Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of isotopes

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was Keep. Rjd0060 (talk) 21:52, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] List of isotopes

List of isotopes (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) (delete) – (View log)

This article is useless. There are already articles on the isotopes of each element, as well as table of nuclides. It's unlikely that anyone would actually want to use a list in this form, even if it were completed. The way, the truth, and the light (talk) 00:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep - acts as a directory and an intermediate between articles. it helps a user whilst browsing and to find articles previously difficult to find. it benefits the views of other articles. it has a practical use and application. --Deoxyribonucletic acid (talk) 22:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete: agree with challenger. Versus22 (talk) 01:13, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep - Lists have many purposes, not all obvious, see WP:CLN#Lists. Giving this a keep because nominator has not identified a reason to delete and WP:IDONTLIKEIT#I_don.27t_like_it is not a valid reason. SunCreator (talk) 01:15, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep per SunCreator. It may need clean-up though.--RyRy5 ^{Got something to say?} 01:20, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment: All it lists is all these different articles. Versus22 (talk) 01:25, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep This could be useful to someone. Per Suncreator's comments.--Adamfinmo (talk) 01:27, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep I don't think it's disputeable that isotopes are notable / important. Moreover, it seems a good candidate for a list, as it's a well defined criteria that isn't likely to hugely expand. Bfigura ^(talk) 02:34, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep This is clearly a well-defined list of lists, and to a non-chemist appears somewhat useful. No harm done. Joshdboz (talk) 02:42, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Keep as a valid alternate respresentation of Table of nuclides, which links to this list as one of several alternate forms. The formatting here is a bit ... well, stretched out is what comes to mind -- a more compact representation might improve the utility, but that's an editing issue. —Quasirandom (talk) 03:43, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Argh -- I got confused by my multiple browser tabs and made an incorrect statement. The Table of nuclides links to Index to isotope pages, not this list. Sorry 'bout that. —Quasirandom (talk) 03:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Striking my keep while I think about this some more. There's this, there's Index to isotope pages, and there's Isotope lists. The latter two are clearly reasonable alternate layouts -- the question is, is this uncessarily duplicative of them? —Quasirandom (talk) 03:51, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Weak redirect to Isotope lists, as much as I dislike using "weak"/"strong" qualifiers. As an index to the same information, I find Isotope lists both more compact and informative, at least in the body; the leads of the various articles, I find somewhat wonky (to use the technical term). That reservation, however, is an editorial matter, and thus while it properly ought not to affect the strength of my recommendation, I find it does. —Quasirandom (talk) 04:01, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

Keep it could be useful to have the isotope lists kept in this list Frank Anchor ^{Talk to me} (R-OH) 04:35, 10 April 2008 (UTC)

• Redirect to table of nuclides, which links to a number of existing representations of this data, including index to isotope pages and table of nuclides (complete). Due to the number of nuclides (isotopes) which exist, this list would be extremely unwieldy if completed in this form; furthermore, individual articles don't exist for most isotopes outside of a couple particularly interesting ones (deuterium and carbon-14, for instance), so continuing to list every isotope in this format is unlikely to provide any benefit over the existing representations. Zetawoof_(ζ) 06:09, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • As an alternate target, Quasirandom's suggestion of isotope lists also looks good. Same information, again - just displayed a little differently. Zetawoof_(ζ) 06:11, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Redirect to Table of nuclides or isotope lists as outlined above (no preference for either option). Lankiveil ^{(speak to me)} 11:37, 10 April 2008 (UTC).
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Lists-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 13:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Note: This debate has been included in the list of Science-related deletion discussions. -- Fabrictramp (talk) 13:44, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. I agree that there's a lot of repetition of material on this subject, but is this the only complete list of lists of isotopes that indexes by name of the element, rather than symbol? It might have utility for people with no background in chemistry who want quick access to a particular list of isotopes and might be put off by the periodic table representations. Also, for several forms of disability and for some output devices, clicking on a periodic table representation might be difficult and a plain text list might be easier to handle. Espresso Addict (talk) 18:55, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Check out the lists linked from isotope lists. They're indexed by name and use plain text. Zetawoof_(ζ) 19:49, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
    • I had seen those, but they don't include all elements on a single page, and you need to know the approximate atomic number to find the correct subpage. Espresso Addict (talk) 21:48, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete or Redirect: The list has existed for 3 years and still has only a few elements with any isotopes listed. DCEdwards¹⁹⁶⁶ 19:19, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Delete I was expecting better than this. What the author calls "Hydrogen-2" and "Hydrogen-3", the rest of us call deuterium and tritium. (Hydrogen-1, of course, is known as hydrogen). A topic that should be in an encyclopedia, but an incredibly useless list. The redirect would be a good idea, since it would take one to something readable. Mandsford (talk) 19:52, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep but completely rewrite. I have made a draft at User:PrimeHunter/sandbox2. It is based on List of elements by atomic number. I didn't use anything from the existing List of isotopes. The isotopes column lists all isotopes which currently have their own article with a name of form "Elementname-number", for example Carbon-14. This may not be the most common or notable isotopes. PrimeHunter (talk) 03:14, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
• PrimeHunter's proposed revision looks good. As noted, it's an encyclopedic topic, and it needs an encyclopedic type of article. Mandsford (talk) 12:31, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong Keep and replace page wither version provided by PrimeHunter. (Nice work.) Keep per navigational abilities per WP:LIST and WP:SAL. Earthdirt (talk) 02:27, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep the revised version. It is very useful to have a list of isotopes that are notable enough to have their own article--something that the chart of the nuclides can't provide. --Itub (talk) 17:23, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep and replace with Primehunter's version. Bm gub (talk) 18:19, 12 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong keep Topic is fully encyclopedic without question. --Blechnic (talk) 00:53, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Certainly. But it's also already covered in a number of other lists - the question at hand is whether we need this one. Zetawoof_(ζ) 02:28, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
    • A table of nuclides, those, is generally written in a different way. If it is exactly the same as this one, written as a list, then it is the problem article, not this one. I will look at it, though, to see if this is the point of this AfD. There are enough chemists on Wikipedia who understand the difference though (I assume by the excellent detail in many of the chemical articles) that it's unlikely any will vote for doing this any way other than the standard, a nuclide table, and a list of isotopes remaining the two different things. --Blechnic (talk) 03:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
      • Comment No, it looks like the table of nuclides is a table of nuclides, while this is a list of isotopes. The user with the sandbox should just put his version of this list, up, though, as it is more useful. They are not quite the same thing, although they may look to be identical due to the type of information they contain, they're used differently. --Blechnic (talk) 03:39, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
        • Comment I have copied my sandbox version to the list. PrimeHunter (talk) 13:42, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
          • Thank you, that's much more usable. Although the prior author(s) was well-intended for attempting a list of this nature, and it's not straight-forward how to make things useful on Wikipedia. --Blechnic (talk) 05:24, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
• Keep. A useful method of accessing isotope articles. The Table of nuclides (complete) is very inconvenient to use for many purposes, and the individual element isotope lists are not appropriate for some methods of approach to the subject. This list is a suitable alternative. -R. S. Shaw (talk) 03:02, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
• Comment - this list of isotopes is incomplete. Just take a look at the complete list of all isotopes published each and every year by CRC Press - and it will take one hundred pages to publish it here. This one is a list of selected isotopes and should be named so, with an explanation in the title why these specific isotopes were selected at the first place, something like "Basic elements and its best known radioactive isotopes". greg park avenue (talk) 19:44, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment. As I wrote earlier, the current selection is simply those isotopes which currently have their own article. I primarily view the list as a way to navigate our isotope articles and not as a claim about which isotopes are best known or most notable. I didn't make the isotope articles and don't know how they were selected (without investigating, my guess would be that different editors just created them when they had time and thought an isotope seemed notable). The lead says the links are to isotopes with their own article. I didn't want to claim on the page that all isotope articles were listed, because new articles may be created without updating the list at the same time. (Existing articles may be deleted or redirected but that is more rare and deletions would immediately stand out as red.) PrimeHunter (talk) 21:06, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
• Strong keep → Weak keep then, if this is the best deal we can make it to show the CRC table without duplicating it - over one hundred pages in small print. If the links to the existing lists of elements/isotopes for any listed in Wikipedia element are provided, and I checked few ones, they are, there would be no better deal in town for now. Don't confuse it with the Table of nuclides - that table is only a graph showing the main idea of the statistics - atomic/mass number ratio but nothing else. And if someone will look for any particular isotope, but did not know which element to look for, this list will do it. greg park avenue (talk) 00:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
  • Comment Actually, the closest thing to the CRC's table is our isotope lists, not this. The way, the truth, and the light (talk) 02:21, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
    • Comment Yes, of course you're right. Why did you not say that in the first place when nominating this article with AfD? Maybe merging this article with the Table of nuclides, which you support I gather, and moving both to the new name Table of isotopes, which name already exists and is redirected to it, would be more appropriate than the deletion? Sounds like an idea, no? greg park avenue (talk) 18:33, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.