Talk:Red phosphorus

Throughout the course of editing, the contents of this page have been seemingly WP:SPLIT from Allotropes of phosphorus; please see its history for full attribution. Utopes _{(talk / cont)} 13:09, 15 August 2024 (UTC)

Honestly, the more I look at it the less I think it should have been split. While red phosphorus is obviously notable on its own, to me it looks like a very clear WP:PAGEDECIDE situation. There is no way to describe red phosphorus without mentioning other allotropes of phosphorus, not only because there are several "kinds" of red phosphorus (fibrous, violet/Hittorf's, etc.), but because there is actually not even such thing as a "red phosphorus allotrope". From Corbridge (2013):^[1]

Red phosphorus is a term used to describe a variety of different forms, some of which are crystalline and all of which are more or less red in colour [1,3,40]. [...] The stabilities and reactivities of these red forms lie between those of the white and black forms, although they resemble the latter more closely.

We face inevitable duplication and confusion by having a separate page for red phosphorus. Currently phosphorus, allotropes of phosphorus and red phosphorus all suffer from this, with information going from ambiguous to confusing to downright technically incorrect. I am more than willing to merge things back together, clean-up the mess and improve the allotropes article (having worked extensively on phosphorus before), but I am posting this message here first to see if people who care would revert me if I did this boldly. Choucas0 🐦‍⬛ 22:04, 4 February 2026 (UTC)

Greetings! As you see I would be very glad if you can pinpoint the exact causes of such technical inaccuracies or ambiguations. Happy editing, and edit boldly! Pygos (talk) 05:48, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Pygos, I pinged you on Talk:Allotropes of phosphorus because you are the original author of the draft of the standalone red phosphorus article. I am not sure I understand your question though, as I think I answered it with my comment above. The gist of it is that there is no single allotrope that is called "red phosphorus", because the term is used to cover the entire spectrum of intermediary shapes elemental phosphorus can take between white and black phosphorus. I would therefore like to merge back red phosphorus into allotropes of phosphorus. Would you be okay with that? Choucas0 🐦‍⬛ 15:41, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

Greetings! To your question, it is technically correct (and I completely agree with such technical rigour), but Wikipedia's rigor is to serve its utility and usefulness. That is, when there is an (unfortunate) prevalence of materials regarding the use of "red phosphorus" (say, in organic synthetic protocols), one would expect there to be a Wikipedia article detailing such matters. And here is where rigor comes into play, where we can articulate in the section the nuances between the differing forms of "red phosphorus" that has hisotrically been imprecisely and colloquially named under such a title, and disambiguate on such a matter. If the original page is inaccurate about such facts, please do feel free to improve on it, as I am far from a perfect editor. Nonetheless, I do not hold a positive position regarding the dissolution of such a page (I will not revert it either if one is to insist, although others might find such actions suitable). Pygos (talk) 15:59, 5 February 2026 (UTC)

I have given it some thought, and I think I mostly agree with what you say. In addition, I realize that since it is likely that we get more allotropes articles in the future (we already have white phosphorus and phosphorene, so black phosphorus would probably also make sense at some point), it would be more logical to keep expanding the red phosphorus page while converting the allotropes of phosphorus page to more of a WP:SUMMARYSTYLE overview. In light of this I have changed my mind on a merger; however that still leaves work to do to fix the inconsistencies. I will see if I can get on that soon. Choucas0 🐦‍⬛ 13:23, 6 February 2026 (UTC)