User talk:DMacks

Close Wikipedia and copyright

 Hello Chemistry Online1, and welcome to Wikipedia. While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues.

You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here. Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify the information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research. Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste. If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a legally designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. Understand, though, that unlike many other sites, where a person can license their content for use there and retain non-free ownership, that is not possible at Wikipedia. Rather, the release of content must be irrevocable, to the world, into the public domain (PD) or under a suitably-free and compatible copyright license. Such a release must be done in a verifiable manner, so that the authority of the person purporting to release the copyright is evidenced. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials. In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are PD or compatibly licensed) it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, the help desk or the Teahouse before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow. Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you must follow the copyright attribution steps in Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate. See also Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia. It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. DMacks (talk) 06:18, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

DMacks. Thanks for your guidance. Please we should add these organic compounds (Nigellicine , Nigellidine , Nigellimine, Carvacrol , α- Hederin , Thymol , Thymoquinone , Dithymoquinone ,thymohydroquinone )into page of Nigella sativa or black seed.If you have proper education in chemistry especially in "organic chemistry "then you will understand. I respect the senior editors but page of Nigella sativa is missing organic compounds.Thousands research papers of journals of high impact factor carrying information about Nigella sativa. But if you see page of Nigella sativa, it seems an agricultural or forestry page. If you don't mind may I ask your specialization in chemistry? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chemistry Online1 (talk • contribs) 10:35, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

DMacks Please update your knowledge. Always go for research and read publications. Now Wikipedia needs updated persons. I edited the page Nigella sativa with that reference which was already mentioned there. For support of that reference I am giving you this link, please visit this site. https://www.accessdata.fda.gov/scripts/cdrh/cfdocs/cfcfr/cfrsearch.cfm?fr=182.10 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Chemistry Online1 (talk • contribs) 12:55, 17 May 2020 (UTC)

added external links

I had added one reference link to page Бесхвостые , tutorvista had added its 4 links, then why not i can add one more reference link from other website. Its not promotion, but the page which i have, also tells about fron digestive system. So is that bad to put a reference link on that page. Please guide me.

Support request with team editing experiment project

Dear tech ambassadors, instead of spamming the Village Pump of each Wikipedia about my tiny project proposal for researching team editing (see here: https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Grants:IdeaLab/Research_team_editing), I have decided to leave to your own discretion if the matter is relevant enough to inform a wider audience already. I would appreciate if you could appraise if the Wikipedia community you are more familiar with could have interest in testing group editing "on their own grounds" and with their own guidance. In a nutshell: it consists in editing pages as a group instead of as an individual. This social experiment might involve redefining some aspects of the workflow we are all used to, with the hope of creating a more friendly and collaborative environment since editing under a group umbrella creates less social exposure than traditional "individual editing". I send you this message also as a proof that the Inspire Campaign is already gearing up. As said I would appreciate of *you* just a comment on the talk page/endorsement of my project noting your general perception about the idea. Nothing else. Your contribution helps to shape the future! (which I hope it will be very bright, with colors, and Wikipedia everywhere) Regards from User:Micru on meta.

Maybe you should not rollback my code in the word "leapyear"

Hi, DMacks:

    When I fixed the some mistake of python code in "leap year", my code is rollback by you for the reason "Too much detail/WP is not a how-to manual". I'm software engineer, and I found many people don't known the history of "leap year", include the textbooks about programming in china. the wrong code is used for getting "leap year"(before 1582). So, I spend some time to study this question, and wrote the code which let more people know "leap year". can you allow the code is added to the context of "leap year".

   It's my first commit in Wiki. :)

   Best Regards

   Jerry.Liu, Beijing, China

   PS:
   I have add python code to bake of baidu. let more people knows the history of "leap year".  My English is poor, maybe you can know what I said.  hah.

Deleted file restoration

Hi DMacks, do you think you could restore the file:Bruce Millan 1992.jpg? OTRS permission for the image is confirmed by the ticket:2019112010009942. Thanks, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 09:35, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

•  Done. I don't have OTRS permission to confirm the ticket, so I'm not going to change the tagging myself. DMacks (talk) 13:27, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

  ​ Thank you. Can you also restore the 20:20, 5 March 2011 version of file:John Rickman.jpg and export said version to the Commons? The author of the painting in the image died in 1859. Thanks again, ‑‑Neveselbert (talk · contribs · email) 15:05, 28 July 2020 (UTC)

I revived that version on the enwiki file and also added linked and updated the source URL. There seems to be a larger image at that source, maybe upload it to this enwiki and then we can send the whole thing to commons? Or else just upload that higher quality one to commons and not bother with this enwiki history at all? DMacks (talk) 05:30, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-32

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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• All queries to the Wikidata Query Service failed between 17:50 and 17:59 UTC on Thursday 23 July. Some queries failed during a longer period. [1]
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15:43, 3 August 2020 (UTC)

This Month in Education: July 2020

This Month in Education Volume 9 • Issue 7 • July 2020 Contents • Headlines • Subscribe In This Issuse About Education at the Wikimedia Polska Conference Featured education community member The importance of having an Education and Human Rights Program The Welsh Wiki-Education project Wikimedia Chile faces the challenge of mandatory virtuality WoALUG and Canadian Institute of Technology write about women in tech

About This Month in Education · Subscribe/Unsubscribe · Global message delivery · For the team: Romaine 05:27, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Ammonium nitrate and "critical mass"

Hi DMacks,

I am sorry that I do not understand the "Talk" function in Wikipedia and find the jungle that the links in the email sent to me by Wikipedia incredibly confusing. I like the idea of including the reference to runaway chemical reactions - that is what happens under the right conditions with Ammonium Nitrate whether it is supplementing combustible material as an oxidising agent, or simply explosively decomposing in its own right, or a combination of both.

However, the more I think about it, the less relevant any idea of "critical mass" becomes to me when talking about chemical explosives. ANY amount of the right chemical substances can undergo a runaway exothermic reaction under the right conditions of temperature or pressure. Under the right conditions of confinement, it will lead to an explosion. In other words, I don't think that the concept of "critical mass" or critical amount applies. If the amount is really small, it just isn't much of an explosion. Unfortunately, we saw yesterday what 2,750 tons of AN can do under the right conditions.

Bunmoh (talk) 03:17, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

@Bunmoh: Wikipedia has a TON of features and ways of using them, no question it can be confusing! I agree that the "mass" itself is not the sole concern (as you note, temperature and confinement matter, which also relates to shape of the material). And also not every runaway reaction is explosive by nature. How about "Both decomposition reactions are exothermic. Consequently, under certain conditions, it can become a runaway reaction, which can lead to an explosion." ? DMacks (talk) 03:36, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi Dmacks - I had a crack at a further edit along the lines you suggest. What do you think? I believe that, in the case of AN, atmospheric pressure is enough of a confinement to cause an explosion once that runaway reaction takes hold. Here in Australia, it is used in bulk in the mining industry, especially to help with removing large volumes of dirt and overburden in open cut mines. In that case, it is usually buried in holes, soaked with diesel fuel and detonated with an explosive charge, so the explosion is partly its role as an oxidiser for the diesel fuel and partly explosive decomposition. Bunmoh (talk) 03:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Nice. I tweaked it a little more. We'd need a cited source that atmospheric pressure is sufficient confinement. Our ANFO article talks about the mixture with diesel fuel. DMacks (talk) 06:01, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

Bunmoh (talk) 11:21, 6 August 2020 (UTC) Last comment - I think the text of this little passage is about as good as it can get now. It is both concise and accurate.

Coactive nonmetals and halogens

G’day DMacks

I write to gauge your thoughts about a proposal to change the nonmetal categories appearing in our periodic table from {reactive nonmetals} and {noble gases} to {coactive nonmetals} {halogen nonmetals} and {noble gases}

thank you, Sandbh (talk) 07:28, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

*     *     *

Context. There has been some discussion about nonmetal categories at WP:ELEMENTS.

I suspect most active members of that project (including me) would agree to divide the reactive nonmetals i.e. the nonmetals other than the noble gases, into two relatively clear and self-descriptive categories. However, since the WP periodic table was created, we haven't found a good way of doing this.

I caveat the expression "relatively clear" by what we say in our periodic table article:

"Placing elements into categories and subcategories based just on shared properties is imperfect. There is a large disparity of properties within each category with notable overlaps at the boundaries, as is the case with most classification schemes."

That said, didactically speaking, the use of "natural" classes or clusters to organise information supports content processing.

In Wikipedia history, the categories of "other nonmetals" and halogens are the two most enduring nonmetal categories used in our periodic table. That was until we started complaining about what a non-informative category name "other nonmetals" was.

Now, the halogen category is consistent with the traditional aspect of teaching the periodic table by contrasting the alkali metals with the halogens.

Long story short, we don’t currently have a halogen category because we weren't able to satisfactorily characterise the other nonmetals as something other than {other nonmetals}. So we decided that they and the halogen nonmetals would collectively be the reactive nonmetals.

Developments. A couple of articles in the peer-reviewed literature have prompted me to revisit this question. The first is "Metals are not the only catalysts", in Nature. The second is "Organising the metals and nonmetals", in Foundations of Chemistry (disclaimer: 1, authored by me; 2, the scheme I propose is not the same as that in this article).

The upshot is that the other nonmetals can be characterised by their:

1. tendency to form covalent or polymeric compounds;
2. prominent biological roles;
3. proclivity to catenate i.e. form chains or rings;
4. multiple vertical, horizontal and diagonal relationships;
5. uses in, or as, combustion and explosives;
6. uses in organocatalysis; and
7. dualistic Jekyll (#2) and Hyde (#5) behaviours

The first six properties of the nonmetals in this part of the periodic table are documented in the literature. #7 is an observation by me.

Coactive. In light of properties 1, 3, 4 and 6, I suggest the term "coactive nonmetals" would be a good way of referring to the other nonmetals. The remaining nonmetals (F, Cl, Br, I) then become the halogen nonmetals, thus restoring the pre-eminence of this category. Here, we show astatine as a post-transition metal since condensed astatine is expected to be a full-fledged FCC metal.

"Coactive" means, "acting in concert; acting or taking place together". That seems like a good adjective wrt the covalent compounds of H, C, N, O, P, S and Se. For their polymeric compounds, e.g. of H, N, O or S, the connection is to the linked nature of their repeating structural units. That is how the literature tends to deal with the nonmetals, except that it has no common term for the first category. There is also the catalytic conation of "coactive".

The literature. Bear in mind the expression coactive nonmetals is not found in the literature.

That said, the complementary term "coactive metal" is found in literature, in the following senses:

• "…adding a coactive metal (such as Pt, Ir, or Rh metal)"
• "The same set of experiments was performed in presence of other co-active metal ions Fe +2, Fe +3, Co +2, Ni +2, Mn +2, Cd +2, Ca +2, Mg +2…".
• "It is of great interest and challenging to improve new catalysts that consist of any of those components and new active metal component (ie co-active metal, promoter)."

There are several other references in the literature to "co-active" elements, materials or substances, including manganese, iron, nickel, cobalt and plutonium.

In the endeavours by WP:ELEMENTS to nail the other nonmetals, we will have now gone full circle from the original {other nonmetals and halogens} → {polyatomic nonmetals and diatomic nonmetals} → {reactive nonmetals}. Now we have a putative categorisation scheme for going from {reactive nonmetals} → {coactive nonmetals} and {halogen nonmetals} that would fulfil the worthy intentions of our predecessors.

Question: Is "coactive nonmetal" a neologism or is it a descriptive phrase, c.f. "coactive metal"? If there are coactive metals does this suggest there are coactive nonmetals? The other nonmetals category is well enough seen in the literature. The covalent-polymeric, biological, catenative, interlinked, combustive/explosive, and organocatalytic properties of the nonmetals in this part of the periodic table are documented in the literature. Historically, and as noted, the "other nonmetals" category is the most enduring nonmetal category used in the Wikipedia periodic table, until we started complaining about what a non-informative category name this was. Do we now have enough content, in pursuit of a better encyclopedia, to support a change back to a binary categorisation of the nonmetals as coactive (formerly other) nonmetals, and halogen nonmetals? ♦

Hi Sandbh! I think "coactive nonmetal" is a neologism. I am not sure even "coactive metal" is a well-defined term based on the elements themselves. At least some of these uses sound like they are related to the reaction context. For example, the last one (doi:0.4186/ej.2019.23.5.169?) talks about catalytically-active materials, and the addition of another component to something with known activity. The text seems be saying that the additive doesn't just change the structural nature of the original catalyst, but instead has some activity itself. So it's not the periodic-table placement or element iself, but instead 'active' in a specific chemical example. DMacks (talk) 07:44, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Hey DMacks! Been a long time. The situation is a bit of a conundrum. By rights we should show an other nonmetals category since that is the most popular categorisation in the literature. That said, we have a better descriptive term. And our WP:NEO policy can accomodate this:

"In a few cases, there will be notable topics which are well-documented in reliable sources, but for which no accepted short-hand term exists. It can be tempting to employ a neologism in such a case. Instead, it is preferable to use a title that is a descriptive phrase in plain English if possible, even if this makes for a somewhat long or awkward title."

On the first article, we even have an article on organocatalysis, which refers to, "a form of catalysis, whereby the rate of a chemical reaction is increased by an organic catalyst referred to as an "organocatalyst" consisting of carbon, hydrogen, sulfur and "other nonmetal" ^_^ elements found in organic compounds". So that aspect of the properties of the elements found in this part of the periodic table doesn't concern me.

It does not seem "right" to me, in the sense of a better encyclopedia, that all the properties involved are set out in the literature, and there is a popular (relatively-speaking) non-descriptive category name, when there is a better, more descriptive adjective for the nonmetals involved. I don't see how replacing a non-descriptive adjective with a descriptive adjective would be a show-stopping violate WP policy. Sandbh (talk) 08:11, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

Tech News: 2020-33

Latest tech news from the Wikimedia technical community. Please tell other users about these changes. Not all changes will affect you. Translations are available.

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• FileImporter and FileExporter became standard features on all Wikis during the first week of August. They help you transfer files from local wikis to Wikimedia Commons with the original file information and history intact. [8]

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• The mobile skin displays a message at the bottom of the page about who edited last. This message showed raw wikitext. This has now been fixed. Some messages in Structured Discussions and content translation may still appear as raw wikitext. Developers are working on it. [9]

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16:06, 10 August 2020 (UTC)

Today's Wikipedian 10 years ago

Awesome

Ten years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 10:23, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Windscreen

I wrote a sentence to define formaldehyde as a colourless gas. Unlike USA, the rest of the world is using colour, not color. Also polymerisation is spelt with z in my language, but in non-American countries, British English spelling is more common. Acetonitrile, acetyl chloride, carbon tetrachloride have the spelling "colourless". LeticiaLL (talk) 11:27, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Not acetyl chloride, oxalyl chloride LeticiaLL (talk) 11:29, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Also thionyl chloride, phosphorus pentachloride. You can't believe but hydrogen chloride has "colourless" spelling too LeticiaLL (talk) 11:35, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

As I said, see WP:ENGVAR. I won't bother re-typing the basis for that guideline here, except to emphasize that it's "per-article" not "per-editor" and that the guideline has widespread consensus as the style guide here on Wikipedia. DMacks (talk) 11:47, 15 August 2020 (UTC)

Regarding Reverting Edits and Citations of Chris Piche

Hi DMacks you state "Copyvio" for a proper Official Legal source where I cited and provided a Judgement Summary from Canlii a Official Legal Public Database that specifically allows copying.

"...legal materials published on the CanLII website, such as legislation, decisions and commentary, including editorial enhancements inserted into the documents by CanLII such as hyperlinks and information in headers and footers, can be copied, printed and used by Users free of charge and without any other authorization from CanLII, provided that CanLII is identified as the source of the document." "https://www.canlii.org/en/info/terms.html"

Court decisions and opinions, as well as the actual texts of laws, are not protected at all under US copyright laws. This goes back to Wheaton v. Peters, and there have been a number of broader holding since. So anyoen claiming that quoting a court decision is a copyright violation is simply mistaken. (by: DESiegel given to me in the new user section)

Furthermore if my additions to this BLP are somehow wrong and/or copyright violations that would make every BLP with a List of Lawsuits and/or a summary of the Judgment a "Copyvio" using your description.

For example the President's BLP or any other BLP on Wiki that contains Legal references and/or a legal summary copied from a Judgement will you be deleting those as well?

Facts are facts (From Wiki's BLP Guidelines Page :) If someone has been convicted of multiple counts of murder and grand theft, it's not a BLP violation to mention those facts with appropriate sourcing, even though most editors would agree such facts reflect poorly on the subject.