Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Nihonium/archive1

The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Sarastro1 via FACBot (talk) 21:43, 8 September 2018 [1].


Nominator(s): Double sharp (talk) 03:36, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This article is about is the first element recognised to have been discovered in Asia, and we can hope that there will be more in our march to the end of the periodic table, wherever that happens to be. ^_^ It's just finished going through a peer review and I believe it's ready for FA now! Double sharp (talk) 03:36, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support by R8R

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Support. My comments have been addressed. Note: I actively participated in the pre-FAC peer review and a majority of my comments was dealt with then.--R8R (talk) 10:00, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A few comments:

  • Preliminary experiments in 2017 have shown -- looks like "showed" would be better;
  • targets, and significantly increasing -- looks like the comma doesn't belong here;
  • the yields from cold fusion reactions -- I'd not use the article here;
  • Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory -- interestingly, this laboratory is referred to by Livermore rather than its acronym LLNL throughout the article unlike, say, GSI or JINR. Is there a reason for that?
  • JINR–Livermore collaboration published its results -- I notice that the collaboration is referred to as a singular noun, but some time ago the GSI team was referred to as a plural one: The GSI team attempted to similarly synthesise element 113 via cold fusion in 1998 and 2003, bombarding bismuth-209 with zinc-70, but were unsuccessful both times. Consistency would be great;
  • In June 2004 and again in December 2005, the JINR–Livermore collaboration strengthened their claim for the discovery of nihonium -- it would be best not to use the name "nihonium" here as it will only be established as official in 2016. I suggest element 113;
  • Further experiments at the JINR in 2005 fully confirmed -- as is, this is seemingly too bold a claim as the JWP did not recognize that;
    • Actually, the JWP did recognise that the data was consistent: they write in their report "The first two events in each chain showed excellent mutual agreement for both decay energies and lifetimes" (on the 2007 studies), and "The 2013 Oganessian collaboration [21] and the 2013 Rudolph collaboration provide redundancy to the three 284113 chains observed in 2004 with the alpha energies being in excellent agreement among most of the events. ... Much of the minor discrepancies in energy are accommodated when sums are considered." What they did not recognise was that this data was from elements 115 and 113, because they considered that Z had not been convincingly established. I've changed it to "experiments at the JINR in 2005 confirmed the observed decay data", to avoid mentioning Z. Double sharp (talk) 14:51, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • halogens (the group containing fluorine, chlorine, bromine, iodine, and astatine) -- it is important to note when talking about the superheavy elements that halogens are not necessarily a group as element 117 may not be a halogen. Perhaps you could use set of elements or the like.

Other than that, the article seems great.--R8R (talk) 12:14, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

One last thing I'd love to see is the three-level location introduction for LLNL (all other places have that so this would match the current writing style) and then I'll be ready to support.--R8R (talk) 17:40, 3 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Added. Double sharp (talk) 01:44, 4 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Comments by DePiep

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Comments Support by XOR'easter

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Looks pretty good!

  • In the intro, it says Nihonium is expected to be within the "island of stability" — perhaps this should be At least one isotope of nihonium is expected to be within the "island of stability". As written, it's a slightly confusing bit of backtracking.
  • I have the feeling that many readers will be more familiar with a different meaning of the term "cold fusion". (In the disambiguation page, the sense of fusion reactions "where the product nuclei have a relatively low excitation energy" comes fourth of four.) Perhaps a brief note should be added to clarify this, particularly since the term occurs early enough that fairly casual readers are apt to bump into it.
  • It looks like a couple words are missing just after footnote 47, perhaps "to reference" or "to honor".

XOR'easter (talk) 21:45, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! I'm happy to support the nomination now. XOR'easter (talk) 17:58, 15 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@XOR'easter: You're welcome! I still plan on addressing your well-founded criticism of our quick introduction of the term cold fusion, and have in fact been thinking about what to do about that. I'm currently leaning towards just adding an explanatory footnote at its first occurrence, since it has to be introduced very early and explaining it then means that we're already going slightly off-topic before the reader has even gotten a clear sense of what the topic actually is. Of course, I'll be most grateful if you have a better suggestion than that. ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 23:55, 17 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
An explanatory footnote at the first occurrence sounds good to me; I can't think of anything better. XOR'easter (talk) 00:47, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@XOR'easter: I've added an explanatory footnote, reusing text from the unbinilium article. Double sharp (talk) 15:38, 18 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Looks good! XOR'easter (talk) 15:10, 19 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Image review

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Comments Tentative support by Cas Liber

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Had a read-through. The lead strikes me as needing some sort of covering sentence, "Very little is known about nihonium as it has only been made in very small amounts." or something sort of like this. The lower paragraph just segues into predicted properties. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:18, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Otherwise, it's a bit dry but then again that goes with the subject matter really...

I've added an expanded version of your sentence at the beginning of the third paragraph of the lede: "Very little is known about nihonium, as it has only been made in very small amounts that decay away within seconds." Double sharp (talk) 16:15, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
much better. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:40, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ok, it is definitely comprehensive, and nothing specific is jumping out at me prose-wise so I think we're there...but my eye for detail ain't great so someone else might pick up a few things. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 23:45, 7 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support from John

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*What spelling variant is the article supposed to be in? At the moment it seems to have both.

There were problems with prose, Engvar, and MOSCAP. This represents a first pass. Please inspect. --John (talk) 01:31, 24 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • Second pass. --John (talk) 04:37, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • Thank you so much for this! I looked through your copyedit and only changed a few things. Most of these are small things; I changed a few things back to the originals (because a decay chain doesn't undergo fission, a nuclide does; and because I wanted to make it clear that the new thing the JWP noted was the confirmation of consistency of the decay energy sums). In particular, I feel the detail that IUPAC alone (rather than with IUPAC) decided on the early release is important, because tensions between IUPAC and IUPAP are later mentioned. Double sharp (talk) 15:20, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question What is the "2n channel"? --John (talk) 14:17, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Question What is the merit of saying (for example) The syntheses of elements 107 to 112 ...? I understand the need to avoid anachronism where the names were not yet assigned to these elements but the degree to which this is done may work against clarity, and WP:EGG seems to be in doubt here. --John (talk) 15:11, 25 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    • I don't think it's an "Easter egg link" if we link the "107" in "element 107" to bohrium, because element 107 is exactly bohrium and so you're getting the article you would expect (even if you might not know its name before you click on it). And I think it might be less clear to give all the names when what is important here is the atomic numbers; connecting each name to its atomic number may work against clarity for readers who haven't memorised all the transactinides. That being said, if the names are generally felt to be helpful, I'm not opposed to a construction like "elements 107 to 112 (bohrium to copernicium)". Double sharp (talk) 23:42, 26 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      • Yes, that's the sort of solution I was thinking of. It's an interesting problem. --John (talk) 00:36, 27 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
        • John, I think we're pretty close to consensus to promote here -- do you have outstanding concerns, or want more time to review? Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:21, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
          • I don't think my concerns rise to the level of withholding support from this fine article. It meets the standard, though it isn't perfect. --John (talk) 01:37, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]
            • @John: Thank you! I've thought about the problem you've mentioned, but I still think that it would be difficult to include the names consistently. Later a lot of atomic numbers are mentioned, with the element names often anachronistic and not the main point, and I don't want to clutter up the article by saying "In 2001, his team confirmed the GSI's discoveries of elements 108, 110, 111, and 112 (hassium, darmstadtium, roentgenium, and copernicium)" or something like that later. (Even though element 108 had already been named in 1997, and hence it wouldn't be anachronistic to name only that one, it's still peripheral and just a lead-up to the main topic of Riken going for element 113.) Double sharp (talk) 07:33, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note

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It looks like we still need a source reivew for reliability and formatting -- you can list at the top of WT:FAC unless one of the reviewers above would like to take it on... Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 00:24, 29 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Support by Chetsford

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Any possible issue seem to have been addressed above. After combing through this, the only minor problem I could dig up is that source 58 is a bare URL, though this might be the result of editing during the FA candidacy. I've taken the liberty of updating it but the nom may want to double-check it to make sure I did so accurately. Chetsford (talk) 15:11, 11 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Coordinator comment: We're nearly there, but I'm not quite sure if the review by Chetsford has fully covered the formatting of sources. For example, ref 1 gives the publisher location but the other book sources do not. Also, ref 74 is missing a publication date. So I'd be grateful if someone could have a look at that. This is a good shortcut for spotting some errors when the references are a little overwhelming to the naked eye. Also, the duplinks need to be checked as we seem to have quite a few and I can't really see that we need them all. This tool will highlight any duplication. Sarastro (talk) 21:41, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, Sarastro - I just noticed I put my support in an unusual place. It was meant as a general support, not a source review, which I'm completely unqualified to conduct. (It just happened that, in this case, my only comment had to do with a source which may also have contributed to the confusion.) I regret the lack of clarity on my part. Chetsford (talk) 21:44, 24 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Source review

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Spotchecks not done

  • FN22 and 36 should also include details of original source - this is a general issue throughout, check for others
  • Generally speaking press releases are not ideal sources - independent references are preferable, except in cases where you're reporting what a press release said

Oppose pending resolution of some of the above. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:29, 27 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I should have enough time to resolve these over the weekend; my apologies for the delay. Double sharp (talk) 14:44, 29 August 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Unfortunately real life got in the way over the weekend; I will try to settle things as quickly as possible (if I can't, R8R may be able to; I'll ask him). Double sharp (talk) 23:55, 2 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I'll try my best to find some spare time and help on Tuesday or Wednesday.--R8R (talk) 11:57, 3 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate it took a long time to get the source review under way (no reflection whatsoever on Nikki, to whom I'm very grateful for finding the time for this among all the other work she does round here) but we really need to get this done ASAP guys. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 04:54, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]
We're both working on it! ^_^ Double sharp (talk) 05:44, 5 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Nikkimaria: would you please have another look?--R8R (talk) 13:46, 6 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

  • If you're going to include a base URL as website alongside publisher this should be done consistently, but it's not necessary to do at all

Closing comment: I think we're finally there. This has been open an unusually long time but mainly because we needed a source review. Thanks to Nikki for stepping in there. One final point is that I mentioned duplinks some time ago, and I see that we still have a few. Someone will need to take a look at that, but there is no need to hold this up any further. Sarastro (talk) 21:43, 8 September 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.