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Deletion discussion
Latest comment: 10 years ago32 comments13 people in discussion
We shouldn't be an indiscriminate collection of chemical formulae unless they have somehow entered the lexicon like CO₂ or H₂O. This would open the door to all possible combinations of chemical elements and this can't seriously be our intent. Anyone who's into chemistry can figure this out from its components, anyway. -- Liliana•11:49, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Appendicize. That is pretty much the universal solution for issues like this. I can envision a circumstance where someone is struggling to remember the common name of a given formula, so maintaining some appendix-space directory of formulae that are otherwise CFI-worthy seems reasonable to me. bd2412T19:48, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
We certainly seem to be putting a lot of specialised non-dictionary things into appendixes. Is that really the direction we want to go in? —CodeCat20:11, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
(after edit conflict) Some people do seem to think the Appendix namespace is the universal trash can where anything that isn't of any use to us is dumped in. -- Liliana•20:15, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Delete per nom. But I think we should put the formulas in to the word entries, not the other way around. Then anyone can search for the word with the formula. Or perhaps redirects from formula to entry.--Dmol (talk) 20:19, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
A redirect seems like the most workable solution, but I'm not sure if there is anything in CFI that really goes for or against including it. "entered the lexicon" is really vague and doesn't tell me at all why AsH₃ would not be includable if CO₂ is. CO₂ is used far more commonly of course, and is known by many more people than AsH₃ is. But that alone doesn't mean anything with respect to CFI: we also include many other obscure or jargon-type terms. So on what basis should these terms be included or excluded? And if there is no basis, should we try to modify CFI so that there is one? —CodeCat20:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think a redirect would be an equally workable solution in this case. I would note, however, that I have worked a great deal on molecular formula index pages on Wikipedia, and there are over a thousand formulas which can refer to multiple possible formula names (for example, C11H16, which can be ectocarpene or pentamethylbenzene). bd2412T00:59, 29 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't get the value of appendices like this for us. I'm not convinced we need it outside the arsine page, but if we do, what do we gain by putting it in an appendix instead of just AsH₃? It seems like only a social difference, so we can look at it and say it's not a real page, with no real difference.--Prosfilaes (talk) 23:27, 28 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
The question is, when do people find it useful to look up a molecular formula? I can't think of a time when doing so would not be as well satisfied by a single, comprehensive list of formulae. bd2412T01:15, 29 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
An appendix in this case would be a sort of reverse-lookup, for those who know the formula but want the common name. Since the common name will certainly have linguistic merit, we should help users get to it if that's what they seek. Another possible way to do this is to make the formulas redirect to the common name, and then add a category to the redirect page, so that anyone looking in that category will see the complete list of redirects by formula name. However, this would still require some additional step for formulas that have multiple possible common names, perhaps depending on their configuration. bd2412T21:49, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
Delete: SOP. However, keepKCN (current redlink) if attested, and likewise others that look like acronyms or words but are actually formulae, as people may well look them up.—msh210℠ (talk) 07:27, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I guess I'm on my own here, but keep if it's used in running English text, which from a brief look at Google Books seems to be the case. Otherwise I'm not quite sure exactly how this is different from H2O or CO2. Ƿidsiþ07:51, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
That definitely would not make sense, since even lay persons sometimes literally say, "Boy, I need some H2O". See, e.g., 2008, Barbara Thomas, The Melanin Factor, page 41: Jared headed toward the kitchen. “I need H2O.” “Bottled stuff is in the fridge. Bring me one, too.” Cheers! bd2412T23:32, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't understand why that would be an argument for inclusion. Just because something is used by laypeople doesn't mean it is an includable term. —CodeCat23:40, 30 April 2013 (UTC)Reply
To speak directly to the criteria for inclusion, H2O is a term conveying meaning for which numerous citations exist (well over three citations, spanning well over three years) showing usage outside of the context of an author merely defining what H2O is. It seems unlikely that AsH3 would yield such citations (although CO2 does, with some effort), but there may still be people who need a refresher on the common name associated with AsH3, or are just curious to know. bd2412T04:41, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Keep. I'm not seeing an enormous difference between these and the other translinguals we have, like taxon names and nonlinguistic symbols. —Angr13:17, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
And Acer pseudoplatanus isn't one word, it's two. And it's not as if chemical symbols can be combined at random; there is (to the best of my knowledge) no such thing as AsH₂ or AsH₄ or As₃H. —Angr17:00, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Just because AsH₂ may not exist, doesn't mean it can't still be a term. There are plenty of terms that refer to fictional entities. However, I think that it's sum-of-parts, just like CO2 and H2O are. —CodeCat17:05, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
But it's not predictable sum of parts, like "brown leaf" would be. You can know that As is arsenic and H is hydrogen and still not know that AsH₃ is arsine. Maybe if "arsenic trihydride" were its only name, but it isn't. —Angr19:34, 1 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
I would not be the least bit surprised to hear someone say "I want some H2O" who has no idea that the H and the O actually stand for things. bd2412T00:13, 2 May 2013 (UTC)Reply
Nine users favour deletion of the entry from the main namespace (Liliana, Equinox, Mglovesfun, Dmol, DAVilla(?), msh210, -sche, Ungoliant, bd2412). CodeCat favours a redirect, but this is not workable, for reasons bd2412 explains. I'm not sure what Prosfilaes' position is. Only two users favour keeping the entry (Ƿidsiþ, Angr). I have therefore deleted the entry. - -sche(discuss)08:15, 28 December 2013 (UTC)Reply
Keep AKA restore. (In part repetitive from Talk:LiBr) We probably don't want to include every chemical formula attested in running text but it is practical enough to include the short ones, isn't it? In Category:mul:Chemical formulae, the longest one is CH3COOH; the category has 54 entries. The argument about opening the door, and indiscriminate collection is familiar from discussions of placenames and company names, and is implausible to me. It leads to the style of regulation in which the regulator makes it all too easy for himself. If we worry about the number of items in some category, we can seek criteria that will put limit on that number, even somewhat arbitrary criteria. One of the simplest limits could be this: keep a chemical formula only if it involves no more than 3 chemical elements and no more than 10 atoms. Alternatively, keep a chemical formula only if the chemical it denotes has a CFI-meeting name: e.g. H₂SO₄ has sulfuric acid or AsH₃ has arsine. This criterion ensures that the inclusion of chemical formulas no more than doubles the number of items in the dictionary. In a more refined look, the addition of formulas that have CFI-meeting names increases the volume by factor (1 + 1/n) where n is the number of languages for which the names have translations; the formula is translingual. Thus, if there were 5 000 English entries for names of chemicals, and if there were translations to 9 languages, that would lead to 50 000 entries on names, and additional 5 000 entries on formulas, leading to 55 000 entries. --Dan Polansky (talk) 07:55, 3 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Practicality has never proven to be a serious consideration in any of our decisions, which tend to be naively "principled"/idealistic and/or legalistic. I would expect each inclusion decision to lead to more and longer formulas. One reasonably principled, legalistic rule that might work, would be to include any formula that otherwise met our attestation standards and had an entry with its name in a spoken language. In this case arsine. We already follow that principle in the case of one-letter formulas, eg, O - oxygen, O2 (atmospheric oxygen) and O3, ozone. OTOH most of the benefit to users would be derived from having the formula included in the entry for arsine, as it would appear at or near the top of the no-entry failed-search page. DCDuringTALK10:29, 6 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Restore per LiBr. If it is CFI-attestable then I see no good reason for excluding it. I don't think there's much risk of us being overrun by huge numbers of chemical formula entries, but if that is a concern, DCDuring's criteria above sound reasonable. —Mr. Granger (talk • contribs) 20:28, 6 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
Don't restore. It seems to me that any chemical formula that's easily mistaken for a word/acronym, like KCN or even LiBr, should be kept, but not this, which is clearly a chemical formula. This, per the overriding concern behind our CFI: "A term should be included if it's likely that someone would run across it and want to know what it means." (This is similar to my own view, not endorsed by the community, that, in any language wherein words are generally separated by spaces, anything run together without spaces and without punctuation cannot be SOP. Thus, German nouns, Hebrew כשהגיע, etc.)—msh210℠ (talk) 15:33, 12 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
{{look}}
My reading of policy is that an entry, once deleted, can not be restored unless there is consensus in favor of restoration. As it stands, I do not believe that 5-3 vote in favor of restoration constitutes such a consensus. Does anyone disagree with this assessment? bd2412T14:59, 31 October 2015 (UTC)Reply
I'm not in a rush to close the discussion; I just want to clearly state in advance how I intend to close it, in case there is any objection to the methodology. bd2412T17:59, 1 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
Don't restore. Per Msh210. Regarding this kind of obviously non-English technical language (note that chemical formulas are translingual), I would accept CFI attestations that take place outside of a chemistry context. Choor monster (talk) 12:44, 2 November 2015 (UTC)Reply
