User talk:Owensumm

Late welcome and comments

Nice to see that you continue to edit around here. We need chemists. The list of named compounds is coming along nicely. Here is my main advice - avoid citing yourself (see opening paragraph at User:Smokefoot), and if you must, adhere to the recommendation that you rely on secondary sources (your reviews and books), see WP:SECONDARY. Wikipedia has no aspirations of competing with Chemical Reviews, it is a source of broad information. Aside from being slightly awkward, self-citations presents a conflict of interest (WP:COI). In any case, feel free to ask around if you want to discuss stylistic or technical matters. There are several pretty experienced inorganic/organometallic editors around here, and we are all pretty approachable. Happy editing, --Smokefoot (talk) 23:58, 15 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

heh thanks.. and points duly noted. I have also started a more nebulous list of inorganic reactions, mainly in response to the organic list.. it seems wrong that inorganic chem is so poorly represented on wikipedia. Anyway Im not sure what form this list will end up as, Ive already restricted it to homogeneous rections (otherwise it would be endless). Also I already think I need to remove some of the broader reaction types and keep it more specific, a bit more like the organic one. cheers Owensumm (talk) 04:16, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]

State of inorganic/organometallics here, one perspective

If you can suggest potential gaps or areas, then point them out. We really welcome that. A lot of what we have is driven by Wikipedia:Notability, i.e. some demonstrated value aside from a couple of academics declaring their pet theme important. One criterion is whether the topic spawned a major review/textbook or if a theme went commercial. Of course, concepts are a major emphasis here, since we have an instructional role.

simple inorganics: Almost every binary compound has an article, and we have been careful to note the main hydrates.
simple organometallics: most major Cp, CO, PPh₃, and mixed Cp-CO and CO-X (X = halide, hydride) compounds are described, which are the most popular starting reagents. Alkoxides are largely missing, and I am guessing many important polyoxometallates too.
for ligands, the commercially important ones are mentioned, but gaps exist for specialized apps. Several chiral diphosphines are missing.
classes of complexes are described such as metal aquo complex, metal dithiolene complex, and metal nitrosyls. This approach could be expanded, one problem is whether the article gets viewed because they are not readily searchable.
organometallics by the element has been started for almost every metal and metalloid, and some of these articles are begging for an quasi-expert (that can stick to general sourcing!). Example: organolanthanide chemistry (see template at bottom of page as guide to others).
Bioinorganic is under-represented although some themes could be included under classes of complexes.
Big commercially important catalysis reactions are mostly described, Fischer-Tropsch process, hydrocyanation, carbonylation, etc. Problems exist with the Ziegler-Natta area of metallocenes (Kaminsky catalyst should be merged with something else, etc). The ansa metallocene part is unfinished.--Smokefoot (talk) 12:54, 17 August 2011 (UTC)[reply]