Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of commonly available chemicals (2nd nomination)


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Well, this discussion is all over the place. But the copyright tag was correctly applied: this is a poorly rephrased copy of. Although copyright does not subsist in pure data, it does subsist in a list such as this one whose composition was a creative process. Because of the copyright problem, the article must be deleted without regard to the disagreements here about the list's usefulness and other encyclopedic merits.  Sandstein  18:50, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

List of commonly available chemicals
AfDs for this article: 
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Even if there's sources, the list does not have a well-defined criteria for inclusion. GZWDer (talk) 21:49, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. Shellwood (talk) 21:59, 24 January 2020 (UTC)


 * 'Delete Initially appears arbitrary, no clear inclusion criteria. The source Household Products Database link isn't working for some reason, but its intro page says "This database links over 4,000 consumer brands to health effects from Material Safety Data Sheets (MSDS) provided by the manufacturers and allows scientists and consumers to research products based on chemical ingredients." I'm confused why the definition of "commonly available" should be defined as "sold in a household consumer product" and why Wikipedia should be a WP:NOTMIRROR of this government database. Being just a copy-paste would explain the stupid punctuation like General; "aluminium foil" and the notes like Must be kept sealed for stability. If kept it should be renamed List of household chemicals or something. Reywas92Talk 23:17, 24 January 2020 (UTC)
 * KEEP There is a clear inclusion criteria, obviously, its a list of commonly available chemicals. Commonly available, as in things anyone could easily get.  List of chemicals found in commonly available products or List of things you can easily buy at any local grocery, hardware, or drug store, which are a commonly used type of chemical.    D r e a m Focus  01:45, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * What does "commonly available" mean? I live in a small village. I would have enough trouble buying milk and newspapers. If I go to the nearby (larger) village, there are shops and I can buy a range of bleaches and drain cleaners. But if I go into the industrial area of the same village, I can buy organic solvents - all just by walking in and waving cash. No ID check, no records, no licensing. I can't buy some things - CFC refrigerants, things on the Explosives Precursors list without a licence. I look online though, and (apart from eBay!) there are a range of chemical suppliers selling a whole range of materials, and properly packaged and labelled, again without needing any sort of ID or references. Then there's the Dark Web, where I shop for all of my red mercury and adrenochrome. But then, as a kid, I could walk into the city-centre schools' chemical supplier (their brand on every bottle in the school chemistry lab) and again (cash, no questions, even if I'm not tall enough to see over the counter) buy chromium perchlorates I'd hesitate to handle today (how did the pharaoh's serpent not kill us all?).
 * What does "commonly available" mean? This list looks like the sort of thing which had a place in the 1980s as a list of commonplace things which you don't know their main ingredient of. But that's defined by the composition of household chemicals (and "household" is then vague), not their availability. Available just doesn't cut it post-2000, in an era of easy web shopping. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:51, 3 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Delete as WP:OR. "Commonly available" is not an obvious criterion. Far from it. Commonly available to whom? The average First World individual? Because many of these are not readily obtainable for many Third Worlders. (It also contains the contradictory "difficult to find" barium carbonate.) Clarityfiend (talk) 09:21, 25 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete: Why is this list notable or useful as a tertiary publication? If it's just a re-posting of a government database (primary source), this isn't what Wikipedia is for. Wikipedia should be curating data for things that are of interest to readers. Waggie (talk) 00:56, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment: Pinging Articles for deletion/List of commonly available chemicals participants:, , , , , , and . Cunard (talk) 11:12, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep It is a useful resource for somebody who doesn't know much about chemistry and comes across chemicals in the community or workplace. Xxanthippe (talk) 11:18, 26 January 2020 (UTC).
 * WP:USEFUL is not a good argument. If someone "comes across chemicals" they can just look up the chemical of interest directly rather than somehow finding this page, or use the original government source this was just copy-and-pasted from. Reywas92Talk 21:56, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. It's not a repost of a government database, but a very small selection. The inclusion criterion is not exact, but it's reasonable.  DGG ( talk ) 22:26, 26 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. •  Sbmeirow  •  Talk  • 15:13, 27 January 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:JUSTAVOTE. Ajf773 (talk) 19:31, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete, it's original research, and makes no sense as a list because "commonly available" is not an objective criteria. Devonian Wombat (talk) 12:07, 31 January 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per Devonian Wombat. The fact that only a couple of the entries are sourced means that nearly the entire content of this list is WP:OR.  And, as mentioned several times above, "commonly available" is an ill-defined, non-objective criteria.  Rorshacma (talk) 19:17, 31 January 2020 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks,  Bobherry  Talk   Edits  04:41, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE. According to this article formic acid can be found at a 5% concentration in "Clorox Dual Action Toilet Bowl Cleanser". Should we list every chemical found in every shampoo? What about the common types of synthetic rubber found in automotive tires, which are very common. Literally everything is made of chemicals, and therefore everything commonly available is full of commonly available chemicals.--Pontificalibus 14:07, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. This list-based article has almost all notable entries with their own article and so satisfies WP:SAL as a valid standalone list; non-notable entries can be deleted. It is a nagivation aid with useful summaries and is valid as such, per WP:CLN. The inclusion criteria are not precise, but are reasonable in the sense that editors can discuss marginal entries and come to consensus on whether to include them. We have plenty of lists with imprecise inclusion criteria, e.g., List of philosophical concepts, and our category system is full of them. Hence "imprecise inclusion criteria" criticsm by itself is not a compelling reason for deletion. A well-formed list article with no major problems suggests keep. -- 14:29, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * It needs a lot more than simply blue-links to satisfy WP:SAL - it must satisfy all the other core content policies including WP:N and WP:NOT. Regarding the inclusion criteria, sure there doesn't need to be an absolute definition so editors have some leeway in deciding what to add to List of philosophical concepts. However this article is more like List of philosophical concepts that are easy to understand or List of commonly seen birds. There is a reason why we only have a couple of lists beginning "List of commonly..." Also the "useful summaries" you describe are entirely unreferenced and should be all be deleted because Wikipedia is not a dangerously inaccurate self-published home chemistry how-to book. --Pontificalibus 16:43, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 18:52, 1 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep I think has the right idea here. Basically, it's pretty obvious what the list means, and ordinary day-to-day editing can settle any problems with it. I don't think that listing every compound in every shampoo (or every one in the human body, for that matter) is really a possible failure mode here. "Commonly available" does not mean "commonly existing"; it means that the chemical can be obtained in sufficient purity to be useful. So, yeah, whatever problems the page has, I can't really say that deletion is the solution. XOR&#39;easter (talk) 19:01, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment The actual original source of the article, since removed, is . The list is just a duplicate of that, and I have tagged it as a copyright violation. His description of inclusion criteria has "I hope that this updated version of my original list might be of help to the amateur scientist community. I would expect the list to be very useful when trying to replicate older experiments where the required chemicals were available at the local hardware store of a prior era. The list might also be very helpful to students working on science fair projects and looking to source common chemicals without credit cards, shipping delays, and mail order hassles." This is not the basis for an encyclopedia article. Reywas92Talk 21:40, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Comment Here are 2 previous AfDs for this article. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Kitchen_chemistry https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/List_of_commonly_available_chemicals One is from 2006 the other 2013.  Bobherry  Talk   Edits  23:50, 1 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Strong Delete several reasons:
 * In legal terms, this page is an "Attractive nuisance" and suffers similar difficulties as the tables of energy content, because the context is not clear to the 'average enthusiastic editor', who just pastes stuff in s/he found in a book. For this reason, the article itself tends to become of poorer quality over time, and is a high cost / low value article from the perspective of the governing project (WikiChem).
 * Compare Logically, the hypothetical contrapositive list: List of chemicals NOT commonly available should be as well defined as the proposed list, but intuitively we know it's not a useful or well-bounded article.
 * Compare List of people from California. I live in California, but I don't meet WP:N. Unfortunately every "chemical" (Element or Compound) does meet WP:N, so the mathematical cross product is vast: Water, Gold, Carbon dioxide, ethylene glycol, methanol and acetyl salicylic acid should all occur in the list, since they're all "commonly available": either naturally occurring or in OTC products.
 * Consider how long it will be before the equivalent of the castoreum nerd comes along and does add every compound listed in shampoo to the list. It's correct to add them, but essentially dilutes the usefulness of the article. Anytime a correct addition to a list makes the list itself less useful is an indicator that the list is not a good idea in the first place.


 * Riventree (talk) 00:43, 2 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep WP:NOTCLEANUP This list-based article has many blue links and so satisfies WP:SAL as a valid standalone list. Lightburst (talk) 03:46, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Simply having a bunch of bluelinks does not satisfy WP:SALAT, otherwise List of randomly chosen articles would qualify. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:49, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * WP:SALAT also accounts for WP:COPO. ミラP 14:29, 2 February 2020 (UTC)
 * I don't see what COPO has to do with this discussion. Clarityfiend (talk) 06:44, 3 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Weak keep This is problematic, as "available" doesn't cut it any more. A better definition (for the same scope) might be as 'chemical components of common household products'. But this is sourceable (per item), does have some value as an overall list, and so I've no wish to delete it. Andy Dingley (talk) 14:56, 3 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Delete per WP:INDISCRIMINATE and WP:LISTCRITERIA, and Riventree. This is a textbook example of an unmaintainable list since there will never be a way to write coherent inclusion criteria. shoy (reactions) 16:53, 5 February 2020 (UTC)
 * keep Nice to have, renaming it to "List of household chemicals" or something along those linse. But its good to have and would be an wast to delt. 19:19, 5 February 2020 (UTC)19:19, 5 February 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by RedBloodCat (talk • contribs)
 * 'Delete 'Commonly available' will depend on where you are in the world, depending on local regulations, market access etc. The page therefore offers little more than an opinion, and a EU/US-centric one at that. --Project Osprey (talk) 14:46, 6 February 2020 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.