Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry/Gold Book workgroup

Redirects
I hve now checked all the Gold Book entries in the sample for redirects and obsolete definitions: there are 67, or 20% of the sample. This implies that the number of current, unique entries in the Gold Book is around 5200. Physchim62 (talk) 10:00, 24 May 2007 (UTC)

Basic stats
The stats from this weekend seem to imply that one-fifth of GB entries are redirects or obsolete and one-fifth are already included in WP articles; for one-fifth of GB entries, the WP article needs non-trivial modification to include the GB definition, while for two-fifths of entries the corresponding WP articles needs to be written. Physchim62 (talk) 10:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I'm not convinced that all of the terms need full-blown articles writing. Many of the definitions I've seen are quite narrow terms, and in some cases there may not really be enough to warrant an entire article.  I'm thinking of obscure organic groups, etc.  In many of these cases, we may want to include the GB definition in one section of a broader article.  What do you think? Walkerma 03:15, 31 May 2007 (UTC)
 * I agree, but the WP redirect should exist at least, so that a user can type in any Gold Book entry keyword and be directed to the article where the concept is discussed (as opposed to the "soft" redirects used on goldbook.upac.org) The call should be up to the editor who delas with the entry: I created a new stub for proton magnetogyric ratio because I think there is probably enough material out there to have a full article (I just haven't found it yet!) Physchim62 (talk) 09:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

"Problem" entries
Two groups of GB entries seem to pose particular editing problems: Physchim62 (talk) 10:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Units, SI prefixes and fundamental physical constants
Is the Gold Book really the best reference for the definition of the metre or the value of the fine structure constant? I have collected these entries together into a Units and constants worklist, along with links to the BIPM brochure (for SI) and the latest CODATA values. There is also a proposal for a WikiProject Measurement which might like to help with these articles. Physchim62 (talk) 10:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

Mathematical concepts
e.g. Bimodal distribution, Probability (from the pilot worklist). Again the Gold Book does not seem to be an appropriate reference, although I don't know where we could find a more authoritative set of definitions for mathematics (Encyclopedia of Mathematics?). Physchim62 (talk) 10:03, 29 May 2007 (UTC)

I don't see that as a problem, because I think we shouldn't be too inflexible and try to reference every single gold book entry in wikipedia. I'm certain that it is not the best reference for the examples you give. The same is probably the case for terms in physics and other fields. Is the gold book definitions of energy or enzyme really the best, for example? I'm not saying that they are wrong, but they are not really authoritative and there are so many other sources that provide definitions, in many cases in more detail. The gold book may not be the best reference even for some chemistry topics! I would say that adding a reference to the gold book is great for articles that have no references, useful for some articles with references, where the gold book might be considered "authoritative" (such as in some matters of nomenclature), but it can be unnecessary in some cases, such as non-nomenclature chemistry topics that already reference more detailed works on their topic. Also remember that some gold book entries come from glossaries and not from "normative" documents. --Itub 08:40, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Organic Syntheses references
Some discussion I think people here may be interested in: Template talk:Cite journal. --Rifleman 82 03:02, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Moving to the next stage
My conclusion from this "pilot study" is that:
 * 1) There are some IUPAC terms (perhaps 20%) that are "low hanging fruit", which are easy to do, for example Bridging ligand. This is where there is a good 1:1 match of a IUPAC gold book term with a Wikipedia article.
 * 2) There are some IUPAC gold book terms such as gauche, where there is not a good 1:1 match, but perhaps an A:B match - there is a related article on WP where the IUPAC term can be inserted. In this example case, there are two related topics: Gauche effect and alkane stereochemistry.  These aren't too hard to do, but they may take a little while to track down if there is not currently a redirect.
 * 3) There are some IUPAC gold book terms, such as crown conformation where there is not a good match. We can't justify a whole article about a minor conformation of eight-membered rings.  In such cases, all we can do is to insert a definition into a broader article such as Cyclooctane, but this often involves a significant amount of time.  This is perhaps a case where there is an n:1 match of gold book with Wikipedia.
 * 4) As PC has mentioned, there are some topics where a IUPAC definition is not the most appropriate definition (though it may be helpful if no cited definition was given before), e.g., metre or Bimodal distribution.

It is also apparent that many terms "cluster" into a group of related terms; indeed, this is how the terms are initially developed, and a list of these clusters can be found here]. One weakness of these is that they are highly variable in size.

Thinking about how to proceed beyond this pilot list, I think the following approach might be fruitful.
 * First, compile a complete list of all gold book terms where there is a 1:1 match with a WP article name. This would cover most (but not all) of the "type 1" cases mentioned above.  This would allow us to get much of the low hanging fruit done relatively quickly.
 * Second, compile clusters of related terms to break up the work into "doable" projects that relate to a Wikipedian's interest area. These might be derived from the list mentioned above, though some smaller clusters may need to be combined.  Then we can request that individuals take "ownership" of specific clusters and work towards getting them completely done.  This group would simply track the progress of each cluster ("54 out of 214 done").  I don't expect miracles - most people have other priorities - but I think it might give us slow but steady progress.  Also, it would make sense for me to work on all the conformations of eight-membered rings at the same time - this would save me (or others) looking up the same references several times.

I think we also need to make it totally clear what counts as "done" and what doesn't. This may seem obvious, but close examination shows it to be much more ambiguous than one would expect. Currently the "What needs doing" really only applies to the type 1 articles, not the type 2 or the type 3. If there are (say) eight relevant gold book terms that should be included in one particular article, and three of these are also mentioned in other article, when is it "done"? Is it the article that is done or the IUPAC gold book term? (I would favour the latter). How do I know I have found all of the relevant articles so I can say it has been completely done? We saw in a recent IRC discussion that we had articles like disodium citrate that weren't even mentioned/linked on the sodium citrate page - we can expect to find the same when tracking down appropriate articles for depositing gold book definitions. So, how should we define "done"? Or shouldn't we even bother, in which case how do we keep track of progress? Walkerma (talk) 05:32, 28 February 2008 (UTC)


 * I would measure progress from the point of view of the Gold book entries, like you prefer, rather than the Wikipedia articles. I'd count an entry as "done" when it has at least one link from Wikipedia or we decide that it doesn't need a link. It's not a perfect definition but it is simple and almost objective. :) It's also easy to automate; we can obtain a list of all Gold book entries by extracting the links from, and we can scrape the list of existing links from Wikipedia from . Of course, the latter will need filtering by namespace, and we should also look at the links to the old PDF version of the Gold book   and update them. --Itub (talk) 07:45, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

A bit confused though, can I cite from Gold Book?
So, suppose that I used a definition for an article that is not put in the worklist. Will it cause any problem to this project? Also, does copying the same definition from GoldBook become a copyright violation? Is this project actually active? V ani s che nu mTalk 07:54, 1 July 2012 (UTC)

I would also like to know this. (I allready copied a definition to dihedral angle is this allowed or not? And if not can we look for  a general UIPAC licence to copy? WillemienH (talk) 19:59, 26 October 2015 (UTC)

Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry
There is currently and RFC on what do do with the shortcuts used for the chemistry-related projects. Please comment. Headbomb {talk / contribs / physics / books} 16:13, 14 February 2017 (UTC)

Activity Around the New (2019) Version of the Gold Book
In 2019, through an IUPAC project ( I deployed a new version of the Gold Book website. This was a conversion the content of the HTML pages of the existing Gold Book website, i.e., no terms were modified (and each term kept its assigned DOI), only the way the website was implemented on the back end. As the new website has a different URL structure to get to each term page, I added code to translate requests from the old style (non-DOI) URLs (e.g.  ) to the new REST format (e.g.,  ).  However, at least on Wikipedia I am interested in converting all old style links to use the   Wikipedia citation style so I can eventually remove the URL conversion code. If you can help with this activity, please let me know. I am also going to update the   citation style to make it in alignment with the current version. Finally, moving forward, I am working with Walkerma on updating Wikipedia pages with definitions from the Gold Book using open CC-BY-SA licensed image representations. For more on that, see the discussion on the main WikiProject Chemistry talk page. Stuchalk (talk) 15:40, 8 October 2021 (UTC)