Sciencemadness Discussion Board - Should I/we 'advertise' SM ?

Should I/we 'advertise' SM ?

Sulaiman - 13-8-2025 at 20:34

I have found a few YT videos that reference SM,
I intend to put up a few chemistry related videos on YT soon.

Do we (especially Polverone + representetives) want lots more traffic?
or should I/we not 'advertise' SM ?

My feeling is that more = better but too many is too much

j_sum1 - 13-8-2025 at 21:07

Activity here waxes and wanes.
There are heaps of once-active members who have not been seen for a long time. I am also not noticing a whole lot of fresh blood.

One thing that is constant is the degree to which Google references SM when searching for chemistry related information. I think SM has a good reputation.

This means, IMO further promotion and introduction of the site to new members is in general an excellent idea. I am more than happy when SM is mentioned in youtube videos and other places. I do not think we are near saturation on YT yet.

BTW, looking forward to those videos, Sulaiman.

Belowzero - 13-8-2025 at 21:54

Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1

Activity here waxes and wanes.
There are heaps of once-active members who have not been seen for a long time. I am also not noticing a whole lot of fresh blood.

This what I most appreciate about SM. It has become a phenomena.
However slow at times it is still there and people keep coming back to it.
I visited SM since when I was a teenager and it gives me great comfort to see that it is still here!

woelen - 13-8-2025 at 23:28

Yes, i also encourage people to mention SM. So, if you can put some good videos on YT, then mentioning SM in them is a good idea.
I am a member since 2005, and it still is alive and kicking. At that time I also was a member of a few other forums, and all of those have gone in the meantime.

teodor - 14-8-2025 at 00:36

Google AI already uses SM as a source of information for chemical questions. That probably means that it is self-advertising itself already based on it's contents. I see another problem that during all those years some topics had so much discussions having both checked and unchecked information, brilliant ideas and nonsenses that for us humans searching information is much harder every day and I wouldn't relay on google because decision here what is important and what is not should be on us humans. So, what I really miss is not advertising but some summaries/reviews of long-long threads and the most important - the summary of all ideas and corresponding experimental results. You will not find that in scientific publications because the instruments in home lab are different. In this sence SM wikipedia could be one of instrument of sorting the contents, but probably can be other forms like regular summary threads. I think it is important because there were so many interesting ideas not followed by experiments or experiments not followed by further investigation. Advertising could bring more empty discussion than experiments, but in the AI time the most valuable contents here is experiments. AI with google can't do chemistry. But advertising and bringing of new people could be completely delegated to them.

CuriousOnlooker - 14-8-2025 at 01:58

Quote: Originally posted by woelen

[snipped]Yes, i also encourage people to mention SM. So, if you can put some good videos on YT, then mentioning SM in them is a good idea.

Names such as NurdeRage or NileRed are familiar to many and get heavy traffic.
Perhaps a dedicated YT channel, with some quality/informative (and short) reactions, with the a the SM logo and "brought to you by SM" introduction? Not saturated with videos, as they take quite some time, money, and effort to produce, and it would then be quite an onerous task for someone to take on.

Quote: Originally posted by teodor

[snipped]So, what I really miss is not advertising but some summaries/reviews of long-long threads and the most important - the summary of all ideas and corresponding experimental results. You will not find that in scientific publications because the instruments in home lab are different. In this sense SM wikipedia could be one of instrument of sorting the contents..

At the moment Google returns pages of SM links but wading through multi-page threads takes time, which is where a better representation for the Wiki would be good. Once again that would mean someone assuming the responsibility. Whether or not the robots.txt/.htaccess files would be changed to reduce Google scraping every single page and instead direct to the Wiki I don't know as it's been too long since I had to do such a thing, and that would be the sole purview of Polverone.

These would necessitate someone prepared to assume those responsibilities, which I'm not sure many would have the time for.
My 2c.

teodor - 14-8-2025 at 06:04

Quote: Originally posted by CuriousOnlooker

Quote: Originally posted by teodor

At the moment Google returns pages of SM links but wading through multi-page threads takes time, which is where a better representation for the Wiki would be good.

On the other hand, many users discussing topics in those old huge threads deliberately didn't provide explicit information to get the desired result but put the information in some indirect form instead. To keep those who don't need to know (for example because is not prepared to do advanced things) away.
And we can say this approach worked quite well, but that AI which can not only find the information by keywords but find it being trained to find can be the gamechanger, who knows. At least at some point AI can find anything better here than forum users, this is what I am worried about.
But providing easy keys to the old threads in wiki for the purpose of popularisation - no, let's redefine the purpose instead.

bnull - 14-8-2025 at 10:08

Quote: Originally posted by teodor

So, what I really miss is not advertising but some summaries/reviews of long-long threads and the most important - the summary of all ideas and corresponding experimental results. You will not find that in scientific publications because the instruments in home lab are different. In this sence SM wikipedia could be one of instrument of sorting the contents, but probably can be other forms like regular summary threads. I think it is important because there were so many interesting ideas not followed by experiments or experiments not followed by further investigation.

A kind of reviews journal in the manner of Chemical Reviews is in my plans (along with a regular ScienceMadness journal twice a year), as soon as I finish compiling procedures from Prepublications. The project is taking longer than expected because life keeps introducing new delays.

I think that publishing reviews twice or thrice a year (or four times a year if there is enough material to review, as is the case right now) would be a good idea. I would need help with them, of course. Selection, organization, a minor rewrite here and there, the design of the final product, that much I can certainly do and have been doing for the last three months or so. But reading and reviewing the whole cabbage that the acetic anhydride thread is, for example, and doing that with many other long-ish threads, is too much for a single person anyway. Two or three members to read and write each review seems reasonable, especially when it is not the same three persons writing the reviews every time. If such scheme can be considered and maintained, I'm in.

The reviews could be published in the Literature and Documentation subforum, either in a dedicated thread, therefore evading the "x times a year" restriction, or collected in issues in PDF each three or six months. The downside of a dedicated thread is that it relies on members not beginning discussions there instead of the primary threads.

Sulaiman - 14-8-2025 at 16:04

Quote: Originally posted by bnull

...The downside of a dedicated thread is that it relies on members not beginning discussions there instead of the primary threads.

make a sub-forum with only certain members able to update it.
normal members like me could read it, comment in the normal threads, and forward anything useful to a member that is authorised to perform updates.

j_sum1 - 14-8-2025 at 21:03

Surprising how often this comes up. (Actually, maybe not surprising.)

The problem with creating summaries is that it is a huge investment of time. It also requires someone reasonably competent. We have had people volunteer before, but the truth is that such people are inherently busy and despite the best intentions and high motivation, it just does not get done for practical reasons.

teodor - 15-8-2025 at 02:11

Quote: Originally posted by j_sum1

Surprising how often this comes up. (Actually, maybe not surprising.)

The problem with creating summaries is that it is a huge investment of time. It also requires someone reasonably competent. We have had people volunteer before, but the truth is that such people are inherently busy and despite the best intentions and high motivation, it just does not get done for practical reasons.

So, if we had the people probably we had already some plans, like the list of topics of the great interest. Because if the time is limited we need to spend it wise. (And I think it is better to create a separate thread. Because Sulaiman asked another question, it was me who started the mess here).

I got my answer so I don't care which way this thread goes :)

Sulaiman - 15-8-2025 at 02:27

teodor - 16-8-2025 at 03:53

OK. In the time of the Internet there is no strict border between SM forum, youtube videos or personal sites like woelen.homescience.net. We can jump easily. But what do you think can bring those who are interested in chemistry to communication with our society? I am not talking exclusively on the board, personal communication/watever. What is your experience?

So, I assume there are young people who potentially are very talented with this particular activity - doing chemical experiments.
In the past, as we discussed several time with woelen already, there was some particularly easy entry point: one was able to buy a wide range of essential chemicals in a usual shop as a private person and start to do any experiments with this limited but in many sences basic and essential set. The information and the access to more advanced staff was limited.
Today we have a lot of information and with some constant effort as I see everybody can get almost anything what he is not afraid to work with. But the entry point is much harder anyway.

In this sense, how do you think, what is more effective as an entry point for starting doing chemistry:

1. More high-quality YouTube videos?
2. Some public actions like chemistry evening etc?
3. Chemistry sets with basic (not dungerous) experiments?
4. Popular books
5. School
6. Parents, relatives, friends
7. Something else

It's interesting to read some stories based on a real experience of those who discovered his interest in practical chemistry not so far ago.

I ask this question becaus I actually don't know how new people can appear here. Those who only watch video will never post. Advertising mentioned by Sulaiman should be in the form of welcoming. There is some border between those who just read this forum and those who start to participate. I can understand that. So, definitely, the way by participating here is not an entry point for the amateur chemistry. But what is it (today)?

[Edited on 16-8-2025 by teodor]

bnull - 16-8-2025 at 13:57

If more than 3 decades is not so far ago...

I'll talk from a kid's point of view. These days, with internet and small screens and such, I'd say (1), (2) and (6).

Back then it was TV. As far as I remember, it was Beakman's World that introduced me to science. More or less at the same time my father used to watch documentaries (animals etc.) every now and then and to give me motors and batteries to play with when I was 4. Having someone to consciously or unconsciously push and prod you towards science really helps. Some 6 years later the library books finally dragged me into chemistry. Most of them were 1960s undergrad general chemistry books. None of the library ladies ever said I should be reading something more appropriate for my age, so I kept reading them.

(3) depends on local regulations and how the parents view science and if they should spend any money with the stuff. The problem I see with (4) is the same I see in classical music: more authors than before but the really good ones are proportionally less; it takes longer to sort out the good and the bad, even with internet at hand. In a funny parallel, composers moved from concert halls to film industry and science popularizers from books to YouTube: both ended up in entertainment. My experience with (5) is that there's barely something of the sort when the school is underfunded, understaffed both in numbers and quality, and professors have to spend their own money if they want to show crystallization of copper sulfate, for example.

[Edited on 16-8-2025 by bnull]

Texium - 16-8-2025 at 16:03

Quote: Originally posted by teodor

It's interesting to read some stories based on a real experience of those who discovered his interest in practical chemistry not so far ago.

Well, it's been over 10 years for me now, but I'm still a spring chicken compared to the average member here, so my experience may be relevant.

For me, Sciencemadness was my gateway to home chemistry, directly. At the time, in 2014, this was not uncommon. I was part of a cohort of new members all around the same age (including plante1999, Amos, Brain&Force, Tdep, Zephyr, and several others). I don't think that it was a coincidence that so many of us were drawn to the forum during that 2010-2015 period, and I think there are some key differences between my generation and today's teens that help explain why that era was a special time that will likely never be repeated .

I'm effectively on the tail end of the generation that can actually remember life without the internet as we know it. YouTube didn't exist until 2005, and while it was well established by 2010, there were hardly any channels that made experimental chemistry content, and virtually none that put out even a moderate volume of eye-catching, high-production-value videos. We may have started off finding YouTube content, but we were left wanting more, and Sciencemadness was the answer. On the other hand, teens today have access to more chemistry YouTube videos than they could care to watch algorithmically fed to them on their device of choice (notably, with members of my generation, e.g. Tdep and NileRed, leading the charge).

In 2014, forums like Sciencemadness were already seen as old-fashioned if not altogether obsolete, but they were still a format that my generation was familiar with using. The last decade has seen a transition from the PC being the primary access point to the internet to smartphones and tablets being ubiquitous, especially for minors. I grew up with a desktop computer and didn't get a fully-functioned smartphone until I was in high school, not long before I discovered Sciencemadness. At that time I was still in the habit of doing all of my browsing at home on my desktop, so logging into the forum after school and chatting with my new friends on Skype from the comfort of my desk was easily adapted into my routine. These days though, kids are often getting smartphones or tablets before they can even read, and they experience the internet primarily through a collection of apps on small touchscreens rather than through an open-ended internet browser with a monitor, keyboard, and mouse. I don't know if y'all have used the forum on a mobile device much, but it's... not great. I actually read it on my phone quite often, and sometimes make brief posts, but when I want to write a lengthy post like this I always sit down at my computer to do so. I don't find it that surprising that a touchscreen-centric generation would find a platform like this unappealing.

Now, that being said, I don't think there's any reason for us to try to adapt to the times, or to try and convince today's teens that they should get off of TikTok and spend time on this fossil of a forum instead. It may not be bustling like 10 years ago, but it has been stable, and that's nothing to write off.

A more probable source of a resurgence, in my opinion, would be a future wave of retirees! A common new-member archetype that has been consistent for years is "retired or winding-down scientist or engineer who may have done amateur chemistry in their youth." I imagine that this demographic will expand, possibly quite rapidly in a few decades, if the site still exists by then, as my generation approaches that stage. Perhaps even some long-gone members who disappeared after getting busy with life will return to the roost one day.

teodor - 17-8-2025 at 06:39

Egyptian priests kept Chemistry as a sacred science. Alchemists also were a closed society. There was always some barrier to enter. The fossil forum could be just a new form of the same principle. We are working with quite aged science where good documented experimental results from any century have the same high value if we can read and repeat them today. Also modern laboratory equipment is very seldom a choice of an amateur. Entering this field assumes respect to all experience of the past because it could be dangerous to ignore that.

Texium - 17-8-2025 at 10:15

I don't think we need to make it intentionally exclusive. The forum may not appeal to as many new users as it once did, but we should still welcome anyone who wants to enter the hobby. In fact, I have been advocating for a return to open registration as soon as possible, once some safeguards to prevent a flood of spam accounts could be put in place. Unfortunately, that is out of my wheelhouse. I think there would be a few more new members if it was easier to create accounts. The manual registration process is an unfortunate barrier to entry.

bnull - 17-8-2025 at 15:02

Quote: Originally posted by teodor

Egyptian priests kept Chemistry as a sacred science. Alchemists also were a closed society. There was always some barrier to enter. The fossil forum could be just a new form of the same principle. We are working with quite aged science where good documented experimental results from any century have the same high value if we can read and repeat them today. Also modern laboratory equipment is very seldom a choice of an amateur. Entering this field assumes respect to all experience of the past because it could be dangerous to ignore that.

What do you mean? Turn the whole forum into a private, invitation-only place like some forums we've seen before?

teodor - 18-8-2025 at 00:17

Quote: Originally posted by bnull

Quote: Originally posted by teodor

What do you mean? Turn the whole forum into a private, invitation-only place like some forums we've seen before?

Obviously not, I was just thinking about those Texium's words:

"In 2014, forums like Sciencemadness were already seen as old-fashioned if not altogether obsolete, but they were still a format that my generation was familiar with using. The last decade has seen a transition from the PC being the primary access point to the internet to smartphones and tablets being ubiquitous, especially for minors."

I was thinking about are those habbits to work with texts could be really something old-fashioned and we will unable to gather new members except those retired ones (which is not bad at all, but my question was about a new generation).

I am not thinking so because I see that a big part of chemical knowledge I still unable to find by Google. That's why we have questions here and the answers are very often referring to some books or publications. There are many publications which were never digitised or they were digitised but put under paywall and even sci-hub unable to help in some situations. For example Gmelin books which I have personally more than 100 (this is only a fraction of all ever published in edition 8), so I know how much is missing from internet only in an inorganic corpus. (For organic, I am not sure everybody can find in the Internet things like Houben-Weyl or Rodd's). The existence of things like 4 vols "Organic Analytical Reagents" by Welcher and many others is not even well-known (if you don't spend time in reading books and examining interesting references).
It can be changed one day (I mean everything can be digitised) but still, ability to read books is essential for chemist today and in the future not depending on wether it is paper or an electronic copy (until AI will be able process and reformulate everything but still, reading books is not only about finding answers, it is also about connection between different things and seeing the gaps).

The same about some old laboratory techniques. I will not provide many examples, just one. For alchemists the main challenge in phosphorus production was inability to find phosphate rock, so they used urine, the rest of process was manageable by laboratory techniques of that time. Today we have a lot of reagents but missing practical habbits which would allow making phosphorus in our laboratories.

So, what I am thinking is that if old-fashined form of conversation can prevent entry that practically the only alternative way is some "light edition" of chemistry in the form of YouTube videos or watever will come next when looking video on smartphone will become obsolete. Which could be not a true chemistry. Of course as SM Guidelines says, all knowledge could be restored in few centuries if we will be able to preserve the scientific method. But I doubt a new scientific method could be discovered very fast and our current scientific method is heavily based on text communications (publication to publication, message to message).

So, if this fossil forum is the barrier it is not less than the barrier between "light" and "full" edition of chemistry.

So, if those things like allowing new generation to easily enter the forum which is a form of communication we try to preserve (I am not talking about the forum software but the text communication as it is) are not under our control, so may be we need to feel comfortable because chemistry was a kind of closed science before.

I am fully aknowledging that this my opinion is biased by the fact that when I was a child the only one form of computer I was able to posses was a calculator and before I built my first computer to edit texts and print them I was needed to study electronics to actually build the thing with many evenings of schematic design and soldering (this is not only about the time but also about the country where I was living). That's why I am more interesting to read opinions of other people here including new joiners.

[Edited on 18-8-2025 by teodor]

CuriousOnlooker - 18-8-2025 at 14:33

Quote:

I don't know if y'all have used the forum on a mobile device much, but it's... not great.

That reflects the age of the software, 2012. Updating to the latest version should resolve this.

Egyptian priests, alchemists .. how are, and quickly, the thread diverged.

Given that the thread is beginning to meander into trivia, and the original question answered satisfactorily, perhaps it could be closed?

Texium - 18-8-2025 at 20:16

Quote: Originally posted by CuriousOnlooker

Given that the thread is beginning to meander into trivia, and the original question answered satisfactorily, perhaps it could be closed?

I see absolutely no reason to

bnull - 19-8-2025 at 08:28

Quote:

So, what I am thinking is that if old-fashined form of conversation can prevent entry that practically the only alternative way is some "light edition" of chemistry in the form of YouTube videos or watever will come next when looking video on smartphone will become obsolete. Which could be not a true chemistry. Of course as SM Guidelines says, all knowledge could be restored in few centuries if we will be able to preserve the scientific method. But I doubt a new scientific method could be discovered very fast and our current scientific method is heavily based on text communications (publication to publication, message to message).

Some comments. First, nothing can stop someone from becoming a new member except lack of interest and registration issues. We have mainly two kinds of members here, the ones who register to ask a question and then buzz off when the question is considered answered (tourists), and the ones who register to ask a question and stay regardless of the question being answered or not (residents). Tourists come to see what they want and then go away, having no interest in the maintenance and improvement of the place. They can also come from time to time like real tourists do. Residents take care of the place because they enjoy the place and want to maintain and improve it, which is why I spend time trying to bring the Acta alive, research things that are ultimately none of my business and reply posts.

Second, if one is really interested, old-fashioned habits like reading texts are no obstacle. Books are still being published, whether in print or electronic formats, even in the age of small screens and YouTube and video platforms everywhere. Who wants to read will read. Videos are nothing less than written words read out aloud with (moving) pictures.

Third, Egyptian priests and alchemists were interested in non-scientific chemistry as an aspect of their religious and philosophical worldview. They wanted Truth for themselves and mystery for everyone else: they tried to hide knowledge behind symbols and metaphors only known by a select few. Nowadays, if one wants to know something, there are classes everywhere, physical or online classes. One can learn the symbols and metaphors if one wants to spend the time.

Fourth, there is only one scientific method and it is based on observation, supposition, and experimentation. A new scientific method would boil down to these three things. You observe facts, make suppositions about how and why it happens, test your suppositions, and make new suppositions about other things that your theory says can be observed. A crucial step that is implicit is the acceptance of the results. See Planck and the quanta, or Einstein and the uncertainty principle. Both men were responsible for these developments, Einstein in a more distant way, but they were unable to accept the results of their theories. What must remain in the future is the acceptance of results and the freedom to accept.

But I see what you mean and agree that there must be a way to ease the entry of new persons in the realm of (not necessarily) amateur science. One of my personal projects for the next years is a series of videos explaining classical mechanics, from basic vectorial stuff to the fundamentals of Lagrangian and Hamiltonian mechanics.

Quote:

Given that the thread is beginning to meander into trivia

Actually, it is a deeper issue. It is one of the aspects of the "how to interest young people in science" question that has been asked in many ways a long time before humans could be called humans and science science. If necessary, this thread can be split after I got my answer so I don't care which way this thread goes and the discussion continued under a new title.

CuriousOnlooker - 19-8-2025 at 12:55

Quote: Originally posted by bnull

Fourth, there is only one scientific method and it is based on observation, supposition, and experimentation. A new scientific method would boil down to these three things. You observe facts, make suppositions about how and why it happens, test your suppositions, and make new suppositions about other things that your theory says can be observed. A crucial step that is implicit is the acceptance of the results. See Planck and the quanta, or Einstein and the uncertainty principle. Both men were responsible for these developments, Einstein in a more distant way, but they were unable to accept the results of their theories. What must remain in the future is the acceptance of results and the freedom to accept.

The true essence of science.
Many years ago databases were flat files and those flat files were full of bloated crud.
Then along came a fellow named Codd, who changed the entire paradigm and developed the rules of what would come to define the design of relational databases.
In keeping with is raw database design principles there was a saying, "The data shall depend on the key, the whole key, and nothing but the key, so help me Codd". (the key being the unique index key in every table).
Exactly the same with experimentation, we go where the data leads.

Quote: Originally posted by bnull

An excellent proposal.

teodor - 19-8-2025 at 13:23

"How to interest young people in science" is too broad question in my opinion. I would squeeze all I wrote to the phrase "how to advertise SM such a way that it will bring more things here which forum members will enjoy". As for your question, bnull, I always was thinking that interest is not something we need to create, it is a very natural thing like other natural things we are surrounded by. We can just show some ways we know to somebody who has interest.

CuriousOnlooker, your example is not an example of scientific method. Because it doesn't explain why other type of databases (e.g. noSQL) exist and in some application are better. It is just a statement that "relation databases are better" based on some believe or tradition. The science begins when you can suppose Codd could not be quite right in his design (also, I am not sure it is really his idea, but doesn't matter) and start doing experiments to search a truth. Which is not necessarily easy to accept. Because we usually like our opinions and opinions of famous people we follow more than truth.

[Edited on 19-8-2025 by teodor]

bnull - 19-8-2025 at 16:54

That's why I said it was only one of the aspects. The question is too broad to have any general or meaningful answer.

Quote:

how to advertise SM such a way that it will bring more things here which forum members will enjoy

One idea is to invite those members and non-members who are already well-known in YouTube to share experiments here. The fellow prepares an original experiment and shares it here and on YouTube at the same time, making sure that some aspects (a deeper dive into the mechanism, or posterior experimentation with the product) appear only here.

One such "featured report" could appear once each two months. As long as different persons do it each time, that is. For example, one could investigate what effect an electric field has on the patterns of a Belousov-Zhabotinsky oscillator contained in a petri dish. I, for one, would like to see the effect, if any.