User talk:ComplexRational

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Hello, welcome to my talk page!

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Attention: I prefer to keep discussions unfragmented. If you leave a comment for me here, I will most likely respond to it on this same page—my talk page—as an effort to keep the entire conversation in one place. By the same token, if I leave a comment on your talk page, please respond to it there. Remember, we can use our watchlist to keep track of when responses are made. At the same time, feel free to send an alert to me on this page about a comment you have left elsewhere.

Thank you!

This user is still learning the ropes on how to use Wikipedia, so may have multiple errors in edits.

Welcome to my talk page! Feel free to post any constructive criticism and/or advice; learning is my main goal here. -ComplexRational (talk)

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Your GA nomination of Unbibium[edit]

Hi there, I'm pleased to inform you that I've begun reviewing the article Unbibium you nominated for GA-status according to the criteria. Time2wait.svg This process may take up to 7 days. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments you might have during this period. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Double sharp -- Double sharp (talk) 08:40, 7 November 2018 (UTC)

Your GA nomination of Unbibium[edit]

The article Unbibium you nominated as a good article has passed Symbol support vote.svg; see Talk:Unbibium for comments about the article. Well done! If the article has not already been on the main page as an "In the news" or "Did you know" item, you can nominate it to appear in Did you know. Message delivered by Legobot, on behalf of Double sharp -- Double sharp (talk) 17:02, 10 November 2018 (UTC)

I was mentioned by R8R, so I ended up on your userpage through notification. I wholeheartedly agree with R8R about the Gold article; there is too much to be done based on its status. However, because I saw this section, I highly encourage you to submit a 1-2 sentence DYK question to be featured on the mainpage. I have a few ideas in mind about suitable topics, but because you just got Unbibium to a GA, now would be a good time to get a DYK snippet up. Just a thought. If you need ideas for what it could be, let me know. UtopianPoyzin (talk) 05:06, 14 November 2018 (UTC)
@UtopianPoyzin: I feel that Marinov's claimed discovery in 2008 is bizarre enough to provoke interest in the subject (as a DYK snippet), even though it was a highly controversial claim that was refuted by the entire scientific community. Any other ideas are welcome, just I do not want something that would utterly confuse an average reader (e.g. difficulty in synthesis). ComplexRational (talk) 00:27, 15 November 2018 (UTC)

Gold[edit]

I've wanted to write this all along after you introduced yourself at WT:ELEM but I've been busy and less active here in Wikipedia than I'd want to be. You're certainly right in trying to pick an article of your own and trying to improve it. The most rewarding thing here in Wiki I can imagine is to bring an article to the FA status. However, I'd strongly recommend to pick an easier target. There are very few articles that require some extreme handling, and gold is one of these because it has some unusual aspects about it that differentiate it from most other elements (you'd have to describe gold as an economic asset, for example, its unusual symbolic status, etc.). I remember the struggle I've had writing my first featured article, fluorine. It is difficult to write actually good articles (as far as you're not used to it, then it gets easier), so it is a massive help to have an example to follow, and I remember really wanting one at that point; while you can use examples for some sections, there is no help for everything with gold. (Speaking of examples, I highly recommend examining lead: most element articles are similar, and this one is well-composed, so you're free to use it as an example. I wrote that article myself, and it's probably not very humble to praise my own work, but I implemented a lot of ideas I've had about article writing in it and it came out great. I used it to get thinking started when I started to write aluminium myself.)

Disclaimer: It is no secret that I want to eventually promote that article myself (I have a list of future goals linked to in my own user page) but that's not at all related. I'm thinking in terms of getting closer to the everblue PTQ and I'd be happy to see any cell go blue, so if gold is getting featured without my input, I'll just focus one something else: for example, silver seems an equally good pick. My point is, I do want to help here and with all writing experience I've had, I thinking this suggestion is actually helpful since you're just getting started (I was once there, too) and there are no ulterior motives here. I'd be glad to help you get acquainted with article writing even if you end up ignoring my advice but it seems that I may not be able to help much soon because I'm busy IRL and I've already committed to help UtopianPoyzin in form of a peer review and I've only been able to keep up with them because they seem busy IRL as well.

In the meantime, I could send you a few very good books I've used to this day for writing articles. You could probably find them yourself after some heavy search, too, but it'll save you the effort to do so if you just ask me. Just write me an email with an address to send them to (or, as I recall, you can write any email and while I won't see the address I got the letter from, I can reply to the said email and I see what address I replied to; I wonder if they fixed that). If you're interested, visit my user page, click "Email this user" in the panel under the Wikipedia logo on the left, and write the email.

Whatever you end up doing, I wholeheartedly wish you to have a good time here.--R8R (talk) 14:22, 13 November 2018 (UTC)

@R8R: Thank you very much for these suggestions - and don't feel bad, I am also very busy IRL. For the time being, I would like to focus on bringing starts and C-classes to GA while I learn how to bring a GA to FA. There are a few 'easier' articles I already had in mind (it probably is prudent not to try something like gold yet as I would not know how to do extreme handling), though they fall slightly outside the scope of WP:ELEM and are more related to e.g. nuclear physics. I would indeed appreciate the books very much, though I need to first enable and configure mail. I'll e-mail you when I'm ready, and likely periodically after that (pun intended) as I try to navigate through everything. ComplexRational (talk) 23:00, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Edit: If these books are freely available online, I'd prefer only the titles, authors, etc. and the links. And please respond here or ping me once you send it. Thanks again. ComplexRational (talk) 23:18, 13 November 2018 (UTC)
Sorry I wasn't able to reply sooner. You see, the deal is that I don't have the links at hand and I did say these were hard to find (not sure about all of them, I genuinely don't remember, but some certainly were), didn't I? That's the easier way to go. The harder way is that I once found a book on a site that the copyright owners hardly meant to use to distribute their work freely (and they probably didn't mean that at all) and posted a link to it in a discussion on a talk page (it was a Proto-Indo-European or a Proto-Germanic dictionary and I needed it to write Lead#Etymology and requested some help from linguists here in Wiki in deciphering it). Some editor told me not to do that any more because that wasn't super legal and somehow he mentioned he wished a Proto-Celtic dictionary was available online. I was lucky to find the book he wanted (it probably won't surprise you if I say Google gives you different search results in different countries) and I sent it to him via email; he thanked me and said he wasn't alien to online piracy but posting a link potentially violating copyright anywhere in Wikipedia can mean legal problems for Wikimedia so that was why he'd told me not to share such links via Wikipedia before. (At least that's how I remember the story.) So even if I were to find those links again (which is an unnecessary complication already if you ask me), this may also be problematic for Wikipedia, so let's not do that here. I hope that's fine with you. My email is still available.
Bringing C to GA is also fine. Although I'll note going for GA is a somewhat loosely defined goal. Compare, for instance, ruthenium and iron, which are both GAs: the former is, despite its status, a somewhat poorly written article and I'd certainly want to write more while the latter seems pretty good (somewhat wordy, yes, but I think that's allowed for such important topics in history, biology, industry, etc.) and has most of what you need for a successful FAC. So the former is not very much of an achievement (I have written an article of similar quality, lutetium, also a GA, and now am somewhat ashamed of it. Maybe I'll return to it and get it featured too. Come to think of it, we still don't have a lanthanide FA and that may be a good reason to write one. But I digress) while the latter is. So my advice would be to write such better, deeper in coverage GAs. (Although if you got that far, why stop there and not try to go for FA? I'd be happy to help you out if you try that.)
If you have an idea on which article you'd like to improve, that's great, go for it. But if you happen to want some help at picking an article, I'd recommend checking out Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Popular pages and picking something from the top. Of the C-class articles, for instance, gold seems a huge goal, and phosphorus and sulfur seem pretty big tasks, too, given their role in chemistry and biology, but magnesium should be fine and seems like a nice article for a start.--R8R (talk) 22:16, 16 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm thinking articles such as r-process (for which I actually began a draft), nuclear drip line, and maybe also the hefty extended periodic table, though as I said, they may fall outside the scope of this project and I may need to consult WP:PHYS. I could also try an element article, though I need to review some more sophisticated chemistry and will likely be constantly seeking input from other editors. If I do get a GA, we can then discuss FA prospects (as you said, why stop there?). ComplexRational (talk) 00:49, 17 November 2018 (UTC)