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    See also: Chemicals talk page, image request page, {{Chembox}} (talk).
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    Can we agree to eradicate RCOOH (vs RCO2H)?

    This question is about one of those very unimportant issues that bug some (me) chemists: the formula for carboxylic acids. I suspect that RCOOH is archaic, but I am unsure. If we can agree on my proposal, maybe we can enter this into our MOS. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:50, 1 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I do strongly prefer RCOOH. In a chemical structure, however, I prefer having the carboxylic acid drawn explicitly (i.e. not to condense it to –COOH). --Leyo 19:31, 1 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I oppose, the proposed formula suggests that the bonding types of the two oxygen atoms are identical. Plasmic Physics (talk) 09:35, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I suspect the trouble with this is that we will have a large group of people who will come in and be annoyed by RCOOH, considering it to have been superseded in common usage by RCO2H, and we will also have a large group of people and be annoyed by RCO2H, considering it to have been superseded in common usage by RCOOH. A brief look at the multitude of basic chemistry texts I have suggests that they are both right about their preferred form being common, and both wrong about the other one having become archaic, perhaps even in their particular text or syllabus. The most reasonable course is surely to keep both in free variation, since people are going to have to be familiar with both anyway. Double sharp (talk) 15:30, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I'd like to hear from more chemists. My annoyance is minor. It is just one of those things. No journal or textbook that I consult seems to use this construction, but maybe I am not looking in the right places. I wonder if Leyo or other adherents could cite some prominent source. Agreed that RCOOH was common many decades ago. My grandfather's books on dyes use it, for example. It's not a big deal. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:57, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    IUPAC Blue Book appears to use COOH in both the 1993 version[1] and 2004 draft[2]. In some areas--admitedly rare cases unless you're discussing organic oxidants--using CO2H is clearer to the reader when trying to distinguish among acid, peroxyacid, and higher analogs (acyl tri/tetraoxides); CAS# 958758-62-8 is the pathological case. DMacks (talk) 19:14, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    And thinking of ambiguoity or that CO2H implies both O are equivalent, COOH could imply both O are consecutive in the structure rather than the first being a carbonyl. Hydroperoxycarbenes are an interesting area of study. But then CO2H could also be a dioxirane if you want to push into corner cases. DMacks (talk) 19:22, 2 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @DMacks: CO2H Does not imply they are equivalent. There are plenty of instances of a molecular formula having multiple of a particular atom that are coordinated differently. One example is Methanium (which is actually drawn wrong on the article and I should fix at some point :D ). EvilxFish (talk) 20:32, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Georginho's way is the best: RC(=O)OH. Peace!
    (I would go with what IUPAC uses in their books.)
    Georginho (talk) 19:16, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Whereas perhaps a standard should be set in order to create uniformity across all wikipedia articles I am personally more familiar with RCOOH, that being said we should probably adopt the IUPAC standard (if there is one). In reality as you said it isn't that big a deal. EvilxFish (talk) 20:18, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I am chastened! Even March uses RCOOH. Sigh.--Smokefoot (talk) 21:55, 3 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The IUPAC Blue Book 2013 uses only COOH (543 hits vs 0 hits for „CO2H” doing pdf search), but in structure drawings neither COOH nor CO2H is acceptable or preferred (Graphical Representation Standards for Chemical Structure Diagrams (IUPAC Recommendations 2008); from the examples of esters, I think acceptable are C(O)OH and C(=O)OH, and preferred is File:Carboxylic-acid-skeletal.svg). Wostr (talk) 14:31, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Check out JACS or ACIE or JOC or Org Lett etc etc. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:08, 5 September 2017

    (UTC)

    Every publisher or even journal has its own preferred system. I accidentally saw this discussion where nobody mentioned the newest Blue Book or IUPAC recommendations about chemical structure drawing and I thought that pointing the fact that „CO2H” is not used there may be helpful. If it's not, you can ignore my comment, as I'm not en.wiki editor and it's really not my concern. Wostr (talk) 13:38, 7 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I can't recall when I've ever seen it written as RCO
    2    H    . Plasmic Physics (talk) 20:05, 5 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    My organic chemistry textbook (published in 2013) uses both...GalobtterTalk to me! 07:40, 5 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Article in need of attention

    Hello all. Could someone more knowledgeable than me take a look at F number (chemistry)? I don't think I recall the concept from my organic chemistry (which was some time ago). I stumbled upon it because it has been listed as an orphan for 8.5 years. Any efforts to beef it up or deorphan it would be much appreciated! Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 02:13, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I can't find any other refs which use F number in this way on GBooks, and it doesn't show up in my old chemistry textbook. I've PRODed the article. If this is a notable topic and I'm just missing it please remove the PROD tag and add references or point me in a direction where I might find some. Thanks! Happy editing! Ajpolino (talk) 23:36, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    It seems to be used and referenced in a few dozen liquid chromatography primary research papers. But I cannot see any reviews. You could probably get some information on its effects, can calculated values for several substances. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 01:39, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Good find! I'd missed those before (got swamped out by the optical "F-number" articles). I don't see anything from the last 20 years, does anyone know if this term is still used? If it's totally outdated and only a few primary papers every reference it, perhaps we should just merge to polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbon? Thoughts? Ajpolino (talk) 02:18, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    This is my search: https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=R.J.+Hurtubise+%22F+number%22&btnG= A merge sounds like a good idea, as although it may scrape past notability, there is not much written about the number. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 02:26, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I added some details to the article, including the usefulness/application of it (rather than just measuring it) for chromatography. I found refs from multiple research groups and up through 2005, so I de-PRODed. DMacks (talk) 03:07, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Great! Thanks! Ajpolino (talk) 05:18, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Iodometry

    Can someone please edit the Iodometry article? There are some sentences which sound were basically fused by mistake, like - To a known volume of sample, an excess but known amount of iodide is added, which the oxidizing agents oxidizes iodide to iodine. 93.142.92.50 (talk) 16:49, 21 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I did a quick cleanup - I hope that's a bit better now. Others are welcome to rework it some more. Thanks for reporting it! Walkerma (talk) 05:29, 22 September 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    {{Chembox}} name change

    Proposal: {{Chembox}} → {{Infobox chemical}}. See Template_talk. -DePiep (talk) 11:21, 1 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Article creation experiment

    FYI you may like to read Science Is Shaped by Wikipedia: Evidence from a Randomized Control Trial. The articles were posted by Carolineneil (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) and may require attention. SmartSE (talk) 10:07, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    See also Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/IncidentArchive965#Single purpose account for mass adding articles by a number of PhD students for paid experiment on Wikipedia. DMacks (talk) 13:47, 4 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    An offline app for Chemistry

    Hello everyone,

    The Kiwix people are working on an offline version of several Wikipedia subsets (based on this Foundation report). It basically would be like the Wikimed App (see here for the Android light version; iOS is in beta, DM me if interested), and the readership would likely be in the Global South (if Wikimed is any indication): people with little to no access to a decent internet connexion but who still would greatly benefit from our content.

    What we do is take a snapshot at day D of all articles tagged by the project (minus Biographies) and package it into a compressed zim file that people can access anytime locally (ie once downloaded, no refresh needed). We also do a specific landing page that is more mobile-friendly, and that's when I need your quick input:

    1. Would it be okay for you if it were hosted as a subpage of the Wikiproject (e.g. WikiProject Chemistry/Offline)? Not that anyone should notice or care, but I'd rather notify & ask
    2. Any breakdown of very top-level topics that you'd recommend? (see Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Open_Textbook_of_Medicine2 for what we're looking at in terms of simplicity) Usually people use the search function anyway, but a totally empty landing page isn't too useful either. Alternatively, if you guys use the Book: sorting, that can be helpful.

    Thanks for your feedback! Stephane (Kiwix) (talk) 12:28, 10 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Valid criticism

    See Wikipedia’s Science Articles Are Elitist for a valid criticism of Wiki science. Far too often the articles are written for other science specialists with little thought to the general reader who might want to learn a bit, but is driven away by sci nerds talking/showing off to other sci nerds. Thoughts? Vsmith (talk) 18:23, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Clearly at least the lead sentence and preferably the whole lead should be written in a way so that it can be understood by a wide audience. It also depends on how specialized the topic is. There is a hierarchy of articles from the general to the more specialized. More general articles should be written in a more accessible style. The linked critique above gives a couple of examples. Graphene (growing technological importance; rated high importance) and Electroweak interaction (Nobel prize; rated high importance) in my opinion fall in the more general category while nonribosomal peptide (rated low importance) is more specialized. Boghog (talk) 20:27, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Timely article. There are various issues, to expand on Boghog:
    • stuff for specialists only. Many articles are not written for general readers. I recently wrote about zirconium acetylacetonate. About 2200 papers/patents mention it, which suggests that the topic will appeal to other specialists, but not to Joe Sixpack.
    • intermediate cases. Many thousands of chemical compounds are on ingredient lists. And many thousands of processes are intrinsically chemical. Think cooking, cleaning, fuels, cosmetics, clothing. These are areas where chemistry editors can more readily help readers. And we can remind them that they live in a chemical world (and therefore need to employ more of us). One challenge is to find good sources.
    • Final point: WP:NOTTEXTBOOK, to quote: "The purpose of Wikipedia is to present facts, not to teach subject matter."

    --Smokefoot (talk) 22:16, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    There's some validity to the argument - but at the same time I don't think its as easy as the article makes out. The article you cite is a blog and as such is free to adopt a conversational tone when discussing things, this can be very helpful for explaining entirely new concepts. Wikipedia however tries to keep to an encyclopedic tone and that language can make technical concepts sound even more technical. That's not to say that its impossible to have an article that is technical, encyclopedic and easily understood; but it is hard. In terms of where to begin with this, to me the obvious place to start would be most popular pages in Chemistry. --Project Osprey (talk) 01:06, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Agree w/ project osprey. Not always the easiest to balance having explanations with conciseness. But honestly even as a science nerd I found the lead sentence in graphene absolutely horrible at explaining what graphene is. So I've rewritten it. Galobtter (talk) 15:46, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Article for Creation

    Why don't we have a dedicated article to cover the topic of metallisation - the phase transition that occurs under pressurisation of a solid that most importantly results in the delocalisation of electrons leading to the appearance of metallic characteristics in the solid? I thought that this would be a relatively important article to have. Plasmic Physics (talk) 23:49, 13 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    @Plasmic Physics: I certainly plan to make one eventually (under the title Metal-insulator transition), but it may take years before I get around to it. You should try asking about it on the Wikiproject Physics talk page since it's more of a physics topic than a chemisty topic. OrganoMetallurgy (talk) 00:24, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I may take on the challenge, that way you can add to it in pieces when have time. The only problem is that I know very little about it. I could also post a notification at Physics, although I believe that this is a interdisciplinary topic, relating to both chemistry and physics. Plasmic Physics (talk) 00:39, 14 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Plasmic Physics: I'm rather embarrassed to point out that the page Metal–insulator transition already exists and has existed for about a decade. I really ought to have checked to see if it already existed before posting my initial response. OrganoMetallurgy (talk) 19:19, 15 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Facto Post – Issue 5 – 17 October 2017

    Facto Post – Issue 5 – 17 October 2017

    Editorial: Annotations

    Annotation is nothing new. The glossators of medieval Europe annotated between the lines, or in the margins of legal manuscripts of texts going back to Roman times, and created a new discipline. In the form of web annotation, the idea is back, with texts being marked up inline, or with a stand-off system. Where could it lead?

    1495 print version of the Digesta of Justinian, with the annotations of the glossator Accursius from the 13th century

    ContentMine operates in the field of text and data mining (TDM), where annotation, simply put, can add value to mined text. It now sees annotation as a possible advance in semi-automation, the use of human judgement assisted by bot editing, which now plays a large part in Wikidata tools. While a human judgement call of yes/no, on the addition of a statement to Wikidata, is usually taken as decisive, it need not be. The human assent may be passed into an annotation system, and stored: this idea is standard on Wikisource, for example, where text is considered "validated" only when two different accounts have stated that the proof-reading is correct. A typical application would be to require more than one person to agree that what is said in the reference translates correctly into the formal Wikidata statement. Rejections are also potentially useful to record, for machine learning.

    As a contribution to data integrity on Wikidata, annotation has much to offer. Some "hard cases" on importing data are much more difficult than average. There are for example biographical puzzles: whether person A in one context is really identical with person B, of the same name, in another context. In science, clinical medicine require special attention to sourcing (WP:MEDRS), and is challenging in terms of connecting findings with the methodology employed. Currently decisions in areas such as these, on Wikipedia and Wikidata, are often made ad hoc. In particular there may be no audit trail for those who want to check what is decided.

    Annotations are subject to a World Wide Web Consortium standard, and behind the terminology constitute a simple JSON data structure. What WikiFactMine proposes to do with them is to implement the MEDRS guideline, as a formal algorithm, on bibliographical and methodological data. The structure will integrate with those inputs the human decisions on the interpretation of scientific papers that underlie claims on Wikidata. What is added to Wikidata will therefore be supported by a transparent and rigorous system that documents decisions.

    An example of the possible future scope of annotation, for medical content, is in the first link below. That sort of detailed abstract of a publication can be a target for TDM, adds great value, and could be presented in machine-readable form. You are invited to discuss the detailed proposal on Wikidata, via its talk page.

    Editor Charles Matthews. Please leave feedback for him.
    If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Opted-out of message delivery to your user talk page.
    Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

    MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 08:46, 17 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Short interview for the Wikipedia Facebook page about your work

    Hello,

    My name is Melody and I work on the Foundation's blog and social team. We elevate our community's work and help people better understand the facts they see on Wikipedia. As you may know, October 23 is "Mole Day," an unofficial holiday celebrated by chemists to honor Avogadro's Number. We would love to use this day as a way to help people better understand the mole, learn some facts related to the mole, and (if there's interest here) let them know about WikiProject Chemistry. If you are interested in helping with this effort or have feedback, please let me know. This is an experiment, and I'm looking forward to discussing further. (And if this doesn't work out, given the short notice, I'd love to think about a way to amplify your work in a different way.) Thank you!

    MKramer (WMF) (talk) 14:05, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    The underlying idea is pretty simple "I have 10g of water, I wonder how many molecules that is?" the sticking point for most people is getting your head around how big that number actually is. A mole of pennies is more money that exists in the world, a mole of marbles would cover the Earth to a depth of 50 miles, there are plenty of analogies on Google. Such analogies don't appear in our articles as they're not exactly encyclopedic but they might be a good way of engaging a new audience, a la XKCD.
    On a separate note, how did we end up with separate articles on Avogadro constant and Mole (unit)? I would have thought them fairly indivisible! --Project Osprey (talk) 14:53, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    By extension, those sorts of analogies can convey just how small a molecule is. Those marbles covering the Earth 50 miles deep? That's how many molecules are in a little over a tablespoon of water. DMacks (talk) 17:46, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, show and illustrate order of magnitude. Don't even try to describe ;-) , and surely without math formulae ... For example, physics is about the size range 10−20 – 10+20. Even recent: the InTheNews gravitational wave is about Neutron stars that "a teaspoon full weighs as much as ...". Unfortunately I'm not sure I can help this specific OP question. -DePiep (talk) 20:11, 19 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Definitely interested though I am not available on the 23rd, I have some great ways of representing the concept of a mole though from when I was at school years ago. EvilxFish (talk) 07:31, 20 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Women in Red November contest open to all


    Announcing Women in Red's November 2017 prize-winning world contest

    Contest details: create biographical articles for women of any country or occupation in the world: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red/The World Contest|November 2017 WiR Contest]]

    Read more about how Women in Red is overcoming the gender gap: [[Wikipedia:WikiProject Women in Red|WikiProject Women in Red]]

    (To subscribe: Women in Red/English language mailing list and Women in Red/international list. Unsubscribe: Women in Red/Opt-out list)

    --Ipigott (talk) 07:36, 23 October 2017 (UTC) [reply]

    Gilbert Stork, 1921-2017

    It appears that Gilbert Stork has sadly died at 95. Our current article on him is pretty paltry and while biographies aren't exactly my thing I'll be having a go at improving it over the coming days. Help, particularly from those of you with an organic background, would be appreciated. Here's a nice (open access) paper of amusing anecdotes about him doi:10.1002/anie.201200033 (and the fact that Angewandte would publish such a thing says enough about him). --Project Osprey (talk) 13:12, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Not a synthesis guy but will help out. Would appreciate it if you checked my work as well. Kind regards EvilxFish (talk) 14:01, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Also are you sure he is dead? The only evidence I can find is a blog post. EvilxFish (talk) 14:06, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Aside from Derek Lowe's blog post, I don't see it announced in the news yet either. I would generally consider Lowe a reliable source though. -- Ed (Edgar181) 14:11, 24 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    It's up now on the Columbia website: https://chem.columbia.edu/news/gilbert-stork-1921-2017/.
    I'm too old for organic chemistry. I didn't know that his wife is also a synthetic chemist!
    Georginho (talk) 19:05, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Gibbs–Duhem equation

    Gibbs–Duhem equation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

    An IP editor has attempted to add some information here, but the mathematical notation (as well as some of the later attempted explanation/reasoning) makes no sense (I've reverted it a few times on these grounds, but they seem fairly adamant). Unfortunately, I know very little about chemistry, so I thought I'd ask for some extra eyes here. There also appears to be a mild English issue which is making things more difficult. See also some discussion at WP:RD/MA#Equivalence_between_differential_expressions. Thanks! --Deacon Vorbis (talk) 14:10, 25 October 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Peroxide reorg

    I wonder if we should not reorganize peroxide, which is a collection of information on H2O2, [O2]2-, organic hydroperoxides (ROOH), diorganic peroxides.

    A proposal:

    • make peroxide exclusively about inorganic peroxides (Na2O2, etc), guiding readers from the get-go to related articles. One slight problem is that in the US, "peroxide" means hydrogen peroxide to nonchemists.
    • hydrogen peroxide could/should absorb content from peroxide that is about H2O2.
    • Peroxy acid (about both inorganic and organic) seems to be ok.
    • split organic peroxide into
      • hydroperoxides, currently a redirect to peroxide, should be stand-alone. They are fairly common. I might need admin help and advice on making that move vs copy-paste.
      • diorganoperoxides (ROOR, not exactly sure what they should be called), but they are topical because of interest in acetone peroxide and the like. Would possibly include dibenzoy peroxide.

    Suggestions welcome. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:53, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I wouldn't say inorganic peroxides are what I'd expect to find at peroxide. Does peroxide usually mean inorganic peroxide to chemists? Could create the article Inorganic peroxide and make peroxide the disambiguation..  Galobtter (talk) 18:23, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Those ideas are excellent. They solve a lot of problems.--Smokefoot (talk) 18:59, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I think that Peroxide should cover the organic and covalently bound molecules exclusively. We should split off an article called Peroxide ion, which obviously covers the ion itself, the hydroperoxide ion, and salts containing these ion. I believe that Peroxide should only discuss covalent compounds which are covered in their own articles in the context of ROOR chemitry. In other words, if a comparisson isn't made, it does not belong on this article. Plasmic Physics (talk) 20:09, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I think Smokefoot's "slight problem" is actually a pretty serious one. We're not a chemistry encyclopedia, but an everyone encyclopedia. I don't think people outside of science are likely to know or care about anything except "the thing most people call peroxide, that is H2O2". And maybe they know about the bleaching agent for hair or fabric. But among science people, there are multiple other meanings (the ion, the organic class, etc.). I don't support having the simple "peroxide"-named page be a specialized article when the layperson meaning is not that, assuming a specialized WP:COMMONNAME case. Instead, I support following WP:CONCEPTDAB and having peroxide be a general top-level article with summaries of the meanings and links to each one's page. That's pretty much what Galobtter said, except I think it might be possible to write a concise intro and bit about each meaning as an article rather than just a DAB list-of-links. DMacks (talk) 20:29, 11 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, I'd think that'd be quite a bit more useful than a simple DAB. Agree that meanings should be clear to everyone since we're an everyone encyclopaedia. Galobtter (talk) 04:48, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Summary of action:
    I will continue to refine as I locate further secondary and tertiary sources. Thank you for the advice, --Smokefoot (talk) 18:53, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Oh dear I just took a look at the (now old) peroxide article and it didn't really contain a summary of the different peroxides. Pretty awful article - just a random mishmash of various information. Galobtter (talk) 19:08, 12 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Okay, I made Inorganic peroxide redirect to metal peroxide and also added a few plural redirects. Currently hydroperoxide redirects back to peroxide.. Galobtter (talk) 05:00, 13 November 2017 (UTC) I made hydroperoxide redirect to organic peroxide, which seems to make more sense.... Galobtter (talk) 05:05, 13 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Facto Post – Issue 6 – 15 November 2017

    Facto Post – Issue 6 – 15 November 2017

    WikidataCon Berlin 28–9 October 2017

    WikidataCon 2017 group photo

    Under the heading rerum causas cognescere, the first ever Wikidata conference got under way in the Tagesspiegel building with two keynotes, One was on YAGO, about how a knowledge base conceived ten years ago if you assume automatic compilation from Wikipedia. The other was from manager Lydia Pintscher, on the "state of the data". Interesting rumours flourished: the mix'n'match tool and its 600+ datasets, mostly in digital humanities, to be taken off the hands of its author Magnus Manske by the WMF; a Wikibase incubator site is on its way. Announcements came in talks: structured data on Wikimedia Commons is scheduled to make substantive progress by 2019. The lexeme development on Wikidata is now not expected to make the Wiktionary sites redundant, but may facilitate automated compilation of dictionaries.

    WD-FIST explained

    And so it went, with five strands of talks and workshops, through to 11 pm on Saturday. Wikidata applies to GLAM work via metadata. It may be used in education, raises issues such as author disambiguation, and lends itself to different types of graphical display and reuse. Many millions of SPARQL queries are run on the site every day. Over the summer a large open science bibliography has come into existence there.

    Wikidata's fifth birthday party on the Sunday brought matters to a close. See a dozen and more reports by other hands.

    Editor Charles Matthews. Please leave feedback for him.
    If you wish to receive no further issues of Facto Post, please remove your name from our mailing list. Alternatively, to opt out of all massmessage mailings, you may add Category:Wikipedians who opt out of message delivery to your user talk page.
    Newsletter delivered by MediaWiki message delivery

    MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 10:02, 15 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Scientific images from WSC2017

    Please take a look in here about newly uploaded scientific images on commons during Wiki Science Competitions 2017.--Alexmar983 (talk) 06:29, 17 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Typography of primes

    How should we typeset primed locants? See for example section P-14.3.1 of IPUAC 2004 draft for systematic organic nomenclature[3] for the meaning. IUPAC uses slanted marks, which I assume are typographical prime (symbol) characters. Those are hard to type, so I see lots of WP articles (and other sources) use straight quotemarks, or sometimes set in italic font. MOS:STRAIGHT says we should not use curly quotes—and they seem less correct than the other options in this context—and blesses prime characters in some technical cases. So should we go with IUPAC, or simple keyboard, or italic-formatted to get simple keyboard to look like IUPAC? DMacks (talk) 05:35, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I’ve always used single quote marker (') because they the easiest (and I guess most universal, we’re not all using the same keyboard setup/language and special characters can move around – this might also be a consideration for wikidata). Beyond that: how does everyone else do it? – Scifinder, Chemspider and Sigma must have had to decide this at some point. The only problem is that I don’t know how you reverse-lookup a character to find out what its ASCII is.--Project Osprey (talk) 10:03, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Reverse-search by copy-paste: [4] (1 character), or [5] (string). -DePiep (talk) 10:39, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • (ec) :Probably better use the formal IUPAC Recommendations (Red Book, 2005) link (pdf, 377 pages):

    IR-2.12 PRIMES

    (a) Primes (′), double primes (″), triple primes (‴), etc. may be used in the names and formulae of coordination compounds in the following ways:

    (i) within ligand names, in order to differentiate between sites of substitution;
    (ii) when specifying donor atoms (IR-9.2.4.2), in order to differentiate between donor atoms;
    (iii) when specifying configuration using configuration indexes (IR-9.3.5.3), in order to differentiate between donor atoms of the same priority, depending on whether they are located within the same ligand or portion of the ligand.
    [example omitted]

    (b) Primes, double primes, triple primes, etc. are also used as right superscripts in the Kröger–Vink notation (see Section IR-11.4) where they indicate a site which has one, two, three, etc. units of negative effective charge.

    [example omitted]
    — NOMENCLATURE OF INORGANIC CHEMISTRY
    IUPAC Recommendations 2005, Red Book (2005) p36/pdf-p48
    Just as a side note: In de.wikipedia the use of primes is recommended (see de:Wikipedia:Richtlinien Chemie#Spezielle Typographie). --Leyo 21:57, 20 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Just noting: this German guideline says "Do not use the double-prime character, but repeat single-prime". -DePiep (talk) 23:11, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    To summarise the most common are
    HTML Symbol
    ′ ′
    ″ ″

    You should be able to type single, double, triple and quadruple prime symbols on Windows by holding down "alt" and typing 2032, 2033, 2034 or 2057 on the numeric keypad. (Doesn't work for me.)

    Or cut and paste these ′ ″  ‴  ⁗ .

    Or use the single prime multiple times ′′′′′

    All the best: Rich Farmbrough, 22:53, 22 November 2017 (UTC).[reply]

    • Using alt-codes requires registry HKCU\Control Panel\Input Method\EnableHexNumpad to be set to type REG_SZ to value 1 and rebooting. It works for me and is really time-saving (if you memorise alt-codes); and its Alt + + + alt-code. Wostr (talk) 23:20, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]


    By LaTeX

    (from Prime article), quote:

    LaTeX provides an oversized prime symbol, \prime (), which, when used in super- or sub-scripts, renders appropriately; e.g., f_\prime^\prime appears as . An apostrophe, ', is a shortcut for a superscript prime; e.g., f' appears as .
    See also WP:MATHCHEM (<chem> formula writing). -DePiep (talk) 09:00, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    MOS

    From our WP:MOSNUM, searched for "prime":

    Not to be used for minute, second. Not to be used for foot, inch. Yes to be used for arcminute, arcsecond (i.e., with degrees); it says: use double prime (&Prime;) not repeated prime. Of course triple prime is not in play here. We should copy that for this question? -DePiep (talk) 09:00, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]


    Exceptions to IUPAC?

    Are there areas in chemistry that explicitly do not follow IUPAC recommandations? (not use prime?) -DePiep (talk) 23:54, 22 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Organic chemistry joins inorganics in this? -DePiep (talk) 09:00, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Nomenclature of Organic Chemistry 2013 has Rule P-16.9 PRIMES, pp. 124–129. Technically (in pdf version) normal ' and " are used (eg. "Primes ('), double primes ("), triple primes ("'), etc. are used...") but the symbols are displayed like primes (′) etc. Also ' and " are technically used for quotation marks but looks like ‘ and ’. I can send a copy of these several pages if you want. As a side note: on the basis of Red Book 2005 and Blue Book 2013, pl.wiki Wikiproject Chemistry adopted about year ago that primes, double primes etc. are recommended. Regards, Wostr (talk) 23:12, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks. I do not understand some parts. You say "primes are used ... BUT the symbols are displayed like primes". The topic is, like: "within chemistry we all know what that high-upcomma means. Now what single symbol do we actually use for that?" If organic chemistry has other guidelines wrt primes, please tell. -DePiep (talk) 23:27, 23 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    • Sorry, it's a bit late and my English is not very good. Of course there is no instruction use symbol ... to write prime in Blue Book (neither in Red Book mentioned above). I just wanted to point out that Blue Book tells the same as the Red Book – technically some symbol is used: apostrophe in Blue Book, „0” in Red Book (? that's what I got when trying to copy-paste prime from Red Book) – visually it's prime symbol.
    • "Primes ('), double primes ("), triple primes ("'), etc. are used..." is a copy-paste quotation from BlueBook in pdf to show exact symbols they used. Compare it with this image (I think they used formatting to get the visual effect of prime using normal apostrophe). So it's clear only how prime symbol should look. Using ' without formatting (cursive) is not enough and (this is my opinion) the easiest way to be typographically and visually correct is to use prime symbol ′. Also, in pl.wiki we use double prime symbol etc., but I'm not sure it's accessible. Wostr (talk) 00:37, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks again. I get it. I don't know the Blue Book (yet). I conclude that even you, familiar with organic chemsistry, do state that a "prime" symbol must be a true "prime" as the preiter intended. -DePiep (talk) 00:49, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    That's my opinion that true prime symbol should be used. But what I'm trying to say is that IUPAC recommendations won't tell you which symbol (prime/slanted apostrophe/...) should be used as a prime in chemistry. Some IUPAC recommendations are published by RSC, some by De Gruyter (and they have different typesetters, correctors or whoever may be responsible for choosing these symbols). Also IUPAC recommendations are prepared mainly for print and Wikipedia is not – so searchability and accessibility should be taken into consideration. But still, true prime is IMHO better (I think that slanted apostrophe would not be read by screen readers, but I may be wrong). Good night, Wostr (talk) 01:15, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I see. Well, IMO when IUPAC or whoever says "prime", we use "prime" and then let the graphicer (font designer) how it looks. That's all. (when we don't use aostrophe, the apostrope does not matter).
    So organic chemistry is OK too using "prime"? -DePiep (talk) 01:25, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Organic chemistry uses prime too. Sorry if my earlier comments were confusing more than helpful. Wostr (talk) 15:58, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Accessibility

    I asked WT:Accessibility if they have any comments about screen-reader effects. DMacks (talk) 06:29, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    As for widely used Windows screen readers, Versions of JAWS released in the last few years read "′", "″", "‴", and "⁗" as "prime", "double prime", "triple prime", and "quadruple prime", respectively. NVDA reads "′" as an apostrophe and reads out the other three as unknown characters; if I remember correctly, earlier versions of JAWS behaved the same way. Graham87 14:22, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    At least on the Mac, VoiceOver reads the above symbols as "prime", "quote", "triple prime", and "prime with prime with prime with prime". iOS might be different. Edit: on the iPhone, they are read as "apostrophe", "double quotation mark", "triple prime", and "quadruple prime".Codeofdusk (talk) 17:38, 24 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Ball-and-stick model

    This key chemical article lacks references. Does anyone have got appropriate literature to be added? --Leyo 08:50, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    • The article has been defaced with an ugly tag so I cannot do any work on it but I have noticed that the German Wiki has a link to an article (open-access pdf). Need to be able to read German though. V8rik (talk) 21:26, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
      This addition has been made today. ;-) I guess that there is also some English language literature on that topic. --Leyo 22:04, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @V8rik: "The article has been defaced with an ugly tag so I cannot do any work on it..." I'm curious, what does that mean? You can't edit an article that has a note saying that it is unreferenced? ChemNerd (talk) 23:27, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Exactly! the tag prohibits me from adding any reference it all! We want to strongly discourage people just adding tags and complain instead of adding actual references. We want to strongly encourage people to pro actively add references. And it works! Someone complained in 2010 but did nothing constructive and got no results. Someone else asks a question in 2017 (and within days) with immediate results! V8rik (talk) 19:46, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Your behavior seems completely irrational to me. It is much more likely to produce the opposite result than what you purport to want. The article remained unreferenced for seven years after being tagged because of editors such as you. ChemNerd (talk) 13:01, 30 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I am missing something here, with respect to adding references to atricles my track record is excellent V8rik (talk) 16:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    No, I'm sorry if I implied that. My curiosity about this minor point is getting the best of me. I just meant refusing to add references to an article that someone has indicated needs references ("the tag prohibits me from adding any reference") comes across as counterproductive. I'll drop the stick now, because I'll just inadvertently upset you more, when I should be instead expressing appreciation to other editors such as you for all the contributions you've made to Wikipedia's chemistry articles over the years. ChemNerd (talk) 18:10, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Case closed! and thanks for the star! V8rik (talk) 18:36, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I added a couple of references. ChemNerd (talk) 19:30, 29 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Class projects again

    Just a heads up: it looks like there is an ongoing class project that will affect chemistry articles: Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Louisiana State University/CHEM 4150 (Fall 2017). I have reverted some off-topic additions to urea and there has been quite a bit of new content added to parabens. More to come, I'm sure. -- Ed (Edgar181) 18:29, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Based on that Wiki Ed page, it seems their grade will depend on the state of the articles they are editing on November 28. So we can expect them to fight hard for their contributions to be included (regardless of Wikipedia norms) today, and then they will likely just walk away after that. ChemNerd (talk) 19:49, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    That sounds like Wiki edu needs to get involved then. --Izno (talk) 21:23, 28 November 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    So far as I can tell Wiki ed does zero.--Smokefoot (talk) 01:21, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    No class should be grading students on what "sticks". We emphasize that to instructors at multiple points in the onboarding process. The Dashboard tool they use makes it easy for instructors to see student contributions regardless of whether they're in articles, removed, or still in a sandbox. We're getting in touch with the instructor to make sure that's not the case here. In general, if you see a class that looks to factor the current state of an article into their grades, please post to WP:ENB. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:27, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Yet more incoming

    Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/Western/Bio 3595 AdGen Wikipedia Project (Fall) is another set of articles being dropped onto Wikipedia. The topics, very biochemical, are not quite as bizarre as those from LSU, but again the instructor does not appear to have edited in Wikipedia and is counting on us to do his dirty work.--Smokefoot (talk) 01:21, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    You might want to cross-post this to the bio/pharma communities... Is it me or are we seeing more of this every year?--Project Osprey (talk) 08:42, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    One reason for proactively creating articles (and redirects) is to preempt these unsupervised student projects. Increasingly the weak classes are forced into writing articles that no one cares about (Environmental impact of silver nanoparticles). --Smokefoot (talk) 14:53, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Not sure we can proactively cover all possible niche article titles... and even if we could I just wouldn't want to. A different proactive approach might be to write something for The Journal of Chemical Education about how to (and how not to) run these projects.--Project Osprey (talk) 16:15, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The instructors probably do not read chemistry journals. So we write an article, the courses continue. We rant about their failure to follow our advice.
    Part of the problem is that the so-called Wiki-Ed supervision/advice apparatus is broken. My guess is that the Wikipedia bureaucracy thinks that student involvement is a means of growing the number of editors. And for this bureaucracy, the number of editors = vitality. In reality, the decline in Wikipedia editor count may be partially a consequence of the low-hanging fruit/articles having been written, and only hard parts remain. And who wants to do the dirty work and revise photoredox catalysis? Not many.--Smokefoot (talk) 17:00, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    This class has been contributing heavily to Gene Wiki articles. While the quality of the contributions have varied considerably, many of the contributions have clearly been solid, good faith contributions. The main problem as I see it is the editing guidlines that the students were given. No where in the guidlines is it stated that secondary sources are preferred. The problem is especially acute in biomedical subjects because of the reproducibility crisis. To their credit, these students have responded constructively to {{Unreliable medical source}} templates. Boghog (talk) 17:50, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The brochure is slick but not very practical. We need a one-page list of do's and donts. The parts of the system that need to be addressed are Wiki Ed, which appears not to pay attention @Ian (Wiki Ed): and the instructors. Without attention from WikiEd, we are stuck with crappy articles. It has been like this for years. And the sour part is that WikeEd group is probably congratulating themselves on what a fine job they are doing. The other thing is that if the instructors are not involved, we are doubly screwed because we few need to do the cleanup. It is this situation that really makes me despair about the whole project. One consequence is that I have taken MOFs and nano-anything off my watch list because these articles are just overwhelmed with over-specialized accretions and so few editors curate these things. --Smokefoot (talk) 18:16, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Hi all. I know that my colleagues are looking into the issues you've brought up with this class. It's not always evident on-wiki because often the best way to ensure students comply with instructions is to talk directly with their instructor. The students received not just the Editing Wikipedia handout but also this subject-specific handout chemistry students receive, which does address the preference for secondary sources. Classes which indicate they will work on classes covered by WP:MEDRS also go through a dedicated training module. We're in the midst of the busiest time for student writing, so I apologize that the time it takes to resolve an issue may be a little longer than during most of the rest of the year. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 20:38, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Editors in the chemistry project have been raising similar issues every semester for the past few years. Who cares if students can "edit Wikipedia" if their content is awful and their topics are poorly selected? Is the point to attract quality content or is the mission of Wiki Ed to inculcate this pool of forced labor? The evidence is that Wiki Ed, inadvertently perhaps, focuses on Wikipedia-as-a-brand vs Wikipedia-as-a-vehicle-for-knowledge.--Smokefoot (talk) 21:00, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Hello @Ryan (Wiki Ed):. To be honest, I don't have a detailed understanding of what WikeEd does and I think for the purposes of this it would be good to know. What sort of influence or oversight do you have on these projects? Smokefoot is correct that the articles we currently get are often badly written and on topics that we just don't need (improper disposal of latex balloons and its environmental effects springs to mind). This is exacerbated by the fact that we usually discover that 20-30 such articles will have been created in the last week. Attempts to delete (and the vast majority are eventually deleted or merged) or edit any of these is often met with protests from students worried about their grades. Attempts to contact course supervisors are usually done in vain. It's embittering - and the experience seems to be a negative one for all parties.
    On the plus side, that gives us plenty of room to improve. I think that selecting the correct new articles to create is key - its easier to write a well structured article on a well defined topic and that in turn makes it easier for us to curate. There is other low-hanging fruit, your subject-specific chemistry handout doesn't even mention this community or a good number of other things. Do course supervisors get similar handouts? If so there is likely much we could suggest that would help things run more successfully. --Project Osprey (talk) 23:21, 1 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Project Osprey: Thanks. Some background: Wiki Education is a small non-profit with roots in the Education Program. Whereas WMF still runs the Global Education program everywhere other than the United States and Canada, Wiki Education works with institutions in those two countries. We talk with instructors to help them with assignment design, explain best practices, and watch for red flags (like a very large class, multiple sections each taught by a different TA, grading based on whether or not contributions "stick", only allowing a short period of time for contributions, not working on sandboxes first, etc.). We also develop resources to try to achieve our goals. The Dashboard is a tool we developed which generates an assignment timeline, links to resources, and structures the assignment according to steps/milestones. The Dashboard also contains interactive training modules, including multiple required and optional trainings for students and an orientation all instructors go through (basically "instructor training"). We update these resources pretty regularly in response to how they've worked and in response to feedback from both instructors and members of the Wikipedia community. We also have a variety of brochures, both for general editing/evaluation and subject-specific handouts like the chemistry handout I linked above. Finally, there are paid staff. A Classroom Program Manager talks with instructors throughout the process (but especially during the onboarding process), and Content Experts (like Ian) work with students and their content. As I mentioned above, it's the busiest time of year for them. All of this said, if you think that students having trouble would reliably receive help here it may be something we'd want to add next time we edit it. Likewise, if you have other specific feedback about that handout, you should always feel welcome to post it either at my talk page (or even WP:ENB).
    Getting to some of the specifics of your comment:
    We do often tell classes about WikiProjects. The reason we don't usually include them in materials like this is for a few reasons. The biggest reason is because if it's there, then students or instructors will assume rely on it. When it sparks a good conversation, it's very rewarding, but it's far from a sure thing that they will receive answers/help when so few WikiProjects are particularly active. That's a general answer, of course; I know this WikiProject is among the more active. That brings me to the next thing -- we want to, whenever possible, reduce rather than increase burden on the community. People in the community have voiced several, sometimes conflicting, perspectives on the extent to which they would like to see students post to talk pages, etc. Use of talk pages is a wikivirtue, in general, of course, but student comments could also get overwhelming if all sent to a particular on-wiki resource.
    It seems like many of the issues are things worth discussing at a higher level than individual articles. You mentioned student protests about their grade. This is something that, similar to grading based on content that "sticks", we really don't like to see. You shouldn't have to deal with that. If you see a student argue using their grade as justification, please let us know at WP:ENB and we'll talk with their instructor.
    You also mentioned article selection. I agree that's a significant variable in determining whether a student will be successful. Our Content Experts are long-time Wikipedians who understand best practices for article selection. Of course, we can't force anyone to follow our recommendations, but we can try really hard to show them the right way. I know that we're investigating, with regard to at least one of the classes above, if there was a way we could've presented our recommendations more convincingly at the outset such that these article selection issues wouldn't come up.
    Thanks for your feedback and sorry for this long reply. :) --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 18:04, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    On the subject of topic selection, it would be good for the topics to be checked by a project before students spend time working on an unsuitable topic. Some of the classes pick good topics, but some others, particularly the one that writes about "environmental impact of ..." articles usually pick topics that lead to a synthesis. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 23:20, 2 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Well the process requires Wiki Ed to do something. But hey, they're "investigating". --Smokefoot (talk) 00:04, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Keep student articles as drafts?

    If this often bothers editors around here, is it a good idea to create these articles as drafts? Georginho (talk) 12:47, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Great idea if it could be implemented. How to make that happen?--Smokefoot (talk) 21:39, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The best is to change the process: 1) create a draft, 2) the draft is assessed by the supervisors in order to fix the grade, 3) the contributor can ask for publishing his/her draft into the main domain after assessment by community. The educational project has to be separated from the contribution to WP.
    From our experience with the MOOC in WP:fr, most articles just need a small improvement after the reading of one skilled contributor. 130 drafts were reviewed into 3 weeks this year so this seems feasible if wikiprojects are involved from the beginning. Snipre (talk) 22:57, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Getting articles, not essays

    The issue, at least as I see it, is essays. Supervisors are accustomed to setting essays and students are accustomed to writing them – if you tell a university student to write an article they will do you an essay, it’s their default format. This must be met head-on. Class assignments should explicitly state that one purpose of the assignment is that students should learn to write in an encyclopedic tone, and that they will be graded on this. This will help steer the students efforts but will only go so far, because if the titles they’re given to write about are naturally essays then I can see students defaulting to essay writing. What I mean by this is titles that can be generalised as ‘X about Y’

    These are naturally essays, you’d start by writing an introduction and a conclusion is clearly needed somewhere and so before you know it you have an essay. Article selection is therefore key. I think distinct small molecules would be a good area to recommend:

    I think pushing this with WikiEd might yield results - in my opinion anyway--Project Osprey (talk) 12:20, 7 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Agree 100%. There are already many articles that need creating. Galobtter (pingó mió) 12:43, 7 December 2017 (UTC)r[reply]

    Similar problem with Wikidata

    Similar problem with Wikidata where new items are created without following the sourcing rules and without check if the chemical is already present in the database, this creating duplicates. @Ryan (Wiki Ed) and Ian (Wiki Ed): Please be sure that students receive an appropriate instruction before editing Wikidata. I am spending some effort to merge duplicates and to delete inappropriate statements. The minimal requirement is to source statements according to Help:Sources and to check if a chemical already exists in WD by typing the name of the chemical in the search bar to see if an existing item has the same or similar label. Thanks Snipre (talk) 21:01, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Just to give an idea, here is the constraint violations report for CAS number in Wikidata: +11 violations mainly duplicates in 6 days. Snipre (talk) 21:20, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Just to give an idea for a possible solution: WP:fr is organizing each year a MOOC for new WP contributors. Each contributor has to start with a draft in a subpage of his personal page and each contributor has to require some feedback before publishing in the main domain (see here the feedback page). Snipre (talk) 21:26, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    "Similar problem with Wikidata where new items are created without following the sourcing rules and without check if the chemical is already present in the database this creating duplicates."
    The recurring issue for the articles is that WikiEd and other administrative types somehow think that teaching Wiki markup is the core skill, where as in the Chemistry Project, markup is ancillary. The core skill is the ability to select topics and to write about them in an encyclopedic manner. Maybe the solution is to require that the supervising (NOT) instructors to contribute to main space before being allowed to supervise students who are tasked to do the same.--Smokefoot (talk) 21:36, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    +1. WP is a community meaning some collaborative work is necessary. We can't say to a newbie "Choose a subject, write something and then publish", the minimal step is at least to use the list of wanted articlesdefined by each project and to ask people to choose one of the missing subject already identified by the community. For chemical subjects, we already have that Snipre (talk) 22:40, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Good points. No student, much less the instructor, ever asks about our needs. There probably should be - and maybe is - a list of articles in need of improvement. To improve these often requires higher level training than undergrads can offer. In fact part of the problem is that virtually the only stuff the student can write about are the environmental or medical threats posed by various chemicals. --Smokefoot (talk) 22:56, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    @Snipre: Sorry, but could you clarify which class(es) the Wikidata issues concern? I'm not sure how to extract that (or even that it involves students?) from the report linked above. Thanks. --Ryan (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:09, 6 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Wikipedia has many thousands of wikilinks which point to disambiguation pages. It would be useful to readers if these links directed them to the specific pages of interest, rather than making them search through a list. Members of WikiProject Disambiguation have been working on this and the total number is now below 20,000 for the first time. Some of these links require specialist knowledge of the topics concerned and therefore it would be great if you could help in your area of expertise.

    A list of the relevant links on pages which fall within the remit of this wikiproject can be found at http://69.142.160.183/~dispenser/cgi-bin/topic_points.py?banner=WikiProject_Chemistry

    Please take a few minutes to help make these more useful to our readers.— Rod talk 14:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    One of these is a link from the Natural Product Updates article to the NPU DAB page. Special:WhatLinksHere/NPU says such a link exists, but I can't find it in the article itself. DMacks (talk) 21:34, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    See {{Infobox journal}} code: looks like |abbreviation=NPU → NPU is internally checked for existance, but not shown. -DePiep (talk) 22:05, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not sure what specific parietal DAB entry should be linked from the Laminin 111 article. I fixed the Sandra Pizzarello article. DMacks (talk) 21:37, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for your help with these. This is exactly the sort of issue which needs specialist help.— Rod talk 07:57, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Aarhus Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants vs. POP Air Pollution Protocol

    I am unsure whether or not these two articles are about the same subject. Does anyone have more insight? --Leyo 14:47, 3 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    → Talk:Aarhus Protocol on Persistent Organic Pollutants#Merger proposal --Leyo 22:06, 16 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    WP:AALERTS need some help on Community Wishlist Survey

    Many of you use Article Alerts to get notified of discussions (PRODs and AfD in particular). However, due to our limit resources (one bot coder), not a whole lot of work can be done on Article Alerts to expand and maintain the bot. If the coder gets run over by a bus, then it's quite possible this tool would become unavailable in the future.

    There's currently a proposal on the Community Wishlist Survey for the WMF to take over the project, and make it both more robust / less likely to crash / have better support for new features. But one of the main things is that with a full team behind Article Alerts, this could also be ported to other languages!

    So if you make use of Article Alerts and want to keep using it and see it ported to other languages, please go and support the proposal. And advertise it to the other chemistry projects in other languages too to let them know this exists, otherwise they might miss out on this feature! Thanks in advance! Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 14:45, 4 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Periodic table scheduled for TFA

    This is to let you know that the Periodic table article has been scheduled to be rerun as today's featured article for January 8, 2018. Please check the article needs no amendments or corrections. I've notified the FAC nominator, StringTheory11 but it's unclear if that user is still active, so I'm posting here too. In particular, if the article has problems that make it unfit to run, let me know as soon as possible so I can run something else Jimfbleak - talk to me? 10:21, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks. I've notified WT:ELEMENTS, where most talks are going wrt the elements. -DePiep (talk) 10:43, 11 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Nonsense article?

    While looking for orphaned chemistry articles, I found this article, densination, which doesn't make any sense? The only results I can find about it is the latin word densinate..does anyone here have any idea what it's about? Galobtter (pingó mió) 07:10, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Hi the page you linked seems to not exist. EvilxFish (talk) 09:28, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    Whoops- Densitation. Someone has now tagged it for PROD. Seems correct. Galobtter (pingó mió) 09:55, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    I <3 Wikipedia and it's ability to find nonsense and delete it, if only the same happened in peer reviewed journals ;) . Kind regards EvilxFish (talk) 10:13, 12 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Talk:Unstable molecules

    Where should this redirect? In ictu oculi (talk) 09:38, 14 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Facto Post – Issue 7 – 15 December 2017

    Facto Post – Issue 7 – 15 December 2017

    A new bibliographical landscape

    At the beginning of December, Wikidata items on individual scientific articles passed the 10 million mark. This figure contrasts with the state of play in early summer, when there were around half a million. In the big picture, Wikidata is now documenting the scientific literature at a rate that is about eight times as fast as papers are published. As 2017 ends, progress is quite evident.

    Behind this achievement are a technical advance (fatameh), and bots that do the lifting. Much more than dry migration of metadata is potentially involved, however. If paper A cites paper B, both papers having an item, a link can be created on Wikidata, and the information presented to both human readers, and machines. This cross-linking is one of the most significant aspects of the scientific literature, and now a long-sought open version is rapidly being built up.

    The effort for the lifting of copyright restrictions on citation data of this kind has had real momentum behind it during 2017. WikiCite and the I4OC have been pushing hard, with the result that on CrossRef over 50% of the citation data is open. Now the holdout publishers are being lobbied to release rights on citations.

    But all that is just the beginning. Topics of papers are identified, authors disambiguated, with significant progress on the use of the four million ORCID IDs for researchers, and proposals formulated to identify methodology in a machine-readable way. P4510 on Wikidata has been introduced so that methodology can sit comfortably on items about papers.

    More is on the way. OABot applies the unpaywall principle to Wikipedia referencing. It has been proposed that Wikidata could assist WorldCat in compiling the global history of book translation. Watch this space.

    And make promoting #1lib1ref one of your New Year's resolutions. Happy holidays, all!

    November 2017 map of geolocated Wikidata items, made by Addshore
    To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see below.
    Editor Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him. Back numbers are here.
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    MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 14:54, 15 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    C2-Symmetric ligands

    I realized that we have no article or category on C2-symmetric ligands. Might be something worth doing (before the homeworkers).--Smokefoot (talk) 23:40, 21 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    It seems awfully precise for a wikipedia article of it's own. Would you then create separate articles for C4-symmetric ligands and every other point group? EvilxFish (talk) 12:22, 22 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    EvilxFish, good point, but it is only C2 that are special . The topic is pretty specialized, but there is intense interest, and even some real apps. An initial article might end up being just a hefty redirect, basically a definition and then pointing readers to many articles as Osprey indicates below. --Smokefoot (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    They are an important class, I would consider Whitesell's review on them to be seminal doi:10.1021/cr00097a012. The idea is mentioned with varying levels of detail at chiral ligand and lewis acid catalysis. I also (wrongly) added info about it at bisoxazoline ligand back when I first started - but the info doesn't belong there. I have thought about trying to collate/improve coverage at chiral ligand but I have issues with the page - we don't have an article on asymmetric catalysis - but to my mind a discussion of chiral ligands and asymmetric catalysis is indivisible. Sorting that out is a much bigger job and one that I keep putting off. --Project Osprey (talk) 02:15, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    OK, maybe I will try to create something short and sweet with that ref.--Smokefoot (talk) 03:50, 23 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Could someone create a navbox Stereochemistry or a navbox Descriptor (Chemistry)? All the descriptors like Cis–trans isomerism, Geminal etc. (listed in the article Descriptor (Chemistry)) are for the moment difficult to find. Minihaa (talk) 13:14, 28 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    Tethering

    Would anyone like to have a look at the recently accepted article Tethered intramolecular (2+2) reactions? As I complete layman, I couldn't help but notice that there doesn't seem to be any article that properly explains the concept of tethering, even though the term occurs in quite a few articles. It is a concept of its own, right? There's a brief definition at Tether (cell biology), but that's too little and it's in the wrong place. – Uanfala (talk) 00:43, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]

    I don't see "tether" as a well-defined scientific concept. And there's only a very loose connection between the bacteriological and the chemical senses you mention. If I use a long rope to tie a goat to a fencepost, leaving it able to roam around within limits, I have tethered it — and this sense of "tether" is used metaphorically in various ways. Maproom (talk) 10:33, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    The article looks legit to me.. Pretty specialized but worthwhile. --Smokefoot (talk) 13:34, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
    No, this is more Carolineneil stuff, the same content is duplicated in Intramolecular reaction. Suggest deleting the article, keep the Intramolecular reaction content. V8rik (talk) 15:45, 29 December 2017 (UTC)[reply]
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