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= Wikipedia and the  Molecular Sciences =

A talk given by  [[Wikipedia:User:Rzepa|Henry Rzepa]], sharing his thoughts about Wikipedia and its use on the occasion of the  [http://uk.wikimedia.org/wiki/London_Wikipedia_Academy London Wikipedia  Academy] launch<hr />
''I venture to suggest that ... the general development of the human race to be well and effectually completed when all men, in all places, without any loss of time, at a low rate of charge, are cognizant through their senses, of all that they desire to be cognizant of in all other places. ... This is the grand annihilation of time and place which we are all striving for, and which in one small part we have been permitted to see actually realised" (Samuel Butler,  1863, <ref name="butler">Quoted in George Dyson, "Darwin amongst the Machines, The Evolution of Global Intelligence", Addison-Wesley, N.Y., 1997. ISBN 0-201-400649-7</ref>)
== Molecules and  Wikipedia ==
# Chemistry is mostly about molecules. Hence it is one of the '''molecular sciences'''
## As of today, there are [http://www.cas.org/ 58,045,845 molecules] known
## For each of which between  10 - 50 [http://www.iupac.org/ well-defined] properties  (sometimes more) are recorded (or calculated).
# Molecules map beautifully onto  Wiki(pedia) pages!
# You will see from the above, that collecting and curating information about molecules has hitherto been done by just a small number of (commercial) organisations: 
#*[http://www.cas.org/ CAS]
#*[http://reaxys.com REAXYS]
#*[http://www.ccdc.cam.ac.uk/ CCDC]
#*  etc. etc.
#* These organisations harvest data from the  ''original sources'' (just like  Wikipedia)
#** The process started around 1881 by [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friedrich_Konrad_Beilstein Friedrich Konrad Beilstein]. 
#** His handbook was the (molecular) Wikipedia of his day!
#** And it introduced many modern concepts, such as the information triple (Molecule|Property|Citation)
#**  And it introduced the concept of assiduously citing the sources! No citation, no entry!!
# Academic promotion still (in part) depends on your citations in CAS (= gold-plated standard)
# But, accessing citations from these sources  is '''''Expensive''''' and only available to rich(er) organisations.
# Firstly, the idea in 1994 to put molecules on the  Web.<ref name="rzepa">H. S. Rzepa, B. J. Whitaker and M. J. Winter, <i> J. Chem. Soc., Chem. Commun.</i>, <b>1994</b>, 1907. {{DOI|10.1039/C39940001907}}</ref>
# And when Wikipedia started, people interested in molecules immediately launched a number of  '''Chemistry Projects'''.
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemistry Chemistry WikiProject]  (for general topics on chemistry)
##* Chemical concepts
##* Chemical reactions and processes
##* Chemists
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Chemicals Chemicals WikiProject]  (for articles on specific chemical compounds) 
##* ~20 active members, who write articles
##* develop boxes
##* validate data
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Elements Elements WikiProject]  (chemical elements).  
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Pharmacology Pharmacology WikiProject]  (mainly drugs), 
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology Molecular and Cellular Biology WikiProject]  (much biochemistry) 
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Geology Geology WikiProject]  (which oversees minerals) 
##[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Physics Physics WikiProject]  (covering some chemical physics).
# The Virtuous circle
## WikiTrust

==  Thinking inside the Box ==
# The ChemBox,  the  ElementBox and the DrugBox
# The DOI template (hey, I had to create this on this site, see below)
# Curation (ChemSpider)
# [http://www.commonchemistry.org/ CommonChemistry], ~3500 molecules
# [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:CheMoBot CheMoBot]
# Where did  I get all this information from?<ref name="walker">Martin Walker ''Enhancing Learning with Online Resources, Social Networking, and Digital Libraries'', Chapter 5, pp 79–92, ACS Symposium Series, Vol. 1060
ISBN13: 9780841226005eISBN: 9780841226012. {{DOI|10.1021/bk-2010-1060.ch005}}</ref>

== How did Henry Rzepa get involved (in Wikipedia) ==
#* In 1997, I decided to teach a course on how students might retrieve (chemical) information.
#* The course was presented as conventional Web pages (they are [http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/it/ still up], as a historical document!)
#* And we got students to express what they had learnt by each writing a small project about an interesting molecule
#** Some of the best can still be [https://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/local/projects/ seen here]
#* In those days, students were keen to learn how to write  HTML
#* But as the years went by, they started to query the usefulness of this skill!
#* So in 2007,  I decided to move everything to our [http://wiki.ch.ic.ac.uk Wiki]
#** A [https://wiki.ch.ic.ac.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Mod:intro Modelling course] now expresses the Molecule Project
#** and the students describe their project using (Media)Wiki markup instead of  HTML. 
#** this is much more to their liking!
#* A key feature of our  Wiki is the [https://wiki.ch.ic.ac.uk/wiki/index.php?title=Mod:writeup molecule renderer]  (Jmol).
#* Our department was the first to use 3D models of molecules (way back in  1860)
#** Nowadays, we build them on computer
#** which  means anyone can play with them
#** or look at how molecules vibrate
#** and how the electrons are distributed around them
# There is much current discussion on how to best incorporate this into  Wikipedia itself
#* You can see for example that  I am not able to install it on this Wiki!

== What else molecular or chemical is happening on Wikipedia itself? ==
#[http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Chemicals#IRC_meeting_to_discuss_possible_addition_of_Jmol_links Jmol]
# New formats for  content: Books, Mobile devices
# Offline
# More validation
#Mashups
#Integration with lab instruments<hr />

= References and citations =
<references />