Talk:Alcohol (chemistry)

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Alcohol (chemistry) article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1, 2: 180 days

Addictions and recovery Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Addictions and recovery, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of addiction on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Addictions and recoveryWikipedia:WikiProject Addictions and recoveryTemplate:WikiProject Addictions and recoveryaddiction and recovery articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Altered States of Consciousness High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Altered States of Consciousness, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of altered states of consciousness on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Altered States of ConsciousnessWikipedia:WikiProject Altered States of ConsciousnessTemplate:WikiProject Altered States of ConsciousnessAltered States of Consciousness articles
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Chemistry Top‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Chemistry, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of chemistry on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.ChemistryWikipedia:WikiProject ChemistryTemplate:WikiProject ChemistryChemistry articles
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the project's importance scale.

Food and drink: Beverages High‑importance

This article is within the scope of WikiProject Food and drink, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of food and drink related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Food and drinkWikipedia:WikiProject Food and drinkTemplate:WikiProject Food and drinkFood and drink articles

High

This article has been rated as High-importance on the project's importance scale.

Related taskforces:
/
	This article is within the scope of the Beverages Task Force, a task force which is currently considered to be inactive.

Food and Drink task list:

To edit this page, select here

Here are some tasks you can do for WikiProject Food and drink:

Help bring these Top Importance articles currently B Status or below up to GA status: Agaricus bisporus (i.e. mushroom), Beef, Bread, Curry, Drink, Food, Ham and eggs, Soy sauce, Sushi, Yogurt
Bring these Top Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Beer, French cuisine, Sugar
Bring these High Importance articles currently at GA status up to FA status: Apple, Burger King, Fish
Participate in project-related deletion discussions.
Delete unrelated trivia sections found in articles. Please review WP:Trivia and WP:Handling trivia to learn how to do this.
Add the {{WikiProject Food and drink}} project banner to food and drink related articles and content to help bring them to the attention of members. For a complete list of banners for WikiProject Food and drink and its child projects, select here.
Provide photographs and images for Category:Wikipedia requested images of food
Consider joining this project's Assessment task force. List any project ideas in this section

Note: These lists are transcluded from the project's tasks pages.

Health and fitness Mid‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Health and fitness, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of health and physical fitness related articles on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.Health and fitnessWikipedia:WikiProject Health and fitnessTemplate:WikiProject Health and fitnessHealth and fitness articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Law Mid‑importance

	Law portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Law, an attempt at providing a comprehensive, standardised, pan-jurisdictional and up-to-date resource for the legal field and the subjects encompassed by it.LawWikipedia:WikiProject LawTemplate:WikiProject Lawlaw articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Psychology Mid‑importance

	Psychology portal This article is within the scope of WikiProject Psychology, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Psychology on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.PsychologyWikipedia:WikiProject PsychologyTemplate:WikiProject Psychologypsychology articles
Mid	This article has been rated as Mid-importance on the project's importance scale.

Requested move 28 December 2021

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: There's no consensus what (if any) the primary topic of "alcohol" is, so the page will be moved off primary and a dab will be placed there. (non-admin closure) (t · c) buidhe 02:54, 5 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Alcohol → Alcohol (chemistry)
Alcohol (disambiguation) → Alcohol

– I think the average reader is going to be looking for Alcohol (drug) or alcoholic drink rather than the chemistry definition. Ivar the Boneful (talk) 03:15, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Retarget to Alcoholic drink and Support Alcohol → Alcohol (chemistry). If most readers that search for "alcohol" are looking for the article on alcoholic drink, then "alcohol" should redirect there as the WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. A proper hatnote at that article can direct people to this article and the DAB page. Rreagan007 (talk) 03:37, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Retarget From previously "Alcohol (chemistry)" to alcoholic drink per WP:PRIMARYREDIRECT. I think is so possible to redirect this page into the alcohol link and keeping DAB page as currently is. 125.167.58.183 (talk) 09:22, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Retarget to alcoholic drink, per above. Randy Kryn (talk) 12:09, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I don't believe there is a clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC here: alcohol (chemistry) and alcoholic drink both have very good claims (though perhaps the former's claim is somewhat stronger), such that neither is much more likely than any other single topic to be the prime reference for 'alcohol'. I therefore support OP's proposal, which actually is the correct solution for when there is no PTOPIC. If there is a PTOPIC though, it is definitely alcohol (chemistry), which means that nothing should be changed. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 15:32, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
I suspect that most know that alcohol is a chemical that is also used for drinking. They won't be surprised that the page discusses its chemistry. (On the other hand, it seems that many do not know that water is a chemical.) As long as the See also is easy to find, I don't see any problem. Gah4 (talk) 15:58, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
@Gah4: it's not clear what your opinion is here. We have 4 major articles which people could be looking for when typing in 'alcohol': one on the class of chemical compounds (this one), one on the specific type of alcohol in alcoholic drinks (ethanol), one on the use of ethanol as a drug (alcohol (drug)), and one on the medium through which ethanol as a drug is generally consumed (alcoholic drink). To which one of those should readers be directed when typing in 'alcohol' and hitting enter? Some of the !voters here (the ones saying 'retarget to alcoholic drink') seem to be of the opinion that by far the most likely topic people are looking for is alcoholic drink, and that readers should therefore first be directed to that article. To me, this appears incorrect: I think that people could equally well be looking for alcohol (drug) or for the class of chemical compounds; even if alcoholic drink would be the most likely topic of the 4 (which I doubt), it's not much more likely than the other topics to such an extent as to be the WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. In such cases (when there is no primary topic), the best thing to do is to make alcohol direct to a disambiguation page (currently alcohol (disambiguation)) which lists the various articles related to 'alcohol'. If you think, like Zxcvbnm below, that people are by far most likely looking for the class of chemical compounds and that this is the primary topic, nothing needs to be changed and you should !vote oppose. Thanks! ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 20:02, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose: OK, I am for keeping it the way it is. While I suspect more people drink alcoholic drinks than work in chemistry labs, that doesn't mean that they are so interesting in reading about it here. And even if more do look for a page related to drinking it, they might not be all that interested in reading the page. Note also that alcohol is commonly used for household cleaning and (both ethanol and 2-propanol) for medical uses (that is, rubbing alcohol). And note that this page does cover much of the history of alcohol for drinking. Gah4 (talk) 03:52, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Support, DAB at base page. No clear WP:PRIMARYTOPIC.--Ortizesp (talk) 18:20, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose The drink is named after one type of alcohol, so being the base topic where the other meanings originate from, this should definitely be primary._{ZXCVBNM (TALK)} 19:40, 28 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

support dab per pageviews analysis It is not clear that "Alcoholic drink" is the clear primary topic and I oppose moving that to the primary topic. Hemiauchenia (talk) 01:38, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
The current primary topic may serve as a broad-concept article on the other hand there are several unrelated uses so a DAB may be better anyway. Crouch, Swale (talk) 10:13, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]
Oppose - a link to Alcoholic drink should be added to the hatnote. I think the rest is fine as-is. Just considering the articles Alcohol and Ethanol, the titles as-is are correct. "Ethanol for human consumption" is a subtopic, and the common name refers to that ethanol as alcohol in a form of metonymy. (I can't speak to the etymology, I am claiming that is what the words mean today.) As far as the hatnote handles that, I think we are good. User:力 (powera, π, ν) 19:29, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support retargeting to either dab or drink. Though from the page views Hemiauchenia presented it would seem that the dab is the better choice. Gonnym (talk) 19:42, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Support dab. In a situation where we have credible arguments that A is primary and also credible arguments that B is primary, a WP:NOPRIMARY outcome is all but inevitable. As another piece of evidence, here is a link to mainspace pages with wikilinks to the basename. It's sorted by random, so if you refresh, you'll get a new random set. A very high proportion (maybe around 10-20%) of these wikilinks are mistargeted, which is a strong indicator that the current primary topic setup is not working. Making the basename a dab will force editors to make a conscious decision about whether they're referring to the class of chemical compounds, or ethanol specifically, or ethanol as a drug, or alcoholic drinks, or something else. Colin M (talk) 20:36, 29 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Deprotect?

You can probably remove semi-protection from this page, now that it's no longer the redirect when you search for "Alcohol". MichaelBijanAfghani (talk) 03:43, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Requested at Wikipedia:Requests for page protection. ☿ Apaugasma (talk ☉) 04:07, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Done: 3 months of pending changes will show if this page really still needs protection. ~ ToBeFree (talk) 07:14, 6 January 2022 (UTC)[reply]

"Use American English" template

Would you mind if I've changed 2 words (catalyse) from UK English to their US English version added the "Use American English" template, in this edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Alcohol_%28chemistry%29&diff=1193270702&oldid=1185209041

I'm not a fond of a particular English variant. If you would like to use British English, I'm OK with that, just change the template and change all the words which differ between the US and the UK English. However, I found out that the article uses mostly US words, so it was easier to change UK to US by replacing just two words.

Anyway, we should have a consistent English version usage, we should not intermix US and UK. Maxim Masiutin (talk) 23:25, 2 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki Education assignment: Introduction to Community Economic and Social Development II

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 9 January 2024 and 12 April 2024. Further details are available on the course page. Peer reviewers: Mehakdeepkaur001.

— Assignment last updated by PinkiRani001 (talk) 19:34, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

saturated and diol

A recent edit mentions saturated carbons, and also more than one. I haven't thought about this for a while, but the usual alcohols are on saturated carbons. Reminds me that benyl alcohol, unlike the name sounds, has a carbon between the ring and the OH. There are also diols and triols, with two or three OH groups, ethylene glycol and glycerine (1,2,3-propane-triol) being two examples. Gah4 (talk) 01:24, 14 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]