Talk:Ferrous

Is any of this really needed?
This is various stuff from the merge and I don't know how much is really needed. I feel that all of this can be found in other articles.

Properties of ferrous metals: * may be pure iron or they may be alloys of iron and other elements. * it is common that they be highly magnetic, although not all of them are. (Austenitic stainless steel, a ferrous metal, is non-magnetic, while cobalt is magnetic but non-ferrous.) ==Ferrous metals== Common ferrous metals include the various irons and steels. Common non-ferrous metals include aluminum, copper, lead, tin, zinc. ==Other uses== For example, referring to "ferrous metallurgy" includes the production of metallic iron, including wrought iron, cast iron, steel, or other alloying elements. --Wizard191 (talk) 18:38, 8 April 2008 (UTC)
 * I have expanded the ferrous part slightly. This may be of help to those who know little of the subject.  I do not think it necessary or helpful to list non-ferrous metals.  Peterkingiron (talk) 22:12, 8 April 2008 (UTC)

uses
Okay, the article may say the uses are mostly deprecated, but... what WERE the uses? I saw this matierial in a minecraft mod, so i'm interested in what it is used for. 209.240.127.38 (talk) 15:35, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Ferris Wheel
Why does the See Also section include Ferris wheel? That article says that the Ferris wheel was named after a guy whose last name was Ferris - nothing to do with Iron. --Sbreheny (talk) 00:37, 8 July 2014 (UTC)
 * Removed, this isn't a dab page. Vsmith (talk) 00:45, 8 July 2014 (UTC)

Requested move to "Iron(II)"
I may not be the first to propose this, but IMO, the articles that currently have the Latin names of ions (e.g. this one) should be moved to their newer element+Roman numeral equivalents (e.g. "Iron(II)"), with the Latin names becoming the redirects instead. I have two major reasons for this: Could moves of such pages be considered? 134.153.39.171 (talk) 13:42, 25 June 2015 (UTC)
 * The system featuring element+Roman numeral is the newer system and the one currently approved/encouraged by the IUPAC; and
 * "Ferrous" is an adjective while "Iron(II)" is a noun; I know that phrases containing nouns are usually preferred over (bare) adjectives for article titles.

Make it into a disamb page?
Having edited it some, now I think that it should be a disamb page, like this:
 * The adjective ferrous may refer to:
 * Ferrous compound or iron(II) compound, that contains iron in the +2 oxidation state
 * Ferrous metal, a metal or alloy that contains iron
 * See also
 * Ferrate
 * Ferric
 * Ferruginous

--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 03:17, 10 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Sorry you didn't get a reply earlier. This page doesn't have many watchers.
 * I understand the argument above, though with the two main entries as iron and iron it's a dubious format.  If we fix the 243 pages that link here by diverting all links to iron, we will lose important information.  Should we nominate a couple of distinctive targets for the two meanings?  Perhaps we can save the old version with an unambiguous title such as  and divert links about ferrous compounds to there, then we can divert the rest directly to iron.  As that would effectively be a copy-paste move, a better procedure might be to revert back beyond the dab and move the old version of this page to Iron(II), then create the dab afresh.  I've alerted WT:Disambiguation pages with links to seek more opinions. Certes (talk) 11:37, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Restored to previous state pending outcome of discussion. bd2412  T 13:11, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * A couple weeks ago tried to clean up the page according to its original conception, including checking and adding refs. But then I realized that most of the information given here was already in the the iron page.  Hence my proposal to turn this into a disamb. Moreover, as you note, the two senses of "ferrous" did not have anything in common except them both being about iron.  It does not seem proper to have a normal article in Wikipedia for two subjects that are only related in that sort of way.  Besides, there is already a separate article for non-ferrous metal. Therefore, perhaps an even better option is to turn this article into a redirect to iron, and add one more line at the bottom of iron's head section mentioning that "ferr-" is a prefix for things related to iron, as in  "non-ferrous metal" and ferruginous. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 14:59, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * A redirect is probably the best solution. We can explain the word usage in iron. bd2412  T 15:54, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * It is now explained there, at the bottom of the head section. It should be there anyway. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I see no problem with keeping the page, and I do understand that the term has been depreciated. There are still sufficient "archaic" and current uses to warrant the pages existence and as the article does note the IUPAC name I don't see a problem. Same goes for the ferric page. Vsmith (talk) 16:01, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * The term is not official, but it is still very common. Iron(II) is only meaningful to chemists; laymen and technical people in other fields will still say "ferrous" (if they distinguish ferrous from ferric at all). But still the point is whether a separate article for this adjective is warranted, since that information is in iron anyway.--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Why do we need separate pages for Ferric and Ferrous? bd2412  T 17:54, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Because to a chemist, they mean totally different things. Ferric chloride will burn holes in your clothes (or skin), and I never handled it without gloves. Ferrous chloride is pretty much a blah compound which just looks pretty. Narky Blert (talk) 22:00, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Why do we need "any" page? What is the "cost" of having two short pages? If a short page about a perhaps archaic term gets a few looks because someone ran across the term and said "Eh ... what?" then looks it up and says "Oh, that's what." Where is the harm? Don't think the Wiki is runnin' out of room. Vsmith (talk) 19:16, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I am totally in favor of putting into Wikipedia information about anything that readers may legitimately want to know about -- even things that are only conjectural, or proved not to exist. And, in general, I am a "splitter" more than a "lumper". And, now and then, I get into fights with other editors to defend those points of view. However, in this particular case, I think that a separate article is not of much helpful to readers.  Since now these terms are explained right at the top of the iron article, it seems just as good for them to have a redirect to that article.  And that is good for editors too, since it avoids duplicating or splitting information between the two articles. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 20:03, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm all for splitting where it makes sense to split, but what is likely to be the most informative structure for a reader who looks up one of these terms? bd2412  T 22:28, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

See the section "Reform it into an iron(II) article" below. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:13, 30 March 2019 (UTC)

Dropping a stone down the well here. In the now non-standard (though still widely used among practical chemists) English-language chemical nomenclature, 'ferrous' means iron(II) and 'ferric' iron(III). That is, the name of the cation is modified to reflect the valence state of iron in the compound. In (what may be) the obsolete German-language nomenclature, the name of the anion is modified to reflect the valence state of iron. Ferrous chloride = Eisenchlorür; Ferric chloride = Eisenchlorid. That makes perfect sense, it's just another way of looking at it.

We must avoid forcing modern terminology onto the old literature and customary practice. I recall a summer student who needed some ethanoic acid, but was unable to find a bottle of it anywhere in the lab. He didn't know the common name. Everything we do must be designed to help readers, not to enforce standards.

In conclusion: I quite like ferrous in its current state. It distinguishes clearly between the chemists' and the metallurgists' meanings, and points a reader who may have come across the word in helpful directions. Narky Blert (talk) 22:30, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

Reform it into an iron(II) article?
Instead of turning this page into a disamb, as proposed above (or in addition to that), one could create an iron(II) article with all the chemical information about the iron(II) cation and complexes of it. The ferric article already tries to do that for iron(III), and should then be renamed iron(III). Note that there are already many articles about anions, like sulfate and oxalate, and about some cations like ammonium; so an article about Fe(2+) would make sense too. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 21:12, 30 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Oppose. To a metallurgist, 'ferrous' means 'containing iron', usually as iron(0). Narky Blert (talk) 22:37, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * Comment. 'Containing iron' is also the archaeologists' meaning of 'ferrous'; but in their case, it means 'containing iron metal or oxides'. The commonest oxide they will find is iron(III) oxide, known to chemists as ferric oxide. Narky Blert (talk) 23:15, 31 March 2019 (UTC)


 * Support a variant. I think you and Narky Blert can both be right here. The current Ferrous article is trying to do three jobs: it's defining the word, it's describing iron(II) and it's talking about "ferrous" in the metallurgical sense of "containing iron" (of no particular valence).  Although we don't do DICDEFs, listing the topics to which the word may refer is a job for a dab page, which has to be titled either Ferrous or Ferrous (disambiguation).  I'd go for the base name because there's no primary topic.  We then need either an iron(II) article, or a section on iron(II) in a combined article with iron(III) as BD suggests above.  I'm not sure which is better but generally I'm a splitter.  We may also want more coverage of the "any old iron" meaning of ferrous than a dab entry can provide.  That should probably go in Iron, to clarify that iron(II) is not the term's only meaning.
 * We should be able to achieve all that by moving Ferrous to Iron(II) over the redirect, salvaging a recent version of Ferrous as a new dab called Ferrous, and making minor edits to Iron. Then we need to resolve incoming links.  Obviously the Fe(2+) ones can be diverted to .  For the others, I suggest making a new redirect to Iron and diverting them there, which marks them distinctively as about the term ferrous rather than about the element.  Is  a good title for that redirect? Certes (talk) 23:01, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm thinking that ferrous may be a WP:BCA, and that its present state may be a good starting point. I've now identified four distinct meanings, three specialist and one in general use ('not non-ferrous'). Readers might be best helped by a BCA. Narky Blert (talk) 23:21, 31 March 2019 (UTC)
 * ...or how about recycling the existing as the redirect to iron for the metallurgy/archaeology sense?  I'll withdraw my suggestion of  to avoid confusion with the more precise term Ferrous metallurgy.  Certes (talk) 23:28, 31 March 2019 (UTC)

I am practically decided to create an article "iron(II)" with all the chemical information about "ferrous" in the chemist's sense. I believe that the chemists will like that. Could we revisit the fate of this "Ferrous" page after that? --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 16:01, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * Would that look very different from the current Ferrous page, and so be a new page, or would it look similar, and be better done by renaming this page then editing it? Certes (talk) 16:39, 1 April 2019 (UTC)
 * It would be at least as big as ferric (now already iron(III)), which is still quite incomplete. --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 02:52, 2 April 2019 (UTC)
 * In that case, we have two good options:
 * A BCA as Narky Blert suggests
 * A new article at built from parts of Ferrous (with suitable attribution), new material analogous to Iron(III), and perhaps a brief list of iron(Ⅱ) compounds.  Then we can make make Ferrous a dab again and fix incoming links.  What should we do with the parts of Ferrous that aren't about iron(II)?  Is there enough for a Ferrous metal article, or do we merge it into Iron and have Ferrous metal redirect there?  Either way, I think Ferrous metal becomes the new target for current links to Ferrous which are not about iron(II).
 * Time to pick an option! Certes (talk) 11:33, 2 April 2019 (UTC)

The iron(II) page has been created. It is still a little more than a stub, though. I hope to be adding a lot more contents in the next month or so.--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 15:32, 2 April 2019 (UTC)