Template:Did you know nominations/Triclocarban

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: rejected by Allen3 talk 09:54, 29 May 2014 (UTC)
Insufficient progress toward resolving outstanding issues

Triclocarban

edit
  • ... that triclocarban, an antimicrobial commonly used in soaps and plastic, is 100 to 1,000 times more effective in killing algae, crustaceans, and fish than it is in killing microbes?

5x expanded by Row131er (talk), Brichr1520 (talk), EDDendocrinelover1 (talk). Nominated by Row131er (talk) at 02:54, 14 March 2014 (UTC).

  • Though the hook is very interesting, and is supported by a citation within the article and by the source material, there is a dispute template on the article that must be resolved before this article can be considered for a DYK. Coretheapple (talk) 17:02, 16 March 2014 (UTC)
  • This article appears to be the subject of educational assignment. In the recent past there have been problems with chemistry articles expanded as part of class projects in which much of the added content was inaccurate, unbalanced, confusing, or otherwise problematic. I'm not saying that is necessarily the case here, but I would recommend waiting until the assignment is over and then getting input from Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry or Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals participants before this page is featured on the main page. -- Ed (Edgar181) 19:35, 31 March 2014 (UTC)
  • Full review needed. The dispute template has been removed by nominator—see discussion on Talk:Triclocarban—so any reviewer should carefully check for neutrality; there doesn't seem to have been amelioration of the issues raised initially, and the template removal may well be premature. BlueMoonset (talk) 14:09, 5 April 2014 (UTC)
    • it looks like the template nominator attracted no support! and may well have been expressing general opposition to environmentalism rather than specific concerns in the article. The article is impressive in depth. MarkBernstein (talk) 12:34, 3 May 2014 (UTC)

Clearly some problems.

  • I have done some clean-up
  • The sentence from which the hook comes is not directly referenced.
  • The following sentence is concerning: The volume of triclocarban reentering the environment in sewage sludge after initial successful capture from wastewater is s 127,000 ± 194,000 kg/yr. Leaving aside the extra 's', the range here suggest triclocarban entry volume into the environment could be −60 000 kg each year!
  • There is at least one bare url reference
  • There is at least one reference that appears three times
  • The detail in references is variable - some have volumes / pages, some not. Some have appropriate doi / pubmed links, some not.
  • I have not checked the 5x expansion, etc, though it looks a solid article... but I am not sure what the hook means. Does 100 times as effective refer to differences in LD50? Is it a manifestation of biological magnification? Does it mean that 1 g could kill 100 times as many fish as microbes (which would be bizarre)? Maybe the hook need not explain this, but the article should.

Just some thoughts. EdChem (talk) 12:11, 5 May 2014 (UTC)


Hello everyone,

On behalf of the other editors of the triclocarban page, thank you very much for your helpful suggestions. As some of you have noticed, this page was the subject of a semester-long undergraduate assignment at Boston College for an advanced experience Biology course entitled "Environmental Disruptors of Development". Submitting a "Did You Know" nomination was required for our assignment and we appreciate the constructive attention that it has brought to our page. For more information about the subject of the class and the scope of the assignment, please visit our professor's page for this assignment. Education Program:Boston College/Environmental Disruptors of Development (Spring 2014)

I would like to address a few of the issues that have been raised and appreciate further feedback. First of all, the dispute banner was an issue that was brought up at the beginning of our nomination process. As can be seen on the article's talk page, we responded to the user who posted the banner by combing through the article and our sources in order to try and eliminate possible areas of bias. We also restructured the opener to the page and restated certain ideas in more neutral terms. We understand that topics related environmentalism can be disputed at times and so we used peer-reviewed academic sources as exclusively a possible. While there weren't many of these academic sources to choose from, we found none that conflicted with what had been written in the article. Because the user did not leave much for specific suggestions as to how we could improve the page or any way to contact them with questions, we left a reply asking for their advice and kept the discussion open to other users as well. Because there was no further conversation about this banner or improvements that could be made, we removed it from the article. We also consulted our class's Wikipedia educational liaison on this issue.

With regards to our understanding of chemistry and how this may affect the quality of our contributions, myself and my other group members are in our fourth years of pursuing Bachelor of Science degrees in Biology, meaning that at this point we have each taken at least 17 university credit hours of chemistry courses ranging from organic and biochemistry to general physical chemistry. We do believe that we have been able to represent the chemistry of this topic well, however we are by no means infallible and are extremely happy to work with others on improving this area. We would very much appreciate input from Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemistry as suggested above.

As for the issues with our reference formatting brought up by reviewers on this page, we will look into correcting these issues and openly welcome others to do the same where they see problems that we have overlooked.

Again, thank you very much for your interest and kind suggestions. It is rewarding to see how far this article has come since its incredibly bare beginning four months ago and we appreciate the educational opportunity afforded by Wikipedia. This project has come to an end and so myself and my group members will now be much less active on the page. However, we truly do care about the quality of the page and take responsibility for our work so we hope that you will contact us if we can contribute more in any way.

Row131er (talk) 21:52, 9 May 2014 (UTC)

  • Row131er, insofar as this DYK nomination you made is concerned, EdChem did a review to explain what still needed to be done with the article for it to appear on the main page of Wikipedia as a DYK entry. It sounds to me, based on your note above, that you have no immediate intention of doing this; indeed, as BC graduation ceremonies are on Monday, less than 36 hours from now, it seems unlikely that you will any time soon. However, I could easily be wrong; please let us know by the end of this coming week whether you plan to update the article before the end of May. If we don't hear back next weekend, we'll have to close the nomination, which has already been open for over two months. Best of luck at Commencement! BlueMoonset (talk) 02:30, 18 May 2014 (UTC)
  • No response nor edits in the ten days since the above. Regretfully closing DYK nomination as unsuccessful. BlueMoonset (talk) 06:41, 28 May 2014 (UTC)