Talk:List of chemical elements

I have changed the List of elements into using dedicated table {{List of chemical elements}} (/doc)

In short

The table is build with row-subtemplate for each element to ease handling input, formatting, changes. Some data is read from central data lists (such as standard atomic weight). Some repetitive footnotes, for example on full sets of elements, are removed. Basic numerical handling in formatting and sorting.

In detail

Columns

Added columns block, origin, phase

Add separate parameter for symbol clarification (like "Hg")

Anchor by symbol added for cross-linking: #He (for example List of chemical elements § Y for the Ytterby brothers)

Data sources

Use standard-data from Category:Element data sets (0) when available.

Per symbol: name, Z, group, period, block, s.a.w., origin, phase

Otherwise, data from old version was used initially

For: etymology, density, m.p., b.p., heat capacity, electonegativity, abundance

Etymology refined writing & punctuation, crosslinks added (e.g. between the four Yterbium-names)

Notation

Used "( )" when projected or estimated value

Format by {{val|gaps}}

Sorting uses numerical value ({{val}} feature)

Footnotes

removed footnotes referencing uncertainty

removed footnotes that describe sets of elements

kept footnotes on singular exceptions (He, As, Pu)

repeat footnote from header at first live appearance (e.g., first actual [ ] notation)

Compare old/new version

{{List of chemical elements/2020}}

Technical

use row-template, parameters

use {{val}} when "( )" value (needed for number handling)

Not done

Check existing data by source

No mayor changes

-DePiep (talk) 13:11, 30 June 2021 (UTC)

You added columns. OK. Why? WP _loves_ lists. But, they often get out of hand with information; information overload. What is the point/value of each column? Is there too much information in the table? Is the information useful? Is the table too wide to be useful? IMO there is too much. The information is not wrong ... but the table is not good. Stevebroshar (talk) 19:16, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

You're responding to a thread that was started and then went dormant over 4 years ago, and are talking to someone who was banned from Wikipedia altogether 2 years ago. Whatever the current state of the page is is probably pretty stable now. If you'd like to see a change, you'll get better results starting a fresh thread with a specific proposal for change than trying to workshop a stale thing. DMacks (talk) 19:24, 27 October 2025 (UTC)

Right now at Chemical_element#List_of_the_118_known_chemical_elements there's a very useful feature: a short explanation of some of the headers. It's missing from List of chemical elements. And, it could be expanded to include most or all of the headers. It would be nice to have a more trim look for the headers. This would save some screen space, particularly on small screens. Some explanation could also be in the headers using {abbr} tags. I'll add both of these to the template itself if there are no objections.

As a side note, the name origins could probably be in {efn} tags to save even more space. Wizmut (talk) 06:10, 7 January 2025 (UTC)

I made some of these changes but did not include the explanations outside the table. These could be added to each place where the table appears, except in cases where such text would not be expected. Wizmut (talk) 20:57, 9 January 2025 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be useful to add a information about whether the element has stable isotope(s)? It not necessarily should be another column, it could be colour-coded for example. Pko (talk) 19:51, 21 June 2025 (UTC)