Category talk:Organic reactions

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I am confused here, why a organic reactions category when we have a extensive organic reaction category? rikXL 22:19, 3 Jun 2005 (UTC)

There is the beginnings of a discussion on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry#Category:Organic reaction vs Category:Organic reactions. ~K 02:54, 4 Jun 2005 (UTC)

reorganizing the categories[edit]

Hi all, I am not happy about the recent initiative to reorganize the cats in organic reactions with subcats but I will respect it. It is getting worse though with the additional subcats condensation reaction and free radical reaction bringing the total amount of subcats to 7. I have been advocating the Jerry March top 5 reaction types addition, elimination, substitution, redox and rearrangements but I fear we will end up with each of the organic reactions in its own dedicated category. Any thoughts? V8rik 22:10, 4 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Category creep is a very real problem in Wikipedia. However, sub-categorization of 'Organic reactions' will happen eventually, because the category was getting just too large.

Way back when I was in grad school, I organized my papers according to the March chapters as you have suggested. I think it's a good idea, but it does have problems. Heterocycle syntheses and complex multi-step'ers are difficult to categorize. Here's my take on what we need:

1-5) The Jerry March chapters as stated above.

6) 'Heterocycle forming reactions' (because there are so many, and can easily be subcategorized.)

~~7) 'Free radical reactions' (because they don't really fit into the March categories.)~~

8) 'Carbon-carbon bond forming reactions' (because they're so important to organic synthesis.)

Remember, it's perfectly fine for a reaction to have more than one category. I think if we can get three of us to agree then we should implement the changes. ~K 01:01, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. Some of the categories will be organized by general kind of reaction, some by mechanism (free radical), and some by synthetic utility (carbon-carbon bond forming). If it's all right with you, I'm going to get my Carey and have at it. —Keenan Pepper 04:16, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

The eight you suggest sound practicable to me. Good idea. Walkerma 05:10, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

O.K. I'll get started on it. ~K 16:08, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Oops. 'Free radical reactions' are technically a subset of 'Addition reactions'. My bad. I've moved the category to a subcategory of 'Addition reactions'. I've striked it from my list above. Sorry about the confusion. ~K 16:38, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Not all free radical reactions are addition reactions. There's free-radical bromination (a substitution reaction), free-radical polymerization, and others I'm sure. Let's not mix up mechanism with result. —Keenan Pepper 06:10, 6 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks everybody for your reactions. I am happy to see that there is agreement on 7 main subcats tops. A reaction can be included in more than one category but please go easy with adding many subsubcats and subsubsubcats. V8rik 23:13, 5 August 2006 (UTC)[reply]

More, multiple categorization[edit]

Sorry to dredge this up, but it seems to me that although the "March-style" sub-categorization of Organic Reactions is tidy, it's not particularly useful. As I understand it, categories are used to browse subjects and to find information that is hard to search for. I don't think the current categories work well because I don't see that the broad reaction type is something that people would want to browse. Personally I would go to the back of March and look at the classification of reaction by compound synthesized. I think a category for instance of "Amine-formation reactions" that covers all mechanisms would provide for a useful browsing experience.

To be the most useful, I would have each reaction in ~three sub-categories of "Organic Reactions":

One for the reactant type (e.g. "Reactions of halides")
One for the mechanism (e.g. "Nucleophilic substitution reactions")
One for the product (e.g. "Amine-formation reactions")

This would mean a lot of categories, but it would also make it very easy to find the reaction you're interested in. There's an impressive number of organic reactions described here, and it's a pity that right now it's hard to use this information. I also think that if accessability became easier it might have a knock-on effect of encouraging more people to contribute.

TheBendster 09:12, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

It seems this is an unstoppable process. I will only emphesize here that organic reactions can have multiple categories V8rik 16:54, 25 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. As far as I'm concerned, the more subcats to "Chemical Reactions" there are, and the more of them that each reaction is meaningfully in, the better (to a point, obviously). However, I also agree with your comment in the above discussion that sub-subcats are a bad idea. TheBendster 06:56, 26 April 2007 (UTC)[reply]