I propose 3 changes to isotope pages: First, the Isotopes of dysprosium page says 164 Dy is the heaviest theoretically stable nuclide. It is actually 92 Zr because the stable nuclides in between are either theorized to decay or spontaneous fission. Second, mark the remaining observationally stable nuclides to observationally stable (191 Ir to 205 Tl ). Third, adding navigation links to nearby element isotopes pages, sort of like on the element pages. -322UbnBr2 (Talk | Contributions | Actions) 04:57, 23 November 2020 (UTC)
About the navigation you mention: what do you have in mind? With elements, it is simply four (N-E-S-W in the periodic table). Would it involve decay chains?
FYI, a complete navigation table, isotope pages by periodic table, is at the bottom, like at Isotopes of dysprosium#References. This navigation aid does not show in mobile view (being a navigation aid). OTOH, if you see a strong content-based relationship in 'nearby', that could be in body text and/or the isotopes infobox.
I note that I am not happy with the N-E-S-W neighbors addition to the element infobox. For the same reason: it is more practical navigation, not a strong content relationship (many more such flaw relationships exist in the PT that do not deserve to be in an WP:infobox). -DePiep (talk) 10:07, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
In the element infoboxes, the NESW links make sense because of the adjacent periodic table to provide context. Far more important to providing those links would be to display a periodic table with each cell linking to the Isotopes of X page. But the idea of showing the complete decay products for each isotope seems interesting to me. YBG (talk) 23:28, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
In general, I reject adding navigation aids to the infobox. Strongly related isotopes info (-pages, -series, -relations) may be added if there is good reason, when numbers are low. How many data points, say links, would that be? Keep in mind that the infobox should contain main article info only, not all info. -DePiep (talk) 13:29, 28 November 2020 (UTC)
For the element infoboxes, the N-S-E-W relationships make sense. E and W are next door in atomic number, and getting to the next or previous element makes some sense for navigation. N and S also make sense: they are in the same group and are hence homologous, so obviously also related. For the isotope infoboxes, E and W still make sense as they are the products of a single beta decay. However, N and S don't make any sense anymore because that second dimension of the PT is based on the electronic structure, not the nuclear one.
That being said, I think a really better solution would be to make the PT bigger so that you actually had enough room to place the symbols and click on them. Yes, that would imply 18-column rather than 32-, but it really is the same thing anyway. Then we would not need any NESW links anymore because they would already be there in the PT.
(The anchor for the old thread name, so it still works. Double sharp (talk) 13:21, 18 November 2020 (UTC))
Similarly, there may be some grounds for just deciding on other nonmetals and halogen nonmetals and calling it a day there.
We had other nonmetals from 2002 to 2013, and no one complained too much.
That's what Britannica does at least for other nonmetals. LANL and ACS are naughty and say "nonmetals" without "other", but an "other" makes that simple and accurate (since halogens and noble gases are nonmetals).
Britannica, LANL, ACS, and RSC all call out "halogens". I think that strongly suggests that including halogens as a category is the common thing to do and that we should do it somehow. The only difficulty is astatine because it is ambiguous: does being a metal (agreed by RS focusing on it) exclude it from being a halogen? Some think yes, some think no, so "halogen nonmetals" solves the issue. If you think yes, it's pleonastic but not wrong, and if you think no, it becomes actually needed for it to be right. (Besides, when most people think about halogens, eight-hour-half-life astatine is not really on the radar, is it? So if only F-Cl-Br-I are mentioned, perhaps it isn't so bad.)
Since it appears that most sources for beginners aren't bothering with a special name for H-C-N-O-P-S-Se, perhaps we should not try either. It appears that people generally feel it's too much for beginners. Remember, we're not looking for a perfect category scheme that somehow avoids "other" categories (I have doubts you could make one in the first place although I'm ready to be convinced), but something that is more or less near the centre of what beginners' RS do considering our likely audience, and manages to stay at least not obviously self-contradictory while doing so. [Added later: besides, if you think both that 3 categories are better than 2 and that something should replace other nonmetals, then maybe it is easier to switch them one at a time.]
In the past, judging from Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 15#Polonium – metalloid or post-transition metal?, the way we solved these issues was just to post at the talk page, see how the response was, and if no strong objections were raised just carry out and do it without needing to RFC anything. That seems in keeping with how we treat the entire rest of the article: anyone can improve it, there's no need for anyone's changes to go through an RFC if it's not generally felt that they'd be controversial. So I try doing it this way to avoid (1) a bureaucratic logjam and (2) extending the issue when there's the whole rest of the article to work on. If people feel generally OK with it, that's good; if not, then that's also good.
@Double sharp: I am rather opposed to the idea. I'm not particularly clinging onto having "reactive nonmetals," and I could live with "other nonmetals." However, I am worried about "halogen nonmetals." As far as I know, it is common to consider halogens either as group 17: fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine (nobody cares about astatine one way or another), or as group 17: fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine (and maybe even tennessine). Specifically excluding astatine from the set of halogens, when the element is explicitly mentioned, is not common; at least I don't expect those readers before whom we'll be wearing our educator's hats to be familiar with it. Talking about "halogens" is common; talking about "halogen nonmetals" (as opposed to merely "halogens," because we would otherwise use the shorter name) isn't.
We could do it, and it wouldn't be the end of the world: astatine is a relatively marginal element, and we can talk ourselves into thinking it's okay. But I'd prefer we didn't create such ambiguous categorizations when there is an option not to.--R8R (talk) 15:07, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
@R8R: Thanks for your comment. Well, I also don't particularly cling to "reactive nonmetals" (I want to ask: reactive relative to what?), and could live with "other nonmetals", so I see we are halfway in agreement. ^_^
As for the halogens problem: I think the issue is just what you say, that nobody cares about astatine. Indeed the only reason we are in such a bind is that the latest research suggests that At is a metal. If not for that, I think having At under "halogens" alone would satisfy everybody. So I'd ask: even if specifically excluding At is not always a thing, is it not the case that it's practically excluded just because the only halogens anyone gets to play with to a first approximation are the first four? For example Greenwood and Earnshaw spends its halogens chapter almost totally on F, Cl, Br, and I and only covers At in a brief section at the end. And when halogens were covered to me in school, while there were some of the usual questions about predicting properties of At, it really wasn't covered in any detail at all unlike the first four. Finally: it seems common to mark out the halogens in some form, and it's only At not being a nonmetal that makes this difficult. Then I would like to ask: if we agree that astatine is peripheral, then is it really the right order to have problems with At block the reintroduction of halogens? I feel that the commonness of halogens as a category for beginners means that it should come back in some form: if I understand correctly, Sandbh may feel similarly. But if we are going to have halogens back, then there seem to be only two options for At: either it goes under halogens (undermining detailed reports that it is a metal), or it goes under metals and generally doesn't make things too bad because At often gets informally excluded from halogen discussion for beginners anyway. So that's my argument: both treatments have problems, but maybe this has fewer problems.
I think that suggests that things may not be so bad, and I guess that when you say that we could do it and it wouldn't be the end of the world it means you're willing to talk. But if you're not convinced, it's totally fine. I'd also like to hear from the rest. Double sharp (talk) 15:30, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
I see. Your logic seemed somewhat strange to me at first, but I think I got it. It appears to me there is a difference in what we seek to prioritize: you seem the want to prioritize categorization of "big" elements first, whereas I'm looking for a self-consistent scheme first. That's why I am trying to get rid of inconsistencies first, and you seek to clarify which elements are big first when there is a potential inconsistency. Both of these approaches are valid, I'm just glad to have figured it out. (IIRC you displayed similar logic when it came to coloring of copernicium.) With this clarification, I believe my position is clear, and I have nothing of substance to add. I'm interested to hear what other editors think on this topic.--R8R (talk) 16:04, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
@R8R: Yes, your position is clear and you've understood my approach here. (That's generally my approach just for categorisation because I think of that as just a human-made give and take; for the record, I feel differently about layout questions, but you already know that and those issues are frozen.) We can wait and hear from the others indeed. One question, though, is raised by what you've written. You mention getting rid of inconsistencies: do you think that our current scheme with reactive nonmetals, or my proposed one with other and halogen nonmetals, has an inconsistency? And if so, could you briefly explain what inconsistency/ies you see? (Because I'm personally not seeing them.) Double sharp (talk) 16:33, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
As you know in the past, I have argued vociferously though not effectively against the trifurcation of the nonmetals, but I have now come to believe that the time and energy I spent on that was a total waste. I have a limited amount of time to spend on WP and on ELEM, and I should spend it on things most helpful to readers, and I rather think that article improvement trumps element categorization by orders of magnitude.
@YBG: So...is that a "go ahead", "don't do it", "please please please stop talking about this so we can work on the article", or something else? (Just as not-too-serious characterisations in an attempt to lighten the mood.)
I only suggested this because both Sandbh and I seemed to be in favour of trifurcating the nonmetals. And since this is one of the issues where we fought the most, I thought that since we both agreed on it we could just do it, really call it a day without people having "and then we're going to change this!!" at the back of our minds, and really focus on the article itself. That was really my worry, that if we stop talking about this one people will still have it in their back of their heads and won't focus effectively on the article like we should, so I wanted to take a leaf from that 2012 thread on polonium and try to resolve it very quickly in a few days and put a result into action and then agree not to talk about it again without any feelings of "the discussion wasn't finished!". If you think we shouldn't be talking about it at all now, that's perfectly fine too; it's just that I don't understand what you're saying. T_T Double sharp (talk) 16:56, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
I am saying that I have no objection to change or non-change. My preference is to spend the least amount of time at the crossroads and start forthwith down one path or another, provided, of course, that we don't have to retrace our steps in the near future. YBG (talk) 17:03, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
@YBG: Right, thanks for the clarification. I also want to spend the least amount of time on this as possible, which is why I'm trying to mimic the old Po thread in 2012 that managed to amazingly enough wrap itself up in exactly one week (26 June – 2 July 2012). ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 17:07, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
YBG and Double sharp, remember that the outcome doesn't have to be dichotomous. Yes, we can only represent one way on the PT shown, but that does not preclude a section later showing a different perspective linking to a more detailed discussion in a different article. There is no reason that the halogen article has to start with halogen = group 17 and not address / recognise that more limited sub-sets are used by the terms in certain situations and further down in the article. A general rule need not apply at all times. EdChem (talk) 00:41, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@EdChem: Yup, it doesn't have to be. I was speaking only for the "general" situation we're dealing with at the periodic table article and for stuff like infobox templates. Specialised articles need not by any means do the same thing of course, they will do and discuss whatever is more relevant for their contexts. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 00:45, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@EdChem: Just asking you since you are a chemist: exactly how is astatine's status as a halogen treated in your experience by your colleagues? Is there any difference between views of organic and inorganic chemists? Does anybody really care much (outside I guess the few who work with it, since they probably care)? Have you ever actually gotten to work with astatine or know someone who has? Is it well-known that recent results (both theoretical and empirical) are leaning towards astatine behaving more like a metal than not? And if it is, does anyone think that that has anything to do with whether At is a halogen or not? Thanks for your answers if you decide to give them (since your statement about the group 3 thing at ArbCom was useful). I understand you would prefer to let us decide this among ourselves, but in this case I think any information you would give on this would be useful to let us do that. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 16:43, 15 November 2020 (UTC)
Double sharp, I wasn't particularly aware that astatine was coming to be seen more as a metal than a metalloid. I've never worked with it and don't know anyone who has. My guess is that most would view At as a halogen just from being in group 17, but that more as a default that a considered analysis of the term "halogen"... though organic chemists do often limit the term halogen to those typically used. I do know some with strong views on La / Lu, though, but that tends to be inorganic / organometallic chemists who work with lanthanoids. EdChem (talk) 00:35, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
@EdChem: Ah, so it is my suspicion then: nobody cares much about any of this except those who work with the elements involved. ^_^ Thank you, this helps a lot! Double sharp (talk) 00:38, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Compromise idea 2: other nonmetals and halogens with At as a halogen?
Here's another possibility: why don't we simply colour astatine as a halogen, with no quibbles about whether or not it is a metal? That agrees with IUPAC, first of all. It also happens to agree with Britannica, LANL, ACS, and RSC.
This is, indeed a more group-like definition of what a halogen is. But it's consistent with what pretty much everybody else is doing, including with tennessine. That makes me think that actually nobody seems to be thinking that the metallic properties in any way block At from also being a halogen, particularly when it does sometimes act like a halogen.
As R8R correctly notes, it is not common to specifically exclude astatine from the halogens. Indeed, as EdChem seems to be suggesting, the majority view among chemists is that astatine is a halogen almost as a default, and that its informal exclusion is not so much due to people having analysed At chemistry and what "halogen" means but more due to people just not caring about it. Perhaps we should follow suit if that is how the literature seems to be, rather than trying to be better than them for an element with a still relatively undeveloped chemistry.
There is a con: doing this means we have to stop with the explicit "umbrella" categories of metals and metalloids and nonmetals. That's because "halogen" no longer implies "nonmetal" (not that it seems to have universally done so in the literature in the first place; maybe for some, by no means for all). So, instead of the legend looking like this:
I think though that this is not a big deal, because the majority of categories still retain "metal" / "metalloid" / "nonmetal" in the name, and because this kind of compact navbox without the umbrella categories is already present in {{Periodic table (navbox)}} right now. Besides, this reflects actual usage: there is a certain ambivalence about whether "halogen" and "noble gas" imply the whole group or go along with the baggage of nonmetallicity as well, and not a consensus in the literature, so it seems correct to be ambiguous about it when everybody does that. It should be noted after all that Britannica, LANL, ACS, and RSC all call tennessine a halogen too – but (1) we can appeal to IUPAC's written word, and (2) most importantly we have given ourselves an out by having an "unknown chemical properties" category, which no one can deny Ts truly belongs to at the moment even if some definitions might also give it a pass as a halogen! That neatly solves how to deal also with questions about category overlaps: although most sources don't stripe, the result should be OK as long as the element in question is shown in one of the two categories it really fits in.
We thus end up with a totally consistent set of categories: IUPAC is used for the common categories (AM, AEM, Ln, An, TM, halogens, noble gases), with "does it appear in Britannica, RSC, ACS, and LANL" as a hopefully unassailable benchmark for "common" when it comes to beginners' literature. (Admittedly this does mean that group 12 could go either way. I have a thread about that, it is a separate issue.) Then for the region in between; the metalloids are charted by Sandbh's amazing work at lists of metalloids as just the common six, and then the ones to the right are called nonmetals and the ones to the left post-transition metals, which is also common. So everything is well-informed by reliable sources.
So that should reflect the literature situation, in which At is considered a halogen nearly universally, but its status as a metal or a nonmetal is up for debate with most basic treatments thinking of it as a nonmetal like its lighter congeners and most more advanced treatments saying "um, that might not quite be the case for all of its behaviour". Faced with the situation of a poorly understood chemistry and reliable sources still not quite agreeing about whether astatine is a nonmetal, a metalloid, or a metal, the "halogen" category therefore neatly sweeps under the rug the problem of just what happens here, when it is not something the average layman should be too interested in.
As YBG has already made statements about being neutral about whether or not to change, this is mostly meant for consideration by R8R and Sandbh. DePiep may be interested as well.
(Avoiding the plurals is also me playing with semantics to be technically correct while being simple. Because if I see a legend saying "halogens", I get the impression that "oh, these are all the halogens". Whereas if it says "halogen", then one can argue "yes, it says these five are halogens, but it doesn't say that these are all of them". Or maybe this is getting a bit too desperately twisty. ^_^)
As a final reiteration of the salient point: this table makes no claim at all about whether astatine is a metal, a metalloid, or a nonmetal. All of that can be discussed in the text where the appropriate context is listed. All this table says about astatine is the incontrovertible fact that it is a halogen. If readers focusing on astatine do not want to read the detailed text about it and assume what is not said here to classify it, then we cannot really stop them from not reading the fine print when the issue is a fine-print one. Double sharp (talk) 23:00, 16 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your very gracious reference to the lists of metalloids as being amazing.
Considerations
Proposed nonmetal RFC
I have a good option in the form of the proposed RFC, and I'd be interested to learn of the community's view, including from our colleagues at WP:CHEM.
Metallicity trends
Having a legend in which the top half shows metal-metalloid-nonmetal is consistent with the L-R progression in metallic character.
To the extent that we try and follow the literature, I'm uncomfortable with the observation that, according to my (as yet unpublished) COPTIC database, 85% of 62 tables surveyed showed sundry categories (50%) or metals-metalloids-nonmetals (35%).
In the p-block we can see the progression in nonmetallic to metallic character going down the groups. This progression wholly or partly follows a nonmetal→metalloid→metal trend.
We know iodine has a metallic appearance under white light; that its crystalline structure resembles that of gallium; that it's a semiconductor (band gap ~1.3 eV); that it's electrical conductivity is better than that of selenium[!]; and that its bonding has some delocalized character. So, it's not surprising astatine has been predicted to be an fcc metal, with the team making this call including the recipient of the 1981 Nobel prize in chemistry. The third author, Ashcroft is a solid state physicist; his textbook on solid-state physics, written with N. David Mermin, is a standard text in the field. We know their Sep 2013 paper has been cited 35 times without dissent.
For Ts, we note that, "GSI (14 December 2015). "Research Program – Highlights". superheavies.de. GSI. Retrieved 9 November 2016. If this trend were followed, element 117 would likely be a rather volatile metal. Fully relativistic calculations agree with this expectation, however, they are in need of experimental confirmation." Although we have not called Ts yet, and that's fair.
We can see the same thing happening in the noble gases, with some cationic behaviour by Rn. For Og the speculation is that, unlike the insulating noble gases, it is likely to be a reactive semiconducting metallic-looking solid, with a band gap of 1.5±0.6 eV cf radon 7.1±0.5 eV, and +2 and +4 as its most stable oxidation states.
To some extent, I think that using "halogen" as a colour-category in a metallicity-based scheme is telling lies to children, so to speak. As opposed to halogen nonmetals which seems like it is plain as day. What is happening in group 17 is not so hard for the general reader (our primary audience) that it needs to be abstracted out of the way. It works OK with using AM and AEM since all the elements involved are metals. It runs into problems in the p-block, with the diagonal appearance of the nonmetal to metal transition. Which does continue into the halogens and the noble gases + Og (solid, reactive).
The WP table is a metallicity table rather than a groupic table.
ACS, EB, LANL etc tables
The ACS, EB, LANL, and RSC tables show that categorisation schemes vary, although the broad contours tend to converge, even if they are fuzzy at the boundaries. So there will always be a TM category, even though the L and R boundaries may vary.
The RSC table is groupic, rather than metallic-nonmetallic progression based. The colour-category scheme of the EB table predates our own WP PT from 2003, and has not been updated in that regard since J J Lagowski (decreased 2014) drew it. The ACS table is more like our table and they show At and Ts as halogens. They also make dubious calls on the status of Cn to Og: they colour Cn as a TM[!] when Cn is more likely to be an insulating nonmetal, and they colour categorise Og as a noble gas! The LANL colour categories have never been updated, since they were first posted prior to the WP PT. For ptable.com it shows astatine as metalloid.
Astatine's category history
When we changed At from nonmetal to metalloid, there were no complaints. Ditto changing At from metalloid to metal. That's presumably consistent with most chemists not caring since so few would ever get to experiment with At.
Regardless, astatine will remain, of course, a halogen.
"Textbook errors"
Astatine raises a question on the reliability of RS. I presume we are all familiar with the idea of textbook errors, which arise from the authors not doing their research. JChemEd ran an extensive series on these for more than ten [!] years.
Nearly all RS have no idea about At. They copy whatever the other RS say, parrot-like, due to "publish or be damned" and figuring it is not worth the effort to do more research. They ignore relativistic effects, which explain why At is a metal rather than a semi-conducting metalloid, and e.g. the colour of gold, and why Hg is a liquid.
We do however have the 35 more credible RS who have cited Hermann, Hoffmann, and Ashcroft on At being a metal, once relativistic effects are taken into account.
That At is expected to be a metal has been around since it was discovered in 1940.
Siekierski and Burgess (2002) in their short 195 pp book, Concise Chemistry of the Elements, refer to astatine as a metal; Turova (2011), in her 157 pp. book, Inorganic Chemistry in Tables, appears to refer to astatine as a metal (hers is an English translation from Russian, so that's why I say "appears").
Philsophy?
Perfect is the enemy of good. I feel the general reader could understand the difference between halogen nonmetals and halogen metals, just as there are nonmetals, metalloids, and metals among the pnictogens and chalcogens.
Oxygen is universally regarded as a chalcogen, as is sulfur. We do not have a chalcogen colour category since that (by itself) is not a metallicity category.
The astatine gordian knot is not worth the bother.
I feel At as a halogen does not represents a better solution.
Thank you for your sourced opinion, Sandbh. Personally, I do not agree with your view of the source situation for At as a metal, but I feel that this case is better made at an RFC which I now agree is the better path forward.
I would nonetheless like to coordinate my proposal of this with yours in some way. To that end, I would like to first hear from R8R what he thinks of this proposal with At as a halogen, since his previous objection was to "halogen nonmetals".
My current proposals and thoughts are evolving slightly as we discuss these matters, so I would like to request some time before any RFC's launch, and some discussion of exactly how the nonmetal one will go forward. Depending on response from R8R and further discussion with Sandbh regarding how similar our proposals really are, we may have two separate RFC's instead of one. Double sharp (talk) 00:23, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Double sharp: I tend to think the non-metal RFC should go ahead. You could vote to keep two categories, and in the discussion section explain your reasoning for doing so, i.e. that you have a separate RFC that you will put, following the nonmetal RFC, should consensus not be established for three categories. That may the easiest way going forward, but let me think about it some more, including your comments and request at my talk page. Sandbh (talk) 01:52, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Double sharp: I think the nonmetal RFC should go ahead. Whatever happens, it could be followed at any time by an RFC focusing on the status At. That seems to me to be the cleanest way to proceed.
I support our historical decision to categorise At as a PTM. I haven’t read anything since then that merits revisiting this decision. The formation of a monocation in aqueous solution, without any inordinate difficulty, is a hallmark. Equally, At shows some non-metallic behaviour as could be expected from a PTM.
Astatine could equally have been expected to be a metalloid (i.e. a semiconductor) but for relativistic effects.
Upon reflection, our decision to go two nonmetal categories was less than optimal. I think WP:ELEM members recognised that. But nobody had a better option/s at the time. Now we do, IMHO.
--- Sandbh (talk) 05:38, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Sandbh: Well, it's not seeming that clean to me anymore, unfortunately. T_T The problem is that the status of astatine impacts exactly what the category is going to be called: "halogen" vs "halogen nonmetals". And that was why R8R opposed Compromise 1, so it is important. As it stands, my proposals are getting further and further away from what you want, unfortunately. That's why I feel like I should try to get mine over with first, because mine is general for a large swath of the PT, and yours is about just the nonmetals; and because mine offers an alternative that is quite different from all of yours for the particular region your proposal is about. So I continue to feel like trying to lump mine and yours together in the same RFC does a disservice to both your proposal and my proposal. But maybe I will ask for some advice.
P.S. There is indeed strong evidence that some sort of cationic aquated At+ species exists, but its structure is not clear. The two alternatives listed seem to be [At(H2O)]+ (only one solvating water molecule!) and [At(H2O)2]+; if it is the former then there is a real question about whether this should really be considered an "astatine aqua cation" or rather "protonated hypoastatous acid" (which is analogous to what iodine can do!) It also seems that in both cases according to my source the water has the partial positive charge and the astatine has the partial negative charge, thus raising serious questions about whether or not this is truly quite like a "metal" cation. Since the paper on condensed-phase At is only theoretical, I would say that I am not convinced that astatine should really be reported this authoritatively to be a metal. And I say this while continuing to believe in metallic astatine as a hypothesis! Double sharp (talk) 11:30, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Double sharp: If consensus is not achieved with the nonmetal rfc, you can follow with an rfc proposing the reintroduction of the halogen category including At. If consensus is achieved with the nonmetal rfc you can follow up with an RFC proposing the reintroduction of the halogen category. I don't expect their would be any drama trimming the "nonmetals" from halogen nonmetals. The nonmetal rfc has sufficient merit by itself. Other rfc(s) of course can be put forward; my feeling is that each deserves their time in the sun, preferably not at the same time.
@Sandbh: Well, that's kind of precisely the thing. My RFC is not going to be just about astatine anymore. It is currently planned to be about changing in entirety to the ACS/LANL/2010 scheme (see the bottom of this page), which impacts not just At, but also group 12, Po, and the superheavies. So the issue is separate but overlaps, which is what makes it difficult. That's why I've been asking if you would object strongly if mine comes first, because:
if yours runs first, and it gains consensus, then mine is left in an awkward position because the issue is separate but overlapping: my proposal is related to the corner you're concerned with but impacts some of the rest of the table as well. So we are left without a clear consensus on the other issues. This becomes difficult unless I offer my scheme as a side one in yours, but then that drags it off your desired topic, also not good.
if mine runs first, and it gains consensus, then it decides the whole thing, and then there's no such problem: your section (nonmetals) would also have been decided. (If that is not an outcome you like, note that you are perfectly free to oppose my proposal when it runs to preserve the status quo or even support your own split instead; if enough people are convinced to your side that I get no consensus, then you can open your own, and everything works well; and if enough people are convinced to mine that I get consensus, then it basically acts as though I oppose all your options in yours and ask for At in halogens, and enough people are convinced by that.)
if either of us runs first and don't gain consensus, then of course there is no prejudice against the other running his.
Because of recent tensions I have been worried about how it would look to do that. However I feel that for this reason it might be simpler if I ran mine first. You are of course perfectly free to oppose mine when it runs, if it runs before yours. ^_^ I would like to ask that we consider it just as a matter of how each one can get its deserved time in the sun most effectively without overlaps. Double sharp (talk) 22:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I have to think about it some more, and I'm not ready to give an answer right now. I suspect, however, that even if we remove the metal/nonmetal distinction from the PT, it will still be thought to be somewhere there. It will still look like the categories to the left are metals and to the right are nonmetals, and astatine will still be thought of as a metal. Besides, is removing those two categories, metal and nonmetal, a good thing or is this loss at least outweighed in terms of encyclopedic value by having a new halogen category? I doubt it.
On the other hand, even if it's unprecedented for us to have a category that has both nonmetals and a metal, that's still an interesting category name, and a popular one, too. I need to think whether I can justify having it in our new element system and whether I'll be able to call that scheme consistent. I'm currently leaning no, but your blocks-only proposal also seemed too much to me at first, but I grew to it over time and even wanted to support it had you ended up having an RfC on the matter.--R8R (talk) 06:34, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@R8R: Thanks for your opinion, looking forward to your answer. I've been discussing these things somewhat and thinking of them on the grounds of what others here (Andrew D., EdChem, Jehochman, Softlavender) have said, so a compromise 3 should also come shortly. Double sharp (talk) 11:32, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
(I add this to preserve the previous anchor and to make it clear where this is planned to go.) Double sharp (talk) 22:11, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Here's a third compromise idea (and probably the one I will end up proposing at an RFC): follow the tables of the ACS and LANL in their category boundaries are exactly the same there. In the cases of disagreement of category names (next to the metalloids), simply be neutral and use "other metals" and "other nonmetals" to create a complete return to the version of 2010, before any of us three still discussing this (me, R8R, Sandbh) had ever touched the template.
(Well not quite, because at that point the discovery of Ts had not yet been announced. But I guess that is a side issue.)
This is also almost exactly the ACS table (except we have "other nonmetal" instead of "nonmetal"; I feel this is justified since noble gases are generally regarded as nonmetals). It is also almost exactly the LANL table (except it has also "post-transition metals" – but there are multiple names for those metals as detailed at Post-transition_metal#Related_groupings, and "post-transition metals" raises unproductive questions about aluminium, so I feel we'd better leave well enough alone). Anyway, the category boundaries are exactly the same there.
I recognise that this is not quite the current table. Scientifically speaking, if we look at the specialised sources, it is true that some elements could be treated better. One can make arguments about polonium and astatine, and also argue about the colouring of the superheavy elements. But:
The perfect is the enemy of the good, following Andrew D. The proposed version is evidently thought good enough by serious English-language secondary sources (American Chemical Society, Los Alamos National Laboratory)
The changes from this to the current table seem to have generally been because of elements like astatine where the situation is not well-known, and it seems to me that caring too much about this is not an ideal situation for the readers. That's based on things Jehochman has mentioned on YBG's talk page: Another way to think of this is that any diagram or table will oversimplify whatever it is representing. Some oversimplify one way, some another. Don't let perfect be the enemy of good. Imagine you are explaining chemistry to a first year high school student. What do they need to know? Any extra complexity an be explained in the article text (who say this alternative, who says that alternative), or footnotes.
Jehochman suggested the LANL table as a compromise on the ArbCom request page: PERIODIC TABLE OF ELEMENTS: LANL - the closest thing to a standard that I can find. This is "A Resource for Elementary, Middle School, and High School Students", which means it should be suitable for a general audience such as Wikipedia readers. If anybody is an advanced chemistry student, they will know where else to look to find more advanced information. ArbCom can't impose a standard, of course. This is a suggestion that might help us all find a path forward from this dispute.
No one at the basic level we're writing for, apparently, cares that the chemical properties of the heaviest elements are unknown when it comes to colouring them in anyway. According to the 2016 IUPAC recommendations on naming new elements, Ts and Og are in fact new elements of the halogen and noble gas groups. So we already have an official precedent for doing what ACS and LANL do and calling Ts a halogen and Og a noble gas even if their chemistry probably does not match. Do I think this is not a good idea scientifically? Yes, I am quite against it as a matter of opinion, and find it silly to call an element that probably behaves like tin a noble gas. I also find it awkward to colour elements when their chemistry has not yet been investigated. But if the sources do it, I feel that is far more important.
The group 12 issue is not really a matter of 50-50. Jensen, the source for this assertion in post-transition metals, wrote that it is 50-50 only in "advanced monographs on coordination chemistry and organometallic chemistry". Later he discusses the situation in "general chemistry and lower-level inorganic texts". Then he writes when describing periodic tables with transition and main-group elements distinguished "In all cases, the Zn group was incorrectly labeled as being a member of the d block or transition block". So, although he doesn't like it, it seems that group 12 as transition metals simply overwhelms in basic sources. The exclusion is based on advanced considerations about bonding that don't need to be gone into at this level, and anyway opens some cans of worms with mercury.
Post-transition metals are explained above. The term isn't IUPAC-approved, there are multiple terms for this part of the periodic table (post-transition metals, poor metals, chemically weak metals, semi-metals, B subgroup metals), and therefore I feel that if "other metals" is good enough for the ACS, it ought to be good enough for us. Anyway it gets rid of tiresome questions about how aluminium can be post-transition when there are literally no transition metals before it.
This is what we had in 2010 before any of us touched anything, which may be welcome given some statements of Softlavender at the ArbCom case. We had this scheme from 2002 in fact. Presumably, all of us feel that it is not perfect, but there is no consensus in sight for how to improve it. Since we changed it, we've been changing things back and forth every few years, but this remained stable for literally eight years. If you don't count the "uncolouring" of the heaviest elements, then literally ten years. That tells me that this is good enough and therefore I suggest that we stick to it. And since this predates any of us changing things around, I believe this sends a powerful signal that we are willing to drop the matter and stop the arguing, that has been productive at nothing except getting the community annoyed at us.
To me, all ideas of philosophical consistency pale before (1) following the sources because they don't seem to care about it and (2) ending the issue using extremely common category names.
Yes, even if we don't say it, it will still look like we have a division into metals-metalloids-nonmetals, and it was still look ike At, Ts, and Og are nonmetals. However, given that experimental results for At are still unclear (At displays both halogenic and metallic properties in experiments), experimental results for Ts and Og are still nonexistent, and the predicted metallicity of these three elements is an entirely theoretical matter at this point, I feel that it is not our place to intervene at this moment, and that the reader will not, in fact, be ill-served. On the contrary, the reader might actually be served well by it, because it will become clear when s/he reads the specific articles that there is some difference between sources in how they use the terms "halogen" and "noble gas" and whether or not they imply an element is a nonmetal. Remember, this is only for a general thing, and in specific cases we do not have to follow it 100%. Just when there are no pressing arguments for a different scheme, as EdChem said above when discussing Compromise 1: YBG and Double sharp, remember that the outcome doesn't have to be dichotomous. Yes, we can only represent one way on the PT shown, but that does not preclude a section later showing a different perspective linking to a more detailed discussion in a different article. There is no reason that the halogen article has to start with halogen = group 17 and not address / recognise that more limited sub-sets are used by the terms in certain situations and further down in the article. A general rule need not apply at all times.
Given his reaction to colouring At as a halogen above as Compromise 2, I think Sandbh is likely to be against this, but it would be nice to have a confirmation. That being said, this is most likely what I will put forward as an RFC anyway. Obviously, my RFC statement will not be this long, and will simply neutrally suggest this form. So I am mostly looking for R8R's opinion here before I go ahead with an RFC. I would like to ask him to take his time and consider.
Oh, and just to clarify: I still scientifically don't like this scheme very much in how it treats those problematic radioactives near the bottom, and I still think it's not perfect. But I also think that if we don't give way on some things, we will never get any compromise out. If everyone goes for "my way or the highway", this will never end. But hopefully, the gravitas of appealing to ACS and LANL (since IUPAC doesn't, unfortunately for us, have a coloured PT) will mean that the result will be accepted as a permanent status quo. And we may apply this principle to future elements too: follow the sources, and if they want to apply categories by group, we'll do that. 119 will be an alkali metal, 120 will be an alkaline earth metal, 121+ will be superactinides for a while, and hopefully by the time that immensely long series is finally left there will be some consensus on how the periodic table looks like beyond there. I think ACS/LANL can have a chance at stopping the debate, and to support it I have put thoughts of "but this is scientifically wrong, I have specialised sources!" and trying to win aside. It all depends though on the opinions of others here and that of the community when I put this up for RFC. Double sharp (talk) 13:10, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Aside from the group 12 question, I see three questions here:
1) polonium is now a metalloid,
2) unknown chemical properties are gone, and
3) a new halogen category.
Here's what I think:
1) Why is polonium a metalloid? Is metallicity of polonium being put into question? Or is it an accidental mistake?
2) I'm inclined to say we should not recolor those elements whose chemical properties remain unknown; it's not right for us as an encyclopedia (supposedly a collection of firm knowledge) to do so. Saying that flerovium is a metal seems a speculation at this point. While from the educational point of view it doesn't really matter, we're an encyclopedia first and foremost; I'm all for accessibility and education, but they shouldn't compromise our encyclopedic goals.
3) If you follow my logic with predicted metallicity, then here's a question. Let's say we color elements 113-116 back to light gray. What do we do with Ts and Og then? If they are also gray, then we have pretty much returned to the previous proposal. If not, this will likely raise questions. Neither solution seems good to me.--R8R (talk) 17:07, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@R8R: It's not a mistake, it's deliberate. Reason being that both LANL and ACS colour polonium as a metalloid, and it can be chemically justified.
I actually agree with you that it's naughty to colour some of the elements beyond 108. It's speculation indeed. The problem is that nobody seems to care. ACS does it, LANL does it, Britannica does it, RSC does it, PubChem does it (actually uses exactly this scheme). And moreover: is it really accurate to say chemical properties of flerovium are unknown? They are not wholly unknown, some experiments have been done. Only their interpretation is not sure. So "unknown chemical properties" also seem problematic for me for Cn, Nh, and Fl. So either way we have to lie a bit. Either we say Cn is "unknown chemical properties", which doesn't match most general RS, and then walk it back and say "oh, it's not unknown after all"; or we say Cn is a transition metal sort of by fiat, which matches most general RS, and then say that combined results of theory and experiment make it seem possible that actually something different happens. But the latter is cutting-edge stuff (paper published literally last year) and I don't think it should be the first thing we're telling the beginners when that's not the first thing anyone else who hasn't been influenced by us seems to be telling the beginners. We're a collection of knowledge sure, but knowledge in the sense of what RS say. It's WP:VNT after all. If most basic sources say something, even if we know it's simply not true, who are we to go beyond them for a standard simplification, especially when the correct thing is much harder to say?
Anyway, that's just my view, you can disagree. Thanks for sharing your view, it is as always thought-provoking, but I think this means neither you nor Sandbh are going to convince me otherwise for this one, so I'll start the RFC following advice from Jehochman in probably a few hours (to take my mind off it and then come back for any last-minute things that may become apparent). Double sharp (talk) 18:33, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
I think you've got a solid case on your hands. I still think that the present scheme is, in fact, the scheme that does the job and it has the benefit of not raising those little questions (which I consider the most important), go no further. However, there is, without a doubt, good merit in yours, and it's likely to obtain at least some (or quite possibly, a lot of) support. I won't be too disappointed if it is chosen by the community.--R8R (talk) 19:09, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Right, R8R, thank you so much for your really kind words. I appreciate them a lot. ^_^
I have consulted Jehochman and EdChem on Jehochman's talk page. The former has already looked at it; the latter plans to. If all goes well, I should be following their advice for RFC drafting, and we should be able to launch soon enough. Like you, I won't be too disappointed if it is not chosen, as I'm not trying to "win" anymore. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 20:53, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Double sharp and R8R: In principle, I'm OK with such an RFC, as I am with any RFC. My only request is to proceed with our RFC's in an orderly and cooperative manner. The nonmetal rfc was proposed on 29 Oct. It is now 19 Nov, three weeks later, and has not yet launched.
The nonmetal rfc proposal prompted mention of another five RFCs. That's OK but I do not think proposing an RFC in response to an RFC and asking for the second RFC to then go before the first RFC is a "proper(?)" way to air of treat the merits of the first RFC, unless the proposer of the first RFC agrees, which I don't. So, I politely oppose starting this option before the nonmetal rfc. Sandbh (talk) 22:13, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you for your polite opposition, Sandbh. Could I politely ask you to reconsider? I feel that the problem here is that this RFC is about a much more general issue than the first one: for example, yours seems to take trifurcation as implying "halogen nonmetals" gets included, but as can be seen from R8R and I there isn't a consensus for that. At least I would favour trifurcation without "halogen nonmetals", but it is very difficult for me to !vote for that without dragging your RFC off topic into other issues, because it is not one of your options. If you do not wish to reconsider, then the best !vote I can think of that I could put on your RFC that really reflects my position would be along the lines of "oppose all options, as none of the Britannica, RSC, ACS, and LANL uses either 'reactive nonmetal' or 'halogen nonmetal', yet all options presume one of them is included. I intend an RFC on whether to institute the ACS/LANL scheme". But even that seems fairly confrontational in a way that I don't want (because it basically smacks of saying "I don't like this RFC and I'm going to start mine"), and it also drags things off topic because instituting the ACS/LANL scheme as I would really support means revisiting many issues outside the nonmetals.
Therefore, for the purpose of discussion flow, could I please ask you to reconsider so that we can go from global issues to local issues and avoid this problem? Because if my RFC proceeds first and is rejected, then I no longer have any of this problem because it would mean my preferred option was truly off the table, and I could shift my support to one of your options without any difficulty.
@Double sharp: I'll reconsider as per your request. I have a few RL obligations today and cannot predict when I'll be able to get back to you (hopefully later today). Sandbh (talk) 23:05, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
Thank you, Sandbh. I've left a note at Jehochman's talk page noting that the discussion is ongoing here firstly. Please take your time. I agree that all of our proposed RFC's have merit; I am simply making my request out of a desire that they proceed in a way that allows the discussion to flow more easily and in a focused manner, making sure any RFC reflects the current variation of options that have reasonable support. I have no strong feelings that my proposed order is the best way to do it; I just feel that such a procedure, no matter how it is attained, would be beneficial, and ask that we work together to find one first of all. Double sharp (talk) 23:10, 18 November 2020 (UTC)
@Double sharp: Something you wrote about the silliness of our "unknown chemical properties" category got me thinking. If we changed this to "category unconfirmed" that would address your concern. Astatine could also be shown this way since its fcc metal structure only has the status of a calculated theoretical prediction, albeit with 35 citations. F–I could then be colour-categorised as halogens.
My only reservation is that a +1 monocation of astatine does exist in aqueous solution in the 1−2 pH range.[1], 55 citations. OTOH nobody seems fussed by the reported cationic behaviour of radon.
Subject to your thoughts, I doubt this would necessitate an rfc. That is, we could change unknown chemical properties to category unknown; change At to cat. unk.; and F,Br,Cl,I to halogens. And, I suppose, the SeSPONCH nonmetals to other nonmetals, followed by the one voter, many votes rfc to change other nonmetals to one of the 22 other possibilities, of which I guess only a half-dozen or so are prospects.
@Sandbh: (edit conflict) I've considered what you're saying. It is a good idea, and I would definitely move my support to it provided my current idea doesn't get support. (And if so group 12 would probably be brought up later and afterwards separately.) After all, there are some discussions about At along the lines of "is it more like a halogen or more like a metal", so we're technically not wrong there either.
But, my main concern with the "unknown chemical properties" thing is not so much what you've mentioned: that was a secondary thing. It is rather that the big names (LANL, RSC, ACS, Britannica, PubChem) don't seem terribly fussed about the lack of chemical studies and colour things in anyway, and that even IUPAC seems to be referring to Ts and Og as members of the halogen and noble gas groups even though their chemistry is probably not going to be anything like that of a normal halogen and noble gas. And that to me is a somewhat convincing argument. You don't have to be convinced by it yourself, but if R8R also thinks the idea has merit and there's a solid case while disagreeing, then it seems to me that I should bring it up for community consensus. We all seem to think each other have plausible cases, arguing won't move anyone, but trying to get a community consensus will let the community decide. But, for the above reasons, I think this is more difficult if the RFC for this scheme doesn't go first. It's not important to me if it gets up or if it crashes and burns; what's important to me is that this idea and the short argument for it be considered by the community.
Therefore, I apologise, but I still have to reiterate my earlier request for an RFC for this one to go first. If it doesn't pass, then I'll indeed have no problems supporting "category unknown" with astatine also included, F-Cl-Br-I "halogens", H-C-N-O-P-S-Se "other nonmetals". Double sharp (talk) 12:16, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
Update: no, I can't currently bring myself to support At outside halogens if halogens is a category. That's just because almost all authors who use halogens as a category include it. If my proposal fails, then yes, I will think about it. Double sharp (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
I don't feel that this compromise is dragging multiple issues into one. On the contrary, I see it as a single issue on how policy is interpreted to apply to this case. To that end I will therefore first explain slightly more briefly why I am supporting the ACS/LANL/2010 option. Basically: there are lots of categories – but when it comes to colouring the PT, quite a few things seem to be generally agreed, such as AM/AEM/Ln/An/TM/halogens/noble gases with what happens in the middle iffy. In particular, it seems nearly universal for beginning texts to take group 12 as part of TM and to have halogens as a category with astatine (and probably now even tennessine) as a part of them. When there is disagreement like in the region between TMs and halogens + H: it may be due to textbook errors, or it may be due to different contexts. But then I feel like while following one source is OK (since the others are usually very close), weighing up the sources ourselves for iffy elements and producing something that none of a whole bunch of common sources do (including an "unknown" category or either removing halogens or removing At and Ts from them) just trips my OR/SYNTH meter.
So it's not about dragging three issues (group 12, Po/At/superheavies, category names) into one. Rather it is about one issue: does the community agree with my interpretation of how policy applies to this issue, or not. It's very possible that my interpretation is not the community-supported one, in which case I will of course change it to conform to the community's. However, that will remain to be seen by the community. Considering the nature of this rationale, I feel that if your RFC starts first, I don't have a good option on how to !vote. If I honestly state my preference, I drag the scope beyond nonmetals alone and into the whole table, precisely because the nature of my argumentation for supporting this makes it an "all or nothing". If you are OK with such a !vote appearing on your RFC, despite it dragging the topic open that way, then there is no problem. (When I say OK with it, I mean obviously whether you think it conforms to the process to !vote that way; obviously, as is your right, you would probably not support it, but that's not the point.) But if you are not OK with such a thing, but you still go first, then I feel we end up at an impasse where I cannot honestly !vote for my preference. Forcing group 12, polonium, and the superheavies outside the scope of an RFC means that I cannot !vote honestly for my preference, because my argument simply doesn't work for changing just the nonmetals only. It's about following categorisation boundaries wholesale and so it only works if you change everything at once. Which is why I feel we need an RFC to see if there is consensus on those issues one way or the other first. If there is in favour of the logic that leads to ACS/LANL/2010; then we're done. If there isn't; then I see consensus is not for that logic, so I change my policy interpretation in accordance with it and seek something else, in which case I can quite likely !vote for one of the options on your RFC. But not yet, which is the problem.
If a way can be found in which I can make an honest !vote given my current justification, then all my objections evaporate, of course. But I can't think of a way of doing it without either not being honest about what my argument leads to or going off-topic. Whereas you could easily respond to my RFC proposing anything you want, because mine is about colouring the whole table and therefore none of what you're suggesting would ever go off-topic. You could write in any option you want, really. You could for example !vote for one of your preferred trifurcation options, maybe with your preferred option replacing "other nonmetals", or maybe with "other nonmetals" first with an eye to another RFC to see if it should be changed. All that seems to work and I would not consider it off-topic at all.
I hope we can resolve this amicably between ourselves. I note that you said at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements#Discussion_4 the following text: That said, anyone can put an RFC at any time. (13 Nov) That makes me encouraged that we can agree on something, although I have no intention to start an RFC unilaterally if you don't agree. So: given that my previous RFC didn't even last 24 hours (started 20 Jul, withdrawn by myself 21 Jul even if it wasn't formally closed till 6 Aug, so I've barely used any RFC air time in the first place; you won't find any comments there after 21 Jul apart from the closer), and given the asymmetrical nature of the problem (I can't seem to !vote honestly on your RFC without going off-topic, but you can do so on mine), could I please ask for your agreement to allow mine to go first? If you say no this time, I'll accept it and try to somehow find another way, but for now my request stands.
(And to make it clear by repetition: if you don't agree, I have no intention to start mine unilaterally. I would want to consult EdChem for advice, but I do not wish to do anything to jeopardise the current peace.)
P.S. I agree that the way the ACS/LANL/2010 scheme colours the heaviest elements sucks scientifically, that it is stuck in a weird limbo between being a metallicity and a groupic table, and that polonium is better regarded as a metal without any qualification, so I would like to ask in good spirit that people do not try to convince me of what I am convinced by already. ^_^ I am supporting it for other reasons, which is that the tables of PubChem/ACS/LANL all seem to care about none of those issues and therefore that I am not convinced we should either. Please understand that my support of something for WP does not imply my personal support of it. For another example, I know R8R and I support Lu personally if you asked us what we thought was the better form, but I know he thinks and he has convinced me that for now WP should show La pending the outcome of the IUPAC project. But, again, that doesn't mean either of us personally support it and would show it if we were writing about periodicity outside WP: we wouldn't. Double sharp (talk) 21:22, 19 November 2020 (UTC)
An 18-column form of the periodic table, positioning Ce−Lu and Th−Lr between groups 3 and 4, in periods 6 and 7. The 32-column form is presented in § The long- or 32-column table.
Some discussion between Sandbh, YBG, and myself has been going on at my talk page. It seems that the three of us are all OK with the 2010 scheme if Po is changed to being showed as a metal. Furthermore, Sandbh does not seem to think an RFC is necessary, and R8R has said above that he wouldn't be too disappointed if this scheme is chosen.
Therefore, in the spirit of WP:BOLD, I have decided to launch the new colour scheme.
I understand that Sandbh would prefer for some articles to be updated first to match, such as our articles on post-transition metal and the nonmetals. However, I feel that if we ask for too many prerequisites, we are likely to never get anything done. The current articles seem more or less serviceable in a pinch (the PTM one will need a small update to not call them PTMs anymore, but that's all); new ones can come later. After all, when element 119 is discovered, we will not be completely correct either, and there's nothing saying we cannot update things slower rather than faster.
I also understand that Sandbh and I currently disagree on whether or not the status of At, Cn, Ts, and Og should be flagged out in the navboxes. But since this disagreement does not extend to the actual colouring, I do not think we should let it stand in the way of the recolouring either, since it can easily be discussed afterwards.
Everything I do can, as always, be reverted and discussed afterwards.
No hurry, take three moments (especially if that serves the "briefness" part of concise ;-) ). Oh and may I add: pls also describe the content nuts, and how they were cracked. -DePiep (talk) 21:03, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@DePiep: I wrote it below. Sorry that it is not brief, but since pretty much every category from transition metals onwards in the legend was affected, it is probably unavoidable. I tried to keep each one to one paragraph, allowing myself a bit more for the halogen/noble gas one since that is basically about two categories at once. Double sharp (talk) 21:41, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
I'm actually willing to compromise on Po. I could, after all, see an argument that indeed Po is not as often included as the other six, and refer to the lists of metalloids for justification. And we did have it as a metal since 2012. My worry, however, is that since some part of the argument for the rest of the scheme is "well, ACS and LANL do something almost like this", it may dilute the support for it because it may look to others that I'm not consistently following my own arguments and that they're fighting against each other. If I presented the RFC option with Po as a metalloid, would you be OK with supporting with the caveat that you prefer Po to be a metal?
I don't think other metal works as an article title. It works in the legend because we have the other categories there, so you know what the other types of metal are, but it doesn't really work standalone. I think this is the situation alluded to in WP:NOTNEO: In a few cases, there will be notable topics which are well-documented in reliable sources, but for which no accepted short-hand term exists. It can be tempting to employ a neologism in such a case. Instead, it is preferable to use a title that is a descriptive phrase in plain English if possible, even if this makes for a somewhat long or awkward title. That is, we don't have a really standard title for this (post-transition metals comes closest but some people in the literature squabble about Al). So we should probably use a descriptive phrase like metals other than the alkali, alkaline earth, lanthanide, actinide, and transition metals. As for "other nonmetals", since there are that much fewer of them anyway, I think that is OK redirected to nonmetal since that article is organised by group anyway (so the halogens and noble gases got their own brief sections). What say you? Double sharp (talk) 09:48, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Polonium
I wouldn't support an RFC with Po as a metalloid. Enough is known about Po such that calling it a metalloid is a needless textbook error, of which there are already too many in chemistry texts. The RFC seems moot. Who would care if we rolled back to the 2010 version, as long as we explained our rationale?
I may email LANL about their multiple errors, including Po.
I'd be OK with linking other metals to our PTM article, and renaming it p-block metals. And we have redirects for the other alternatives.
@Sandbh: Then I guess we're back where we started. I don't agree that calling Po a metalloid is a textbook error is appropriate for WP, because there's not really a generally accepted definition of what a "metalloid" is, per your Metalloid#Definitions. If there was such an accepted one, that Po failed to fulfil, then yes, I would agree. But there isn't, so there we are. So I don't think it's our place to say that calling Po a metalloid, or indeed calling Sb a metalloid, is a "textbook error" even though we both agree about it for Po and you know that I think so for Sb – on the grounds of our own definitions of what a metal should be, which as we know are not the same. (And even speaking with the educator's hat on, I have a hard time believing in Po and At as metals if Sb is not also one. See YBG's talk page for why.)
I'm not really in favour of a separate article precisely because there are so few of those nonmetals and multiple ways to split them in the literature. We are already splitting the nonmetal article by group, and if we speak about biology, the halogens (or at least Cl and I, maybe Br) have significant biological roles too. But it is something that can be discussed if the proposal passes.
The reason I want an RFC is to have a clear idea of a consensus beyond the project. (Weren't you concerned about our project alone deciding on things before, IIRC? Or have I misunderstood?) That way, once we have a scheme, we have some discussion to point to for why we have chosen it as a "house style". Again, that's based on comments by Jehochman and others on the ArbCom case page. Moreover, this will guarantee something stable that we will not have to discuss again and again unless the literature changes are really obvious. Double sharp (talk) 11:35, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
YBG, my main issue with that is that while we would in the 2010 scheme be using something consistent with that, in the main article we would have to consider all significant views and some of them include group 11 and 12 as well, which are in the d block. As for myself, I have said enough about the insidious tendency of any short phrase in English to start sounding like a term if it is repeated often enough, even if it is purely descriptive (try it for example with "chemically weak metals" or something like that, and you'll probably start hearing it that way too). Which is why I've been supporting such long titles to make it clear to everyone that they are not terms and avoid any hint of neologising. That said, I am not even sure those leftover nonmetals (and that's a descriptive phrase, not yet another term) really need their own article separate from nonmetal when there are not that many nonmetals on the PT in the first place and most of the trends and properties continue down into the halogens and noble gases too. Double sharp (talk) 20:16, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Well said. Re metals, I hadn't considered the d-block aspects. Re nonmetals, I was not focusing on the appropriateness of having an article, but rather on the selection of a title for such an article - or, truth be told, on the trip down memory lane linked in my final sentence. Despite my epynomous rules, I am beginning to see the wisdom of having leftover categories. The question becomes, what section in nonmetal should be the target of the "other nonmetals" legend key? Is there enough information from secondary or tertiary sources describing the train wreck that is nonmetal classification? If so, a short section about that could well be the appropriate link target. YBG (talk) 20:41, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
Of course! Much simpler than my complicated ideas. And it has the added advantages of making it obvious that the category is a leftover one and the label is description not a term. Brilliant!! YBG (talk) 21:51, 26 November 2020 (UTC)
The main issue
I can comment briefly for now.
Seemingly, the main issue is the merit of restoring the halogens (F to Ts), and the other nonmetals.
This could be relatively easily done. There’s no need for an RFC for the reasons following.
1. There is no need for concern about defining what a metalloid is. The literature tells us the elements commonly recognised as metalloids are B, Si, Ge, As, Sb, Te. Separately, the lists of metalloids article confirms this.
2. All other issues about Po, Sb, and At, and names of articles are distractions.
@Sandbh: Let me just clarify if you don't mind. ^_^ In the OP you mentioned that you could support 2010 provided Po was a metal, right? So would this be OK with you?
(I took the one at User:Double sharp/RFC and just recoloured Po to what you wanted.)
Yeah, I would personally be OK with this one, since there is a reasonable source-based argument for it (i.e. metalloids are shown as the usual six; other categories mostly follow IUPAC + what's common; Po is normally excluded from metalloids by higher-level texts, and for an element that is hard to study those will be more reliable; At is agnostically displayed since its status as metalloid/metal is not clear and it is usually discussed with the halogens). My worry was just with drumming up support for it RFC-wise. But if you don't think an RFC is needed, and we can agree on this scheme, then I don't think there's actually any problem and we can probably launch it. As you said, thinking about the article titles and other things now is perhaps a distraction. If it is really needed, we can think about it later.
The PT looks good. I recall a past reference to our colour scheme as a hybrid, which I took to mean it was a combination of metallicity- and group-based. Thus: “…Wikipedia uses the below hybrid system in its periodic table subgroupings.” Does the halogen category then become an old style hybrid category, given the certainty of the nonmetal status of F–I, the ambiguity of the status of At, and marginal uncertainty re Ts? For groups 13–16 I guess this is not so much of a deal given the metal status of Tl, Pb, Bi, and Po.
As far as implementation goes I expect there’d be a need for some substantial editing of our articles on (1) the PT; (2) nonmetal; and (3) names for sets of chemical elements. Just as our PT map increases its coverage, I feel the accompanying text needs to be more explanatory and nuanced. (4) A rationale for our changes also needs to be written.
I’d like our PT to flag the more notional nature of the colour categories for At, Cn, Ts, and Og, and that predictions of their metallic (At, Ts, Cn) or non-metallic status (Cn, Og) have not been experimentally confirmed.
I’d like for these accompanying changes to articles to be ready to go at the same time as we launch the comprehensive PT.
If you mean "is halogens not a metallicity category", then that's correct. Same with "noble gas". They then become simply group names that take in anything in group 17 resp. 18 without regard to metallicity. That's how people in the English-language literature seem to be using them for the most part (it is something I wish they would stop doing, but there it is).
I think that for these rare elements, flagging out the category issue in the main PT template is perhaps too much. It is after all simply a navigational aid. Currently, we do not flag out the group 3 issue, after all. And I think that's correct for much the same reason: unless you are reading about an element that is directly affected, the general answer is "who cares"? Not that I like it mind you, but it is how it is. This being said, I am ready to be convinced otherwise.
I do not think we actually need to write a rationale for our change. For one thing, we don't usually list what we used to have. (Is there anywhere on WP where we actually explain why we stopped using polyatomic vs. diatomic nonmetals?)
I agree that the periodic table article will need to mention this issue, but probably it will be put under the section on categorisation.
Firstly, we could say that while the trend towards metallicity is known to exist in groups 17 and 18 just as it does for the previous groups, due to the intense radioactivity of the elements concerned it is not known for sure exactly where this creates elements that conduct electricity like metals.
Then mention that the short half-life problem makes it quite difficult to study astatine and the elements beyond 108. (Astatine because you cannot get enough and, unlike francium, there is no 100% effective congener to carry it with.) Just mention that the experimental results are inconclusive and that the category scheme shown is based on what is usually done by sources showing such schemes, which is to simply extend the categories by groups. Say that there are some theoretical indications that things may behave differently down there due to relativistic effects: At and Ts are likely metallic, Cn may be an insulator, Og may be a semiconductor. I don't know if we should mention the predictions too much beyond a single sentence. There have been multiple predictions in the past and each one got better than the previous one. It may be better to adopt a "wait and see" approach for these issues. (Something it would be interesting to know: if the properties of Sn were calculated the way those of Og were, would one expect a structure more like grey or white tin?)
Personally I think what we have currently, while not ideal for this new scheme, is at least serviceable as a stop-gap. Therefore I don't see a problem with launching it early and then fixing the problems later. After all: when element 119 gets discovered, we're not going to have a preparation phase to update everything, it will just have to happen as it happens.
Another thing to consider: if we gain WP:ELEM consensus on the 2010 option, I think we'd like it to stick around for a while. One of the arguments in the past for an RFC has been that it would encourage stability for a while. That should be considered in deciding whether this should be implemented via RFP or via ELEM-BOLD. YBG (talk) 17:36, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
I share your thoughts, YBG. I am OK with any title that is obviously descriptive and is long enough not to be taken as a new term, anyway, and Sandbh's fit the bill well enough to my liking.
I also agree that if the 2010 option is considered acceptable, it should stay for a while. It's nice to have stability. Obviously, if the sources change en masse to the extent that it doesn't reflect them well anymore, we should do something, but if that happens at all I doubt it'd be quick. I also think that eventually, we should think about putting it into the MOS: as a stable thing to refer to like WP:ALUM, to tell us how by default we should draw our periodic tables on Wikipedia. However, I think there are several issues waiting before we should do that. First of all there is the colouring issue; we still do want to update those 2002 colours, don't we? Frankly I have no strong opinions and think that what R8R has is already going to be a good start, but we need to decide on one in order to say "on WP, as a default, use this". And secondly there may be a group 3 (layout issue) rerun sometime in the near future as the results of the IUPAC process are released to the public, and I would not like anything about that to be set in stone as an official WP convention until the process finishes somehow and the results are publicly released. True, just IUPAC saying something does not mean we have to decide to follow them, but whatever they say must be taken into account. Therefore I feel we should wait till the process really finishes. Till then we are working with incomplete information when we will have complete information if we just wait a bit longer. So, it is an eventual goal, but for now I would argue to wait and leave it as an ELEM thing only both because of internal (recolouring once categories are settled) and external (IUPAC) matters: I don't think it will do any harm if the colour scheme becomes somehow officially stabilised as WP convention later rather than sooner. In the meantime, we can perhaps update Wikipedia:WikiProject Elements/Guidelines to have the colour-scheme information. Double sharp (talk) 18:59, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
P.S. Since element 119 may well come next year: just to cover those edge cases, I will say that under this scheme, whenever discovered, element 119 will get coloured in as an alkali metal and element 120 as an alkaline earth metal (so just like for Og, we will not be waiting for chemical investigation). They will appear in row 8 where you'd expect them as eka-Fr and eka-Ra. So now I've said it and we will be ready. What happens after that can be left for the future. Double sharp (talk) 19:09, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
I’m not fussed about the actual colours. I thought R8R’s was quite good.
Stability is antithetical to the nature of WP as an encyclopaedia based on continuous improvement, so I don’t see a valid reason to embed this, but YMMV.
This continues my comment re flagging At, Ts, etc. Courtesy ping YBG.
The context for my post is that Po is normally excluded from metalloids by higher-level texts, and for an element that is hard to study those will be more reliable.
OTOH, colour coding Cn, At, Ts, and Og as a PTM, halogens, and a noble gas, without any flags, ignores what higher level sources say.
Higher level sources point to At as a metal. For Ts, the case for metal status is stronger, as noted in its article. For what it is worth, the RSC refers to Ts as a metal.
So, if we acknowledge higher level sources are more reliable for hard-to-study elements, I’d like to flag Cn, At, Ts, and Og, whilst retaining their colour categories as PTM, halogens, and a noble gas, per introductory sources.
Certainly our PT is a navigational aid. Along with our colour categories, a few flags would enhance an appreciation of the metal-metalloid-nonmetal landscape. Sandbh (talk) 05:01, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
YBG, I take it to mean advanced level sources, that are not normally taken account of by introductory level general chemistry text books. For example, the 1940 announcement of the synthesis of At which referred to it as a metal; Batsanov’s 1971 article predicting a band gap of 0.7 for At; and the 2013 relativistic modelling study that predicted a band gap for At of 0.68 eV, but a fully metallic fcc structure once all relativistic effects were taken into account. A similar thing happened when the Curies wrote, in 1898, that Po was a metal. AFAIK introductory level general chemistry textbooks do not mention such things. Sandbh (talk) 07:57, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
Sandbh, it does not necessarily rule against what higher-level sources say. Greenwood & Earnshaw calls At a halogen, and so does Holleman & Wiberg. Here's a source focusing on superheavy elements and their properties that does call Ts a halogen: [3]. I think it comes down to just that there are two ideas of what "halogen" means: one demands being a nonmetal, the other does not and simply asks that you be in group 17. And in fact, by calling "halogen" a group name in periodic table, we're implicitly using the second definition. So even if reliable sources do expect At, Ts, and Og to be more metallic, that will not necessarily mean they have to stop being halogens and a noble gas.
The situation with Ts and Og is only predicted. The predictions have changed in the past for Og, and I think that predictions should not be given the same weight as experimental knowledge. Indeed we already don't give them that in the current scheme: we just tell them "unknown chemical properties". As for At and Cn, there are relatively clear predictions too, and there are experimental results, but the experimental results are not so clear yet. I think that means we should wait. There is also the question on whether English-language sources will actually care even if Og is conclusively shown to be a semiconductor; will they keep calling it a noble gas anyway for simplicity, accepting that it becomes just a name, just like how "alkaline earth metal" includes Be and Mg which don't fit the name? And will primary and secondary sources do different things here? I think flagging this out will be too complicated for a navigation box since the higher-level sources are not agreed for these four elements: remember that the Cn experimental results were interpreted by the experimenters as signalling that Cn was a metal, and it's only the recent theoretical reappraisal that pointed out that it was also consistent with Cn as an insulator. And I think that simply explaining it in article text is probably for the best, to say that the trend towards metallicity also exists in groups 17 and 18, but it is not experimentally sure yet how it goes exactly. Double sharp (talk) 11:56, 30 November 2020 (UTC)
@Sandbh and Double sharp: The RFC says it will run until closed by an admin after (a) 30 days or (b) WP:SNOW. IMO there are 9 logical possibilities:
Result of current RFC
Action after current RFC
Make no changes
Propose change via RFC
Change via ELEM consensus
Consensus on 3 (ie, a change)
1. (3→NC)
2. (3→RFC)
3. (3→ELEM)
Consensus on 2 (ie, no change)
4. (2→NC)
5. (2→RFC)
6. (2→ELEM)
Closed without any consensus
7. (0→NC)
8. (0→RFC)
9. (0→ELEM)
This gives us a number of options to think about. If we at ELEM decide on a change other than the ones under consideration in the current RFC, it would probably be best if that RFC ended with no consensus. Toward that end, I think it would be best if there were a Neither of the above option in the current RFC. Would anyone object if I added such a section? YBG (talk) 18:40, 27 November 2020 (UTC)
@Sandbh: I can see two alternatives, both of which I believe require your action, as RFP originator. (1) You withdraw the RFP (not sure if that is allowed). (2) You add a "neither of the above" alternative and see if it garners adequate support for a consensus on "non-consensus". YBG (talk) 03:21, 29 November 2020 (UTC)
Naturally, there are several pending issues that need to be discussed. However, since none of these impact whether or not the scheme is supported, my personal call is that it is better not to wait in order not to jeopardise things from getting done when there is some reasonable agreement on them.
Comment: I am glad to see progress happening and discussion between WT:ELEM participants. I am also grateful that Double sharp has provided a detailed rationale below, promptly responding to DePiep's request. I have been watching the user talk page discussion and wondering whether to comment, and I would like to make a procedural comment. I am all for collaboration and discussion but have been concerned that a user talk page discussion might result in a local consensus that might not reflect the consensus of this WikiProject or the WP community as a whole. It appears that this concern has not been borne out in this case, but I ask that all of us bear in mind that discussions that become likely to be implemented in article space be moved to an appropriate article or project talk page. Alternatively, bring the conclusion to a suitable page and seek broader input or endorsement. The final option (and the one I prefer least) is to make a BOLD implementation coupled with a talk page discussion, accompanied by a willingness to revert / step-back and discuss if anything proves controversial. Double sharp, I thank you for making clear that there was a user talk space discussion that led to your edit and for making clear your openness to further discussion should it prove necessary, which is very much in the spirit of BRD. DePiep, I thank you for asking politely for details and indicating a willingness to wait for a response rather than going straight to a reversion. Hopefully discussion will lead to a consensus that all support. Thank you also to Sandbh and YBG for working collaboratively on areas where agreement and productive incremental improvements to article space are possible. This implementation of BOLD appears to be working, which is great, but discussions leading to article space changes are best held or ultimately endorsed outside of user talk space, and I ask that this be borne in mind going forward. Thanks. EdChem (talk) 20:29, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
TBH, EdChem, I am a worried too about the From-Userspace-Boldly-Into-100-Articles. At leasst it could have a "proposal" step on this project page, building consensus. -DePiep (talk) 18:40, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
I agree that consensus should ideally be built on article talk pages or on a suitable project page (and then linked from the article talk page / with the edit). Userspace-developed consensus can be problematic, though as with much of WP, rules are not absolute. Double sharp, Sandbh, and YBG, I think you were all involved with user space discussion prior to these edits, would you please take note of DePiep's point and try to ensure, when seeking consensus, that the discussion include the relevant article talk page(s) and/or a WiiProject page such as this one, as appropriate? BOLDly making changes is encouraged, though I strive to temper boldness with wisdom... if a change is major or (more importantly) if I know it is likely to be controversial, discussion prior to implementation is desirable, and it starts in a much nicer environment than can exist after a bold edit and revert sequence. Taken further, a BRRRRRRRR sequence can get downright chilly! I'm all for keeping this project welcoming for Goldilocks and friends... not too hot, not cold, but nice and warm and comfy. :)
I will ignore the parts of the periodic table that were not changed.
Mostly, sources that present periodic table colourings are working more or less at an overview level, not delving deep into the chemistry of a single element. They also are usually meant as a didactic introduction to signal out groups of like elements, especially the easy-to-cover ones that will be introduced early in chemistry. Therefore, priority was given to such sources as ACS, LANL, RSC, and Britannica. Priority was also given to IUPAC (as the relevant authority) when it had something to say, which is unfortunately not always. Further down the list were textbooks and monographs (e.g. Greenwood & Earnshaw, Holleman & Wiberg as very common reputable textbooks), and finally individual research papers for the "difficult" superheavy elements that are not well-known.
Group 12 as transition metals. This is something that has been strongly argued against. However, even Jensen who was strongly against this in 2003 had to admit that nearly all introductory general chemistry textbooks were doing it, and that it was only the advanced monographs on specific topics that sometimes don't (but even there it was 50-50). So do all four of ACS, LANL, RSC, and Britannica. IUPAC presents the definition including them first in the Red Book 2005 (their latest word on the matter): For example, the elements of groups 3–12 are the d-block elements. These elements are also commonly referred to as the transition elements, though the elements of group 12 are not always included. That is also evidently their primary definition, as when they discuss the organometallic nomenclature in pages 228 through 232, group 12 is not discussed with the main group elements. (For those who don't know: that means "the elements that are not transition elements.) Greenwood & Earnshaw as well as Holleman & Wiberg both consider group 12 as transition metals, though Cotton & Wilkinson don't. Therefore it seems more justifiable to follow the more general perspective. This also matches what we had in 2010.
Other metals rather than post-transition metals. Between ACS, LANL, and Britannica (RSC classes by group in this area, which is a rarer choice) there is not agreement on which to use: there are also a bunch of other names in the literature such as poor metals, chemically weak metals, p-block metals, B subgroup metals, and so on. As such it seems more prudent to not take a side and simply use other metals, which is indisputable as a catch-all qualifier. This also matches what we had in 2010.
Metalloids. There is not agreement between ACS, LANL, and Britannica about whether there should be a metalloid category. The first two have one as {B, Si, Ge, As, Sb, Te, Po}; Britannica lacks one, splitting {Ge, Sb, Po} to metals and {B, Si, As, Te} to nonmetals. Most English-language sources do have one, but are often a bit hazy about which elements are in there. The literature survey done by Sandbh whose results are at lists of metalloids was consulted: here {B, Si, Ge, As, Sb, Te} emerge as the most common six inclusions by far, with a huge drop to the next inclusions {Po, At} that have always had a certain amount of iffiness hanging around them due to their intense radioactivity. In general, it seems that most sources that focus on polonium do treat it as a metal: in this special case of a difficult-to-study but still fairly well-characterised element (unlike most radioactives, Po is not ignored or quarantined off into its own special section in Greenwood & Earnshaw), following them seems reasonable.
Other nonmetals. ACS, LANL, and Britannica are unanimous about splitting out the noble gases and the halogens from most of the nonmetals. Both are, after all, some of the first examples of group trends an average chemistry student encounters, and make sense to highlight at this overview level (that's not true for the pnictogens and chalcogens, say). There is not agreement as to whether these should just be called "nonmetals" or "other nonmetals" between them, but since "other nonmetals" is the only accurate one anyway (everybody agrees that chlorine and argon are nonmetals), we have used it. This also matches what we had in 2010.
Halogens, with reference to At and Ts. The problem is that there are two definitions of "halogen" running about, as there seems to be for a lot of these categories. In the literature focusing on the superheavy elements, there is some feeling I detect that you have no right to call an element a "halogen", a "transition metal", or a "noble gas" before you have actually characterised it chemically, and that if the properties are badly matching enough it's possible that Ts is not a halogen (e.g. here). So that's the specialised practice. However, outside the subset of chemists focused on these issues (which is very tiny given the short half-lives of the problematic elements At, Ts, and Og), nobody cares. ACS, LANL, Britannica, and RSC are unanimous about calling At and Ts halogens. Greenwood & Earnshaw and Holleman & Wiberg have no qualms about calling At a halogen (they were published before Ts was discovered). The 2005 IUPAC Red Book is absolutely clear that the halogens include At. It was published before Ts and Og were discovered, true, but IUPAC reports in 2016 made it clear that for them Ts and Og were in the halogen and noble gas groups. Indeed, that's the very reason why they are called tennessine and oganesson with the -ine and -on suffixes of their groups, and not -ium like for other elements. So clearly for them it means the whole group.
I feel that on the above grounds using the definition in which Ts is not automatically a halogen, and Og not automatically a noble gas, and using an "unknown chemical properties" category, is catering only to the superheavy-element community and not the rest of the chemical world that does not seem to care about such issues. I'm sad about that because I think the superheavy-element community has the right idea here, but they're not usually in the business of colouring periodic tables as an overview of the elements people actually care about.
Finally, I think it is simply premature to classify astatine as a metal, metalloid, or a nonmetal. As far as is experimentally known, it sometimes reacts characteristically like its lighter buddies in the halogen group which are all clearly nonmetals (fluorine, chlorine, bromine, and iodine). But sometimes it reacts more like a metal instead. Experimental results on copernicium appeared to suggest metallicity – but later theoretical calculations pointed out that the result was also consistent with nonmetallicity. Therefore I feel that any metallicity category here is an overreach, and that it is a good thing that we have a group category to save the day. We only have predictions telling us that At is probably a metal, that Cn is probably a nonmetal (like a noble gas), that Ts is probably a metal, and that Og is probably a semiconductor (so maybe a metalloid like silicon?). We can hardly use these predictions without some element of original research for Og, and the predictions have changed before for elements like Cn, Fl, and Og: who's to say they may not change again?
This also matches what we had in 2010.
Noble gases, with reference to Og. All of the above on Ts applies here to Og. This also matches what we had in 2010.
Colouring Mt through Lv. I agree that somehow it looks problematic, colouring them with category names that include "metal" when it's not actually sure if these elements are metals. On the other hand, ACS, LANL, RSC (for Mt through Cn), and Britannica all do that anyway. Besides Cn, no one seriously expects anything different, and for Cn, predictions have changed back and forth and they may well do so again. I also feel that it is not a problem that the category names become "formal" and a bit divorced from the actual meaning when everybody is making them so anyway. No one asks how bismuth is "choking" when that's where "pnictogen" comes from (well, I suppose you could choke on a large piece); no one asks how polonium can be an "ore-former" when it's too unstable to form ores; no one wonders why Be and Mg are "alkaline earth metals" in English (I know they do in Russian and Japanese, but that's not exactly the practice the English Wikipedia should probably be prioritising); no one wonders why the rare earth elements are not rare. With all this behind us, what's wrong with Og as a "noble gas" that is neither noble nor a gas, if the literature's mostly happy with that? This also matches what we had in 2010.
Therefore this colour scheme seems to be one of the best solutions within the bounds of what can be justified from sources to the whole problem. It was worked out as a compromise in the first place, seeking to follow the sources but at the same time try to be as "correct" in a way that both of us could agree on (and you know we sometimes differ very strongly about what exactly is "correct"). It is not what I would like at all for an off-WP situation, but for a WP situation I don't think we have the right to do anything vastly different based on the source situation. Because of the support I got for it on my talk page, I have decided to launch it.
Note that subtleties regarding how the status of Mt is not actually experimentally known, as well as the problematic metallicity of At, Ts, and Og and possible lack thereof for Cn, are all discussed where appropriate in the infoboxes. See {{infobox meitnerium}}, {{infobox astatine}}, {{infobox tennessine}}, {{infobox oganesson}}, {{infobox copernicium}}. For the everyday reader, I submit that what we show is enough as an overview, and that there is no need to footnote elements that to a first approximation no one cares about and that no one will get to see for a long while if ever.
Finally, we note for clarification that:
So as to avoid having to rush a discussion at the last minute when elements 119 and 120 get discovered, we will add that unless sources do something massively different, element 119 will be coloured as an alkali metal (like Fr) when discovered, and element 120 as an alkaline earth metal (like Ra) too. Future elements may be in the g block already (I think they are, some people think they aren't, you can probably guess that this is a group 3 thing) and that will require some more far-reaching decisions based on what sources do. That is really unanswerable at present because until element 121 appears, nobody will have to make that decision. And it will be difficult for other reasons because IUPAC does not immediately put newly reported elements on its periodic table, but only does so once the IUPAC-IUPAP JWP evaluates the claims and deems it to fit the discovery criteria (so we won't have their guidance). Therefore any decision on them should probably be postponed till when the eighth period begins with elements 119 and 120.
This scheme only decides the categories. In particular, it makes no decision about the precise colours used for the categories. Those may be discussed separately. It also makes no decision about the composition of group 3. That is a subject that will be returned to hopefully when Scerri's article appears in Chemistry International outlining what has gone on at IUPAC, as it is expected soon. AFAICS, there is no point in working with incomplete information when whatever this project concludes is going to be very important to the source situation and it seems that complete information is coming. We will see according to the situation.
At the top, I would like to see some greater vertical separation between "Group" and "Period" – they look squashed together to me (this is a minor aesthetic point)
This may have been discussed / resolved before, but I think having the atomic numbers and symbols the same size makes the symbols less prominent as Z increases. I wonder if a smaller size for the atomic number and a larger size for the symbol would look better. I also wonder about slightly larger squares, so that there is more space around the symbol – the boxes at the bottom look crowded.
On the points about a colouring for 'properties unknown', I do take the point that many PTs do not have such a grouping, but it does make sense pedagogically to make the point that there are things that aren't known. It emphasises that the PT is continuing to evolve and that Chemistry is an experimental science where empirical evidence always takes precedence over theoretical expectations. I wonder if these cells might be divided diagonally and have two colours, or a footnote that the properties of recently discovered elements (XXX = symbols) need to be explored experimentally to see if they display properties in line with expectations. This idea may not find favour here at WT:ELEM, in which case of course I will respect consensus, and there may be better ways / ideas to address this point, but I do feel it is worth discussing.
Can the colour for the alkali metals be darkened to increase the contrast to the transition metals? Perhaps consult one of the WikiProjects that deals with accessibility for readers for comment on the colour scheme on different platforms and for readers with other-than-typical vision?
Would the asterisks between La and Hf and adjacent to Ce look better if vertically centred, like the period numbers and the double star for Ac / Rf / Th appear?
Regarding 1, 2, and 5, I have no opinion on the PT image layout issues. I think your proposals are sound, but since I am not the best at svg editing, I will probably have to leave it to somebody else (figuring out how to change the colours by directly editing the svg in a text editor was interesting enough for me ^_^).
Regarding 4, previously the alkali metal colour was indeed the darker
. It was lightened to
in a WP:BOLD action by R8R in September: see Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Elements/Archive_50#Alkali_metal_color. I personally found it OK, but since you've raised concerns similar to DePiep that this may be a problem, I have reverted it back to the darker colour. In any case, there has been some talk about revamping the colours altogether, in which case both problems will eventually go away anyway.
Regarding 3 (sorry for the despairing wall of text XD) – frankly I sympathise. But the trouble is that tension between two definitions of "halogen". If "halogen" means not only "in group 17", but also that the element has to act like {F, Cl, Br, I}: then you're right, because we don't know how Ts behaves, and theoretical calculations say it's really not much like a halogen at all, we don't have the right to say it's a halogen in that case. And that's how most sources focusing on superheavy elements indeed see it. But it seems that a lot of sources, including IUPAC, seems to see "halogen" as a synonym for "in group 17". In which case the category is formal, and Ts is automatically a halogen regardless of whether it acts like {F, Cl, Br, I} or not. We can argue maybe about periodic table placement demanding the electron configuration is known – but theoretical predictions say Ts is s2p5 anyway, so that won't change things. Pedagogically, I think this is clearly stupid when apparently the closest match to known elements among Ts is Ga (yeah, personal communication from computational chemist User:Droog Andrey, but the interpretation matches the sourced predictions): a category purporting to put gallium and chlorine together as similar elements is quite clearly chemically deranged, so I'm sure that one putting together chlorine and tennessine likewise is. But I can't see a way out of it even though I'd dearly like one.
I think we may be in the same situation as astatine: even from its discovery, its discoverers were already noting it had significant metallic character, today we know it chemically seems to at least be a funny mix between halogen and metal properties, and chemists seriously working with it explicitly question whether it is more like a halogen or more like a metal (implying that it being a metal, which is getting some serious theoretical and experimental support but is not really sure yet, would rule it out from being a halogen). Eighty years on: nobody cares, IUPAC explicitly calls At a halogen, Greenwood & Earnshaw and Holleman & Wiberg explicitly call At a halogen, everyone calls At a halogen, and questions keep getting set on high-school exams asking to predict the properties of At (now also Ts) based on the lighter halogens (and therefore basically ask you to pick the wrong answer, amusingly). Anyone who actually cares about these elements knows that they behave quite differently (At seems mixed between halogen and metal properties chemically, Ts is probably like Ga), but (correct me if I am wrong, as I would love to be wrong) I cannot imagine that the proportion of chemists whose work significantly involves astatine is in any way significant among all chemists. Well: astatine has been known for eighty years, it's been on the periodic table for much longer than tennessine has. If that wasn't enough to make people care with an eight-hour half-life, then are people going to care about tennessine with a half-life under a minute? The end result is likely going to be the stupidity of calling Ts a halogen when calculations say it acts like Ga, and calling Og a noble gas when calculations say it acts like Sn (so if you thought gallium and chlorine in the same basket is chemically deranged, we now have basically tin and argon in the same basket, which is even more chemically deranged. ^_^). But there are worse already: if the rare earth metals are not rare, and beryllium is an alkaline earth metal despite being more amphoteric than alkaline, then I don't think most chemists are going to bat an eye about oganesson being likely neither noble nor a gas. Particularly when the most stable isotope of Og has a half-life of under a millisecond and probably its greatest relevance for the average chemist is completing the seventh row and making the periodic table look nice and complete, rather than anyone actually being able to use it for anything. And especially when IUPAC changed its naming rules in 2016 to make sure they'd be tennessine and oganesson with the matching suffixes; previously they'd have ended in -ium by the old naming rules! (The article that suggested this in Nature compounded the problem by implying that halogens and noble gases cannot also be metals – but when we get to At, Ts, and Og that may stop being true.)
In the end, I think what I would like putting on the educator's hat (halogens ending at iodine with astatine ambiguous; noble gases ending at radon) is just not easy to defend on WP, because it is hard to say "properties might not match" just because not everyone agrees that properties should define what a halogen or a noble gas is. And once you've done that and coloured Ts and Og, we can hardly not colour Mt through Lv when actually more is known experimentally about the chemistry of Cn than that of Og! (Not that Cn is conclusively characterised by any means: experimental results are rather underwhelmingly consistent with both Cn the eka-Hg and Cn the noble eka-Rn. I just mean that there actually have been experiments done on Cn and that has not happened for Og yet.) I cannot currently find a way out of this, which is why I put forward this scheme as something that might be a workable compromise. To my pleasant surprise it turned out to be one. If you can come up with a good argument why we could in this case follow the specialists' definition of halogens and noble gases – I will be most happy to uncolour At (as ambiguous) as well as Mt through Og. My worry is just that doing so will just make us inconsistent with what the general reader will see everywhere else and with what most people are defining halogens and noble gases are: pedagogically I agree with you and if I could find a way to justify it to myself would do it in a heartbeat. I have tried to address this point in some text at Periodic table#Categories, also at Periodic table#Further periodic table extensions, and in templates like {{infobox tennessine}} and {{infobox oganesson}}. Double sharp (talk) 21:32, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
re #4, color for alkali metals: the dark color has issues too - also with accessability. (font contrast). So it's 6 of one, half a dozen of the other. For stability, there is no gain in flip-flopping (reverted). Improvement can be easily achieved with some considerations. -DePiep (talk) 23:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)
PT image in lede
I've updated the image to bring it into line with recently agreed changes. I haven't read EdChem's comments yet. I've flagged Cn, At, Ts, and Og, via underlining their symbols and adding a note about what this means. Since M used the PT to make predictions, and since we mention the predictive capacity of the PT about ten times in our article, I presume these flags and its accompany note are OK. Sandbh (talk) 01:48, 2 December 2020 (UTC)
@EdChem and Double sharp: I've 1. added group and period labels, and 2. reduced the size of the atomic numbers by ½ a point. I suspect the footnote addresses #3. For #4, I can easily change the the colour of the AM back to the darker red. On #5 I believe the image addresses this. I'll experiment some more, later. I'll see if the group names could be added to the white space between the s- and p-blocks. I'll post a prototype here.
I like most of the changes – the labelling of groups and periods is better, as are the font sizes of atomic numbers – though maybe another 0.5 point? I do notice that:
There appears to be a white line at the bottom of each period 2 element.
I wonder if stars would be better than daggers to point to notes.
I think some copyediting might be helpful. For example:
Single Star (or a [1] or [a] or [I]) on Group 3, Lanthanides, and Actinides: * The placement and display of lanthanides and actinides is not the same on all periodic tables due to differing scientific views on the composition of Group 3.
Double Star (or [2] or [b] or [II]) on Transition Metals and Group 12: **Elements Zn, Cd, and Hg are sometimes considered as "other metals" rather than "transition metals"; Element Cn displays some properties consistent with being a non-metallic noble liquid
Placing a triple star symbol (or [3] or [c] or [III]) on the halogen and noble gas categories, note *** The "Halogen" and "Noble Gas" descriptors are commonly applied to all members of their respective groups. There is theoretical and some experimental evidence that elements At, Ts, and Og display properties inconsistent with being nonmetals.
Maybe a [4] or [d] or [IV] (rather than quad star) on other metals noting ****Little is known of the chemical properties of Nh, Fl, Mc, and Lv, but they are predicted to be metallic elements.
I don't think mention of band gaps or Og's claimed appearance are needed as the former is not information a generalist will comprehend and no one has made enough Og to actually see its appearance.
I don't think the meaning of the underline is sufficiently clear – perhaps clarify or remove. Maybe also should be underlining La and Ac as the note at present implies they are transition metals?
On colours, maybe we seek outside ideas – DePiep is correct that accessibility is an important consideration.
@EdChem and Double sharp: I reduced Z by another half-point. Removing the white line will take me more work than I have time for just now. I experimented with multiple asterisks; they take up more room. I've changed the footnote markers to be consistent with sequence suggested by the Australian Government Publishing Service Style Manual, since I have that one at hand. I have changed the footnote explanations along the lines you suggested, with some rationalisation to reduce duplication. The underlining connection is more visible know. I haven't said anything about Nh, Fl, Mc, and Lv, since we have no reason to expect that they will be anything other than metals. This is case for the elements from 99 onwards, none of which have been produced in bulk. OTOH, for Cn, At, Ts, and Og, theory suggests they will be something else than their lighter congeners. Sandbh (talk) 03:38, 5 December 2020 (UTC)
I wish to note that this revamp appears to be way too much using "Bold", without searching for consensus. There seems to have been some voting process on a userpage. There was no fleshed out proposal -- instead, a clarification was only provided after someone asked for it. Also, since the change involved dozens of mainspace edits which were bulldozed over us, this does not look like a true Wikipedia process. FWIW, any next time I meet this I might claim like "No Consensus". -DePiep (talk) 19:52, 10 December 2020 (UTC)
As far as I know, WP operates on the basis of continuous improvement
If there is a dispute about content that is when consensus may need to be sought
All the edits since our experiment on continuous cooperative improvement editing started have been by myself, R8R, YGB, and Double sharp
There have been no car crashes, traffic jams or road rage incidents.
The article probably needs more work. I intend to review it, as can any editor at any time, subject to other interests and priorities. Sandbh (talk) 04:55, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
@DePiep, EdChem, Double sharp, R8R, YBG, and Sandbh:. There are a number of things that could have been better in this process. There could have been (1) discussion at WT:ELEM instead of user space (2) a summary of the changes and pages affected in the WT:ELEM announcement (3) a list of deferred changes that need to happen and (4) a pause between the announcement and the implementation. Nevertheless, there was an announcement and a stated offer to accept BRD. So in the same way we look for continuous cooperative improvement editing, let us also seek to have continuous cooperative interaction improvement. YBG (talk) 22:53, 11 December 2020 (UTC)
@YBG: I mean continuous cooperative improvement editing or (and) continuous cooperative interaction improvement. Choose your poison, so to speak. Sandbh (talk) 02:29, 12 December 2020 (UTC)
"Bold edits don’t require consensus" true by itself, but then again accept straight reversal or other editors being bold. As wikipedia works, without considering critique beforehand one should expect BRD. When applied as lightly as you suggest & with forseeable effects, this turns easily into bordering or editwarring, and poor content. Note that "discussing" is not mentioned.
"WP operates on the basis of continuous improvement". Yes. How does this excuse non-talking?
"If there is a dispute about content that is when consensus may need to be sought". May? Why not "must"?
"continuous cooperative improvement editing" has not been defined or even described. I only met wp:bold edits, which is not a new approach. AFAIK, WP policies and guidelines are well-descibed and sufficient for handling development. "continuous cooperative improvement editing", whatever process it actually is, is not replacing any policy. No editor it tied to this (unspecified) idea. Also, if it involves changing the way WP:ELEM handles policies like BRD, RS, DUE, there is no base to invoke it.
"no car crashes, traffic jams or road rage incidents." -- Actually, there were and we both were involved.
All in all, I am not convinced that this suggested "new" or "different" approach to editing is that 'cooperative', nor does it work to improve the encyclopedia. Not one bullet is about 'time to talk'. -DePiep (talk) 20:33, 19 December 2020 (UTC)
