Talk:List of compounds

Initial scope discussion
Does anyone have any thoughts on formula wikification standards? How about linking to functional groups, say as in CH3COOH? -- Tim

Do you ever get the feeling you're talking to yourself? Property table info at User:Tim Starling/Inorganic compound project, if anyone's interested. -- Tim

Oh, I see we've acquired a mineral - gypsum. I didn't add minerals to start with for a number of reasons:
 * 1) There's lots of them, they can get their own list
 * 2) A mineral name specifies not only the chemical formula but also the crystal structure
 * 3) Minerals are usually hydrated (is that the right word?), so you get the problem of potentially having a number of pages for the same thing, just different numbers of waters
 * 4) This is a chemistry page, not geology.

-- Tim

Co2


 * Great, no minerals from now on but a link to list of minerals will be beneficial.

I know I'm just being nitpicky, but is there way to format the list so that even the formulae with no subscript take up the same amount of space. It looks strange now with some entries being closer together than others. Not really a big deal, but if there's a way to fix it, it would look prettier. Tuf-Kat

How about separating the organic compounds from the inorganics? Smack


 * If you mean two sections on this page rather than two separate pages, then I don't see why not. Are you offering to do it or just suggesting? -- Tim Starling 05:42 23 May 2003 (UTC)


 * I could do it, just not today. I'll leave myself a note. Smack 22:11 31 May 2003 (UTC)


 * Actually, that may be a bad idea. My original intent was to separate biochemistry from the chemistry of naturally occurring substances, but some compounds like acetone and octane make the distinction moot.
 * I also have an idea regarding the earlier discussion of minerals. We can integrate the minerals into this list as sublists.  For instance, calcium carbonate would have a sublist including limestone and whatever other forms it occurs in. Smack

I reverted Shellreef's addition of a number of article-less compounds, on the assumption that s/he added them without reading the intro. If and when Shellreef creates the articles, the entries can easily be pasted back in from history. -- Tim Starling 08:58 2 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Copied from VFD:

 * List of compounds without articles Is this a sort of wish-list for compunds? Why not just include it on List of compunds?? Gorm 11:14 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and integrated the two at List of compounds, mostly because we conventionally don't make separate articles for lists of things that do have their own article. Seems pretty obvious that the ones in red do not have articles :) -- Wapcaplet 13:27 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * List of compounds is a page very dear to my heart, because starting it was one of my first contributions. Since its inception, it has only included compounds with articles. At the time I wasn't aware of the precedent from other "list of" pages, but more recently I have justified this by pointing out that there are 6 million chemical compounds in CAS, and that there's no point in creating broken links to all of them. user:Shellreef, a new user, added half a dozen article-less compounds to list of compounds. I removed them, citing the intro. S/He started List of compounds without articles in response. I'm still against including article-less compounds unless a clear inclusion test can be defined, but that's a discussion for Talk:List of compounds, not here. In summary my position is that List of compounds without articles should be deleted, and entries in List of compounds should only be added at the time of article creation. -- Tim Starling 14:05 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * Tim, supposing I was inspired by a red link to create an article on some compound. How would I know that list of compounds even exists? If common compounds were added to that list, even if they were red linked then it wouldn't matter if, I knew abou the link or not. Theresa knott 14:30 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * Answer at Talk:List of compounds -- Tim Starling 14:56 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)

Reply to Theresa Knott: indeed in your scheme lost compound articles will occur less often than in my scheme. In either scheme, lost articles will occur occasionally, and the course of action is the same: occasionally a regular contributor will hunt them down and add them. I can't deny that the lower loss-rate is advantage of your method. But my main objection hasn't been addressed: what exactly is a "common" compound? -- Tim Starling 15:11 9 Jun 2003 (UTC)
 * How about this for a definition. A compound is common (enough to go on the list) if it appears on at least one other page in the wikipedia. Theresa knott 08:09 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)


 * I guess I can live with that. -- Tim Starling 08:54 10 Jun 2003 (UTC)

In my opinion, based on arguments similar to those against including minerals, protein families (such as green fluorescent protein) should not be listed as compounds. As the article GFP indicates, there are at least two naturally occuring types of GFP, to say nothing of the myriad synthetic such proteins now in existence. All of these are distinct compounds from each other, in the sense that a compound is a homogeneous substance that can be defined exactly by the stoichiometry of its elements. GFP from organism A is not the same compound as GFP from organism B is not the same GFP as some fusion protein cooked up in a lab. If this is to be a list of compounds, the protein family name should be removed, and each should have its own listing or the family name removed to some other list of biological entities with a looser classification scheme. To maintain the current listing is to risk inferentially muddling the very idea of what compound means. I'd have just started on doing this, already, but wanted to make sure this wasn't an old battle that was documented here in the Talk page. And, once I got here, I figured it would be good to give a rationale before I started. I'll let this sit for a short time, and then try to remember to get back to moving the entries absent reasonable objections or counterproposals. Joe Anderson Wed Aug 4 14:31:21 UTC 2004


 * Sounds fine to me. My original test for inclusion was to only put in compounds with a reasonably compact, well defined chemical formula, but I haven't been too active in enforcing that. There's no policy, so the page just drifts to maximum inclusiveness when people add things without thinking and nobody bothers removing them. -- Tim Starling 15:53, Aug 4, 2004 (UTC)

Wikiproject on chemicals
I'm pretty new to Wikipedia, so I'm still sort of stumbling around a bit- but I have found this discussion here, as well as the start of a Wikiproject over at [Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals Should these two discussions get linked up? It seems to me that we do need to agree on standards for how chemical compounds are listed.

Thanks, Walkerma 22:49, 30 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Material Data Safety Sheets
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/ Material Data Safety Sheets, and numerous other places on web. MSDS are public domain. Suggest each compound page link to relevant MSDS. Acts also as information confirmation for the careful reader who needs more than one reference. 67.124.100.26 21:16, 16 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Propose dividing list into three web pages
'''This list of compounds has become too long at 63 kilobytes, practically twice the ideal maximum length of 32 kilobytes. I propose dividing this list into 2 web pages: one from approximately A - L and another from about M - Z. Does anyone care to provide feedback on this proposal?'''  H Padleckas 08:19, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sorry I resaved the List page so many times. I kept getting an error message everytime I tried to save. H Padleckas 08:19, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)
 * Good idea, go ahead. Cacycle 11:10, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * Sure, go ahead, it makes sense. I notice that Google often finds the page, so we want to make sure that people can still find the compound they want.  I wonder if now is also the time for someone (I guess I'm volunteering!) also to make a List of organic compounds and a List of inorganic compounds split as well as the alphabetical split?  See Smack's comment in the original discussion on this page.  Thanks, Walkerma 16:13, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Let's split into organic/inorganic: it's a much more meaningful split than a mere alphabetical split. Then further breakdowns can be into lists like "list of alcohols", "list of esters", "list of organic salts", "list of sugars" and so on. Do you know any good mostly-accurate pattern-matching heuristics for quickly finding organic/inorganic compounds by pattern-matching names? -- Karada 21:48, 14 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I have set up a new page called List of inorganic compounds, please give me your comments. In the process I removed minerals, generic terms, free elements, joke compounds and really obscure things (I tried to be careful about the last of these, and I didn't touch any of those that had pages written).  I uncovered three silicon stubs from 2003 that looked look very silly (especially SiO(OH), made by heating sand and water, producing oxygen!)- I put these on VfD (please vote Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Silicate_dihydroxide here], [[Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Silicate_dihydroxide here] and [[Wikipedia:Votes_for_deletion/Silicon_hydroxide here]).  I wrote a new stub on [[silicic acid, to put up some more suitable info on these compounds. I am about ten pages into the organics right now, but there are a lot more of these so it will take rather longer. Walkerma 09:08, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I have now reached the end of N with List of organic compounds, and put these up. Please let me know if I'm deleting any important compounds, but I've tried to be careful, and I haven't chopped any that are links except for one duplicate page. Walkerma 04:32, 28 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * List of organic compounds is now complete, though it is rather large at 33kB (still only half the size of list of compounds). We may want to consider removing the biological molecules, reminding people of list of biomolecules, and that would probably bring down the size a lot- but it may upset some biochemists.  Regarding names that begin with numbers, I found a huge number of these listed by number (rather than by name) at the end of list of compounds.  Nearly all of these are in red and are obscure so most were deleted for the new list, and the few remaining ones were merged into the main list alphabetically.  This means that the list now follows the standard system most chemists use, namely 1,4-Cyclohexadiene is listed under C, not under 1, and the letter is capitalised when in a title.  Personally I would like to have done the same with prefixes like p-, t- etc, but I am aware that many users may be unfamiliar with the perverse conventions of organic chemistry (e.g., why is sec-butanol listed under B but isobutanol is listed under I in most catalogues?).  Therefore for letter prefixes I left things as they are, but I added a statement at the beginning of the letter, e.g. if you can't find p-cresol under P, look under C.  I chose to leave in inorganic carbon compounds if listed, like CO2, because not all users may be familiar with how such things are classified (they are also found in list of inorganic compounds).  I'm sure there will be some inorganics I missed etc, please feel free to edit away.


 * Now the big question- are we ready to make the change? Do we want to turn List of compounds into a very elaborate redirect page, to tell people to go to List of organic compounds, List of biomolecules, etc? (Wasn't that the original idea?)  Do we want to have a list split alphabetically as well? If so, can this be done with some severe pruning as well?  Please leave comments here, and if feedback is positive, I will delete most of this page in a week or two.  Walkerma 20:50, 29 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I think we are ready to do a three-way split, into
 * Inorganic
 * Organic (except biomolecules)
 * Biomolecules

This is really good and useful work. Please let me know on my talk page if you need any programmatic help sorting and searching the lists. -- The Anome 23:19, Mar 29, 2005 (UTC)


 * What do others think about a three-way split? I personally think that it may be better to do this now, rather than having to discuss another two-way split 6-12 months from now.  I don't mind doing the work, as the hard work is pruning rather than sorting (pruning is mostly completed), but obviously it will take a few days to take out the biomolecules from  List of organic compounds and add them (if needed) into List of biomolecules.  I would propose that both lists should keep simple biomolecules like glucose or pinene, but it would allow us to remove enzymes and large proteins from List of organic compounds- there are quite a few of these.  Walkerma 16:26, 30 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * If the list of organic compounds is going to include also inorganic compunds such as carbon dioxide, I think it should be pointed out after each of these entries. For example: Carbon dioxide – CO2 (inorganic). I also feel that this old list should be made into a disambiguation page directing people to these new lists. If somebody really wishes to maintain this alphabetical list, it should have the same content as the other lists, preferably split into manageable-sized parts. Wipe 17:19, 30 Apr 2005 (UTC)

I strongly support a division into subject lists instead of an arbitrary alphabetical cut. Wim van Dorst 12:19, 2005 May 2 (UTC).

List of organic compounds
I propose deletion of the following unsubstantiated statement: "Note that there is no list of organic compounds, as such a list would be infinite." To be clear, this is akin to stating something like "there is no list of galaxies or exoplanets, as such a list would be infinite." The statement is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding; there are obviously lists of organic compounds (google and see for yourself), they are merely incomplete. A list of organic compounds would then comprise all *known* organic compounds, and such lists do indeed exist. e.g. http://www.bd-research.com/Application/ChemicalOrganic/List_of_organic_compounds.htm The statement is further contradicted in the article on Organic compounds. I am aware of no definitive assertion that there are actually an "infinite" number of organic compounds beyond its use as imprecise (and technically incorrect) shorthand for "a lot." In fact, one of the more well-known efforts to map the "small molecule universe" (comprising all possible organic compounds) cites an estimate of 1060 in total. Stochastic Voyages into Uncharted Chemical Space Produce a Representative Library of All Possible Drug-Like Compounds Blacksun1942 (talk) 01:01, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

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