Talk:Wikichem

Questions

Please explain why this cannot fit into Wikipedia. PiRSquared17 (talk) 04:24, 15 April 2014 (UTC)

I think it can and already is to some extent, but the key problems are the lack of organization (semantics) and lack of specialized and more powerful search for those semantics (eg searching all the reactions which a compound may be used in), and potentially the layout. Another problem is there is plenty of chemical information which may not easily fit into an existing Wikipedia page and may not warrant a new page (for example the chemical properties of some obscure compound). Devon Fyson (talk) 02:34, 11 November 2016 (UTC)

redundant but brilliant idea

I agree that the content of a WikiChemistry project would mostly be a duplicate of Wikipedia. However, so is WikiSpecies. I think if WikiSpecies exists, then WikiChemistry is a logical next step. Like WikiSpecies (and unlike Wikipedia), WikiChemistry would be non-language-dependent, existing only in the international language of science, providing quick international reference to chemical elements and compounds. Language-dependent details would then link to individual Wikipedias. Nicole Sharp (talk) 16:20, 11 October 2015 (UTC)

I think this is a great idea, I've been looking for something like this for many years now. Getting and sharing chemistry information is especially difficult as most of it is behind subscriptions which are cost prohibitive for the average person without access to an educational institution. For example Reaxys and SciFinder are both close to what I envision but both are very closed, very expensive, and not collaborative . I think the best implementation of this wiki would be incorporate Wikidata and other semantic methods as much as possible and start by copying over existing data from Wikipedia and organize it. Thus it would behave more like a higher-order version of Wikidata specializing in chemical information. It would not be anywhere close to a duplicate of Wikipedia, but rather use it as a source of information. Then once this wiki is well established, Wikipedia could then use this wiki as a resource for inserting standardized information (chemical data, reactions, spectra, etc) into pages as needed analogous to how Wikicommons is separate to Wikipedia and specializes in curating media which can be used in Wikipedia and other projects. For example the reaction HCl + NaOH -> NaCl + H2O might be used multiple times over several wikis not to mention other websites. Instead of duplicating it, would instead insert the reference to that reaction from this wiki. The same principles have (in theory) already been applied in Wikispecies or Wiktionary (eg you don't define a word on wikipedia, but instead reference wikitionary) and could be done for others too. As for the layout, I think this wiki should be setup into compounds and reactions. Compounds would be easy to deal with where all the data would be stored in Wikidata. Since difference sources can report different values for the same property (eg two similar but slightly different melting points for the same compound), they would both be added. This is done in Wikidata. The more complicated part is handling reactions. Currently it appears wikidata does not support that. The other part would be handling abstract reactions, such as a class of reactions. Then associating all the specific reactions to the abstract reaction (eg HCl + NaOH would be an example of an acid-base reaction). Maybe it would be ideal if wikidata supports that and reactions, and this wiki would merely be an interface to wikidata specializing in chemical data, and all edits would really be edits to wikidata. Devon Fyson (talk) 02:34, 11 November 2016 (UTC)