Talk:Iron(III) chloride/GA2

GA Review
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Reviewer: Dylnuge (talk · contribs) 18:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Hey, picking this up as part of the GAN backlog drive! I'll be leaving comments here as I review; feel free to reply to them inline or wait until I'm done and address everything at once, whatever works best for you. Also please feel free to ask any questions or push back on suggestions. Thanks! Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 18:37, 30 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Sorry, I am very busy in real life right now, so I probably won't respond to most comments. I will try to address comments within the little time I have. Keres🌕Luna edits! 04:13, 31 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No worries, ! There's no real deadline on this; 7 days is often used as standard timeframe, but I'm willing to keep things open for longer if you need more time to address comments. If you're at a point where you don't feel there's any time for this right now and is willing to take over as nominator, that also works. Worst case, we can pull this nomination and y'all can re-nominate when it's a better time for you.
 * Let me know what works best for both of you; my goal here is to help improve the article and ideally get through the GA process, but there's no specific pressure either of you should feel on having to do this right now, and if real life is interceding I totally understand. Dylnuge  (Talk • Edits) 15:58, 1 September 2023 (UTC)

Opening comments

Article is stable (5). No obvious copyvio detected (2d); note that is flagged by Earwig but is clearly content lifted from Wikipedia, down to including the wikilinks (and even using MediaWiki classes in the divs), same goes for. Article is illustrated and media used is appropriately captioned and licensed (6a/6b). Reference format is good (2a).

Three paragraphs are missing any citations: the second paragraph of "Redox reactions", the second paragraph of "Etching and metal cleaning", and the second paragraph of "Organic chemistry". Since these are short paragraphs it's likely the intended citation for them is nearby and just needs to be included at the ends of these paragraphs as well.

Two major things stand out on first read: accessibility and list incorporation. As a technical article it makes sense that some sections will be deeply technical, especially those which essentially require chemistry knowledge to understand. On the other hand, not all of the article needs to assume a background in chemistry. In particular the lead should be readable by someone with limited specialized knowledge, even if they don't know what everything means (I find it helps to imagine the average high school student in the US). For non-technical readers, the key information will be what the compound is and how it's used, so this is especially important to cover in the lead, and the "Uses" section in particular should be accessible by a general audience. Take a look at an article like 1-Pentadecanol for an example of what I'm talking about here—the lead there includes technical language, and the article does not shy away from including significant details likely to be most relevant to specialists, but it avoids describing things in exclusively technical terms and includes a decent summary of how the compound is used in the lead.

Lists should be used only where the article wouldn't be able to better present the information using prose. In this case, I see at least one list (the one in "Organic chemistry") that almost certainly would be improved if it were presented as prose. I'm less sure on the list in "Hydrates" or the list-like formatting of the "Preperation" section; both of these seem more likely to be legitimate usages of lists, but I am not a subject matter expert here so take a look and see if this is the ideal framing.

One more thing here: I notice has written the plurality of the content here (over 1/3rd: ) and has been recently active in contributing to this article. I think it'd be helpful to include them in this review process. I bring this up because the nominator is generally responsible for working with the reviewer to shepherd the article through the GA process and in the case where an article has been worked on by multiple people it's helpful to have major contributors participating in the process. Dylnuge (Talk • Edits) 19:18, 30 August 2023 (UTC)
 * As an interested contributer, I am glad to help with this process. I kinda avoid these processes because I seem to often respond in the wrong way or mess up some fussy formatting prettiness. But I am good for the chem. --Smokefoot (talk) 20:40, 30 August 2023 (UTC)

Comments


 * Issues from GAR delisting and previous GAN include: lead lacking an adequate summary, cleanup tags including missing citations and a section expansion tag in "Safety", and possible issues with list incorporation. The safety section has been slightly expanded and the maintenance tag removed (it may need additional work, but it is definitely improved). Citations have been added extensively, and there seem to not be remaining issues (except the three paragraphs I mentioned above). I share the concerns about the lead (as noted above), but don't see these as particularly hard to fix. Overall, we're in shape to proceed with this review.
 * Lead: first sentence should describe the compound without simply stating its formula. More information about usages should be given.
 * (Optional) This is not a GA requirement, but I notice some of the info in the infobox doesn't have the WikiProject Chemistry verify checkmark. I am (as this review should make extremely obvious) not a chemist and don't know enough to do that, but if someone is comfortable double checking the infobox and marking it validated, that'd probably be a nice thing to have.
 * This electronic configuration places electrons in molecular orbitals — Would "Electrons are configured in molecular orbitals..." work here? The repeated use of "electron" feels wrong.
 * The first paragraph of the "Structure and properties" section should probably begin by summarizing that iron(III) chlorides can be in anhydrous and hydrated states, since that seems to be core to the organization of the section.
 * The vapor consists of the dimer Fe2Cl6 (like aluminium chloride) which increasingly dissociates into the monomeric FeCl3 (with D3h point group molecular symmetry) at higher temperatures, in competition with its reversible decomposition to give iron(II) chloride and chlorine gas. — long sentence with several competing ideas and parentheticals; might be good to break it up.
 * As mentioned above, the list under hydrates seems like it could potentially be converted to prose. This would require expanding the detail on these forms
 * Aqueous solutions of ferric chloride are characteristically yellow, in contrast to the pale pink solutions of [Fe(H2O)6]3+ — especially here, but as a general example, could be good to give a name to the chemical being compared instead of just using formulas. This is doubly true if they have their own articles that can be linked. As-is, I'm not sure what this is or why it's being compared (at a guess, it's because it lacks a chlorine molecule, to compare the chloride to something else, but I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough in chemistry to adequately guess).
 * Preparation feels like it's essentially a numbered list in how it describes the process. Would it make sense to break it out into prose describing the process more fully and a numbered list showing exclusively the three reactions?

Some new revisions
Responding to critique


 * Issues from GAR delisting and previous GAN include: lead lacking an adequate summary, cleanup tags including missing citations and a section expansion tag in "Safety", and possible issues with list incorporation. The safety section has been slightly expanded and the maintenance tag removed (it may need additional work, but it is definitely improved). Citations have been added extensively, and there seem to not be remaining issues (except the three paragraphs I mentioned above). I share the concerns about the lead (as noted above), but don't see these as particularly hard to fix. Overall, we're in shape to proceed with this review.
 * Lead: first sentence should describe the compound without simply stating its formula. More information about usages should be given.
 * slight beefed up this section


 * (Optional) This is not a GA requirement, but I notice some of the info in the infobox doesn't have the WikiProject Chemistry verify checkmark. I am (as this review should make extremely obvious) not a chemist and don't know enough to do that, but if someone is comfortable double checking the infobox and marking it validated, that'd probably be a nice thing to have.
 * can get the pros to inspect later


 * This electronic configuration places electrons in molecular orbitals — Would "Electrons are configured in molecular orbitals..." work here? The repeated use of "electron" feels wrong.
 * rephrased and expanded


 * The first paragraph of the "Structure and properties" section should probably begin by summarizing that iron(III) chlorides can be in anhydrous and hydrated states, since that seems to be core to the organization of the section.
 * OK, done


 * The vapor consists of the dimer Fe2Cl6 (like aluminium chloride) which increasingly dissociates into the monomeric FeCl3 (with D3h point group molecular symmetry) at higher temperatures, in competition with its reversible decomposition to give iron(II) chloride and chlorine gas. — long sentence with several competing ideas and parentheticals; might be good to break it up.
 * I tried


 * As mentioned above, the list under hydrates seems like it could potentially be converted to prose. This would require expanding the detail on these forms
 * Many listy things are more prose-y


 * Aqueous solutions of ferric chloride are characteristically yellow, in contrast to the pale pink solutions of [Fe(H2O)6]3+ — especially here, but as a general example, could be good to give a name to the chemical being compared instead of just using formulas. This is doubly true if they have their own articles that can be linked. As-is, I'm not sure what this is or why it's being compared (at a guess, it's because it lacks a chlorine molecule, to compare the chloride to something else, but I'm definitely not knowledgeable enough in chemistry to adequately guess).
 * Attempted to correct


 * Preparation feels like it's essentially a numbered list in how it describes the process. Would it make sense to break it out into prose describing the process more fully and a numbered list showing exclusively the three reactions?
 * More prose-like now

--Smokefoot (talk) 18:02, 3 September 2023 (UTC)

Status?
Nothing has happened on this review in almost 3 months. Can this be wrapped up soon? RoySmith (talk) 14:49, 24 November 2023 (UTC)


 * My apologies; I've been inactive for a bit recently for various reasons but am happy to resume the review and should have time to get to it this weekend. Sorry for letting this stall out for so long here! Dylnuge  (Talk • Edits) 06:59, 2 December 2023 (UTC)
 * @Dylnuge are you going to be able to complete this, or should I close it out so somebody else can review it? RoySmith (talk) 15:28, 17 December 2023 (UTC)
 * I've declared this review abandoned per WP:GAN/I. RoySmith (talk) 18:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)