User talk:Tim Starling/Inorganic compound project

The table looks neat. I guess I'm biased since it looks very similar to the previous version of the elements table. I can see this as being as useful way to display list-like tabular data, although I am a bit worried that the subject matter has way too many things to apply the table to. Carbon alone as over 10 million compounds. But I guess a bot could be used to fill all those tables with data and also create some text -- so long as parsable tabular data can be found. The only thing I would suggest is maybe adding an empty cell at the top of the table for the possible inclusion of images of the compounds. This is something I've already done for the element articles and for the WikiProject Tree of Life tables. Oh, and this looks like it would make for a neat new WikiProject. How about WikiProject Compounds? It can be a descendant Wikiprojects of WikiProject Elements. --mav


 * I'm totally against writing a bot to create thousands of compound entries. Most compounds are simply not important enough to get an article. You know how controversial the Rambot articles are&mdash;how do you think people would react to 20,000,000 compound articles? (That's the number of compounds in the CAS registry). Instead, I propose we enter in only those compounds which are important enough to be referenced elsewhere in the encyclopedia - either from an element article or from the article of an application.


 * The blank row is probably a good idea. I could put an HTML comment in saying &lt;!--insert picture here-->. As for the WikiProject&mdash;I didn't think it was worth the effort if it was just one person, but then this is a long term project and I won't be here forever. Inorganic compounds definitely need different treatment to organics&mdash;I'm not sure whether there should be two projects or one.


 * BTW, do you like my new source-level table layout? Lots of CRs. -- Tim

OK no bot. But you shouldn't let Ram-Man hear you say that "most compounds are simply not important enough to get an article" since I once said a similar thing about very small US places and he took that as a challenge. :) No hurry on setting up the WikiProject - I didn't bother until after I created about a dozen element articles. And Bryan still hasn't set one up for his Solar System factsheet project. But yes, in the long term it is best to provide the documentation needed for somebody else to create articles easily. I like the code for the table - it is nice and clean. However, on my browser it creates a hideous amount of white space before the table for some reason. Also, a piped link to the corresponding property article would be useful under stuff like: &Delta;fH0gas.

I've also been meaning to ask you about the WP Elements table: Do my headings make sense for the listed properties? Is there any rearrangement that should be done? How about the addition of new fields of useful properties? I also want to have a ==Compounds== section in each element article and was wondering if you might want to collaborate on creating either some standard text (like I have for the ==Isotopes== section now) and/or on creating a standarized listing of common compounds. A good source for this is at http://www.webelements.com (example. Cheers for now! --mav


 * Obviously not that much, considering what you just did to NaCl. Care to explain? -- Tim


 * I was trying to get rid of some rendered whitespace that leads the table. It helped, but not much. --mav


 * Oh, okay. It seems my comments before and after the table are removed and replaced with &lt;p> tags. Inside the table the whitespace is just left alone. I'll fix it. -- Tim