Talk:Borderline hydrides

Suggestions

It would be useful to indicate where "borderline hydride" is defined? It is surprising (but not impossible) to group H₂Se (a fairly acidic molecule) with CuH₂. We are always on guard for articles that become some form of original research. Cupric hydride supported by an 18th century article. We know about cuprous hydrides (Stryker's reagent), but the cupric thing is more obscure. Readers expect to see a more comprehensive overview of this material. Otherwise it seems to be an obscure material Metal dihydrogen complexes are usually not viewed as hydrides and are therefore probably not borderline. So a good start would be to find textbook or monographs (Kubas?) that discusses hydrides broadly.--Smokefoot (talk) 14:28, 30 November 2010 (UTC)

Wulfsberg in Principles of Descriptive Inorganic Chemistry classifies hydrides as Molecular hydrides, Catenated hydrides, Saltlike and polymeric(borderline) hydrides, Metal-like (interstitial) hydrides. H₂Se and H₂Te are included in molecular (which would remove an error), AlH₃, ZnH₂, CuH, liquid GaH₃ included in borderline, TiH₂, NiH included in interstitial. One thing troubles me is that as there is this article on borderline hydrides it sort of implies there should be one for the other categories that GW describes. My second concern is the lack of coherence between this article and both the hydride and binary compounds of hydrogen where borderline hydrides are not mentioned. I guess that could be argued as a case for merging all three. Axiosaurus (talk) 11:06, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

Agreed. These articles are written by enthusiastic editors who are well intentioned but lack perspective, so please edit! The inclusion of H₂E (E = Se, Te, and Po) is incorrect. --Smokefoot (talk) 13:12, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

That's funny, because I suggested merging them a while ago, but it was opposed. Plasmic Physics (talk) 14:04, 18 September 2013 (UTC)

There are some editors that oppose almost any merger. I dont understand the approach because having several similar articles hurts readers who are just trying to learn basics and the same policy leads to poorer editing which is spread over several articles vs focused on a few good ones. Another incentive for blocking mergers is that editors that create articles hate seeing their masterpiece melted down. Maybe we should try again. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:36, 18 September 2013 (UTC)