Talk:ChemSpider

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Articles for deletion This article was nominated for deletion on 4 June 2007. The result of the discussion was keep.

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[edit] original talk page entry regarding possible COI issue

[reformatting for historical clarity - section heading added] --Parzival418 Hello 01:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

Sorry,

WikiPedia is not the right place for linking commercial web sites from single entries such as

  • chemspider.com
  • chemrefer.com

Question: why does Wikipedia not link

  • chemweb.com
  • chemie.de

???

And so on...

PLEASE STOP THIS! 213.188.227.119 17:27, 2 June 2007 (UTC)

So why then are there Wikipedia pages devoted to big commercial organisations (Google, Yahoo etc.)? These anti-commercial rants are too common on Wikipedia. As if all non-commercial organisations are purer than pure? Willg1982 19:41, 29 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] ALERT: Afd has been filed for Deletion of this Article

There is a discussion regarding possible deletion of this article in progress at this location:

Interested editors are invited to comment. If you comment here instead, it may be a good idea to leave a note at the above link as well. --Parzival418 Hello 01:05, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

NOTICE: after the above note was added, someone changed the PROD tag to AfD. The formal process has now started, so anyone with comments should view the article page and follow the link to the AfD comments page. The discuss at the WP:WQA link listed above is still available for reference, but comments there will not directly affect the AfD discussion page. --Parzival418 Hello 17:30, 4 June 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Ideas for improving the article

It's good to see some recent changes by regular editors, though I don't yet perceive that this article is moving forward. For instance, take a look at this overview on the company's web site, about the type of searches you can do. Until mid-June there was a paragraph in the article under 'Database and searching' describing the types of searches, some fairly esoteric. I thought that was probably the point of the whole thing, that it was more than a pure text search, and more than a convenient grouping of commercial databases. If the functionality on the above-mentioned data sheet is not really there, then of course we can comment on that. Otherwise we should consider restoring that paragraph, which had been removed with the comment that it was 'speculative.' Also the literal recitation of all the databases seems boring, and perhaps we could link to a list of those elsewhere, or just give the most important ones. EdJohnston 20:33, 17 July 2007 (UTC)

See also a recent posting at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Chemistry, discussion at User talk:ChemSpiderMan#Improvement of ChemSpider article and a sandbox version of this article at User:ChemSpiderMan/Sandbox that anyone is welcome to edit. This cautious approach is intended to satisfy our conflict of interest guideline. EdJohnston (talk) 14:46, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

EdJohnston, I know you wanted to have some details about size of company etc. Not sure where you want the details but here is the info. "ChemSpider is a free access system run by ChemZoo Inc. All contributions to the system (developers and curators) are voluntary in nature. The site is supported primarily by the hosts and secondarily by contributions from sponsors. All services are gratis. A team of 6 people presently supports the system and its accompanying weblogs."--ChemSpiderMan (talk) 15:30, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

What is ChemZoo, Inc? I assume a regular profit-making company? And when you say ChemSpider is supported in part by the hosts, do you mean the web hosting providers? I gather that ChemSpider is not run by a non-profit and is not a 501(c)3; it just chooses to make search results available for free like Google does. If ChemSpider gets revenue from on-site advertising, perhaps that could be mentioned. EdJohnston (talk) 15:56, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Thanks for the questions. I hope this clarifies..check out this blog posting. I founded a corporation for the purpose of litigious protection. A number of people/groups are upset at what we are doing and there has been no shortage of rants about the fact that ChemZoo is Incorporated and ChemSpider "belongs" to a corporation. I accept full responsibility for that. It all started as a hobby project and it "seemed like a good idea at the time" since it was cheap and easy to incorporate. Setting up a not for profit was way more complex and I didn't expect such attacks as a result of not doing it. Well...from one direction only actually...the users don't seem to care. When I say ChemSpider is supported by the hosts I mean all hardware, software, ISP fees set-up costs, etc. etc. are covered by me. Yes...we make search results available for free...just like Google but with no fulltime employees and no billions in the bank. ChemSpider gets no revenue from onsite advertising. I did this with GoogleAds initially and made $90 in 3 months. But blocking inappropriate ads was too much work so it's all gone. On the home page of ChemSpider I have chosen to put the logos of some companies who have given sponsorship to ChemSpider. Please detail this as you would see appropriate. Best wishes.--ChemSpiderMan (talk) 17:06, 18 January 2008 (UTC)
Yes, the blog posting you include above is helpful. (The thread includes some responses from others). I hope there is a correct way to include a link to this blog posting in the article, perhaps as an external link, since a blog posting is not usually a reliable source. Some responders to the blog post mention the curating of open-source chemical data, and the question of keeping the results of that work freely available. This topic could be of great interest, but due to Wikipedia's sourcing rules, we may have to wait to say more until that topic is covered in a mainstream publication. EdJohnston (talk) 17:58, 18 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Chemistry: A long way to go ...

... in the WWW. Could please anyone else help linking the missing database abbreviations? Its unbelievable that 'real' compounds are not known because their abbreviations are less common than XML, RFID, WII, and all the other technological buzz-words out there.

JKW 20:37, 17 July 2007 (UTC)