Wikipedia

Project Osprey

Joined 28 September 2012


Osprey Projects

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Activity

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I tend to build new pages (or re-writes of existing ones) in sandboxes. Depending on what I'm doing they can see a lot of activity, or hold old drafts from months ago. If you want precise information on what I'm actually up to then you're better off checking my edit log

Planned activity

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A to-do-list of things that I've been meaning to start for ages but have never gotten around to doing and am now afraid I'll forget the spellings for:

To Do Major re-writes or expansions
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Recent changes in
WP:Chemistry and WP:Chemicals
List overview · Updated: 2017-05-20 (infobox articles) · This box:

Wikipedia has all sorts of useful templates and guides, which it seems are always hidden and can take you half-an-hour to find even when you know what you're looking for. As such a list of bookmarks becomes handy:

Images and charts
Tempalates
Work lists
Commons images
Off-site tools
Wiki tools
Misc

Book citations and templates

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  • Template:Cite_patent
  • Category:Chemistry citation templates
  • Handbook of Preparative Inorganic Chemistry, Volume 1, 2nd Edition(1963) G. Brauer ISBN-13: 978-0121266011
  • {{March6th}} for Smith, Michael B.; March, Jerry (2007), Advanced Organic Chemistry: Reactions, Mechanisms, and Structure (6th ed.), New York: Wiley-Interscience, ISBN 978-0-471-72091-1
  • {{Clayden}} for Clayden, Jonathan; Greeves, Nick; Warren, Stuart; Wothers, Peter (2001). Organic Chemistry (1st ed.). Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-850346-0.
  • {{Greenwood&Earnshaw2nd}} gives Greenwood, Norman N.; Earnshaw, Alan (1997). Chemistry of the Elements (2nd ed.). Butterworth-Heinemann. ISBN 978-0-08-037941-8.

About me

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I got into Wikipedia shortly after finishing my PhD thesis. I'd written a long chapter on oxazolines and I knew that it would likely just sit on a shelf and never be read again. The existing page was pretty basic and I figured I could improve it very easily by just copy-and-pasting across some general information, I've been carrying on ever since.

In the earlier years I did a lot of work on discreet small molecules, name reactions and the like, the sort of esoterica that many chemists love - and I still periodically return to that - but in recent years I increasingly seem to be working on murkier things that we all encounter day-to-day, like plastics and surfactants. These are generally a type of muck, in so much that they're either not produced pure or get mixed in with other things even if they are. Trying to pick apart the interactions can be a tricky business but I like to fool myself that it's a better use of my time, as these are topics people are more likely to care about.

... I do sometimes reflect that if I'd put this much effort into being a youtuber then I'd probably be able to retire by now.

About Wikipedia

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Wikipedia is an odd place and in my experience it certainly isn't a social network. Since my early days here I've often wondered what the size and make-up of the chemistry editing community is - after 10 years I'm not really any the wiser.

We have a WikiProject and a dozen or so of us are active there but I've also slowly become aware of a diaspora of editors who rarely seem to interact with the community at all. Many are highly active and I'm grateful that they're there. It does however, sometimes feel a bit monastic.

The future

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I sometimes wonder about the future of Wikipedia. It was formed back in the Wild West days of the internet, when anything was possible and permittable because nothing was really regulated by either governments or the public. The idea now seems mad, that anyone, expert or otherwise can just rock-up and rewrite a page on some sensitive subject visible to billions. Times have changed and websites are now often subjected to scrutiny (though rarely sanction). At the moment that’s mostly focused on social media, but I feel that Wikipedia’s time will come. We're unelected, often unqualified, and on occasions unaccountable - qualities which make us more likely to be neutral, to search for good references, to be bold and make changes (or undo them) and to serve no ulterior motive - but they also read like a list of indictments.

Knowledge is power and the idea that a website which tries to collect all useful knowledge (however imperfectly) will remain largely unsullied by political or business pressures seems unlikely. Actions by the Foundation to deal with nefarious goings on in some of the smaller, non-English wikis are perhaps a foreshadowing of this.

Colour keys for graphics

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Lead(II,IV) oxide   Pb3   O2−

Many pages on inorganic compounds contain computer generated images of their structures. In these depictions different elements have different colours, however a key is almost never included. This probably isn't a problem if you know the CPK coloring system off-by-heart but for most people (chemists included) it limits their usefulness. Take for example the totally obvious cell of Lead(II,IV) oxide (on the right). Even someone with a reasonable level of chemical knowledge may be confused by this.

Thankfully key's can be incorporated with a minimum of fuss. The key (  Pb3   O2−) can be added using the following code:

{{colorbox|#575961}} [[Lead|Pb]]<sup>3 </sup> {{colorbox|#ee2010}} [[Oxygen|O]]<sup>2−</sup>

The colours are hexadecimal and can be found by trawling the code of the CPK coloring page or here if they've been made by User:Benjah-bmm27, who produces rather a lot of our 3D images.

Key's may also be added into the Chembox by exploiting the ImageCaption tag:

| ImageCaption = {{colorbox|#bd80e3}} [[Arsenic|Ar]]<sup>3 </sup> {{colorbox|#ee2010}} [[Oxygen|O]]<sup>2−</sup>

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