl, uranyl and others. Of course, they are not 'naked' in solids or solutions, nor would you expect them to be (like polyvalent metal cations). But they are sufficiently stable apart from other ligands to be considered discrete ions (like the same metal ions), and are acknowledged as such by many sources; in the AfD discussion there was no dispute on the essential nature of the subject, nor did any of the provided sources do so, nor would one expect any source to do so, because the very word contains 'ion' and should not be applied to radicals having no existence as ions. I was careful, in compiling my list, to include only (to the best of my imperfect knowledge) those for which there was sufficient reason to believe could exist as ions in solids or solutions (condensed phases), and not e.g. chromyl.
    Yes, it is reasonable to mention that oxycation-like terminology is used for compounds that are not sensibly considered ionic, or are very little so. It is also reasonable to mention salts of oxycations (and that they may not be entirely ionic), as is already done on pages for individual ions. But not as a replacement for the main topic! The definition of oxycation, which I did not make up, requires only oxo ligands, so ions/radicals containing halogen and organic ones like acyl don't belong either. A possible exception is those where the bond to the oxo ligand is clearly and significantly more firm that that to any other ligand (the latter of which can be replaced), as can be found in some of the sources; note that acylium ions don't work that way.
    Finally, your edits contained numerous visible formatting errors, and at least one outright blunder (AcO2+ instead of UO2+ as the source clearly reads), and it should not be the responsibility of others to take the time to fix these. I'll have to fix some of these, and if you will not discuss it, start from scratch by reverting all your edits, then adding the new information that is worth something - making sure, as I do, NOT to break formatting or references. 2601:441:8500:B870:C0AC:6A95:A4FD:3786 (talk) 13:45, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @2601:441:8500:B870:C0AC:6A95:A4FD:3786 Please review Wikipedia:Civility. "Stated simply, editors should always treat each other with consideration and respect." Discuss content, not editors. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:03, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I was discussing content, and find your jumping in here to attack me dubious. Why does it always have to be personal when you get involved? 2601:441:8500:B870:C0AC:6A95:A4FD:3786 (talk) 15:01, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    These aspects of your post are not about content and create an uncivil atmosphere:
    • "Your edits are strongly objectionable."
    • "...they appear to be promoting your personal view..."
    • "Finally, your edits contained numerous visible formatting errors,..."
    Regarding: I was discussing content, and find your jumping in here to attack me dubious. Why does it always have to be personal when you get involved? You posted my name in the title of this topic, so I don't think I am jumping in. I am getting personal to join the other editors in encouraging you to please take a different approach. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:50, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    By the standard you apply to me, then, you are being uncivil. And surely if anything possible incivility in an honest attempt to discuss the improvement of an article is less culpable than the same done only to hurt. (And I don't think any of those are reasonably seen as personal attacks on Smokefoot.) 2601:441:8500:B870:E0BA:CF17:F8D7:7D9C (talk) 13:31, 17 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Chemistry tag for AfD

    [edit]

    I have (fingers and toes crossed that I did it right) added "Chemistry" as an AfD category when creating one. Entries should appear at Wikipedia:WikiProject Deletion sorting/Chemistry if this option is used. Note that this is different from the AfD sorting page. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:25, 14 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Should synthesis methods be given for psychoactive / controlled compounds?

    [edit]

    Talk:Βk-2C-B - Wikipedia

    Other parts of the article eg;

    Routes of administration, Dosage, Tolerance

    are all unsourced and im unsure of the notability of the information , it seems more an advice page rather than what I might expect in an encyclopaedia?


    apologies if this report was in error LeChatiliers Pupper (talk) 00:15, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    • WP:NOTHOW Potentially relevant but again I may be in error
    LeChatiliers Pupper (talk) 00:29, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think bare outline of a synthesis given in Βk-2C-B is fine. Please add sources. Feel free to delete any unsourced sections for any reason. For examples any of the sections "Structure-activity relationships" "Pharmacokinetics", "Effects" "Tolerance" could be removed. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:10, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Does US law restrict the publication of this kind of information? Our policy for inclusion is not "notability" but WP:Verify or WP:Due. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:57, 15 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd need to re-check the appropriate legislation, but as far as I'm aware, there are not legal restrictions on publication of synthesis routes (it'd make patenting anything in pharmaceuticals a bit of a nightmare, which is contrary to most priorities of US legislation). To my knowledge most of the regulatory and enforcement activity focuses on tracing actual production of precursors. To be certain, I'll check over the laws later today - I have about 30 hours of airplane time to kill. Fishsicles (talk) 03:13, 16 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Featured article review for Shale oil extraction

    [edit]

    I have nominated Shale oil extraction for a featured article review here. Please join the discussion on whether this article meets the featured article criteria. Articles are typically reviewed for two weeks. If substantial concerns are not addressed during the review period, the article will be moved to the Featured Article Removal Candidates list for a further period, where editors may declare "Keep" or "Delist" in regards to the article's featured status. The instructions for the review process are here. ~~ AirshipJungleman29 (talk) 10:23, 22 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Buggy (?) Reactionbox template creating categories

    [edit]

    The template {{Reactionbox}} is creating a Category from the entry in the "Type". I came across this first for ZACA reaction, but it is also in Stille reaction and probably others. I don't think we should have editors/templates creating semi-random categories like this; I found it indirectly from Category:Transition metal catalyzed organometallic functionalizations that was created by ZACA. Template editing is not my expertise, over to someone else... Ldm1954 (talk) 11:41, 23 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The template should not do this, per WP:TEMPLATECAT. The process to fix it is to manually apply the relevant category to each affected article, then remove the categorization code from the template. I'll be happy to do the second part if you ping me when the first part is done. – Jonesey95 (talk) 11:50, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    IMHO, reaction boxes are not very useful and almost pointless. Focusing on just one aspect: the true origins of many reactions are often obscure, and assigning discovery reinforces the prominence of "named reactions". The practice, which is prevalent in organic chemistry, also puts much emphasis on attribution to individuals. Inorganic and materials chemists rarely name our reactions. Also the "reaction type" is not useful. Reductive amination is described as "coupling reaction". Who is the authority that classifies reactions? My guess is that reaction boxes originated with the success of ChemBoxes, but it doesnt work for me. Maybe I will regret these harsh comments.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:41, 25 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I was waiting for more responses, but since there have not been any I will respond. Please delete the part of the code that is doing this. If there is a category needed then people can add them; I only did a BA in Chemistry many years ago, so I don't know what (if any) categories the reactions that use this box should go in. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:39, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I deleted the code that adds the category. I didn't change the documentation because I couldn't find a mention of the feature there. Johnjbarton (talk) 15:13, 28 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Nomination of 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene for deletion

    [edit]
    A discussion is taking place as to whether the article 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

    The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

    Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article until the discussion has finished.

    Svartner (talk) 03:32, 5 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    "Molecular form" listed at Redirects for discussion

    [edit]

    The redirect Molecular form has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2025 September 10 § Molecular form until a consensus is reached. --MYCETEAE 🍄‍🟫—talk 19:16, 10 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Notability guidelines for compounds

    [edit]

    Lately I've been thinking about having some kind of framework for notability of compounds, as seen for other topics in WikiProject notability advice. WP:NUMBER is the sort of framework I would take inspiration from: a series of questions that can loosely establish either notability or a lack thereof. I'm inclined to lean for inclusion rather than against in most edge cases, but I'm sure people disagree - and hashing out the concept in general can be a useful reference for those cases as they arise. Fishsicles (talk) 14:02, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Developing some consensus on notability of chemical compounds is an admirable idea but probably a doomed effort. Often it seems, when a very chemical theme is AfD'd, suddenly out of nowhere arrive editors thoroughly knowledgeable of rules and regs but ignorant of the chemical literature. Any effort would be thwarted by these virtuous souls. Anyway, it's not that big of a deal because dumb articles don't interfere with our main mission.--Smokefoot (talk) 18:03, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The only way to change the rules and regs is to propose an alternative, though. If all we can cite are the informal expectations of different WP:CHEM editors, nobody's going to really pay much mind - but having an internal standard is the best first step to suggesting actual official guidelines/policies through the proposal process. Fishsicles (talk) 12:54, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    [Writing this when I'm tired, hopefully this isn't too long-winded and makes enough sense]
    Thanks @Fishsicles, I'm glad you raised this. Ultimately, I think it would be helpful to have a WP:SNG for (non-medical) scientific topics. I agree the best place for WP:CHEM to start would be to develop a topic-specific WikiProject notability guidance page, albeit these tend to be less influential for AfDs (as they are treated as essays [that] do not establish new notability standards, lacking the weight of broad consensus of the general and subject-specific notability guidelines).
    The usefulness and distinctiveness criteria mentioned in your 19:07, 5 September 2025 userpage note seem reasonable to me. I also came across the essay WP:How Wikipedia notability works (full disclosure: authored by an unsuccessful RfA election candidate), which argues that, in practice, WP assesses notability using three broad criteria: source availability, importance, and encyclopedicness. It suggests SNGs can help with assessments of importance / encyclopedicness, and can sometimes also set up alternate criteria [or alternate assessment systems for criteria] for topics where GNG is not commonly used or usable.
    As per @Smokefoot, I think low-quality articles on obscure topics should be relatively harmless as long as they don't violate other core policies/practices (e.g. FRINGE, BLP, POV forks). But notability guidelines also play a role in training/shaping WP's community of editors. I gather there have been cases in the past (e.g. ROADS) where subcommunities of editors have diverged far enough from the expected norms, for long enough, that the inevitable correction has caused significant conflict, disruption, and editor loss (understandably so, when editors have put so much work into articles prior to their en masse removal). To quote from Slate's article on WP:ROADS:

    One flashpoint that inspired the recent revolt was a strict interpretation of the site’s reliable sourcing policy. ... A volunteer editor seeking to contribute content to the page might use information found on the West Virginia Department of Transportation’s website as a reference source. However, policy sticklers are likely to deny this usage because DOT is a primary source for highways ... According to the site’s policies, Wikipedia should be based mainly on reliable secondary sources, such as newspapers. ... Why not allow Wikipedians to cite from DOT, which is responsible for publishing highway routes? ... it’s worth remembering that most of the time Wikipedia has good reasons for the prohibition against primary sources, especially with government entities. ... The question is whether there is some way to recognize an exemption, granting that some types of primary sources may be reliable while still protecting the integrity of the rule.

    In particular, I was struck by the recent AfD comment (from a fellow science editor) We have a long standing general consensus to keep stuff covered by multiple reliable academic sources, even if they are considered technically primary. I can imagine situations where this would be warranted. E.g. if secondary sources exist, indicate a topic is notable, do not provide sufficient detail to write a non-stub article, but multiple independent primary sources exist and are broadly in agreement (a scenario which is much more likely for scientific topics), it should be possible to collate information from primary sources without falling foul of WP:SYNTH or WP:DUEWEIGHT. But the more frequently we deviate from GNG guidelines, the more important I think it is to explain/codify our reasoning. I'd like us to start doing that, beyond the limited scope for discussion provided by individual AfDs. Preimage (talk) 07:23, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Might be interesting to bring in the supporters of 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene: @Cyclopia, Dclemens1971, My very best wishes, and Very Polite Person:. I retract my comment that dumb articles (e.g., 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene) are harmless. They become intertwined (linked, cited) into legit articles, which confuses readers who think that we are providing notable information vs some lame crap. The other thing is that this exercise in self-citations encourages losers to dump more %$& onto Wikipedia in an effort to gain a modicum notability as authors (bibiometric tools at journal sites recognize Wikipedia mentions). As one criterion for the proposed notability would be that the article is not based on self-citation thing, as is 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:46, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    My (quick) $0.02: whatever standards are set on a subject-matter level like this for more particular notability conditions, are, remember, supplemental or alternative paths TO notability, or guidance on interpretation of notability against WP:GNG, WP:BASIC, et al. A per-topic guidance framework, even ridiculously over-the-top ones like WP:FRINGE, are wholly subservient and lessor to, in all circumstances, WP:GNG. Even WP:MEDRS, which anyone sane supports, will factually lose 100% of battles in a straight up fight vs rote WP:GNG (as it should; as should any of them).
    If the question is: can we make it a little harder to get stuff into Wikipedia in some context like this? The answer is and must be no.
    If the question is: can we make it more clear what is considered WP:RS for things derivative of or created by chemical synthesis broadly defined? Sure, lots of topics do that. You'd just need to carve up and build out ideas, and then refine them in a few RFC type fires. Just remember: no matter who tight you may or may not try to make it, anyone, me, you, a stranger, can blow up any opposition by simply dropping several WP:SIGCOV level WP:RS, and walk away whistling. I've done that on a few AfDs that I suspect left heads scratching. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 14:56, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The comment above that is really delicious (or kinda self-canonization): "If the question is: can we make it a little harder to get stuff into Wikipedia in some context like this? The answer is and must be no." Also, one might add, have you stopped beating your wife? Which books have your burned today? And in what ways do you support slavery?--Smokefoot (talk) 16:10, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Huh? I'm supporting the idea of refining the standards or carving them out. I was just explaining that if it was the goal to make it more restrictive (which I'm not objecting to) then it would be around defining what counts as RS in the first place, like how MEDRS handles it. Just emulate that approach. I was just saying it can't be done by making it simply harder from a GNG/BASIC POV. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 16:15, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Of course rules being discussed would make it more difficult to "get stuff into Wikipedia." What else could a rule do? The effect would be incremental and net beneficial, at least that is the intent. Yes, one always worries about "slippery slopes" etc. But anyway, sincere thanks for the advice. --Smokefoot (talk) 16:20, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm 99.872% sure we're on the same page and would prefer the same outcome. I was just trying to say the smoothest route would be the chemistry equivalent of MEDRS. Launch your ship from Miami aimed for Lisbon, but tweak the heading a fraction of a degree off and you end up in the Med. Having WP:CHEMRS (I will !vote Support for WP:CHEMRS to be the name) would help make sure most ships get to Lisbon or their intended destination--accuracy.
    Sorry, I get verbose. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 02:05, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think some specific guideline might be helpful. Obviously, not everything in PubChem qualify for inclusion. One can reasonably argue that a compound should be included if (a) it is described in several publications, and (b) there is a substantial information about the compound to be included in the page. Speaking on 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene, I think it satisfies (a). As about (b), this is something debatable. One can say it does not satisfy (b). One of important criteria could be inclusion of a compound into tertiary sources, such as encyclopedia or even reputable databases. Would everything in Merck Index qualify automatically for inclusion? Maybe. Everything from the Human Metabolome Database, i.e. [[1]]? I am not sure. Everything from DrugBank? Yes, probably. Assuming that there are also publications about the compound in scientific journals. My very best wishes (talk) 17:01, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think what needs to be codified most is when primary sources are appropriate for establishing notability. In particular, I would say primary sources that are about a compound itself are less important than primary sources using a compound to achieve some end.
    To use one of my own AfCs as an example, sodium tetrapropylborate: I'd started looking into it mostly on a whim as it is isoelectronic to tetrapropylammonium. The De Smaele et al ref (doi:10.1016/S0021-9673(97)00886-8) is about the compound: if this was the only paper I'd found going into it in any depth, I'd probably have ditched the draft. Chemists make new compounds with Amazing Potential™ all the time and I'm not interested in hyping up someone else's grant applications. It's useful for establishing properties of the compound, but not establishing notability.
    Huang et al (doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2004.04.015) has a specific use of the compound (and establishes that it's commercially available to researchers, a fact that in of itself raises notability to me) - this isn't a silver bullet, but is a much stronger notability point even if it doesn't have as many topic-specific details compared to the about paper. Schubert et al (doi:10.1007/s002160050072) is about using the compound, and moreover a comparison to a related compound - this sort of paper is to me the "strongest" kind of source for notability short of a proper literature review.
    ...of course, now that I've said all this, I feel like going on another dive for that page once I get back to my journal access computer... Fishsicles (talk) 17:13, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree with Very Polite Person: «If the question is: can we make it a little harder to get stuff into Wikipedia in some context like this? The answer is and must be no.» As they correctly stated, any further guideline would only supplement or clarify WP:GNG, not substitute it. That said, I reject the concept that (sourced) obscure compounds are not encyclopedic or even "lame crap". When I first started contributing to WP more than 20 years ago, I did it for its WP:PURPOSE: «free access to the sum of all human knowledge». If there are reliable sources on anything, be it a chemical compound or else, we can include it, and if we can include it we should include it.--cyclopiaspeak! 10:35, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I think the problem is that WP:GNG is rooted firmly in secondary sources, and that there's not good secondary sources for many compounds that I would argue are notable. The question that is most relevant to this issue is "what kind of primary sources establish notability for chemical compounds, and to what degree?". Many chemical articles are rooted mostly or solely in primary sources, which would make none of them notable under a strict reading of WP:GNG - which is obviously not the goal. The question I think is not "How do we make it harder to get things into Wikipedia (compared to GNG)?" but rather the concurrent questions "How much easier should we make it to get things into Wikipedia (compared to GNG)?" and "How much harder should we make it to get things into Wikipedia (compared to current informal process)?" Fishsicles (talk) 12:56, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It ought to be relatively straightforward. If you could amend WP:RS directly just for purposes of what sort or caliber of primary sources is sufficient for defining notability of chemical substances on Wikipedia...
    What's the gold standard? What's the minimum floor? What specific two sources, as an example?
    Tailor a version 0 draft against that: ID examples. Agree on two examples. Tailor initial outline and sketch describing sources that would include both of those sources, but "likely" cut off anything beneath the floor source. — Very Polite Person (talk/contribs) 14:48, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for pointing this, Fishsicles. I was a bit carried out because de facto, academic papers, while being formally primary sources, are considered equally as secondary across a wide range of scientific fields. Species, for example, or astronomical objects. WP:NASTCRIT could be a starting point if we need to make this explicit. cyclopiaspeak! 20:39, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree with WP:NASTCRIT as a solid foundation, though there's obviously some practical differences.
    1. The object is, or has been, visible to the naked eye.
      This one to me says "things should be significant outside of the field's interest in discovering new things". I would probably propose "the compound is or was commercally available in meaningful volume".
    2. The object is listed in a catalogue of high historical importance
      There's not really historical equivalent of astronomical catalogues for chemicals, as it took us a lot longer to figure out what chemicals were, but some level of "known and significant in historical records" is probably worth having. Is there a WikiProject Alchemy?
    3. The object has been the subject of multiple non-trivial published works, which contain significant commentary on the object.
      This is probably where the haggling is to be done. I'd say "multiple non-trivial published works" needs a chemical caveat of "from different labs" - in particular, while a source on the first preparation or characterisation of a compound is useful for preparation and properties of that compound, I don't think it should be counted towards notability.
    4. The object was discovered before 1850, prior to the use of astrophotography or automated technology.
      I don't think this directly translates at all as it's hard to "automate" discovery of chemicals. I suppose "discovered prior to modern chemistry" is also a criterion for notability, but that fits more into the "significant in history" rather than its own line.
    Fishsicles (talk) 18:05, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Part of the issue is what does "primary" mean. Because most of our articles are about people or organisations, we don't want to use sources where people write about themselves, or where organisations issue a press release about themselves. These are primary sources. However chemicals do not write about themselves, and theoretically at least have some existence. However if one person writes about a chemical, we would want it to be confirmed by another writer. Many chemical articles have a mini-review at the start, summarizing previous work. So I would recommend that notability is proved where independent people write about that chemical topic. Even for chemicals that don't exist, but are in chemists imagination, there may be notability if several articles are on the topic. However most of the prod and AFDs I have started for chemicals are for those that do not exist. On this board we have discussed some unsuitable sources. These would not be reliable sources. Some databases such as PubChem and ChemSpider do not prove notability, as they have entries for all sorts of stuff, including errors and things that do not exist. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 06:00, 19 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, the inclusion to PubChem and ChemSpider do not prove notability of any compounds, although the inclusion to DrugBank might be. The only reason for keeping 1,5-Diisocyanonaphthalene could be its studied anti-fungal activity. This is on the borderline of notability, I agree. It could be deleted or kept, whatever. My very best wishes (talk) 17:52, 20 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Not to relitigate a recent AfD too much, but I'd argue against potential applications as a criterion for notability unless very widely studied. Everything has potential applications. If a compound can be developed to the extent that it's competitive with existing compounds, it should get an article once that hits the market, not while it's in basic research.
    (Shout out to my absolute favourite Wikipedia redirect, applications of graphene.) Fishsicles (talk) 13:04, 22 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the goal of this effort should not be to make it harder (or easier) to get articles into WP, but rather easier to determine notability in our specific subject area, and harder for articles that meet our specific standards to get AfDeleted. I agree that a key part of this is determining RS for our subject area, and to codify appropriate use of primary sources. Eventually this should make it into a Chen-specific RS guideline and N guideline, to be accepted as part of the general WP standards. But a good first step is to hash something out in our project space so we as a project are agreed on how the general WP standards should be enhanced and we are reasonably confident that it would be accepted as part of the general standards. YBG (talk) 06:38, 23 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I have created a workspace for this concept at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry/CHEMRS draft, with a more formal statement of my "notable availability" criterion. Other members are highly encouraged and/or begged to contribute or discuss. Fishsicles (talk) 17:48, 13 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    pKa, you know what I mean...

    [edit]

    A perceptive editor complained that the pKa listed for diphenylamine is really the pKa of its conjugate acid. That kind of "you know what I mean" thing can be confusing. So, I doctored up the entry in the chembox (format police allowed that), but there may be a more elegant approach to this problem (definining that pKa for amines often refers to conjugate acid). Also, I wonder how pervasive is this issue? --Smokefoot (talk) 18:15, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The {{chembox}} template accepts pKb. Couldn't that be used instead? Seems better to report the basicity of a base, rather than the acidity of the base's conjugate acid. Marbletan (talk) 19:40, 15 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Isn't organic chemistry almost universally taught from the perspective of pKa for acid-base equilibria? For that, I think it's a little more useful to record a pKa. Though nothing really wrong with reporting both (like Ethylamine), unless space is at a premium.
    In this case I would format it as: 0.79 (conjugate acid, Ph2NH+2), but that is basically the same thing. I like the addition of the chemical formula for clarity, most of the time it is omitted like Aniline. ⇌ Synpath 01:08, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would say the best solution is to have a separate argument in chembox that determines if the pKa line is titled as just "pKa" or as "pKa (conj. acid)" for amines etc. (It should probably also have a check requiring that if the "conjugate pKa" line is used, a conjugate acid formula is provided in the chembox.) Fishsicles (talk) 12:59, 16 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Isn't this just a semantics issue ... for both pKa and pKb it is not about the acid or its conjugate base, it is about the equilibrium between the two and a proton in a certain media. For the chembox, that is generally water at 25°C, where it is then an interplay between the subject acid and subject base and not a 'free' proton but the 'hydrated' proton. I think that the link to acidity in front of it does it all, it does not need the explanation. Dirk Beetstra T C 07:40, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep, as things stand, there are a heap of inconsistencies between WP articles. I'll start with a quick look at simple polyprotic acids. Sulfuric acid's infobox reads pKa1 = −2.8 [line break] pKa2 = 1.99, whereas phosphoric acid has no mention of any pKa values in its infobox, instead reporting pKa1 to pKa3 in the article body.
    Hydrazine's infobox reads pKa = 8.10 ([N2H5]+) [with citation] and pKb = 5.90, with article body reporting pKb values for both N2H4 and [N2H5]+. (It would probably be an improvement to refer to these as pKb1 and pKb2 for hydrazine.)
    The most complicated example I found was arginine, whose infobox currently reads pKa = 2.18 (carboxyl), 9.09 (amino), 13.8 (guanidino). While this conflates the pKa of arginine with its conjugate acid and base, it's the cleanest way of presenting its acid-base (buffer) properties. I get the argument we should be reporting pKb for bases rather than pKa for their conjugate acids, but for arginine that would mean we'd have to list pKb1(amino), pKb2(guanidino), and pKa(carboxyl), which I think is going to be more confusing in practice. (And the isoelectric point is going to be more of a pain to calculate if we do things this way.)
    If we needed to be absolutely precise, I guess we could say the conjugate acid of arginine (ArgH+) is a triprotic acid, with pKa1(ArgH+) = 2.18 (carboxyl: −COOH ⇌ −COO− + H+), pKa2(ArgH+) = 9.09 (amino: −NH+3 ⇌ −NH2 + H+), and pKa3(ArgH+) = 13.8 (guanidino: −NHC(NH2)+2 ⇌ −NHC(NH)NH2 + H+). Though I doubt that's going to fit in the infobox :) Preimage (talk) 14:17, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I like the idea of having an annotation in the infobox if the value is actually for the conjugate acid. I strongly oppose my interpretation of Fishsicles's parenthetical about "formula is provided in the chembox" because we universally try to avoid including details of "compound B" in the infobox for "compound A" on the article that is focused on compound A, and especially because it's only for purposes of clarifying one infobox item. Instead, I'd support a parenthetical or similar note specifically in that one infobox item, such as "conjugate acid" in the title (which can be usefully linked), and something more specific (parenthetical on the value) if there are several to distinguish from each other. DMacks (talk) 18:29, 17 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    My parenthetical is more in reference the existing Template:Chembox Properties conjugate acid/base entry, not an additional field. If the pKa is defined as that of the conjugate acid, it should probably warn if there's no entry on the conjugate acid in the template. Fishsicles (talk) 13:06, 18 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Quick fact check for categorisation

    [edit]

    I've been cleaning up the chemical categories on Simple English, with a goal of matching (where enough pages exist) the categorisation here on enwiki. One thing I've noticed, though, is that we count Category:Diazepines under Category:Aromatic nitrogen heterocycles. Now, it's been a while since I did heteroaromatics in any particular detail, but this fails the Huckel smell test to me - shouldn't diazepines be antiaromatic? They've got two more pi electrons than imidazole. Is there a corner case here I'm forgetting re: the lone pair on the NH? Fishsicles (talk) 11:48, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I have removed the "Aromatic". So now nitrogen heterocylcles Graeme Bartlett (talk) 12:23, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Category:Dibenzodiazepines had the same mis-categorization. But it wasn't even a subcat of Category:Diazepines, whereas

    Category:Benzodiazepines is. So now that's all fixed. DMacks (talk) 12:45, 24 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Requested move at Talk:Organolithium reagent#Requested move 10 September 2025

    [edit]

    There is a requested move discussion at Talk:Organolithium reagent#Requested move 10 September 2025 that may be of interest to members of this WikiProject. veko. (user | talk | contribs) he/him 18:16, 25 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Formula parameter in {{Chembox}}

    [edit]

    Please weigh in on Should the Hill notation be prefered in the Chembox formula entry? by visiting that page and replying there. Thanks. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:23, 28 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Another categorisation fact check

    [edit]

    The enwiki Category:Imides is categorised under Category:Lactams. While many imides of interest are cyclic, and AFAIK IUPAC nomenclature uses "diacylamine" for acyclic imides, the functional group itself is defined as including any RCO−NR−COR (but "especially" cyclic compounds). Wiki pages seem inconsistent as to which standard is applied.

    The main pages for both imide and diacetamide refer to the latter as an imide, but it is only classified under Category:Acetamides. Phenacemide, meanwhile, is an acyclic imide that is in the category - and is very much not a lactam.

    For Wikipedia purposes, is Category:Imides meant to contain all di/triacylamines, or only cyclic ones? If the former, it should not be classified under lactams, and pruned of the acyclic compounds; if the latter, should we have Category:Cyclic imides that implies lactams? In either case, the category description(s) should probably specify. Fishsicles (talk) 15:51, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I think we should follow IUPAC, where "imide" is not necessarily cyclic; having an subcat "cyclic imides" intersection of "lactams"+"imides", each of which are subcats of "carboxamides" makes sense. And also per IUPAC, "imide" is specifically diacyl. If we have any triacyl articles, that could go in a sister-cat of "imides" as a subcat of "carboxamides". — Preceding unsigned comment added by DMacks (talk • contribs) 16:14, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Are cylcic imides even lactams? Can a cyclic anhydride be a lactone, a linear anhydride as an ester? I doubt it is useful to subdivide functional groups like this. ⇌ Synpath 18:39, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The convention I am familiar with is that "lactams and cyclic imides" can be grouped together like that, rather than the latter as a type of the former. That said, it's not something I can point to a particular definition for, so I'm inclined to bow to existing wiki taxonomy until a more formal definition shows up one way or another.
    If I were writing from scratch, I'd be inclined to keep them separate, on the grounds that we don't normally call amides amines even if it still has the C−N bond - but again, nothing formal I can point to that decides things "properly". Fishsicles (talk) 18:51, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Sure, it seems reasonable to make Category:Cyclic imides and include a hatnote or some other mention to Category:Lactams (as you suggested). That would let us follow IUPAC while including the relation to lactams and not imply they are overlapping sets. ⇌ Synpath 22:06, 29 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Indeed by functional-group definition, acid-anhydrides are not esters, and imides are not amides and neither of them are amines (amides and imides are derivatives of amines). But many specific compounds are named as if they were, via the derivative/substituent concept (example: N-acylethanolamine is an amide). How about using Commons cats as a basis, which means easier interwiki mapping. DMacks (talk) 03:01, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Commons cats tosses a new wrench into the works: they don't put imides under lactams, but they do call imides secondary amides. Which only makes sense to me (mathematician brain wants universal rules) if amides are considered amines. (And I agree they're not!)
    I think chemistry categories in general have an issue of not distinguishing "member of a class" from "derivative of a class". I've noticed a few hydrogenated heterocycles being grouped under their aromatic parent, with levamisole being a recent case - it was categorised under Category:Imidazothiazoles, despite both rings being partly or wholly saturated. It's clearly a derivative of an imidazothiazole, but it's equally clearly not one itself.
    I haven't gone on a whole big hunt for them because I suspect that the terms get fuzzy when looking at chemical definitions versus pharmacological definitions? But still, if tetrahydrofuran isn't in Category:Furans (and I don't think it should be!), complex hydrogenated aromatics also shouldn't be in their categories from where I sit. Fishsicles (talk) 12:54, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Put Category:Cyanohydrin esters on the list of derivative versus member - they're listed under Category:Cyanohydrins, but very much aren't hydroxy compounds. (That category raises other questions, since it's just a supercategory with only one very specific subcategory...) Fishsicles (talk) 17:30, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Glucuronide esters?

    [edit]

    I took it upon myself to clean up some of the subcategories of Category:Esters, grouping them based on the shared component, and noticed Category:Glucuronide esters. As glucuronic acid is polyfunctional, I went to check if this was "esters of the carboxylic acid group on glucuronic acid" or "esters of the hydroxyls on glucuronic acid", only to discover the answer was apparently neither: a randomly selected page, codeine-6-glucuronide, showed me that the compound in question was a glycoside of glucuronic acid, without any visible ester groups. Ditto estradiol 3-glucuronide, estrone glucuronide, scutellarin.

    Are glycosides esters, rather than ethers? Is there something special about glucuronic acid derivatives specifically that warrants classifying these seemingly esterless compounds as esters? Am I losing my mind? Fishsicles (talk) 18:06, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree with you. It seems to me that everything in Category:Glucuronide esters should be in Category:Glucuronides. I'll to notify the editor that created the category and moved articles from Glucuronides to Glucuronide esters (@AlyInWikiWonderland:). Marbletan (talk) 18:36, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    At a guess, it might relate to glucuronidation. That is an important process, but it doesn't necessarily mean that this is a valid Category. Project Osprey (talk) 21:45, 30 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think Category:Glucuronide esters is a category filled with incorrect entries - glucuronidation is a glycosidation reaction, not an ester-forming one. Glucuronides have a free carboxylic acid group and could in principle form esters, but glucuronides themselves are not esters. I suspect people got confused about which end of glucuronic acid forms the chemical bond in a glucuronide. I don't see any actual glucuronic acid ester article in Category:Glucuronide esters Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:05, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Based on the discussion above, I have moved the articles that were in Category:Glucuronide esters to Category:Glucuronides. Category:Glucuronide esters is now empty and has been nominated for deletion. Marbletan (talk) 14:56, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Carbohydrate vs Saccharide

    [edit]

    I am looking for advice on splitting out almost all saccharide, disaccharide, polysaccharide info out of carbohydrate. See Talk:Carbohydrate#Split proposal. Carbohydrate and the saccharide articles overlap significantly. What would be left in carbohydrate would be dietary and related health info. I'm unsure what to do with modified saccharides.--Smokefoot (talk) 12:17, 1 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    As summarized at Talk:Carbohydrate: Glycobiology redirects to Carbohydrate, Glycan redirects to Glycoconjugate (even though glycan is the same thing as a polysaccharide, workers in the area seem to use the term in the context of hybrids such as glycoprotein/glycolipids), most mono-, di-, oligo-, and polysaccharide has been pulled out of carbohydrate and redirected to those four articles, history was mostly removed from sugar to history of sugar. Carbohydrate is more of an overview with emphasis on food.
    Our portfolio in this area is hopefully less confusing. The nomenclature seems almost as complicated as the structures. One problem is that sucrose and glucose are dominant on the minds of most editors, but they may not so dominant in biochemistry and biology. A related challenge is contextualizing the role of high fructose corn syrup. Other editors are welcome to comment.--Smokefoot (talk) 19:11, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Chemical compound categories in set categories

    [edit]

    I noticed most of the Wikipedia categories named after chemical compounds are in the set categories of their corresponding chemical compound. This introduces issues like this guy being considered an organic compound with 1 carbon atom, as his article, through a long chain of categories, is in the methane category. This is why set categories shouldn't mix with topic categories and we should remove all topic categories from the chemical set categories. I'd like some help chipping away at these, so I'm doing a post here. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 10:11, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Is this an official WP policy? If not, I suspect that strictly enforcing this separation will cause more issues than it solves. While I support strong organisation of categories within a topic (e.g. my multiple posts earlier about functional group categorisation), those are non-trivial distinctions relevant to someone who might be browsing e.g. Category:Esters. If someone is looking at a category describing chemical compounds, and gets a list of chemical compounds, it's important that all those chemical compounds are accurate! But anyone who is looking into a list of compounds should know to exclude a man from Liverpool unless they are going into existential questions. On the other hand, someone looking for e.g. general background on alkanes probably doesn't want to look in two different places, one strictly for their chemistry and one for everything else. To me, you should be able to get to a category named Methane from a category named Hydrocarbons, because the category Methane is about a hydrocarbon even if everything in it isn't a hydrocarbon itself. Fishsicles (talk) 12:57, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    No, it is a guideline. For that use case it's convenient to have those articles there, but it pollutes search results with deepcat and other automated browsing methods. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 14:06, 2 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This strikes me as the responsibility of the developers of the automated tool. In my opinion, the concern of contributors should always first and foremost be people browsing Wikipedia directly. If the set category/topic category distinction is important for the backend, there should be a way to explicitly distinguish them in the frontend, e.g. an argument in the [[Category:]] tag, that does not impose restrictions on content and organisation from the user side. Fishsicles (talk) 14:58, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Searchability is important for maintaining Wikipedia. I was searching through articles about chemicals to try and find ones without structure diagrams, but there were so many people, products and companies in the results that I was having a hard time. It seems to me that the most painless way to fix issues like this is to take these 100 or so topic categories out of set categories, rather than develop a new argument for the category tag that then needs to be added to all the same pages. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 19:07, 3 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Bit off-topic, but would Category:Chembox articles without image be helpful for you here? (Can use search if you need to narrow down further, e.g. carbon-containing non-drug non-proteins.) Preimage (talk) 15:51, 5 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems to me the problem is downstream (uh, no pun intended) of poor categorization: "natural gas" is in category "methane", when TBH we should probably have "methane" in category "natural gas". TBH a simple fix might be to scan for all pairs (topic category t, set category s) with t ∈ s, and then swap them so that s ∈ t. Is that too simplistic? Do you know any other examples of this problem? Bernanke's Crossbow (talk) 14:21, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    IIRC, Coca-Cola used to be in the caffeine category before I removed it. The other way around wouldn't work in my opinion. HansVonStuttgart (talk) 18:08, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Crotyl compounds; naming and notability for functional groups

    [edit]

    Crotyl group has a singular citation, to Merriam-Webster. Category:Crotyl compounds has two pages I might consider notable, crotylsarin and crotylbarbital, but both need pretty substantial expansion. Compared to the other Category:Alkenyl groups, this is very sparse. While some other derivatives seem important - crotonyl-CoA, chiefly - I question if the group itself warrants a page.

    The main page crotyl group makes some interesting but unsourced claims of delocalisation in the carbanion, which makes intuitive sense to me, though though I'd expect the resonance forms to be the allyl anion-esque R−CH2−CH=CH−CH−2 and R−CH2−CH−−CH=CH2, rather than involve "both terminal carbons" as the text describes (I'm assuming they are counting the carbon bound to R as "terminal"?) If this is just the same structure as any other allylic carbanion, I doubt it needs a dedicated section on a dedicated page. Crotylation appears to be a reaction with some presence in the literature, but I've not dived deeply into its applications.

    At what point does a group warrant a page outside that of its parent class (in this case, alkenyl group redirecting to alkene)? And if this group passes that threshold, it's a real fixer-upper. Fishsicles (talk) 19:03, 7 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Reticular materials

    [edit]

    This page was drafted earlier this year by a user who is likely a student of (now Nobel Prize-winner) Omar M. Yaghi. Jannatulbaqi (talk · contribs) moved it to mainspace, but that account was banned as a sock and had a pattern of accepting AfCs with no apparent review (as described on Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Darshak.parmar/Archive). The existing content is very promotional and looks more like a grant application than a Wikipedia page. I believe it is too late to redraftify the page. I'm not sure what do do about this.

    Omar M. Yaghi has a history of COI edits and the entire Research section needs some help. Maybe an expert, maybe just someone who understands this field of chemistry more than I do. Apocheir (talk) 21:37, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    It is very obviously AI, with both Sapling.ai & Quillbot being quite certain. However, I don't see blatant AI hallucinations, but I have not checked the sources in detail -- I to do not know the topic. If someone does check and finds evidence for hallucinations then a CSD becomes possible. Otherwise there is the question of whether, in terms of content, this is a WP:CFORK of Metal-organic framework in which case you could send to AfD. Ldm1954 (talk) 22:12, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    AfD just filed. I have had it up to my eyebrows with science-themed LLM slop on Wikipedia. We have much better things to do with our time than hunt down each and every claim to make sure the cited source actually said it. If the article's creator cares enough about the topic to write an article, let them write the article properly. WeirdNAnnoyed (talk) 22:31, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    You will require luck in deleting this thing. Here is the pattern: out of nowhere, editors will arrive at the AfD who are steeped in rules, who know no chemistry, and who are dedicated to an iota of truthiness. They will out-vote and out-argue the best of us.--Smokefoot (talk) 20:08, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Kitagawa Nobel Prize

    [edit]

    Susumu Kitagawa has a couple of problems for a WP:BLP that just won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. The Chemistry Prize did not made it to the WP:ITN because of Kitagawa. Can somebody help improving the article? ReyHahn (talk) 10:19, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    ? Could you explain what "problems for WP:BLP" means? Johnjbarton (talk) 15:24, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The main issue is that there are several statements not backed up by inline citations. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:27, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    He is a living person. Specially a famous living person with a Nobel Prize (that makes it high importance in the project scale). Everything in his article should be backed by a reference.--ReyHahn (talk) 21:10, 10 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Ok thanks. I agree that is a great goal. Maybe deleting is the only path. Johnjbarton (talk) 04:00, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Kitagawa is looking great now, there is only one template left. Can somebody also help with Omar M. Yaghi? It has sections based only on his or other research without secondary sources. Can somebody either remove part of that content or back it up?--ReyHahn (talk) 09:02, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Due diligence

    [edit]

    In June 2009, user:Theinfamousfinatic uploaded this photo and called it "Hydrogen.JPG", then added it to the article on hydrogen, then removed it two minutes later. They last edited in 2015.

    Based on their other edits, I'm confident they were well-intentioned, and most likely took the photo themself in a high school chem lab.

    Does anyone have any idea what specifically the people in the photo are doing, and thence what would be a better name for the file such that I could transfer it to Commons? Or is it not worth it and I should just delete it? DS (talk) 23:17, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    The lack of protective equipment alone would suggest that this had better be dry ice or liquid nitrogen.
    This site claims the latter and moreover says "Image is copyright Carleton College Chemistry Department". On this basis alone I would suggest delete. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:28, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    More diligence than I'd have thought of, thanks. Gone. DS (talk) 23:47, 11 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Help on new article for Tsugaruite

    [edit]

    Hi. I'm in no way a chemist, but started a sandbox version of a new article on the mineral Tsugaruite here: User talk:MisawaSakura/Sandbox2. I could use some help beefing it up before moving to mainspace. Feel free to directly edit my sandbox. Two questions: 1) are there any practical uses for this mineral at the moment and 2) is mindat considered a reliable source? Thanks! MisawaSakura (talk) 18:27, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Pb, As, S, and Cl are abundantly available as by-products from higher value minerals so I doubt this one has any special demand as an ore if you aren't turning anything up for unique structural properties.
    Mindat is a good source for properties but I would not consider it one for notability of specific minerals, similar to e.t. PubChem. Fishsicles (talk) 21:55, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. There is very little info on Tsugaruite. Not sure I can make a decent article on it. MisawaSakura (talk) 22:06, 17 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    What is the structure of those non-metals As S and Cl? It is an unusual combination, so it would be good to describe the nature of ions and covalent bonds. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 07:33, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    That's where I need help. I don't understand chemistry well enough to do that. I stumbled across tsugaruite while looking up info on Aomori Prefecture. I have a couple refs in the sandbox.MisawaSakura (talk) 12:11, 18 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't have access to doi:10.3749/canmin.2000005 to check details, but the abstract suggests the structure is Very Complicated - 8x15x38 is a huge unit cell even for a zeolite, let alone something without silicon or oxygen. I have to assume sulfur's doing a lot of the heavy structural lifting. Fishsicles (talk) 02:36, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    THANK YOU! I already emailed Cristian Biagioni (ref 2, the one you refer to) to ask for a copy of his article, so we'll see what happens. MisawaSakura (talk) 02:40, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I will say that even if the structure seems notable - and I'll restate that it certainly seems unusual, going off the numbers I can see - an article claiming such is probably going to run afoul of WP:SYNTH unless you can find a review or something that discusses its peculiarities in wider context. Hunting further resources turned up doi:10.1127/0935-1221/2008/0020-1778, which doesn't have too much to say but is at least a better citation for "this seems weird" than Wikipedia User Fishsicles. Fishsicles (talk) 03:10, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Fishsicles Thanks again! I've never had an intention of trying to write a robust detailed article on this as I know it's beyond my knowledge level. But I am knowledgeable enough to write a short stub/start article that meets the DYK requirement of 1500 characters of prose, which I've now done. I also find this particular mineral very interesting, for some reason. The full text of the doi link you just found is here, in which it says "The crystal structure of tsugaruite is unknown, but is probably complex as is indicated by the large unit cell(V=4678 Å3).3". Note that article is 13 years older than the one I emailed Biagioni for. I hope Cristian Biagioni sends me his article because I can only find an abstract of that one. For now I have enough for a DYK and I could add a couple more sentences if Biagioni sends me his article (I'll let you know if he does); but beyond that a science person would have to work the article. I'll make you a co nom on the DYK. Thanks so much again! MisawaSakura (talk) 12:12, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for the acknowledgement, but I'd prefer not to be listed on any suggestions I haven't contributed directly to. Fishsicles (talk) 14:06, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    It's just a really complicated thing with non-stoichiometry, a big unit cell, obtained from super-obsure locations. And the aspects that might possibly be worth fretting over (Cl-As bonding?), charge balance, nature of the disorder (Cl vs S in a big cell would take a very skilled crystallographer) would require someone with deep knowledge. So, I worry that developing this article by someone who is "no way a chemist" seems like a really bad idea. Just leave it alone and work on subjects where you do understand the topic. Also I am unsure if it is worth fretting over. --Smokefoot (talk) 03:17, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd tentatively call it notable from the claim that it's the first (well described) chlorosulfosalt of lead and arsenic, but I'm pretty sure that "chlorosulfosalt" itself is a category of maybe ten minerals? It's definitely beyond my ken to delve into the details though. It's got some unusual properties, but they're unusual properties for geologists and crystallographers to poke at a bit more, rather than unusual properties that merit a full page on Wikipedia.
    That said, there's a lot of mineral redlinks, and I can't help but wonder if some kind of "list of minerals" pages similar to the way akin to e.g. 10000#Selected numbers in the range 10001-19999 is done, using the Mindat version of N-S? The current mineral classification pages have no shortage of issues beyond the redlinks - I'm still tilting at windmills about who moved the non-tetrahedral vanadates into the phosphates class, and having a larger restructuring plan would greatly appeal to me. Fishsicles (talk) 13:46, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Chemical intermediate vs. Reaction intermediate

    [edit]

    I recently came across Chemical intermediate in the new pages queue after it was split from Reaction intermediate by Bernanke's Crossbow. From my brief search online, it seems like there is some overlap in how the terms reaction intermediate and chemical intermediate are used, so it might make more sense to cover them in the same article. I'm not very knowledgeable about chemistry, however, so I'm not in the best position to evaluate the sources. Can any WikiProject editors provide their perspective on whether the articles should be split? Thanks. Zeibgeist (talk) 02:25, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    These are two different concepts, though the former is very poorly sourced - this definition of "chemical intermediate" is mostly used in an economics context, while the sole Britannica link describes the chemical sense shown in reaction intermediate. The compounds a market analyst would call "chemical intermediates" are simply products of one reaction and reactants in another; nothing a chemist is going to label a reaction intermediate is going to (meaningfully) last into the next process unit, let alone survive a trip to "other industries". Fishsicles (talk) 02:52, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I edited the hatnotes to make the best case for a split. Without some reliable sources I suggest that chemical intermediate could be deleted as not notable. Maybe Intermediate chemical would be clearer. Johnjbarton (talk) 02:53, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you both for your comments. If I've understood you correctly Fishsicles, it seems like "chemical intermediate" is a more niche industry term. The fact that Britannica uses the term as a synonym for "reaction intermediate" seems to reinforce this. I agree with Johnjbarton that the sourcing is very weak, so unless better sources can be found I'm inclined to merge chemical intermediate back into reaction intermediate. If the article is going to remain separate, better sourcing definitely needs to be added. Zeibgeist (talk) 03:23, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Bernanke's Crossbow: Are you able to provide any additional sources that reinforce the need for a separate article on chemical intermediate? Right now I'm inclined to undo the split. It seems reasonable to just include a section in the reaction intermediate article about how the term is used in the chemicals industry without making it a separate article. Zeibgeist (talk) 03:31, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Zeibgeist: Why are you even involved in this discussion? Bernanke's Crossbow is a pro in the chemistry editing sphere, and you have no track record. If you need us to explain the difference between a chemical intermediate and a reaction intermediate, then you are out of your depth. I just dont understand editors who take it upon themselves to cross-examine technical articles well outside of their knowledge base. What is the point?--Smokefoot (talk) 12:49, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I am a new page reviewer, and Chemical intermediate is in the new pages queue because it was recently expanded from a redirect. The fact that I'm not an expert in chemistry is precisely the reason I opened this discussion – so that people with expertise can help me make an informed decision. This kind of rude commentary really isn't helpful. Zeibgeist (talk) 13:23, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Smokefoot: If I don't make a decision on whether to review the article, that decision will fall on another reviewer (who will also probably not be an expert in chemistry). This is Wikipedia after all; most of us are not subject matter experts. With that in mind, do you have anything productive to contribute to this discussion? Zeibgeist (talk) 13:29, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think @Zeibgeist did exactly the right thing in this case. Given the lame state of Chemical intermediate, the questions raised are the right ones and in the right venue. I say kudos to the editor! Johnjbarton (talk) 16:10, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I would definitely prefer a split article, even a stub, rather than combining the two pages - the two terms are very different, even if the existing stub doesn't have much to talk about it. I suspect there's plenty of secondary sources about e.g. the size of "chemical intermediate" markets that exist on the economics side of things, I just don't have them to hand - and it's difficult to assess sources on economic data for their reliability, as there's a lot of investorbait slop on the open Internet and I'm not really inclined to pay a "reputable" analyst firm for their reports just to cite a wiki page. Fishsicles (talk) 13:54, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There are some things that probably would justify, e.g.https://www.britannica.com/science/chemical-intermediate does ("All the substances generated by one step and used for the succeeding step are considered intermediates", clear distinction from a reaction intermediate that cannot be isolated) .
    Note that pharmaceutical chemists also talk about 'chemical intermediates' as the intermediate compounds between starting point and final API. Some of those chemicals also have no other reason to be made then to be converted further, and often will not even leave the lab where they are made. Sometimes these compounds are just stable enough to observe (spectroscopically) but not stable enough to properly isolate, they react A and B, observe until C is optimally formed and then add D to convert C to E. Dirk Beetstra T C 13:33, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you all for your comments. It seems like there's rough consensus to have separate pages, so I went ahead and marked Chemical intermediate as reviewed. Additional sourcing would definitely be helpful if it can be found. Zeibgeist (talk) 14:04, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    (Edit conflict) Wow, this discussion proceeded far while I slept. No, I don't know any sources immediately. But this is not the first time that a new page reviewer has complained that my split produced a poorly-sourced draft, so I'm going to try to dig up some sources at the local college library. Bernanke's Crossbow (talk) 14:06, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks, that would be much appreciated! Zeibgeist (talk) 14:08, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think sourcing this split may be more difficult than we think. "Chemical intermediate" has two meanings, not one. Every "reaction intermediate" is also a "chemical intermediate" in many sources. If we had a disambiguation page for "chemical intermediate" then reaction intermediate would be the main use case according to sources by a wide margin.
    A web search for "chemical intermediate in chemical production" will have links to suppliers of chemicals that describe their products as "chemical intermediates". Registration, Evaluation, Authorisation and Restriction of Chemicals (REACH) defines an "transported isolated intermediate" as an intermediate not meeting the criteria of a non-isolated intermediate and transported between or supplied to other sites. They also define a on-site isolated intermediate. I think we could use the REACH definitions to support the notability of a page named isolated chemical intermediate or isolated intermediate, then change the hatnote on reaction intermediate to link it. Johnjbarton (talk) 16:27, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    (Well, the main thing is that the patroler would "appreciate" our efforts). More seriously, lots of terms could have multiple interpretations, but in this case, there is little room for ambiguity. A "reaction intermediate" is certainly a chemical, but no professional chemist would call such an intermediate a "chemical intermediate" because that would be redundant terminology. At least IMHO.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:54, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah, I think the main issue here is that search engines see "chemical intermediate" and then immediately leap to "reaction intermediate" as their suggested topic; I'm certainly not familiar with chemical literature using the term explicitly. Searching for e.g. "chemical intermediates market" gives more concrete examples of the "chemical intermediate" usage but I'm not calling any of them WP:RS. Fishsicles (talk) 22:27, 19 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Discussion at Talk:Lyonium ion § Proposed merge of Lyate ion with Lyonium ion

    [edit]

     You are invited to join the discussion at Talk:Lyonium ion § Proposed merge of Lyate ion with Lyonium ion, which is within the scope of this WikiProject. DMacks (talk) 05:18, 26 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Strong unsourced claim on derivative (chemistry)

    [edit]

    As I'm gearing up for another bout with Simple English's chemistry pages, I've noticed a particular claim on enwiki: 

    In chemistry, a derivative is a compound that is derived from a similar compound by a chemical reaction.
In the past, derivative also meant a compound that can be imagined to arise from another compound, if one atom or group of atoms is replaced with another atom or group of atoms, but modern chemical language now uses the term structural analog for this meaning, thus eliminating ambiguity.[citation needed]

    While this may be a formal definition - and if so, definitely needs a citation - I'd hardly call the use of "derivative" to mean "we traded some parts out on a blackboard" something only seen "in the past". It's certainly not how it's de facto used on Wikipedia, in categories like Category:Nitrobenzene derivatives - if someone can make flutamide from nitrobenzene in one reaction I'd love to see their notes.

    I'd normally look to IUPAC for prescriptivism in chemical terminology, but IUPAC has no official definition of a derivative or structural analog. I suspect this definition might be something from the legal world on defining derivatives of a drug (where the "ambiguity" mentioned is much more of a problem)?

    If this language has been deprecated, it should have a very robust source backing it - otherwise we should probably represent the practical usage rather than a particular rigid framework. As much as I do love rigid frameworks. Fishsicles (talk) 15:42, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    I agree with the concern about stating which (if either) meaning of "derivative" is obsolescent, even if "analog(ue)"is a more recent and non-ambiguous term for one of them. You're right that there are legal entanglements when a term has an imprecise meaning. See doi:10.1039/9781839166631-00153 for some discussion of that aspect. DMacks (talk) 16:09, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This source itself seems to contradict the idea that one notion is obsolete - per the abstract, "its precise meaning depends on the circumstances", which suggests a lack of a single standardised meaning in 2022, 12 years after the relevant edit, Special:Diff/393553874. I'm not sure there's good reason to leave an uncited assertion from a banned IP user standing. Fishsicles (talk) 16:19, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't know how much banned IP comes into it since that range wasn't blocked until 15 years after this edit, but I agree that unsourced claims as significant as this should be commented out at minimum.. -- Reconrabbit 19:32, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Template to render molecules

    [edit]
    ×
    Example output of the template

    Scribunto recently added support for outputting images. I've been trying to come up with cool uses for that. I made a template (based on CineMol) that takes in a .mol file and outputs a visualization of the molecule: Module:Sandbox/Bawolff/CineMol(edit: now Module:CineMol). I don't know much about chemistry, would that template be useful for this wikiproject? Bawolff (talk) 23:33, 27 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    This is pretty exciting. It makes it easier to upload views of 3D structures while potentially unifying the presentation style in infoboxes. Sourcing 3D structure coordinates is not too difficult, but it is somewhat obscure. I would rely on the Protein Data Bank for most of the molecules I would be interested in. The first concern that comes to mind is if the image generation slows the loading of the article too much. 3D views are nice, but aren't worth sacrificing reading experience.
    As an aside, since you mentioned you're looking for uses for the new functionality, automatic generation of 2D line drawings and reaction schematics would be very desirable for me. The ability to input a few SMILES strings into a template and output a schematic would save a lot of time for many enzyme reaction articles. The primary reason why I don't add images to articles with inline reaction schemes like Indole 2,3-dioxygenase is that it takes up too much time to generate images. If I could reduce the work to to copying and pasting SMILES strings and setting wikilinks I would spot fix every one I come across. ⇌ Synpath 02:02, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I feel the need to clarify I wouldn't put proteins into this template but their ligands. ⇌ Synpath 02:04, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    ×
    3D diagram of the structure of PDB ligand ERY
    Creative Commons CC-Zero
    Rendered based on the entry in the Chemical Component Dictionary for the molecule with id "ERY".
    PDB ligand: ERY
    Playing with the module a bit the most salient issue is including the full text of the .sdf file as input. It would be more editor friendly to host a text file on Commons or Wikidata. The easy incorporation of CSS is very nice for us dark mode enjoyers. ⇌ Synpath 02:21, 28 October 2025 (UTC) Updated image to use new PDB ligand code functionality. The full text coordinates issue is partly solved. ⇌ Synpath 21:12, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I think the ideal would be supporting the smile format as wikidata already has a property for that and it also seems to be a much more concise format. At first glance though converting between smile and mol seems a bit complex, but i'll have to read more about it. We can only use .mol text from commons in a template at wikipedia if its in a Data namespace, which is a bit unideal, but i guess workable. I agree that putting the .mol directly on the article feels bad. I guess one could create a template for each compound, and store the .mol in the template but that also feels not great.
    As far as darkmode goes, we can make this support dark mode. Is there an official colour scheme for this sort of think in dark mode. For that matter, is there an official light mode colour scheme for this type of diagram that Wikipedia uses? I just copied what cinemol does.
    For performance - there are two things. First of all this puts images directly into the article which can theoretically slow down page loads. Generally these images are small enough (~10kb) that i think the effect would be insignificant. Second, the template is more complex than the average template so it may slow down parse time (by ~500ms). However, most of the time a view does not parse the page, so this should not slow things down in the average case. Of course all of this needs more real world testing on real data to be sure. Bawolff (talk) 07:45, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I was referring to line-bond drawings when converting from SMILES. There are existing open source packages that do this (imperfectly, but it is a hard problem to solve well!). Converting from SMILES to 3D coordinates is something I haven't seen yet, but I also haven't actively looked for that.
    Storing the coordinates in a template is a decent enough solution, but it would be more appropriate to store that in a more searchable and accessible space like Wikidata. A wiki I know next to nothing about, so take that with salt.
    Re: dark mode, there's no official color scheme, but lightening the shade of grey representing carbon would help dark mode contrast. The outlining in the cartoon look helps a lot with that.
    Re: performance, at least personally these images haven't hampered my experience, though part of that may be the caching. ⇌ Synpath 12:51, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Personally, I think that those images are not helpful, possibly even deceptive and possibly original research. Maybe I can be convinced otherwise, but my impression is that these images are used as a substitute for conveying information, which is our core job. If one wants to contribute, then describe properties, uses, preps, reactions, safety, etc. I would welcome arguments for the inclusion, much less the proliferation, of such eye candy.--Smokefoot (talk) 21:14, 28 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Creating an image like this is no more original research than taking a photograph of a landscape and has similar issues with deceptiveness as photos. Projecting the 3D onto 2D necessarily loses information. As for helpfulness, it does vary from person to person, but 3D views of molecules generally help to communicate properties (sterics, at least). They are relevant. ⇌ Synpath 20:37, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    @Synpath I think wikidata mostly wants their properties to be about one sentence at the most, so i think mol files are too big. However I managed to import PDB's Chemical Component Dictionary into commons, which is linked together with wikidata via d:Property:P3636. So its now possible for the template to use a pdb ligand id, or wikidata if wikidata has that property filled out. Bawolff (talk) 04:45, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This makes the template a lot easier to use! ⇌ Synpath 20:39, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I see many problems with this type of image rendering and few advantages. The example Bawolff used is benzylpenicillin and that article already has an accurate 3-D structure based on an X-ray source (click on the image here to see the details). Note that Bawolff's space-filling version a) has used different co-ordinates and b) does not expand to a larger size or give image details when clicked. Molfiles obtained from most sources will not correspond to a verifiable 3D set of coordinates but will be as drawn by an unknown author. Incidentally, ChemSpider stores molfiles and Wikipedia articles should always have a ChemSpider ID in the Chembox/Drugbox so in principle the molfile could be obtained from there rather than Wikidata. Our Chemboxes are already set up to provide Jmol links so that users can not only see coloured ball-and-stick representations but can manipulate them by rotation to see the "back" of the image, which in my opinion is much more useful than a single static picture. Mike Turnbull (talk) 11:48, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't see there being a problem with auto-generating a static thumbnail-sized visualization based on coordinates deposited in a curated database. Something like the PDB Chemical Component Dictionary would be a reliable and verifiable source of molecular coordinates. Among others, I'm sure. Also, the image could be made to automatically link to Jmol or do so in a caption alongside the sourcing, since Jmol is an external link. The automatic image could be overwritten with a higher-quality, custom-made version when an editor has the time to do so.
    That said, I don't think this could be easily integrated into the chembox since there isn't a dedicated image field for a 3d view. We wouldn't know which boxes should already overwrite an automatically generated image.
    Performance is still my main concern, but barring that I believe this module is a net benefit. ⇌ Synpath 20:58, 29 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I added support for clicking to zoom in, as well as the ability to specify an additional caption when zoomed in. The template now also has a link parameter to allow it to link somewhere else if desired. The copyright situation of the ChemSpider database is a bit unclear to me, I don't think we can use it in an automated fashion. Wikidata is used to find the pdb ligand id, which is then used to lookup the mol file in the pdb chemical component dictionary (or more specificly a copy of it that I uploaded to commons). The actual mol files are not coming from Wikidata. Alternatively the template supports directly specifying the pdb id instead of using wikidata. Bawolff (talk) 08:17, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The question remains: why do this? "I don't see there being a problem" is hardly justification. Showing one of myriad conformations implies some insight that is not available to the contributing editor. I say: (1) contribute core content (properties, uses, preps, reactions, safety), (2) improve our English, or (3) many articles where some improved graphics are needed, lots of badly drawn ChemDraws associated with organic mechanisms.
    Maybe I am too old fashioned, but ChemDraw and equivalents rule. I am repeating myself.--Smokefoot (talk) 20:07, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Puff piece patrol: Ionocaloric refrigeration

    [edit]

    Page has a lot of potential-application promises and few specifics or sources, and may have WP:COI issues from researchers cited. I will be looking into it myself but more eyes would be appreciated. Fishsicles (talk) 23:34, 30 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Clearly AI. Since the original paper only has 29 cites I think it fails notability. Either PROD or AfD.
    N.B., I love the name PPP, can I join? Ldm1954 (talk) 08:07, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The PPP welcomes all who embrace our creed: "Wikipedia is not here to pump up someone's next grant application." Fishsicles (talk) 14:31, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Google scholar has 30 results for "ionocaloric refrigeration", some of which are secondary sources. So, however bad the article currently is, something could probably be salvaged. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:25, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    May I suggest that we discuss a bit further what we consider as WP:SIGCOV for pages such as this. I don't think there is any policy or an essay, and I have seen claims that something is notable ranging from a small number of (peer reviewed) cites to not notable despite having hundreds or even a thousand.
    I suggest criteria similar to when we look at academics for WP:PROF#C1. I have seen arguments that "a number of papers with more than 100 cites" starts to be impactful, with > 1K definitely impactful. Hence to me we should use a cutoff of at least 100 to justify an argument of WP:SIGCOV for a scientific advance. Comments welcome, maybe later this can be opened up to a wider discussion if we have any consensus here. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:03, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    This overview
    • Defay, E. (2022). Cool it, with a pinch of salt. Science, 378(6626), 1275-1275.
    does a good job of putting the ionocaloric effect in perspective. A topic with this level of coverage and fitting in to the overall story of refrigeration and caloric effects is notable.
    I doubt it was AI generated since most of the material was added by a COI editor. In addition to the COI, the primary issue with Ionocaloric refrigeration is, as usual, lack of sources.
    Note that Elastocaloric materials was created by a now-banned editor and has some structural similarity. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:14, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Note: Quillbot and Scaling.ai indicate 95% & 100% AI respectively for the Overview section, quite definitive. Ldm1954 (talk) 14:42, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    So does that mean that AI wrote this section or that AI learned about this topic from the Science article + the Wikipedia article written by the same person? Johnjbarton (talk) 15:09, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    The web sites detect AI from various characteristics in the style of writing. They are not infallible, and can be confused by math/citations, but useful. When two give such a high score it means that it was almost certainly written by AI. There is also GPTzero (which marked the page as 84% AI generated 16% Mixed 0% Human) as a third source; there are probably other web pages you can use. Ldm1954 (talk) 15:23, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think there is necessarily a conflict between AI generated and COI; I dislike speculation, but I can imagine a major LLM use case is prompting it to summarise something written for an academic audience into something for a general audience. (Certainly I've seen enough students try and do this...) Fishsicles (talk) 15:59, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    There is also an article in Physics Today (March 2023). However, the Defay 2022 article in Science and this one are published soon after the original paper was published in Science in December 2022 so I don't think this article yet meets the SIGCOV requirement using WP:GNG criteria, i.e. is this article WP:TOOSOON? Nnev66 (talk) 15:56, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm definitely leaning WP:TOOSOON. As I've done a bit more reading, it does appear to be a reasonably novel approach to refrigeration - at the very least, they've built a working prototype, which is more than can be said for many "potential applications" puff pieces, but my subjective judgment of "interesting, potentially promising" doesn't mean much if it stays a curiosity.
    On consideration, my preferred solution is currently a page for caloric refrigeration in general, which can discuss this topic as well as the aforementioned elastocaloric materials and related experimental work. Looking at electrocaloric effect also sets off some of my puff piece alarms, although that page at least demonstrates to my satisfaction that there's a lot of ongoing work in the field. The magnetocaloric effect could also be discussed there in brief, as by far the most mature example. Fishsicles (talk) 16:09, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    When does a scientific advance have enough SIGCOV?

    [edit]

    I have moved this from the PPP topic above to get more specific input.

    I suggest that we discuss a bit further what we consider as WP:SIGCOV for pages such as ionocaloric refrigeration. I don't think there is any policy or an essay, and I have seen claims that something is notable ranging from a small number of (peer reviewed) cites to not notable despite having hundreds or even a thousand.

    One option is criteria similar to when we look at academics for WP:PROF#C1. I have seen arguments that "a number of papers with more than 100 cites" starts to be impactful, with > 1K definitely impactful. Hence to me we should use a cutoff of at least 100 to justify an argument of WP:SIGCOV for a scientific advance.

    An alternative, that is close to the same is criteria used for notability of chemicals, e.g. the ongoing AfD here (although I am not sure what numbers would be used).

    Comments welcome, maybe later this can be opened up to a wider discussion if we have any consensus here. Ldm1954 (talk) 13:34, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    At least among physics pages I know a numerical cutoff is helpful but I think other criteria and multiple goals are involved. Is the topic extraordinary (anti-gravity)? Controversial (Hubble's constant)? Supported by work from a single person (Black hole electron)? Then we need secondary sources and not just press releases or news reports. Could the topic fit with other similar topics? The bar for a paragraph is much lower than the bar for an article. Johnjbarton (talk) 14:04, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you Ldm1954 for starting this conversation as I was curious myself about what sources count as SIGCOV for an early stage scientific discovery. I see there's a proposal that a certain number of citations could be a loose metric, which seems reasonable. However, I don't think individual journal articles noting a given discovery/method in the context of other research should count toward notability. Would articles written in journals like Science for a generalist scientist audience count towards this (e.g. Defay 2022 noted by Johnjbarton for the "Ionocaloric refrigeration" section above)? I would think so but would like to see what others think. Nnev66 (talk) 15:50, 31 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    My personal sense is that for scientific advances, one has to note their coverage by independent researchers. Whether this coverage is "in the context of other research" doesn't really make a difference, whether this coverage is substantial probably should. Regarding ionocaloric refrigeration there seems to be a little independent coverage, but whether it's substantial I didn't check. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 07:46, 1 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Please see

    [edit]

    ...matters for discussion raised with today's date, at the Talk page of Potassium peroxymonosulfate, regarding split of the article into two—a short one for the pure title compound, and a longer one for the commercial reagents historically known, e.g., as Oxone® (which contains the pure compound in various formulations). We have done work today to make clear which content elements of some content sections apply to which agent—the pure or the commercial "triple salt"—but as other registered editors have noted (including some contributing here), the article currently continues to confound the pure agent and the triple salt formulation. So, if effort is going to be made to split the article (i) it is easier now than it was earlier, and (ii) it will make further, future edits all the easier to have the article split. (After today, we will reserve editing time for other articles, until this is addressed, so that we better use our limited time in future.) Signed, a former registered editor of many years. 73.45.21.125 (talk) 17:52, 3 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Template:Chemical reaction

    [edit]

    I've made the {{Chemical reaction}} template meant to ease the creation of high-level chemical reaction schemes. Rather than spending 10-30 minutes creating a high-quality svg and uploading it to Commons you can now opt to create a medium-quality version from images of single compounds already on Commons in 1-2 minutes. Great for improving less-viewed corners of the project that use only text to express reaction schemes.

    I'd appreciate if you could take a look at the template and give some feedback on readability, accessibility, usability and practicality. I've constructed some examples at Citrate synthase, Tryptophan 2,3-dioxygenase, Strictosidine synthase and Glutamate synthase (NADPH) and you can see them all at the /testcases page. My bias is enzyme chemistry as you can see, but the scheme should work for any reaction (Note that the arrow does not accommodate verbose reaction conditions well, at the moment). I would like to improve the template to reliably make schemes that editors can use easily+quickly, while rendering well on all skins and small screens. I have a few ideas on where to go next, but I think the template is in a good enough spot to ask for opinions here before making more changes. ⇌ Synpath 15:55, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

    Wow, that's impressive, though I'm not sure that your estimate of 1-2 minutes is realistic given the steep learning curve for use of the template! Nevertheless I'll certainly give it a try. I liked the fact that I could easily tweak the size of each individual component using the |upright= parameter, which allowed me to make both citrulline and aspartic acid have the same bond lengths (set aspartic to |upright=0.6), which was otherwise what would be a minor irritation about the example on your template page. I also liked the fact that you are supporting other-language versions of Wikipedia by separating the captions from the drawings. It has been a problem with chemistry reaction schemes that some editors are tempted to put language-specific text into their .svg so that they internationalise less well. Well done indeed. Mike Turnbull (talk) 16:40, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    I noticed that you had used an image of unspecified stereochemistry for the product at Glutamate synthase (NADPH) so I tweaked it to use the correct L-Glutamate product by swapping the image file. In doing that I noticed a very odd effect. You had an overall width parameter of 50% but if I kept that value the product's image came out looking absolutely tiny in Preview and adding an |upright parameter had no effect. However, when I enlarged the whole width parameter to 60% everything looked OK. Is that something to think about? Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:18, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for taking a look! Part of the reason I'm looking for feedback is that I'm getting blind to how easy/intuitive this thing is to use, and how quickly I can get others up to speed on how the template group is supposed to operate.
    As for Glutamate synthase (NADPH) I gave it a pass of my own and the issue was that the width of the image was being suppressed by the lack of a text caption. An un-intuitive effect I will need to fix. Perhaps with a minimum width CSS rule or by making the caption mandatory.
    The width parameter is a bit of a pain point for me. There are some values that improve the look of a scheme, but it needs to be balanced against how the page is rendered at different screen sizes. I set it to 50% as a conservative width that accommodates the fixed width of the Infobox. I can partially fix this by forcing the scheme to scroll when the sizes don't match up in borderline scenarios, but using scroll bars like this aren't recommended for mobile I think. ⇌ Synpath 19:35, 8 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemistry&oldid=1321110772"