User talk:H.n.mcmurray

Check it out
As of today, 1356 articles, patents, etc report on RuO4, 638 appearing since the year 2000, of which 21 are reviews. We should stick with reviews per WP:SECONDARY. Otherwise we end up citing obscure papers like McMurray, H. N. (1993). "Uniform colloids of ruthenium dioxide hydrate evolved by the surface-catalyzed reduction of ruthenium tetroxide". The Journal of Physical Chemistry. 97 (30): 8039–8045. doi:10.1021/j100132a038, which has been cited a grand total of 4 times in the past 23 years.--Smokefoot (talk) 16:47, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

You can sneer if you like Smokefoot but for Wikipedia to be telling people that RuO4 is a colourless liquid is inexcusable misinformation. The info on the Ruthenium Tetroxide page even contradicts the info on the Ruthenium page. So I hope you feel proud of "correcting" my edit.
 * Feel free to correct the color. Great service to the community.  Adding citations to obscure publications is the opposite.  At least in my opinion.  --Smokefoot (talk) 19:08, 24 May 2019 (UTC)

And the physical state (solid at 25C). I fully understand your points regarding self citation and primary sources. However, I would not personally regard the ACA Journal of Physical Chemistry as an "obscure" source. The subject of the paper is obscure, not many people get to prepare, handle and use RuO4 in quantity, I did, as an academic and a consultant to the Johnson Matthey company (23 years ago as you accurately point out). You won't find a description of how RuO4 reacts in neutral aqueous solution in any textbook, in real inorganic chemistry (not organometallic) these change with glacial speed. Nevertheless, for many chemists and in many practical situations a knowledge of how a compound behaves in contact with water is a fairly fundamental consideration. Think about it at least. HNM