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Wiktionary:Votes/pl-2020-02/CFI for chemical formulae

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CFI for chemical formulae

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The status quo: There is no standard for what chemical formulae are acceptable in Wiktionary. Entries get debated individually at RFD, which is a waste of time and generally fails to create clear precedent.

The proposal: All chemical formulae are Translingual. To be included, chemical formulae must be attested in publications that (1) are not written for a scientific or technical audience; (2) don't make clear that they're formulae by e.g. explicitly discussing chemical formulae or by listing their component parts; and (3) do not otherwise explain the meaning of the formula. So, a textbook saying "AsH₃ is made up of an As and three H atoms" wouldn't support AsH₃, but a murder mystery saying "the air in his scuba tank had been replaced with CO2" could support CO₂.

Rationale: This is similar to our current policy WT:BRAND, which is effective at allowing commonly used brand names, without opening up the floodgates to everything. Similarly, although many dictionaries cover at least some chemical formulae, no general-interest reference work would cover the millions that exist. The idea is that the rule will still allow the inclusion of chemical formulae that are in common use in publications written for a general audience.

Schedule:

Discussion:

Support

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  1. Support Imetsia (talk) 16:30, 1 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Support —Μετάknowledgediscuss/deeds 05:34, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    Support (as per my comment on the talk page) -Stelio (talk) 09:37, 2 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Support. Seems sensible. Andrew Sheedy (talk) 07:21, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Support  --Lambiam 15:50, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  5. Support Equinox ◑ 17:05, 3 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  6. Support - -sche (discuss) 21:32, 5 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  7. Support Old Man Consequences (talk) 14:52, 8 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  8. Support --Droigheann (talk) 05:53, 14 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  9. Support — justin(r)leung { (t...) | c=› } 16:45, 16 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  10. Support * Pppery * it has begun... 04:32, 18 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  11. Support. I think I may like this even better than my own idea (1, 2).​—msh210℠ (talk) 21:00, 21 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  12. Support İʟᴀᴡᴀ–Kᴀᴛᴀᴋᴀ (talk) (edits) 21:40, 29 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose

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  1. Oppose I weakly supported the last time, but I have decided to oppose since I have seen no convincing (to me) arguments against the alternative policy to include formulas attested in use that have CFI-meeting names, which I like better. A discussion is at Wiktionary talk:Votes/pl-2020-02/CFI for chemical formulae#Include formulas attested in use that have CFI-meeting names; for instance, the argument that this policy would exclude CO₂ is utterly unconvincing, as I argued there, and similarly, I have seen no evidence to support the notion that very long formulas are attested in use. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:47, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    As for "no general-interest reference work would cover the millions that exist": and no general-interest reference work would cover the huge counts of attested chemical names and names of biological taxons. Wiktionary is not the kind of general-interest reference work that carefully limits its scope. Furthermore, the alternative policy mentioned by me above addressed the concern with the number of included items since it ensures that the number no more than doubles, and counting other languages apart from English, not even that. --Dan Polansky (talk) 09:53, 6 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Oppose After due consideration, I now disagree with the proposal. Qualification by CFI is by use, not mention, and that seems sufficient to me for chemical formulae as well. We allow common names (in use) for chemicals, including from technical sources, and there are a potentially unlimited list of them; likewise we should allow formulae (in use) for chemicals, including from technical sources. A more effective policy would be to only allow chemical formulae to have entries if they come with qualifying citations. -Stelio (talk) 10:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree that chemical formulae should be listed as Translingual. But I opine that "AsH₃ is made up of an As and three H atoms" is not a good example of an in-use citation. See H₂SO₄ for an example of a good in-use citation. -Stelio (talk) 10:40, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
    For further clarity: taking just alkanes as an example (as on the talk page), there is a theoretically limitless list of them, and the names can be constructed by rule. This is true of both the common names and of the chemical formulae. But we restrict the list of cmmon names by requiring citations (as per CFI). If we allow the common names by citation in technical sources, why should we only allow the chemical formulae by citation in non-technical sources? We should be consistent: do the same for both common names and chemical formulae. -Stelio (talk) 12:25, 20 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Abstain

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  1. Abstain Don't much care either way. --{{victar|talk}} 02:55, 9 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  2. Abstain I am skeptical about the dichotomy posited by the text. What about a textbook saying “the air in his scuba tank had been replaced with CO2“. Chemical works can have historical excursus, and the restriction apparently is not that the formula must be attested in fiction. I can foresee the quarrels. But teehee, I hinder not the chaos that the community desires, I care not about formulas, forthy I prefer that they are not here at all. My position stands that H₂O and CO₂ should be deleted because they are SOP and that if a piece of information can be displayed linear and encoded in Unicode it implies no way we should include it. Emojis should be excluded too, there are better projects on the web on them. Maybe we should have integrations for other websites particularly for the cases when formula display is needed, which can be done better by other websites in other than linear fashions. Like we point to Wikispecies for taxa. (Would also support superscript/tooltip or the like in-line links to CAL because they have a coverage that we will never get up to and duplication is stupid anyway.) Fay Freak (talk) 23:56, 9 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  3. Abstain Numberguy6 (talk) 18:24, 13 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]
  4. Abstain - DonnanZ (talk) 08:39, 30 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Decision

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Passes 12–2–4. --Gorgehater (talk) 02:45, 31 March 2020 (UTC)[reply]

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