User talk:Cacycle/Archive 02

This is the archived content from my talk page.

Is Category:Aromatic Hydrocarbons no longer being used?

I noticed that on about Jan. 8, you took "Category:Aromatic Hydrocarbons" out of the Benzene, Toluene, and Xylenes articles, even though these compounds are obviously aromatic hydrocarbons. There were no articles in "Category:Aromatic Hydrocarbons" when I last checked, even though there used to be. Is this category now defunct? I was considering putting Styrene in this category. Should I not use this category now for consistency with the rest of Wikipedia? Do you plan to delete it? It seems to me it is a perfectly reasonable category to use for applicable organic compounds. Do you have a better scheme in mind for aromatic organics in Wikipedia? Articles in Wikipedia are allowed to belong to more than one category.
H Padleckas 07:40, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Hi H Padleckas,

I have rearranged the the categories like this:

• Category:Aromatic compounds
  • Category:Simple_aromatic_rings, fundamental non-polycyclic unsubstituted aromatic rings.
    • Category:Basic_aromatic_rings, basic simple aromatic rings.
  • Category:Polycyclic aromatic compounds, fused aromatic rings that can contain heteroatoms.
    • Category:Polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAH)

I would put toluene, xylene, and styrene into Category:Aromatic compounds and, if you want to indicate their hydrocarbon-ness, I would put them also into Category:Hydrocarbons. You may reanimate Category:Aromatic hydrocarbons, but I'm not sure if there is any need for such a subcategory - these compounds have nothing in common in terms of properties or uses.

See also at the end of Talk:Aromatic_hydrocarbon.

Cacycle 09:59, 25 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Slang terms

Cacycle, slang names have nothing to do with meSquiquifox 02:25, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC), as you would know if you had checked. The Cannabis article is already too long. Perhaps the slang section could be made into a separate article, allowing Howrealisreal more editing freedom.

Organic synthesis

Hi, can you take a look at the new page I put up on organic synthesis? Please feel free to edit it, and I'd also appreciate any feedback. Based on my contributions you probably think that I am an inorganic chemist, but in fact organic synthesis is where my main interest and experience lie! I've put comments about the inorganic template on my talk page, I think most of your suggestions are great, thanks. Walkerma 20:09, 1 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Salvinorin A Effects and Kappa Agonism

Hi cacycle, I've responded to your message on Talk:Salvinorin-A. -- Bk0 22:22, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the save

I see that you reverted the Planets of Star Wars article when someone decided to delete the section on Nubia. I can't see why someone would want to destroy the page I've put so much hard work into. So this is a small thanks for saving the day. -- Wikipedian Riffsyphon1024 23:54, 7 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Articles on the X and the Y chromosomes

Please see the new comment at Talk:XY_sex-determination_system. I think we need to remove two of the redirects, and allow Wikipedia to develop one article on the X chromosome, and one article on the Y chromosome. What are your thoughts? RK 22:30, Feb 13, 2005 (UTC)

Inorganic compounds by element

Hi Cacycle, Thanks for your prompt feedback on the Inorganic compounds by element page. I don't have strong preferences either way in terms of format, whether it's a table or it's a list. However, do you know ways to override the "alphabetical" macro that seems to have taken over the page? One of the major reasons for me trying to do this page was to come up with something where the list of contents at the top was of elements, not letters of the alphabet. (Please, not another alphabetical list of compounds!) Do you know a way to fix this, while still using the list format? At least it seems you can still write a direct link to (say) all arsenic compounds.

Also, please let me know if you have any thoughts on the scope and goals that I put on the scope and the goals of the chemicals wikiproject?

Once again, thank you. Walkerma 17:30, 2 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Phenol image

Thanks for sorting out the image on phenol. I wasn't all that sure what the original image was showing, guessed it was some sort of resonant structure illustration, but I did know that it was horribly low-resolution and unreadable, so all I did was produce a higher-resolution copy. Drw25 22:35, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC) PS. The original image is also used on electron density - maybe you could create a similar image of benzene for that article? Drw25 22:40, 6 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Benzenemethanaminium

Wow. I came upon this page that you tagged with a speedy delete. Just for grins I did a quick google search for the term. I'm not a chemist by any stretch, but this word seems to be used to refer to many different things. There was even one page that listed it as a synonym for denatonium benzoate. I will delete the page, but I am very curious now as to what the real story is. -Rholton 03:38, Mar 9, 2005 (UTC)

Actually I have seen that page. Benzenemethanaminium is not a real compound, it is just a fragment of a chemical name, meaning the benzylammonium group C₆H₅-CH₂-N⁺R¹R²R³. You can find such fragments in Google because chemical names are separated by dashes and count there as words. Its relation to Denatonium would be like that of the word "to" to this specific sentence... :-)

RfD

Hello, Cacycle. I wanted to let you know that I moved the deletion request for Diethyl benzyl benzoate to RfD, as it didn't qualify as a speedy. Thank you for tagging it, though. I've had your user page on my watchlist for quite some time now, just so I could find you easily if I ever had a chemistry question. Thank you for all the work you're doing around here. I'm always glad to see a professional editing in their area of expertise. Happy editing! SWAdair | Talk 07:32, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Oops, I have now commented on it on RfD. Thanks for the compliments :-)

NMR Spectra

Hi Cacycle,

I have thought for years that there should be a good repository for NMR spectra, where people can access spectra of simple compounds for free. This would be extremely valuable for teaching NMR- I like to put up web-based NMR problems, but I have to run spectra myself to avoid copyright problems. It seems to me that Wikipedia is an appropriate place to put spectra, with links from the appropriate chemical compound page. What do you think? I put up an example on the heptane page, please give me your thoughts.

I'm not promising to run hundreds of spectra- I think at present we need much more basic content- but I often have need to run a simple compound as part of my teaching or my research work, and scanning and uploading such a spectrum isn't too much work. If this is a useful enhancement to a compound page, how should it be laid out? How would you see it fitting in with your "simple organic" template? Also, if there are any compounds that you think desperately need NMR spectra, let me know.

Walkerma 16:44, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Are you aware of SDBS (http://www.aist.go.jp/RIODB/SDBS/cgi-bin/cre_index.cgi)? They have NMR spectra of most catalog chemicals (although many are low-res 90 MHZ spectra). I think it's a good idea to upload spectra as images and put a link to them into the articles. Cacycle 22:03, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)

It is my opinion that making a tutorial on NMR spectra for Wikipedia is technical overkill for the average reader of Wikipedia. However, a chapter that is a tutorial on NMR spectra seems appropriate for Wikibooks, especially somewhere in the Organic Chemistry book of Wikibooks. Wikibooks is more geared for lengthier chapters and tutorials like that, which often go into greater and longer depth in single areas than would be appropriate for a general encyclopedia. Links in Wikipedia to Wikibooks can easily be inserted when a reader wants to learn some topic in more technical depth. Wikibooks is also less finished than Wikipedia and there is much more "opportunity" for expansion. By the way, I just inserted myself as a participant in Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry and Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals. H Padleckas 08:18, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for the feedback. I was unaware of the Japanese database, and so was our science librarian until 5 minutes ago! That looks to be a very useful resource. I would still like to see some public domain spectra, however, so I will probably begin attaching links to any suitable spectra I run.

Regarding a tutorial on NMR, this is something I hadn't considered before. I agree that a detailed tutorial is probably going a bit far, though perhaps a short page outlining the basic terms may be appropriate for Wikipedia. However I myself believe that there is no "average" Wikipedia user, there are only people searching for information- many articles outside chemistry go much deeper than I would ever care to know, for example, but I don't dispute their value. But if a high school student wants to do a term paper on NMR spectroscopy they should be able to locate something useful in Wikipedia. Walkerma 15:16, 10 Mar 2005 (UTC)

If it is of any help I also have some NMR spectra to share. The tutorial is necessary, because the NMR article is to much on the physics side. The NMR is the best friend of an organic chemist! I would like to help! Stone 8:20 11 Mar 2005

Anethole

Thanks for helping clean up the anethole article. But my source (On Food And Cooking, by Harold McGee) says "Anethole is unusual among phenolic flavor compounds for remaining pleasant to the taste at high concentrations." Isn't anethole a phenolic? – Quadell ^{(talk) (sleuth)} 03:10, Mar 11, 2005 (UTC)

Actually it's not. The term phenolic indicates a free alcoholic hydroxy O-H group like in phenol. In anethole there is a methoxy O-CH3 group instead which makes this compound an ether. This has also a drastic influence on the chemical and physical properties. Cacycle 09:19, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I noticed that inconsistency too in the Anethole article, so I added the chemical structure of anethole and added the "Category:Ethers". H Padleckas 12:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Laughing at your edit summary remark "removed Koala nonsense" from Phenols. I was tempted to do it myself, but I restrained myself from deleting that informative tidbit of knowledge. I plan to further edit the Phenols article to replace references to "hydrocarbon" with something more appropriate. H Padleckas 12:12, 11 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Sysop

Congratulations! You are now an admin - I suggest you read the administrators' reading list and administrators' how-to guide before using your new powers. Warofdreams 13:23, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Congratulations! How in the world did I miss that RfA? You certainly would have had my vote. I've wondered before why you never sought adminship, as the extra options would help you in your work here. I'm glad to see you've done it. Happy editing! SWAdair | Talk 13:49, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Phenols and Koalas

I saw that bit on BJAODN and checked the article, but it seems like something that, if true, would make a very interesting addition to the article. Do you have information that reveals that portion of the article to be nonsense? --L33tminion | (talk) 15:59, Mar 15, 2005 (UTC)

It seems to me that if true it is interesting, but we should not have half of the text of an article on phenols be about one obscure fact. This would be like having half of the page on Ann Boleyn being about her having eleven fingers (which our article says is an untrue myth, by the way). One brief sentence about koalas might be OK IF TRUE, but no more. I think a general statement that "Phenolic compounds, when taken up orally, rapidly diffuse into the brain" etc is a gross generalisation that could not be proven for all phenols. Let's make sure our articles cover things that are important in a balanced way. Walkerma 17:21, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Actually it is obvious for everybody with a pharmacologal background that this is a hoax. But I have checked it anyway: the provided reference is about something unrelated and there is nothing on the net about it. Cacycle 19:11, 15 Mar 2005 (UTC)

See Talk:Ammonium latest edit. H Padleckas 16:26, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Question: Are you sysop in Wikimedia Commons?

Are you a sysop or do you have sysop authority in Wikimedia Commons? I upload many of my chemistry images there so they can be used by all Wikimedia, including all languages of Wikipedia, Wikibooks, Wiktionary, etc. For example, I have the chem. structure of Bisphenol A there, which I plan to put into Wikipedia someday. H Padleckas 16:54, 19 Mar 2005 (UTC)

No, I'm not a sysop at Wikimedia Commons, but I will now upload all new images there. For linking it makes no difference if the image has been uploaded at the english Wikipedia or at the Commons, just put the image name into square brackets. Why don't you just add the image to the Bisphenol A stub. Cacycle 13:19, 20 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Acidic Image

Hi Pixeltoo,

you have uploaded the following hazard symbols:

• Image:F inflammable.png
• Image:N Dangereux pour environnem.png
• Image:O comburant.png
• Image:T Toxique.png
• Image:Xn nocif.png

Unfortunately there is one missing for corrosive, similar to . Do you have this one too somewhere? cacycle

Please don't use these images anymore, since they are all available in SVG: (see commons:Hazard symbols) --MarianSigler 13:17, 30 April 2006 (UTC)

Hello cacycle, as you insist i will create one. I just need time to remember me how i created the other pictures. :) Pixeltoo 00:05, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Great! Maybe also one similar to (the last missing one). If you still have the project files it would be very interesting to have the symbols as high-resolution images (> 2000 pixels width, orange/black two color PNG) so that they could be printed out. Cacycle 11:03, 21 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Ethyl alcohol

Why did you revert the formula at Ethyl alcohol? Fornadan 12:34, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Because the standard for empirical formulas used in the chemical infoboxes is: carbon atoms, hydrogen atoms, other atoms alphabetically. Instead of C2H5OH or CH3CH2OH it must be C2H6O. This is especially important if you are searching for a certain formula. Cacycle 12:59, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

OK, but then I think the infobox should make clear that it's the empirical formula that is given, especially in cases where another variant is in frequent use Fornadan 13:42, 5 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Isoquinoline Revert

You just reverted the formatting changes I made to Isoquinoline. Did you look at the result? Even if the formatting preference is to have the chemical box at the top -- our readers still need to be able to read the copy. It would be better to make the box smaller or move all copy -- as I did -- either to the top or bottom of the box. I'll leave the adjustment to you, but the current pattern is really unworkable. WBardwin 02:01, 10 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Template Ecstasy

I agree with you about the template, and have deleted it. I made a large number of changes to the article and chose to restore those, rather than try to cut and paste pieces into your minor edits. Regards -SV|t|th 09:54, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Ecstacy

Would you mind clarifying a few points for me?

• 1-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-N-methylpropan-2-amine

  I can find no other source stating this chemical name. All I can find is 3,4-METHYLENEDIOXY-N-METHYLAMPHETAMINE

• Image:MDMA.png

  http://www.erowid.org/library/books_online/pihkal/images/pihkal109.gif

Would you explain to me why yours is correct even though it doesnt agree with the majority of other sites? I'm not a chemist so i'd love for you to explain it to me (preferably in terms I can understand).  ALKIVAR™ 17:56, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Hmm... Chemical nomenclature is similar to language - you have dialects, slangs, literary language, classical languages, sacred language, standard language, and official language. Usually, but not always, you can understand all these differing types of languages, but every language is used in a specific context.

The strictly systematic IUPAC nomenclature is the official language of chemistry - even if is often not the name that chemists actually use in everyday life and in their writings. Therefore you often have zillions of different names floating around. But there is only one offical name and the rules are very complicated. I guess not many chemists actually know all rules, but there computer programs that can do this automatically. I have generated the systematic name "1-(benzo[d][1,3]dioxol-5-yl)-N-methylpropan-2-amine" with ChemDraw. "3,4-methylenedioxy-N-methylamphetamine" is a semi-systematic but commonly used chemical name and has definitely to be mentioned in the text.

Cacycle 21:33, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Regarding the chemical structures: Both are the same and both are correct. Similar to the naming of compounds there are many different ways to draw chemical structures. Every style has advantages and disadvantages and is used in certain contexts. The style seen in the EROWID image is actually a (common) mixture of different styles and that used in the Wikipedia image is the more stringent style (see bond line notation and [1]). Cacycle 22:01, 14 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for clearing that all up, for the record that was well explained :) At least now I have something I can point to when someone else changes the article again.  ALKIVAR™ 15:23, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Commons

Topic: Image:Gefahrensymbol X.png: You must say who's the painter! (It must have been de:Benutzer:BirgitLachner, de:Benutzer:Paddy, de:Benutzer:Zinnmann and de:Benutzer:Phrood). 80.171.11.89 12:36, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC) (de:Benutzer:Van Flamm)

Oops, I have now added the following authorship to all "Gefahrensymbols". Unfortunately I cannot see the history, so I have to rely on your message.

Authors:

• de:Benutzer:BirgitLachner
• de:Benutzer:Paddy
• de:Benutzer:Zinnmann
• de:Benutzer:Phrood)

Cacycle 13:58, 15 Apr 2005 (UTC)

Descirption of Molecular Mass

Should not the term "molecular mass" be changed to "molar mass" (see Wikipedia definition of molecular mass) to be consistent with that definition of the term "molecular mass"?

This is with respect to the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoxazole

Thanks, Sam Smith Michigan (Please delete this item after review to avoid cluttering the comments)

New standard template

As one of the main people contributing organic compounds, I'd really appreciate your feedback on the new template, which is a BIG change from the old one. The draft version is on my talk page and the discussion is on the Chembox discussion page. It's designed to be concise, easy to use, yet adaptable, and it incorporates the idea of s supplement for more obscure information like Molar entropy etc. Some of the entries (like pKa or specific rotation) are obviously optional. I'd like to ask, if you were planning on expanding (say) the toluene article to Featured Article status, would you use the table? If not, why not? Can we fix it so that you would be happy to use it? Should we have a cccccc colour option for the organics, and the pale orange-red for the inorganics? With more & more chemists coming onto Wikipedia I think it's important we try to standardise- though I think your simple organic template has become a de facto standard for organics. Thanks, Walkerma 16:29, 6 May 2005 (UTC)

Nicotine

On Jan. 18 I added the melting and boiling points of nicotine, and later the same day you changed the melting point from -80 to -7.9. What is your source?

EricK 19:53, 12 May 2005 (UTC)

I have searched http://chemfinder.cambridgesoft.com for nicotine. It is also very obvious that such a large compound cannot have such a low melting point :-) Cacycle

Merbromin?

Mercurochrome I wanted to help but I don't know this chemistry so well. So my question is, is Mercurochrome deserving of being placed on List_of_organic_compounds? Thanks!--x1987x 01:50, Jun 25, 2005 (UTC)

Mercurochrome is an organic compound - an organo-metallic compound to be more specific. I think you should place it on List_of_organic_compounds. Cacycle 28 June 2005 22:14 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry)

Thank you for contributing to Wikipedia:Naming conventions (chemistry). I have now summarized the discussion on that page and added certain points which have been discussed at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals. Any comments, and especially improvements, on the results would be more than welcome. Physchim62 7 July 2005 11:04 (UTC)

Mechanism prettificiation

So, I've been uploading quite a few chemdraw documents of reaction mechanisms. If you'd like to prettify them (using your standard), just drop me a line. I hate chemdraw so much, but there's really nothing else out there... Takometer

Indoles, family pages, synthesis pages, etc

Hi Cacycle, We've been having a lively discussion on all sorts related to indoles on my talk page, and since you are both an expert on indoles and on Wikipedia I would really appreciate it if you could offer an opinion. Cheers, Walkerma 22:39, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi Cacycle and Walkerma,

You all seem to know much more about Chemistry than I do. I created most of those image of Plant Hormones without really knowing about the Chemistry (I just copied the structure off of Web pictures into freeware Chemical drawing programs). Getting the stereochemistry is important. Cacycle redrew my Salicylic Acid. The most important plant hormone is Indole Acetic Acid (IAA) and I know it needs redrawing. If I could get you guys to do it it would be great. Also if you could make suggestion about where to get the others redone. Brassinolid has been redone but not posted yet by -mkh-.--socrtwo 03:53, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Chemical structure of Melanotan I

Hi Cacycle !

Could you make a chemical structure of Melanotan I and add it to the following article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melanotan, please !

Thanks a lot !

PubChem

Nice one, Cacycle, I just saw it go through on Special:New pages. Keep up the good work! Physchim62 18:16, 8 October 2005 (UTC)

ChemDraw

I was curious about the settings you used for drawing the chemical structures in ChemDraw. They really look nice. Thanks. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ | Esperanza 23:25, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Thanks. You can find a detailed description about making, uploading, and using chemical images on my user page. Cacycle 23:33, 24 October 2005 (UTC)

Reinstating deleted links

Cacycle, I would have appreciated if you'd contacted me before reinstating all those external links added by 128.95.153.42 (talk • contribs). I actually disagree that the BrainInfo site is so awesome. It has a lot of information but the user interface is far from intuitive and requires a lot of navigating. Most of what can be found there should actually be integrated into Wikipedia articles, theoretically with this site (or other sources) as a reference. JFW | T@lk 23:22, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

The site might not be user-friendly, but it is an important portal with interesting resources. As such it deserves its place among other external links - even better ones if you can find some. 128.95.153.42 put some effort into adding these links as they pointed to the respective brain structures. The mass reverting would have needed a good reason in the edit summary. The reason stated by you at the talk page of 128.95.153.42 (talk • contribs) gave me the impression that you have not checked the links. Cacycle 09:37, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

SMILES and CAS templates?

Do you think it could be a good idea to consider writing the CAS reference numbers and the SMILES structures as templates? Geographical coordinates, another kind of structured data with links to external sources, already have something along those lines via eg. the template:coor d; see Wikipedia:WikiProject Geographical coordinates.

It could perhaps be useful to use similar approach for the CAS references (which could link to the appropriate databases online), and SMILES (which could in turn link to services for eg. displaying them in VRML or in eg. Jmol applet, or to do anything else that can be done with SMILES string. Any kind of semantic markup could be useful here; if it is consistent, it can be always rewritten to something else by a robot when the need comes, and if it is a template it can be rapidly modified.

What is your professional opinion? --Shaddack 05:24, 28 October 2005 (UTC)

I created the templates template:CASREF and template:SMILES. An example of their use is in the article Safrole. The templates are quick and dirty at this moment. The long-term plan is to figure out how to emulate the geographical coordinates behavior, using the same trick with a redirect page, the short term plan is to add some related functionality using Greasemonkey scripts. The minimal way could be perhaps to export semantic hooks via eg. enclosing the strings into <span class="valueCAS">CAS-num-ber<span> and <span class="valueSMILES">SMILESSTRING<span>, inside the template - then we can add various user interface functionality related to the marked up value types via either Greasemonkey or user javascripts installed in the WP:TOOLS style. --Shaddack 00:31, 29 October 2005 (UTC)

Suppliers/manufacturers

Hi Cacycle,

I noticed that you removed the suppliers/manufacturers section from the iodomethane article, is there a specific reason for this? This section is standard in most of our longer chemical substance pages, I think we have it in a couple of hundred or so. As long as the info is posted by a legitimate editor, and there are several sources listed, we consider it to be appropriate and in harmony with Wikipedia policy. Spam is watched for and is (has been) deleted when it arises. Is there something particular about MeI that makes you think it's inappropriate in this case? Or do you have a problem with the policy generally? If the latter, can you raise it as a topic on the WP:Chem talk page? Cheers, Walkerma 02:20, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Yes, I think supplier lists on articles are highly inappropriate for Wikipedia. We are not the yellow pages or a buyer's guide - especially for such trivial things as common chemicals where thousands of suppliers exist. Moreover, individuals cannot order chemicals from these companies and companies or universities already know were to buy these chemicals - they have the respective catalogs or use the online catalogs of these companies.

We could instead compile a list of important chemical suppliers and link to that list. There are also several websites specialized in finding manufacturers for chemicals.

The only case were links to suppliers or manufacturers would be appropriate is for very special compounds where only one or two sources exist. These should then be put under External links. Cacycle 10:36, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Thymine image incorrect

Could you please update thymine so that the image correctly displays the methyl group?

Thanks.

The image is right. The methyl group CH₃ is the line in the upper left corner. The carbon atoms are implicit as well as the hydrogen atoms. I have already removed your note from the article. Cacycle 21:58, 1 November 2005 (UTC)

Confusing edit summary

Confusing edit summary, and maybe more going on? Could you have a look at my remark/question at Talk:Patti Smith, because I'm really a bit confused what is going on here, and your edit summary doesn't seem to explain your edit. -- Jmabel | Talk 22:19, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

See my reply under Talk:Patti Smith. Cacycle 01:33, 25 November 2005 (UTC)

Wrecked Unicode in Earth article

Your edit of the Earth article [2] completely wrecked the Unicode letters in the page. Please make sure that this hasn't happened on the other pages you've edited. The few pages I checked appear ok.--Jyril 20:51, 3 December 2005 (UTC)

Oops, thanks for your note. I will check and correct the few edits for which I have used an external editor. Cacycle 00:18, 4 December 2005 (UTC)

Manual of Style

Cacycle, since you have previously expressed an opinion about the issue of what the Manual of Style has to say about links in the title, I'd like to invite you to talk a look at the further discussion that I have had with User:E Pluribus Anthony at Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style#Links_in_the_title.

I disagree with the "compromise position", which I think reflects only his desire to water down this rule. I would like to hear your view. If you and others are happy with the compromise, then so be it, I will leave it alone. If not, then let's change it back. Regards, Ground Zero | t 17:37, 6 December 2005 (UTC)

New editor guidance

Hi - A new user, User talk:Reveldrummond, has recently added the article Magnesium in biological systems. I gave him/her a welcome and have been helping with it a bit. I would appreciat it if you would take a look and add your biology expertice. The article has a large ref section and the user plans to expand it. Please take a looksee and give some advice/guidance. Thanks, Vsmith 01:48, 16 December 2005 (UTC)

Deletion due to "insignificance"

Some time ago, in September of this year I believe, you deleted an addition I made to the LSD (disambiguation) page. We had a short conversation in the entry's Talk page, but you didn't respond to the last post I made. Maybe you just forgot about the page or didn't expect me to respond, but anyway, I don't care about that particular incident anymore. However, I really would like to know your opinions on my viewpoint, so could you please let me hear them?

What you posted:

The debate clubs of the Lynbrook High School, the Leland High School, and of any other school with a name beginning with "L." are simply not notable enough to be mentioned here. This is also indicate by the fact that none of them has its own article (don't understand this as a request to start them...). This is an encyclopedia and not a dictionary of acronyms. Cacycle 16:08, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

My response:

Cacycle, in my opinion... 1. Your statement "this is... not a dictionary of acronyms" is contradictory to what is evident on the LSD disambiguation page. I do not understand how half the other entries on the page (such as those of works by certain bands) are notable enough to be mentioned but I am not about to delete them. In any case, you'd probably consider such a deletion to be sabotage and I likewise consider the deletion of my entry an equally unnecessary and biased measure. (I don't hold such a grudge anymore, haha ^.^)

2. The debate clubs of Lynbrook and Leland are certainly notable. They are neither lacking in size, prestige, nor renown amongst our generation and were Wikipedia to be maintained by a yet younger set of people, these clubs would be on par with any university student group including Liberating Students Digitally, which is listed on the LSD disambiguation page but also lacks a Wikipedia entry of its own.

I continue to protest but I will respect the status quo and refrain from re-posting my entry. To tell the truth, I have never been a member of any debate club (though I was indeed a student at Lynbrook), and I am much more interested in your biochemical research than speeches. However, I burn with indignation at the short shrift given on Wikipedia to societies organised by high school students in sharp contrast to the credit accorded to collegiate groups (even fraternities, for the love of god!).

--Lapin rossignol 17:11, 2 September 2005 (UTC)

Added comment:

I think that so-called trivial facts are no less important than and are hence every bit as valuable as information generally considered essential. Facts are facts! No fact should be intentionally excluded!

Anyway, you might want to read my user page User:Lapin_rossignol for more details on this issue and a general idea of my standpoint in Wikipedia. But I really would appreciate your response!! Thanks a lot!

(P.S. Trust me, I'm not a debater! :-p. Debaters would be much, much more skilled at their art than I am, haha. My true interest is Biochemistry but I don't considered myself qualified enough to contribute to such articles because I'm only a first-year university student, so I limit myself to "general knowledge" contributions.)

--Lapin rossignol 17:25, 28 December 2005 (UTC) (actual signature for this particular post = all of the above under the heading)

Barbara G. Walker

Hi Cacycle,

I just wanted to let you know that I have edited the Barbara G. Walker entry. Mainly, I have included information about her from her autobiography The Skeptical Feminist and changed the bit about her believing in the goddess (she describes herself as an atheist).

Ekpardo 06:03, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Adding spaces below section headings

You edited Wikipedia:Manual of Style recently to add spaces after a section heading. May I ask why? By Wikipedia:Manual of Style (headings), spaces are completely optional, and like spaces after periods, an article shouldn't be edited to change someone else's spacing. You didn't give a reason in your edit summary, so I was just curious about the edit. Thanks. --TreyHarris 20:33, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

The edit was about spacings and blank lines in the example text. Please see Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style#Improving_the_source_text. Cacycle 23:42, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

List of publications in chemistry

Hi, I would welcome your comments on Talk:List of publications in chemistry. I am trying to get it going and have put up a lot of ideas recently. There seem to be few chemists here, so I really need all to comment. Thank and best wishes. Bduke 03:52, 11 January 2006 (UTC)

editor script

I replied on my talk with some stuff you might want to read. — Omegatron 19:20, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Your javascript diff code

Hi, some people have asked me to show diffs in popups and I noticed that you've got some code for diffing wikitext. I haven't taken a look yet, but does it work independently of the rest of your script, and please could I use it in the popups script? Cheers, Lupin|talk|popups 22:35, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

It's from here, I believe. — Omegatron 23:44, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Thanks. There's certainly something wrong with that code, though - my first test, diffString('a', 'b') generated no output. Lupin|talk|popups 14:41, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

There are some bugfixes and enhancements in User:Lupin/diff.js. It detects changes in whitespace and should be more robust than the original. Lupin|talk|popups 18:06, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I have written a new diff function completely from scratch. I have added it to the editor script, but you can also access the extracted function under User:Cacycle/diff.js. This algorithm can detect blockmoves and can resolve way more cases compared to the first code. The algorithm has been optimized for wikicode. Cacycle 23:05, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I just tried diff('a b', 'b a'), which outputs

<span class="diffBlock0"></span><span class="diffBlock1">b<font class="diffInsert"> </font></span><span class="diffBlock0">a<font class="diffDelete"> </font></span>

Is that correct? This sort of thing was causing problems in my code until I realised that if you have ordered output then you need to worry about blocks which are identified as the same text but appear in opposite orders in the old and new text. I haven't got an efficient way of dealing with this well in all cases, although the inefficient untangle function in my code is a start. I'm using a suboptimal untangling algorithm at the moment.

I think the original implementation is a good one for steps 1-5 (with a few little bugs which are squashed in my code), but it sucks in step 6, the output. That's the hard part, it seems to me. Lupin|talk|popups 23:47, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

I have made some changes to the code including some bugfixes. The output above is correct because spaces and other non-words have a lower priority, i.e. they are not used as seeds in pass 3 (and the post-pass 5 "island fixing" code). In the a.b example it is then not possible to determine where the middle non-word belongs to.

I will try display block moves in a better way including the point where it has been removed from. Cacycle 20:02, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Hm, maybe I'm misunderstanding something here. Ignoring the tags with no content and all whitespace, I'm interpreting the output above as essentially

 <unchanged>b</unchanged><unchanged>a</unchanged>

but that seems wrong, as it would incorrectly imply that the original and final text were both 'b a'. The output should be something along the lines of

 <deleted>a</deleted><unchanged>b</unchanged><inserted>a</inserted>

Lupin|talk|popups 23:12, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

The diff code has been moved from User:Cacycle/editor.js to User:Cacycle/diff.js. Please update your monobook.js as described on User:Cacycle/editor. There is also a new page about the diff code: User:Cacycle/diff. The algorithm has been extended and shows optimized block moves. It also gives correct results for the example above ("a.b." to "b.a." -> "[>]b.[a.]"). Hope you like it... :-) Cacycle 18:02, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

Nice! Seems to work well to me - I just have to wrap my head around all those shifting blocks :-) Could you please make it possible to not mark the unchanged blocks between changed blocks that currently get coloured light grey? I'd like to produce small diff fragments for popup previews, and this would help me to see what's relevant and what's not. Lupin|talk|popups 04:09, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Ok, done. Additionally all diff elements are now customizable, see the beginning of diff.js. Cacycle 22:26, 1 February 2006 (UTC)

Hello again :) I put your code in my popups script for previewing diffs, and I found a bug.

 var o="foo bar";
 var n="bar"
 diffString(o,n);

yields "bar<br>", which seems wrong. Lupin|talk|popups 05:06, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I found that nasty little bugger... It's fixed now. Cacycle 19:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Minimum block size

Please could you optionally disregard small blocks, say smaller than a certain number of characters? Otherwise the diffs can look very busy if a section is rephrased. (I'd like to see the change, but just not with the moved block markers). Thanks! Lupin|talk|popups 05:15, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I have implemented a minimal block size (together with some other features). The custom variable blockMinLength has now a default of 3 real words (excluding spaces and non-words). Cacycle 16:06, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

IE chokes on SetupDiff()

I haven't tested it myself but apparently IE chokes on the line insert.innerHTML += html; in SetupDiff(). I suppose the obvious fix is to use a static external stylesheet, but I wonder if there's a workaround. Lupin|talk|popups 17:18, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

IE freezes with even trivial diffs

I'm testing IE under wine (I don't have windows), and when I execute diffString('a','b') it seems to go into an infinite loop. Lupin|talk|popups 17:48, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

Seems to be the regexps in splitText that are freezing it. That function seems to be all about word splitting - is that actually used? For examples, diffString('foo bar baz', 'foo bAR baz') gives a diff with deletion/insertion in the middle of the second word. Lupin|talk|popups 17:58, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

I don't use IE either and I do not have the time to adopt the code for this crappy browser. However, if somenbody would send me the changes I would apply them. The split routine is always the first step in the diff process. The deletions /inserts in the middle of a word are a late-stage feature of the program: identical starts and ends of deleted/inserted sequences are removed from the changes. Cacycle 19:34, 2 February 2006 (UTC)

language support

Is this script usable in other wikis? I suggest also to use some standard css-definitions. --Olliminatore 12:50, 26 April 2006 (UTC)

Spaces in links

(Moved from User talk:Cacycle/editor) Ok I installed it, but no matter which editing button I press, it adds spaces around the pipes in all links, so I can't really use it yet. Why does it do this? — Omegatron 21:05, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

You can add this to your monobook.js:

var spacesAroundPipes = false;

It will disable the insertion of spaces around pipe symbols in links and templates. Cacycle 22:55, 31 January 2006 (UTC)

PNG File

Structure of unmodified epoxy prepolymer. n denotes the number of polymerized subunits and is in the range from 0 to about 25

Can you please draw a png format of Bisphenol A type epoxy resin's molecular structure? I have given a scanned copy of the drawing in the article, "Fusion Bonded Epoxy Powder Coatings" in wikipedia under subtitle, "Chemistry of FBE". Penguin s 09:51, 1 March 2006 (UTC) Penguine_s March 01, 2006

Here it is. Cacycle 13:08, 2 March 2006 (UTC)

Thank you very much..... ~~ Penguine_s