Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of molecules discovered in the 21st century


 * 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. I appreciate RoySmith's point that these could well be interesting lists for readers; I'll be honest and was somewhat excited to read them. That being said, they are, as many have pointed out, hopelessly incomplete, and will forever be due to the sheer number of molecules (I'll also add on a pedantic note that "molecule" is overbroad, and could arguably include every transcription and translation product from every species). More relevantly, there doesn't seem to be any indication that molecules as such have been described or the subject of great writings in the context of their century of discovery. Such information is more relevant and interesting for elements, but it does not appear so for molecules. The importance of molecules has nothing to do with how notable their year of discovery/invention may be; I don't need to care when water or TNT were "discovered" to care about what they do. ~ Amory  (u • t • c) 02:53, 13 April 2018 (UTC)

List of molecules discovered in the 21st century

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This list is so uncompletable as to be useless. The number of molecules currently known is astonishingly large, and what counts as discovery? shoy (reactions) 20:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC) I am also nominating the following related pages:

shoy (reactions) 20:33, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. shoy (reactions) 20:34, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
 * Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. shoy (reactions) 20:34, 29 March 2018 (UTC)


 * Dissociate 21st and 20th centuries per nom as WP:INDISCRIMINATE. Not sure about the 19th. That one possibly could be short enough??? Clarityfiend (talk) 00:15, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
 * The 19th century list might be viable as List of earliest discovered molecules. Clarityfiend (talk) 02:29, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

This article is a list of molecules, organized by century and year of discovery, for an article with similar structure you can rewiev.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Lists_of_shipwrecks_by_year

The previous link shows an article with millions of shipwrecks, what they did with the article is separate them in smaller list, one list per year...

This page belong to a series of three pages, that begins with the definition and discovery of elements and molecular theory that starts in 17th century and the first molecules properly discovered by John Dalton and Amedeo Avogadro

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_molecules_discovered_in_the_19th_century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_molecules_discovered_in_the_20th_century

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_molecules_discovered_in_the_21st_century

The articles are for now not so big as the Lists_of_shipwrecks_by_year, and it is to small that is ok to have theme grouped in pages listing molecules discovered by centuries and not in lists of discovering by years.

If the lists gets big enough I will create lists per decade o per year.

Molecules are way more important that ships and new molecules are discovered and created all the time.

A single molecule could look so small that has to be observed in microscopes, but if we group one specific molecule in the whole universe in one place and we put together the same molecules, for example, water or oxygen... We could no just fill a swimming pool with it, not just an ocean, but a whole galaxy with water or oxygen... In fact there should be galaxies full of water... and our planet could be located in a desertic zone not worthy even for a visit for an smarter and more advanced civilization.

And in other hand, the use that we can do to each molecule could not have limits, could be a drug, a source of energy or even can be part of ourselves during our lifetime. Discovery of new molecules should be as or more important than the discovery of a new star, galaxy or planet.--Zchemic (talk) 16:08, 1 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Perhaps list of sodium compounds discovered in the 20th century or list of iron compounds discovered in the 21st century would be much shorter. --Leiem (talk) 01:24, 2 April 2018 (UTC)

 Relisted to generate a more thorough discussion and clearer consensus.
 * Delete all. List is incomplete and unverified but has all the hallmarks of an indiscriminate list. Fails WP:LISTN. Ajf773 (talk) 10:17, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Please add new comments below this notice. Thanks, North America1000 07:22, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete all. This is outside the scope of an encyclopedia.  Date of discovery is a mostly irrelevant statistic for a chemical compound - let's leave collections of statistics such as these to databases that are designed for that purpose such as Chemical Abstracts where you can find the first reported date for over 100 million individual chemical compounds.  These lists are a bad idea and hopelessly unmanageable on Wikipedia.  A discussion at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals indicates Wikipedia's chemists are opposed to having these lists.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 12:38, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete all. Per WP:NON-DEFINING: do not categorise non-defining properties of an article. - DePiep (talk) 13:28, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I note that the infoboxes Chembox and Drugbox (together 17k articles) don't even have a parameter option "date of discovery". (And yes, Infobox element has &mdash; equally correct). - DePiep (talk) 13:32, 5 April 2018 (UTC)


 * Delete all. Ridiculous (although well intentioned).  How does one confirm the date of discovery (vs date of publication)?  Also seems useless.--Smokefoot (talk) 19:59, 5 April 2018 (UTC)
 * Delete as the list will be much too long to every be useful. Restricting to molecules rules out other kinds of substance, such as ionic, or covalent crystals. Instead of this there could be a history of chemistry in each century, but that is irrelevant to the uselessness off these lists. Graeme Bartlett (talk) 05:52, 6 April 2018 (UTC)
 * I recognize that I'm swimming upstream here, but I think these could be interesting and useful articles. However, I'm unclear what the inclusion criteria is.  For example, List of molecules discovered in the 19th century includes water in 1811.  What does that mean?  Certainly, people knew water existed before then.  Is 1811 when the molecular structure was worked out?  Probably not, because there wasn't any understanding of covalent bonds until a century after that.  Or was it just when the stoichiometric ratio of Hydrogen to Oxygen was worked out?  Or something else?  -- RoySmith (talk) 01:04, 13 April 2018 (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.