User talk:Reedijk

Please desist editing the fluoride pages
Your changes are viewed as vandalism or disruptive. Wikipedia has no obligation to or ownership by IUPAC. If you wish to influence policy here, then discuss your ideas at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry. There are more useful ways of contributing than nomenclature, obviously. --Smokefoot (talk) 17:33, 9 September 2008 (UTC)

Dear Reedijk, I concur with the above. Wikipedia has its own set of rules, which follows more 'the common way of naming' then IUPAC rules (though we do follow them). Your changes, as e.g. here do not change those rules. I do say 'tetrafluoroborate' and 'hexafluorophosphate', not with 'fluoride'. As Smokefoot is saying above, I also would like to ask you to discuss these ideas at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry, as I expect you can help us out greatly by contributing your knowledge to this encyclopedia. Thanks! --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:32, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Moreover, changing Image:Tetrafluoroborate-ion-3D-balls.png to Image:Tetrafluoridoborate-ion-3D-balls.png does break the page (the bottom one does not show up, as the former does, see boxes right). The changes you performed break pages (and less informed editors could see them as 'vandalism'), and, if implemented, would need more changes throughout wikipedia. It is therefore better to discuss them. --Dirk Beetstra T C 10:38, 10 September 2008 (UTC)
 * One way that you could apply your IUPAC knowledge would be to set up "redirects" so that if someone searches tetrafluoridoborate, they get to the BF4- page. Also, if you know IUPAC nomenclature, you probably know other things - and we would really welcome a new partner.--Smokefoot (talk) 03:50, 11 September 2008 (UTC)

Reply
Thanks for your question on my talk, I'll reply here, although I normally like to keep the discussion in one place (you can answer here, I'll drop by later).

We have an extensive guideline of how we name articles, wiki-wide that is in our manual of style, and the chemicals wikiproject (WikiProject Chemicals) has adapted from that an own styleguide for 'chemical compounds' (see WikiProject Chemicals/Style guidelines). We have chosen to use what the 'majority of English speakers would most easily recognize, with a reasonable minimum of ambiguity, while at the same time making linking to those articles easy and second nature'. Some rules overrule that a bit, e.g. MDMA is at Methylenedioxymethamphetamine, as we prefer not to use the abbreviation as the main article (there may be other pages which have the same abbreviation, sometimes that leads to problems; but also there there are exceptions). But that means that we use Caffeine, Acetic acid, Toluene. The official IUPAC names are also articles here, but they redirect to the actual article (1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione, ethanoic acid, methylbenzene, which all three redirect to the earlier names). Using the easier names has as a big advantage that one does not get redirected over and over: from a page, via acetic acid to ethanoic acid. For some compounds linking to the article directly becomes error-prone (that is already an active argument against having the article at methylenedioxymethamphetamine, for 1,3,7-trimethyl-1H-purine-2,6(3H,7H)-dione it is almost impossible), and it may also make articles that link to caffeine less readable in the end. Making redirects to the current article is already helpful. If you believe there is good reason to move it to a better name, then it is best to contact the wikiproject, there are people available which can help you in move it to the correct position (for some moves to be performed properly one needs administrators).

I think you certainly can be useful here! Although we have a lot of data covered, there are still subjects which are not complete, and we also have a lot of information which is plainly not there yet. If you encounter compounds which you think are missing here, by all means create the article (the style guide gives some hints, and we have a neat template: chembox new to contain the chemical data), or add the data to existing articles (a quick start of things that desperately need help can be found in the 'things you can do box' on WikiProject Chemistry). You'll be working together with other a wide range of people here (ranging from passers-by to professors), and I am sure that if you have further questions, we are all willing to help. The wikiprojects (Wikiproject; for chemistry WikiProject Elements, WikiProject Chemistry and WikiProject Chemicals, are good points to attract attention of a larger group of people with the similar interest, otherwise some of us show their speciality on their userpages, and that may be a quicker way of attracting attention if you have specific needs (there is also a list on the wikiproject of participants, which may lead you quickly to certain specialities). Also article talkpages are a good place, though one has to be a bit lucky to really attract attention there, there are so many pages.

Regarding IUPAC names etc. A couple of us here are at the moment very busy with trying to verify data (especially the 'dry numerical' data), and to make sure that changes to the verified data get noticed (after all, this is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit, which unfortunately includes people who intentionally try to damage it). You may see some of us passing by on pages removing data for which we can't find a proper source (or better, which we can't verify properly), also help there would be great (see WikiProject Chemicals/Chembox validation). Regards, hope to see you around, and happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra T C 16:00, 13 September 2008 (UTC)