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Draft talk:List of modes of action of insecticides

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Starter-for-ten

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@Bosula. Here is a first stab at a sortable wikitable. It needs to be expanded and this is easiest in the source editor, where the structure of each row should be obvious. I've tried to wikilink as much as possible and I don't think we should add any common name that doesn't have a WP article, which will cut down the number. There are still going to be too many OPs and pyrethroids, IMO, so maybe some other exclusion criteria would help?

I've drafted this as "List of modes of action of insecticides" rather than "List of insecticide modes of action" (which could be a redirect) because I want to have the possibility of "List of modes of action of fungicides" etc later.

If you haven't already, I suggest you set your preferences for "sticky headers" for tables, which makes it easier to see what's there when scrolled down near the foot of big tables. See Special:Preferences#mw-prefsection-gadgets and search for "sticky".

Note that WP is unlike Excel in that you can't sort a table using multiple levels/column names. Hence it is very important that the table as seen in its source code has the precise sequence of rows necessary. The software is clever in that it sorts by the piped name, so that's the alphabetising that should be used (see Cinerin I for an example, when you sort by Common name). Mike Turnbull (talk) 17:15, 20 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Mike, The table looks great. It would have taken me weeks to amass the know-how to do that. Here my suggestions.
  • That was the first table I've ever made. I just followed the wikitable link and looked at a table in another article.
Title of page: We should have "classes" or "chemical classes" in the title as well as "mode of action".
  • Might become inelegant and don't forget we can use WP:REDIRECTs. Can wait till we finish and move to mainspace.
Column heading: For "IRAC code" we add the letter A, B etc. Carbamates are 1 A and Organophosphates are 1 B etc.
  • Could be tricky as currently sorts as numbers. If text, would sort 1A, 1B, 10, 2, 3.....
Column heading: "chemical class" instead of "class", although both variants have their advantages.
  • Fine, I'll bow to your judgement.
We write the classes as they are written in IRAC. For example "avermectins, milbemycins". There are two pages in WP in this case, which is not a problem because we can link to each of them. If the name of the class in WP is egregiously different from the IRAC one we change it; If it is different but OK we link to the WP name. If it means the text is too long to fit nicely in the space available, then some of the rows will be thicker, and we give up attractiveness for exactitude.
  • Agreed. Note that wikitable columns automatically expand to fit to biggest content unless otherwise instructed.
We either list all common names in the class or just one example, irrespective of how many of them have WP pages. If we have just one example then we need an addition column with heading "number of insecticides in class", or "Nr", or possibly two columns, one for the IRAC list and one for the BCPC list. The column heading "common name", becomes "example of common name" or something like that. Bosula (talk) 11:32, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
  • I think just the IRAC number as that's our main source. However we need to add the extra column now to save time later. Note that having such a number complicates the updating of the table once list is live: we could instead just have a disclaimer in the text at the beginning or put an asterisk against those classes where there are extra unlisted examples. Anyway, go ahead and start adding more columns/rows as you see fit and we'll see how this develops. I didn't mention it before but I don't think we should include biologicals. Mike Turnbull (talk) 14:59, 21 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I agree we should first consider carefully and settle on a concept before populating the table. I will make a comment on the Talk:Insecticide page with a link to this page so others can give their input. Also such a link on the Talk:List of insecticides page.
    One variant we did not discuss is using your List of insecticides page. We leave the title of the page as "list of insecticides" and add "class" and "MOA" information to all 548 insecticides. This would then give the table you created but much longer. We then only have one page and one table. Bosula (talk) 11:55, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think it works so well when pages try to do too much. The current list of insecticides is fairly compact and readers can easily click from the letters at the top to the set beginning with that letter where they'll see most of the entries together, at least if they are using a PC monitor. If we had a 3-column table there, it would be much more difficult to scroll to see any given entry. For the same reason, I think that the table here should be comprehensive for moa and classes but not worry that it is missing many common names. Thanks for alerting others, we can now wait about a week to see if anyone comments. Mike Turnbull (talk) 12:27, 22 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]
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