Talk:SiGe
Latest comment: 4 years ago by DCDuring in topic RFD discussion: December 2018–December 2019
Similar entries which have also been RFDed
[edit]See also Talk:AsH₃, Talk:CO₂, Talk:LiBr. - -sche (discuss) 02:21, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
The following discussion has been moved from Wiktionary:Requests for deletion (permalink).
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A chemical symbol. We don't have NaH, CaO, for example. Could this be SOP? --Pious Eterino (talk) 17:47, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
- We have Category:mul:Chemical formulae which includes, for example, H₂O and , but not C₂H₅OH. The number of chemical formulas is endless; I estimate that Wikipedia lists some 13000 of those, including obscure ones like C23H34O4, shared by Androstenediol diacetate, Calcitroic acid, Digitoxigenin, Prebediolone acetate, Rostafuroxin, and Testosterone diacetate. I suggest that we amend CFI to require at least three citations in general, non-scientific publications – where popular science articles or books are also considered scientific and do not contribute to the count. --Lambiam 18:27, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
- This is a fraught topic. See User talk:-sche#CFI for chemical formulae for links to previous discussions and further thoughts by several editors on this subject. What is clear is that we need a vote to handle this across the board, instead of it coming up again and again in RFD discussions. —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 19:46, 22 December 2018 (UTC)
- Can a single word be SOP? Another issue is that it is not immediately obvious that it is a chemical formula, so someone may easily fail to analyse it from its elements. Its also much less of an SoP than silicon germanide, which is not being nominated for deletion! --RichardW57 (talk) 01:10, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- Is it a word? It's a combination of symbols combined according to rules that have nothing to do with human speech. There's actually some precedent for not using spaces as a criterion in languages that don't have spacing the way English does, like Thai or Chinese. The fact that chemical formulae aren't English and never contain spaces might lead to them being considered SoP unless there's some meaning that's not inherent in the parts. It might be useful to have translingual entries for chemical formulae that have names in human languages (vitriol and water, for instance), along the same lines as taxonomic-name entries. If we just assume that nothing written without spaces can be SoP, we end up in danger of allowing entries for any random combination of elements that's appeared three times in print, because we have no notability criteria. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:14, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- Language is more than speech.
- When it appears in English, SiGe acts like a word. Identifying a word is hard in Thai, though a first pass approximation would be to look at where line-breaks occur. (That wouldn't work for Lao.) How are we throttling back German, Swedish and Sanskrit compounds? Why aren't regular inflected forms sums of parts? --RichardW57 (talk) 11:47, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- Is it a word? It's a combination of symbols combined according to rules that have nothing to do with human speech. There's actually some precedent for not using spaces as a criterion in languages that don't have spacing the way English does, like Thai or Chinese. The fact that chemical formulae aren't English and never contain spaces might lead to them being considered SoP unless there's some meaning that's not inherent in the parts. It might be useful to have translingual entries for chemical formulae that have names in human languages (vitriol and water, for instance), along the same lines as taxonomic-name entries. If we just assume that nothing written without spaces can be SoP, we end up in danger of allowing entries for any random combination of elements that's appeared three times in print, because we have no notability criteria. Chuck Entz (talk) 03:14, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- I think this falls under our second definition of word. I would keep them all, but not go out of my way to add lots more. SemperBlotto (talk) 06:10, 23 December 2018 (UTC)
- I agree that it would be preferable to develop some general guidelines rather than RFDing these piecemeal. Take a look at User:-sche/chemicals, and don't vote yet (we can move it to the BP or set it up as a vote once it's ready), but let me know if you have other proposals or if you foresee any of the proposals having unintuitive side effects. - -sche (discuss) 21:08, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
- In the talk page thread Meta linked to, I mulled over something similar to Lambiam's proposal above, a sort of "BRAND for chemicals"; it seems a bit subjective/hard to enforce, but I've taken a stab at it (please tweak the proposal as needed). - -sche (discuss) 21:14, 25 December 2018 (UTC)
- LiCl and LiOH would be included too. --Pious Eterino (talk) 22:54, 30 December 2018 (UTC)
- Notice: I opened a straw poll about the general inclusion/exclusion of chemical formulas in the BP. - -sche (discuss) 02:29, 9 January 2019 (UTC)
- Keep. Absent an agreed-on policy, I am using the following: Keep a chemical formula only if the chemical it denotes has a CFI-meeting name: e.g. H₂SO₄ has sulfuric acid or AsH₃ has arsine. This criterion ensures that the inclusion of chemical formulas no more than doubles the number of items in the dictionary. This entry meets that criterion since it refers to silicon germanide. The entry also meets the arbitrary "keep a chemical formula only if it involves no more than 3 chemical elements and no more than 10 atoms", which I mentioned in Talk:LiBr. --Dan Polansky (talk) 15:50, 13 January 2019 (UTC)
- Keep DCDuring (talk) 23:59, 2 December 2019 (UTC)