User talk:Beetstra/Archive 3

There are several discussions about external links on pages about chemical substances in wikipedia in my archive (mainly in Archive 2). I you want to contact me about my view of this policy, please read the discussions on my talkpage/in my archive first, and read wp:el, wp:spam, wp:rs and wp:not. If you still have questions, or disagree with me, or think that the external link should be included, start a new subject on my talk-page

Archives

Talk started 20/3/2006

1 - 7/9/2006

2 - 29/11/2006

Re your comment to me on my User Talk:mbeychok page

Your comment on my Talk page:

Dear Mbeychok. I have responded to the reactions on theoretical plate, and also to V8riks answer on his talk page. Why is it, that when chemical engineers are editing an article, contributions of other chemists are described as 'comic strips' and 'cracking jokes'? Until now I have not seen any of these remarks on any of the 3500 pages on my watchlist (except when made by first-time editors). Could we please get into an open discussion, and try to write an encyclopedia readable for the normal public. If a subject cannot be explained to the normal public (say, a high-school student, though a target person with a lower education is preferable), it may be worth considering to not put it into the wikipedia, but into specialised mediawiki projects. Or otherwise, please tone the subject and the discussions down to give it an entrypoint suitable for the above described public. Thank you. --Dirk Beetstra T C 20:16, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

My response:

Dirk Beetstra, when or where have I characterized anyone's edit of Theoretical plate as "cracking jokes" or any such derogatory remarks? As for the discussion on the Distillation page, all I did was ask V8rik if he did not consider the "Simple analogy" section to be non-encyclopedic?

Your remarks indicate to me a dislike of chemical engineers, so you have stereotyped me as someone you don't like. And you have reverted the edit by Ketankhare purely on the basis of that dislike rather than on the merits of the "Simple analogy" section involved. mbeychok 21:16, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

I already answered on your talkpage (we can keep the discussion there, better to keep it on one place (or choose to copy it integrally here, either way is OK). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:19, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Dirk, this is my last response on your talk page or mine on this subject until you post an apology for bringing me into this. Just in case you think otherwise, your intended or non-intended slur about "50 years of experience" in your comments to Ketankhare on the Theoretical plate talk page did not go over my head. mbeychok 21:42, 25 November 2006 (UTC)

Read relevant talk page. Ketankhare 05:46, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

Please stop removing importance tags without doing anything useful

The way to reduce maintenance backlogs is not to split it up into smaller categories and to say that if there aren't enough pages in each category to be a backlog, then the entire thing isn't a backlog. The backlogs should actually be processed. While yes, that particular tag does say something misleading, the purpose of the category, and all of the other templates that put things into the category (such as {{notability}}) are to question the actual notability of an article. Perhaps, in theory, splitting {{importance}} from the category would be a good thing to do, but in practice, people almost always use it in the same way as {{notability}} is used, not in the way that it's meant to be used according to the text of the template, so it wouldn't do much good. --Rory096 03:02, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

WikiProject

It feels very nice to get support. My examination will be starting soon and will get over on 12 December 2006. After that there is a lot of work to be done I suppose. I had started the project long back, it is dormant as of now. Anyways, could you be kind enough to write your comments in the relevant sections of the project page. The link is here Chemical and Bio Engineering WikiProject Ketankhare 16:42, 26 November 2006 (UTC) Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Ketankhare"

J&J Template

Oddly, the article page has a lot of external links. Thus, I was a little strapped. I believe most of my template creations are well received by their transclusion sites. I understand that external links may be a problem. Maybe I should remove all external links on the template. TonyTheTiger 23:40, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

I am surprised that you say that the reversion was not due to the external links but because you don't find templates with corporate brand useful. This is unusual. I imagine that you have an active role in some of the pages that the template linked to. We need to coordinate what you think a useful template would be for J & J and discuss what changes need to be made. I would like to replace some sort of template that won't get torn down by you. TonyTheTiger 00:43, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I have removed most unlinked text in the Template:J&J. Let me know if you think it would be useful to add it to the selected brands now. TonyTheTiger 19:15, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Template:ChemicalSources

Did this ever become active? It's a little misleading to call it an external link when it goes somewhere internally - would there be any perceived harm in removing it until/unless the Special: page mentioned above is approved? -- nae'blis 06:12, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for the remark. Well .. yes and no .. I have been waiting for some time for someone to chip in and write this, and then started to hack it myself. We do have a properly working copy now since about 3-4 weeks (see http://chemistry.poolspares.com). I have asked around to chemists to give their opinion, but have not heard a lot. It feels like there is no need for it, and indeed, I will renew the discussion on the chemicals portal, and otherwise indeed consider to remove the template (well, if it gets implemented, I will also remove the tag, along with a massive number of external links which then get covered by the special:chemicalsources).

But, in a way, yes, I do believe it does harm to remove it, there is still a bias when external links are added, in this way they at least go (sometimes) to the list, and external links can be removed without discussion. The only problem is indeed that it is technically not an external link, but I do, for now, not see another solution to get this on all pages. Maybe the template should be cut loose from the external links section, and be a box at the bottom, with a couple of links programmed by CAS, and in there a link to the chemicalsources page (which needs reformatting, then). I percieve that when there is no link to a full list, people will blindly add links again, with all reasons as stated in another discussion on my talk-page. But maybe we have to live with that problem. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 11:34, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Dirk, I've not been on wikipedia long, so perhaps you can give me a global perspective about what this chemicalsources is hoping to achieve, and how it fits in with wikipedia generally. I compared your chemicalsources "Water" article with the water article on wikipedia. As far as I can tell, the point of chemicalsources is to focus only on the chemical elements of that substance. If true would that mean that the chemistry would be removed from the water page and pages like bromobenzene (which are all chemistry) would move from wikipeida to chemicalsources? Sorry if this is obvious question! --Quantockgoblin 08:16, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Uhh .. obvious .. not at all (I even have to distill out the question, you provide me with a line of thinking which I have apparently, not made clear) .. No, I would like the special:chemicalsources to start to exist on wikipedia, just like the special:booksources (which already exists). Chemical compounds and all stay here, but on the pages of the chemicals all the chemical identifiers get a link (using a parameter) to the special:chemicalsources (so a http://en.wikipedia.org/w/special:chemicalsources?CAS=123-45-6, e.g.). Clicking the link brings up the result page where all the 'search on CAS' links result in searches (within that database/company) on that CAS number. So chemical pages will stay here. Now the external link that is connected to the current CAS number is biased, just as the addition of only one or two suppliers. The page, where the special:chemicalsources is now demonstrated, is only a temporary site, it will go, maybe soon. Hope this clarifies. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 08:28, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

Splitting "NN"

Off the top of my head, it's not entirely clear-cut. Granted it's large, at 5,000-ish, but it's far from being the largest "maintenance" category. I think at bottom it's a matter of what's the best "producer-consumer" relationship: if it were split up, would multiple specialist groups assess notability and clean them up (one way or another) more rapidly. Or would it lead to the same people simply having to deal with more categories? You might ask at some of the larger wikiprojects if they have an interest in "processing" separated-out categories in their area (as you may have noticed I'm trawling around the idea of doing the 'uncategoriseds' on that basis). Alai 15:15, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

That's why I thought of you. But OK, so that category is not that big. Someone was deleting the tag from articles not stating any importance, 'complaining' that there were too many articles clogging that category .. I have put them all back with the comment that that was not going to solve the problem. Did think of you, but could not remember your name at that point, and digging was too much work at that point :-p. I'll leave it at this, that category is biggish, but not too big. It is OK with me, then. I'll clear out an {{importance}} every now and then. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:23, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Splitting by month is another possibility, even if there's only one group of "consumers". It also has the advantage of being easily bottable, once up and running. Alai 15:50, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Seems like a plan. I'll feed this back to .. well .. he or she who was removing the tags .. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:52, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

I've gone ahead and suggested this at Category talk:Wikipedia articles with topics of unclear importance. Let's see if this meets with general approval. Alai 18:21, 28 November 2006 (UTC)

Continuous distillation

Thank you for requesting my review/consultation on the Continuous distillation article and for complimenting my drawings. Just in case you did not know, I am both a chemist and a chemical engineer. I have BS and MS degrees in both. I have taken a look at your sandbox rewrite of the Continuous distillation article. I understand your point about including some explanation for a non-technical reader. I would like to edit it to improve the explanations using appropriate chemical engineering terminology, but adding short explanations for the non-technical person where practical. We also have different styles about how to explain things. I think if I spend some time editing this sandbox version, we can reach a version acceptable to most of us. Unfortunately, I'm very busy these days with other things and it will likely take me a while to get to it. I hope you are willing to wait a bit. After all, there are no deadlines in Wikipedia. H Padleckas 04:51, 30 November 2006 (UTC)

• I have indicated to H Padleckas my intention to have a look at this article in the near future. I agree with your view that it could do with a rewrite LouisBB 14:14, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

I just saw your message on H. Padleckas' page, and was going to answer on your page. Milton Beychok and I have done a major overhaul already, the article is in my sandbox. I was going to write something on the talkpage of continuous distillation and copy the sandbox version over the version in the main namespace later today, but feel free to have a look first. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 14:20, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Replacement of methanol

Aangezien je zelf chemie hebt gestudeert zou je van de productie beter op de hoogte moeten zijn als ik. Aangezien je mijn edits weggomt stel ik voor dat je dan zelf een tekstje opmaakt over de ionische vloeistoffen die methanol moeten gaan vervangen.

Groeten, — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.246.184.213 (talk • contribs)

I am going to answer in English, we are on an English wikipedia. I am not going to write a replacement text, a) the text does not belong on these pages, and b) it is absolutely not WP:NPOV. It might, when written properly, have a place on ionic liquid. Cheers, see you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:55, 1 December 2006 (UTC)

Can you help me?

Dirk, take a look at the Hydrodesulfurization article, which is one that I am merging. There is section in it called "Substrates". I don't know what the word means in this context. Is there some more common word that could replace it? Like "Other hydrogenation targets" or "Other chemical species" or what else?? I would appreciate your help. - mbeychok 05:13, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

I copied the section to, and subsequently demolished it in your sandbox version, and left a comment on the talkpage, there. Feel free to demolish it further. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 09:27, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

Re: edits to the trichloroethylene page

Hello Dirk,

I've added references to the trichloroethylene article for the revised content in the health effects section. Hopefully these address your comment concerning sources and references. Please let me know if you have any other questions or comments about them.

With regard to your comment about the health effects content possibly being in conflict with wp:not: having looked through the guidelines, I'm not clear where the conflict might lie, and we may need to discuss this further. The problems I see with your suggestion (a shorter health effects section, and a separate section discussing physiological effects) are that the sections would be overlapping, or the shorter more discrete health effects section could be misleading. There may be some tightening I could do, but I would encourage maintaining the health effects discussion as the single section, as it's now written. I am interested in your thoughts on this proposed approach.

The story for this compound differs considerably from 1,1-dichloroethylene or 1,1,2,2-tetrachlorothane. There is high interest by the general public about TCE right now, particularly about the controversy over potential human health risks. The potential for human exposure to TCE is much greater than these other two substances. We know so much more about the risks from TCE compared with dichloroethylene or tetrachloroethane, which paradoxically makes the story for TCE less straighforward. TCE has become a very polarized topic, and as befits the Wikipedia concept, I've tried to present it in an objective manner. Again, I am interested in your thoughts here.

Drop me a note in my user talk area if you would like to discuss these matters further.

Cheers,

John

Jlowe19 20:51, 2 December 2006 (UTC)

See my comment on your sandbox's Discussion page

Dirk, I offered some comments on your sandbox's Discussion page. Regards, - mbeychok 05:12, 4 December 2006 (UTC)

Continuous distillation (2)

(moved from my sandbox Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC))

The principle for continuous distillation is the same as for normal distillation: when a liquid mixture is heated to its boiling point, the composition of the vapor above the liquid will be different from that of the liquid. If this vapor is then separated and condensed into a liquid, we find that it has become richer in the lower boiling component of the original mixture.

This is exactly what happens in a continuous distillation column. A mixture is heated up, and routed into the distillation column. On entering the column, the feed starts flowing down but part of it, richer in lower boiling component(s), vaporizes and rises. However, as it rises, it cools and while part of it continues up as vapor, some of it (enriched in the less volatile component) begins to descend again.

Sorry Dirk, there is something wrong in the first sentence here.

There IS a great difference between coontinuous distillation and normal distillation, inasmuch as in what you call normal distillation something approaching a temporary equilibrium which is set up, until a differential quantity of the vapour is removed. At that point a new equilibrium is set up and so on. It is therefore also called differential distillation. Every drop coming through to the receiver has a different composition! Of course, the composition of the still changes as well.

In continuous distillation, as mentioned later an equilibium condition is set up which results in the product composition being constant !

What I said earlier has also needs to be changed somewhat, as rather than saying that 'This is exactly...' we ought to say 'This is more or less...) Here is exactly my point that I keep on talking about: vapour liquid equilibria:

Just listen to this if you please: As Henry will tell you, this used to be measured by taking a batch of liquid and boiling it under total reflux, nothing added, nothing removed for such a time as no change is taking place in the two compositions. There is a very very small receiver the quantity of which is negligible compared with that of the still (if you like) which can be sampled by removing a minuscule fraction to determine vapour composition. It is possible that now other means are used for measuring vapour composition, and which does not need sample takeoff and the receiver size can be decreased even more. (Henry can tell us)

Continuous distillation is much nearer to this setup than to 'ordinary' differential distillation'. (In both cases there is zero change in vapour and liquid composition) This is why I am in favour of mentioning the introduction of equilibria at this stage, not just because its determination is the first step in design calculations. In continuous distillation there is (at least in the simplest binary case) one lower boiling component takeff, and one higher boiling component takeoff.

It would nicely fit to the start of this section with a drawing of an apparatus with 100% reflux.

I am not going to make any changes myself anywhere, you can consult anybody about it, but this is correct! I am sending you a note as well

LouisBB 15:26, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I do not concur with this, and I will explain why (but you are right, there the paragraph has something which is unclear). Distillation is the principle, which has different operation modes. Two of these are batch distillation, and continuous distillation (and the more 'exotic ones', like e.g. steam destillation, which require quite an explanation in how they are different from the batch/continuous versions, but that should go in separate articles). Both are distillations working on the same principle, that the vapour above the liquid is different in composition than the liquid (well, except some rare cases). The difference starts indeed when we start taking samples. In continuous distillation the everything is kept at a constant composition, in batch distillation the composition changes.

I have made a small change to the explanation, more might follow, needs a bit of a tweak. Thanks for pointing me at this. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:04, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

subst citation templates

I know. I was testing something. I seem to have fixed the problem. — Omegatron 22:48, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

It's OK, saw your good edits, and then these two 'bad' ones .. thought I'd lend a hand. By the way, your edit summaries are sometimes a bit cryptic, triggers me to have a look, while that may not be needed. But keep up the good work, happy editing! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:56, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

Yeah, I'm sorry about that. Always writing edit summaries is my big weakness, so I have an automatic diff summary-writing thing. Unfortunately, it sometimes writes cryptic things... — Omegatron 15:06, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

You should talk to Werdnum on IRC (#wikipedia), he is working on that as a built-in feature. Maybe it is possible to combine your efforts. Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 15:09, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Unfortunate issue

I seem to have upset someone - badly - no crisis, but slightly ugly. If you get a chance, please check Cp2Ni and related work. Cheers,--Smokefoot 14:29, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Let's let it be for a while and I will email you if this continues. Thanks--Smokefoot 16:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

OK, I'll see, cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:08, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

Aspartame

Please see my response to your posts on the discussions of Aspartame, there is credible scientific proof about the breakdown of this substance eventually in to formaldehyde as you will see if you read the topmost references, this therefore must be included on the main Aspartame page. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 194.75.244.138 (talk) 16:32, 8 December 2006 (UTC).

Aromatic alcohols

What's wrong with puting aromatic alcohols into one category? It's to point out that there are some aromatic compound with hydroxyl group, that definitly aren't phenols - just like Benzyl alcohol. It's an exception kind of exception and it's quite confusing to some people. I wasn't planning to add anymore categories of this type. If can't we have aromatic alcohols, should we put aromatic amines and others into aromatic compund category??? JRS.pl 20:14, 8 December 2006 (UTC)

expand tags

It's an interesting problem. Here's my take on it. These articles have been in the "unclear importance" category for a loooong time and nothing has changed. The only way these will change is for someone with relevant knowledge of chemistry to expand them and I don't think leaving them in this category will help much. The way I see it, "unclear importance" is a fairly negative category: it expresses concerns that perhaps the article's subject is not suited for inclusion on Wikipedia while the expand category is more positive in that it says "sure, this has a place here but we really wish it wasn't such a poor stub". One way to solve the problem would be to have parameters to the expand tag that allow us to create categories like "chemistry articles to be expanded" so that people from the relevant projects can work on them. I don't think it makes sense to put all of these articles for deletion: although their value is marginal, I think that ideally we would want these articles to exist with some extra content. Pascal.Tesson 16:29, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

I agree with that point, and well, it does not matter whether they are too long in the importance or expand category (switching every now and then does at least result in them not being too long in a category, and they see some other company). But they are now twice in an expand-type category (stub and expand), what about adding importance also, the articles still do not state any importance, anyway? If they get importance, they will also move into more appropriate categories, and chances increase they will get some more attention. I will (and have) fought AfD's on articles with an importance tag, we can't work on all of them all the time, and well, expanding articles about chemicals is not my prime interest, it takes time (every now and then I do one). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 16:36, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Manofwar4662 comments

*phew* I'm wondering how best to parry the recent comment from User:Manofwar4662 that reads "I'll be adding content and citing the link. I know what I did is right because I did read the rules, but I know I can't win against the establishment. I'll be adding some content and the same links. And the site I added is CONTENT rich, just so it's clear." It is not true that 'what I did is right' but how can we best get that across to this new user? --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 19:43, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

First of all, the site is not a reliable source, I have already removed some other ones. I will probably even revert if he tries to use it as a reference, bit depending on how he adds it.

Secondly, one of his earlier remarks to me was close to a personal attack, and again I feel like adding a warning template about that ({{civil1}}?).

I have been fighting spam links for a long time already (the banner on top of this talkpage is not there for nothing). I will keep an eye on it, and see what happens. Thanks for the help! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 19:53, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Your welcome. It was my first 'incident' of this kind. I have the feeling that my encouraging him to add content and use the links as support was, as you imply, only a half solution (based on source reliability) - even though I did mention that those links might even then be removed and primary source links might be required. --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 20:03, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

P.S. The editor might have done their homework at Wikipedia:Verifiabilty and Wikipedia:Reliable sources and come away with the impression that the sources were acceptable. I find I inadvertantly mentioned a couple of specifics mentioned in WP:RS without knowing I was doing this ... I'll keep in mind to point out specifics in future 'incidents'. Regards, --User:Ceyockey (talk to me) 20:08, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Well, he seems to be a hard case, certain that he 'does the right thing'. I don't think he did his homework on wikipedia:reliable sources, the data is not peer-reviewed, so it can't be that reliable. It may contain new information, which is not backed up by peer-reviewed data, yet. I only hope his first real contribution is going to be a good one, so that we don't have to revert that edit. We'll see how it ends. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:17, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Thanks

Just wanted to say thanks for reverting on my user pages. I'm glad you saw it, because I didn't even notice. --Ed (Edgar181) 19:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

And that while you are always so active in hunting down vandalism. But you're welcome! Happy vandalhunting ;-). --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 21:12, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

I'm in line to say thanks, too

... for the note and the actions, which I sensed. It was a crazy situation in many ways, and my sharp tongue did not help. These dudes actually know something and could contribute usefully, if we can get them to stop selling stuff. --Smokefoot 22:33, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

And you are welcome too. I'll keep my eye on the articles involved, and hope the person involved will start again making usefull edits ... --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 22:40, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

My new compound articles

Thanks for tidying up after me at glycerol 3-phosphate and pyrophosphatase. Adding such esoteric things to the wiki always makes me think nobody cares about them since they didn't exist beforehand, and it's nice to see the topics immediately getting attention and cleanup. It reassures me that my good faith edits, even if I rushed through them while studying for a biochem midterm, will eventually be edited into something useful. Robotsintrouble 11:55, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

You're welcome. I am just looking after (all?) chemical compounds in the wikipedia, keeping an open eye for new ones. Make sure these articles get linked to, and people will end up improving them. See you around! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 12:37, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Dodecahedrane

No arguments about mid instead of low. I tend to be (overly?) conservative in assessment, something carried over from another wikiproject. --Rifleman 82 17:20, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Don't be too conservative ;-) .. By the way, my compliments, nice work. --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 17:22, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

Criticism disappears from Nimesulide article

I noticed you were editing the Nimesulide article at the same time as me. I just added the POV Adverisement tag. Compare the current article with this previous version and you'll see some evil drug company troll sanitized the article, removing references to problems with the drug. I don't have any competence in this area, so perhaps you can fix the article. All I can tell is that it's not neutral. Here in Mexico my daughter was perscribed the drug, and after she had a bad reaction, I searched around on the Internet, and found that pedeatric use of it is forbidden in many places. Something people should be aware of, and that should be mentioned in the article. This link [1] was also removed from a previous version. - Andrew— Preceding unsigned comment added by 200.67.231.185 (talk • contribs)

I saw your post on the talkpage, and started looking around. I already reinstated the old section, and resorted the section. I have no clue about the medicine (hence the 'expert' tag). I have removed the advert tag again, although it is still quite positive about the compound (though I think the first sections are just scientifically correct, even when the references are missing). When there are scientific references, pertaining the negative issues of the compound, I think the first half can be rewritten also. I don't know anything at all about the controversy, could you write some things, I'll help you with layout, text, etc.? Cheers! --Dirk Beetstra ^{T C} 20:49, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

I know very little, just what I've seen on some Web sites. Wish I could help more, but no time right now. Glad someone is watching what happens on these pages. Surely the person who sanitized the article is on the payroll of a drug company, no? Notice that one external article (the second one in my first comment here) claims that it's the drug companies in the industrialized world that don't favor the drug, and have carried out a smear campaign. Good luck and thanks.