Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Raney nickel

Raney nickel

This is a self-nom, although I have to thank the fellows over at WikiProject Chemistry for their help, specially Physchim62. This is a somewhat technical article on a useful catalyst, although we've tried very hard to make it accesible to the general reader. It makes use of the canonical references and it makes good use of images. Any suggestions for improvement are welcome as well. It had a very productive Peer Review a couple months ago. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 17:23, 22 January 2006 (UTC)

• Support. May need reformatting of references section, and a check of picture copyright tags, but otherwise, appears to be clear, lucid, and concise. We need more high-quality chemistry articles on the Wikipedia just like this one. RyanGerbil10 20:15, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you. I uploaded/created all the images except for the safety labels, so I believe we are safe on the image copyright side. Do you have any suggestions for improving the references section? -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 20:50, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Usually, the references section doesn't have subheadings, and the notes section is seperate. Those things don't bother me personally, but some people are fanatically picky with their FA votes. More of a cautionary tale than direct imperative. RyanGerbil10 22:00, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support. I don't know much about chemistry, so I can't personally verify that this is comprehensive and accurate et al, but it certainly looks that way. Has references, lead is good, prose is brilliant. Looks like featured quality to me. Fieari 21:41, 22 January 2006 (UTC)
• Support. Like the last commenter I'm not a chemist, but the article is interesting and well-written. My only immediate issue is with the references section, as previous comments have noted. --NormanEinstein 03:58, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Per increasing popular demand I just went ahead and sorted the references out. Should make everyone happy now :) Thank you for the input. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 04:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment I don't want to actually oppose, because it is a cool and well-written article, but... The References are just thin, somewhat. First, the references you do have should be converted to inline citation. Second, even if you do that for every source you have listed, that's only 8 references. If that's enough, ok, but today's featured article (another science article, Planetary habitability) has 28 references all with inline citation. Staxringold 14:07, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Thank you for your comment. I can convert the citations to whatever format you want, but I don't see the point in cluttering the text unnecessarily. The reference section has subheadings pointing out where everything specific came from. Also, adding more references for the sake of it would be superflous since the "general" reference provided covers the vast majority of the topics in this article. This particular reference is "canonical" because it is the starting point for anyone who wants to get a general idea before starting to do research on Raney-Ni. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 15:32, 23 January 2006 (UTC)
    • Some of the newer inline citation systems can be easily hidden with a change to a user's stylesheet. That removes the readability problem and allows implementing the verifiability policy. FA's simply must be easily verifiable with inline citations. - Taxman ^Talk 16:08, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
• Comment. Ok upon reading there are many very short paragraphs that should either be expanded or merged. They make the text flow poorly. The last reference should be formatted properly with as much of the author, date, etc, information that is available. WP:CITE also calls for access dates on websites used as references. Finally I echo the other's concern about the amount of references used being a bit minimal. The article is on the short side and I'd think additional research may yeild more important info that should be covered. - Taxman ^Talk 16:34, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

• • I concede the thing with the inline citations and I'll get around it as soon as I learn how to deal with the new style. In addition, if you had followed the (only) weblink that has no access date you'd have realized it is a link to a database query, for which there is not much point on giving one (although I'll have to provide the name of the database, maintainer and such).
    • Actually that's a perfect reason to list the last access date. - Taxman ^Talk 19:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
  • Also, it would be nice of you if you could point out specific paragraphs that are too short (except the last one in the properties section, which is one line). More importantly, I'd like to know what more important info that should be covered is missing. I did a full thesis on this material and I'm pretty sure I covered all the basics and the peer review, in which fellow chemists took part, did not point out any missing material. Now, if what you want is PhD material, well, just tell me and I'll see what I can do. Thank you. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 21:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)
    • There's virtually no reason for any FA to have any one or two sentence paragraphs. That some may have them is a failure, not a reason to justify having them. - Taxman ^Talk 19:38, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
      • Specific examples please? -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 19:51, 25 January 2006 (UTC)
        • The paragraphs starting with "After leaching...", "Macroscopically, ...", "Raney nickel is notable...", "The solubility of...", and the first two paragraphs in the Safety section are all examples. I reallize it is a technical article, but the prose should still flow well where possible. All of those are possible by judicious merging or adding a bit more context for someone not familiar with the subject. There's probably nothing you can do about the one's around the reactions, so that's fine. Also considering flow, the first paragraph of the lead is a bit choppy, and unfortunately I couldn't think of a way to immediately fix it myself. - Taxman ^Talk 20:04, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

• • • • • • Thanks, I'll see what I can do. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 20:18, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Well, I fixed the paragraphs the best I could. They may need a slight copyedit but overall they should be fine. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 03:42, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

Good improvements. I made a copyedit you should check. The last paragraph of the lead is still short, and it leaves me wondering if the rest of the article is using the term generically and just telling us the pedantic way it should be used or is it really referring only to W.R. Grace's product? Clarification on that would be helpful. - Taxman ^Talk 14:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

No, the article is only about W.R. Grace's product. The paragraph is there because in the literature the term "skeletal catalyst" is starting to be used more often now. I'm also planning to start a separate article on skeletal catalysts later on, so this is also a way to tie in both topics. The copyedit you made worked as intended, btw. Thanks. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 15:25, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

SupportCommentrefs are few. Are there more? Using ref/note system will not clutter the article and will tie refs to the text. Rlevse 18:33, 24 January 2006 (UTC) Refs are much better! Rlevse 11:29, 29 January 2006 (UTC)

• Thank you for your comment. I explained above that I'm hesitant in adding references for the sake of it, since this is not a controversial subject. About the inline citations I should be done converting all the refs to the new style soon. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 21:27, 24 January 2006 (UTC)

• • The new citation style is done. -- Rune Welsh | ταλκ 21:08, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Support. I have helped out a bit on this, but the article is mostly down to Rune.welsh. I don't think it is under referenced for the subject matter, but I will see if I can dig out some more if that's what people really want. The most important point is that the important refs are there: this would have been picked up at peer review were it not the case. Physchim62 (talk) 18:32, 25 January 2006 (UTC)

Support. Good article. ~K 18:47, 29 January 2006 (UTC)