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)

[edit] reorganizing the categories

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)

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)

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)

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

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

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)

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)

• 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)

[edit] More, multiple categorization

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)

• 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)

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)