Talk:Oxygen

Featured articleOxygen is a featured article; it (or a previous version of it) has been identified as one of the best articles produced by the Wikipedia community. Even so, if you can update or improve it, please do so.
Main Page trophyThis article appeared on Wikipedia's Main Page as Today's featured article on March 14, 2008, and on September 5, 2017.
On this day... Article milestones
DateProcessResult
December 6, 2007Good article nomineeNot listed
December 20, 2007Good article nomineeListed
December 27, 2007Featured article candidateNot promoted
January 28, 2008Peer reviewReviewed
February 6, 2008Featured article candidatePromoted
On this day... Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on August 1, 2004, August 1, 2005, August 1, 2006, August 1, 2007, August 1, 2008, August 1, 2009, August 1, 2010, August 1, 2012, August 1, 2014, August 1, 2021, August 1, 2023, and August 1, 2024.
Current status: Featured article

Pre-Far note

The article has are several single sentences, unsourced statements, and more coverage needs to be added. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 03:42, 14 January 2025 (UTC)[reply]

The article is already pretty long, what kind of coverage are you suggesting? Keres🌕Luna edits! 16:26, 21 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Oops, sorry for the late reply. Added bunch of tags. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 00:31, 7 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I will try to get to these tags and issues within a month, but I am very busy right now. Keres🌕Luna edits! 21:50, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Just take your time, no rush. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 01:40, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Boneless Pizza!: All cn tags have been taken care of. Keres🌕Luna edits! 16:23, 27 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
It seems like the common issue have been resolved already (nice job), though I'm not sure if this one still needs more eyes since I'm not expert at this subject. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 01:17, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Should the lead have a long paragraph about respiration mechanisms of animals? The topic is not covered in the article AFAICT. Johnjbarton (talk) 19:05, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I cut the lead and moved the citation from the intro into the body.  Done Johnjbarton (talk) 18:31, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The History / Discovery section has some issues. The paragraph on Sendivogius relies on one Polish source with possible bias. The Maples source seems to have been written by a Mason (Freemasonry) and it does not anyway verify the content
  • This discovery of Sendivogius was however frequently denied by the generations of scientists and chemists which succeeded him.
In other sources it's clear that later scientists did not understand the consequences of Sendivogius' work anymore than he did. That's quite a lot different than "denied".
A much better source for the entire section would be
  • Severinghaus, J. W. (2016). Eight sages over five centuries share oxygen's discovery. Advances in physiology education, 40(3), 370-376.
In particular the early studies did not "discover" oxygen as a molecule or element but rather noted some properties and found steps towards purification. (The whole concept of "discovery" of these early elements makes no sense.) Johnjbarton (talk) 03:54, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I reworked the history section. I would like to include more about the Cavendish/Priestley/Lavoisier outlined in the Severinghaus source. Cavendish showed Lavoisier that hydrogen and air produced water, a key to discrediting philogiston, but I want to find another source to confirm. But I think the current content is good enough for now.  Done Johnjbarton (talk) 18:53, 6 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@Boneless Pizza!: Have all of your concerns been resolved for this article? If not, what else do you think needs to be done? @Keresluna and Johnjbarton: I added two cn tags to the article. I think the short paragraphs in "Build-up in the atmosphere" could be better formatted into longer paragraphs. Z1720 (talk) 00:55, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I fixed the 2 cn-s. Johnjbarton (talk) 04:08, 10 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
See my comment on "Build-up in the atmosphere" below. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:28, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Z1720 I rewrote "Build-up in the atmosphere" and as long as other editors are ok with it I'm  Done here. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:31, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnjbarton: All of my sourcing concerns have been resolved. I am unsure what Boneless Pizza! was referring to when they specified that more coverage was necessary in the original post. I have no other concerns with the article. If you think the article meets the FA criteria, can you mark it as "satisfactory" at WP:URFA/2020A? Thanks, Z1720 (talk) 17:27, 7 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry for the late reply. I can see that this article has undergone significant improvements and can now be removed from the list of notices given at Wikipedia:Featured article review/notices given. 🍕BP!🍕 (🔔) 01:33, 9 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

We know the objective is to reach a consensus for BrE.

Consensus for BrE

I would like a consensus to use BrE. 96.33.107.226 (talk) 02:19, 27 April 2025 (UTC) [reply]

I think the consensus should be here. Zefr (talk) 02:21, 25 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I believe there shouldn't be without a good reason. ZergTwo (talk) 03:47, 27 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Here's the reason: This article is transcluden in other articles using British English. Theonepoppa6 (talk) 20:45, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
That's not really a reason, or if it were we'd have to throw out one guideline or the other. If one cares about that {{engvar}} can be made flexible. Remsense ‥  20:50, 10 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Comment: I struck some socks/evasion-IPs. DMacks (talk) 03:19, 18 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

not to scale

The table "Ten most common elements" has bar graph but is labeled "not to scale". The entire point of a bar graph is to provide visual comparisons: it must be to scale to be useful. Johnjbarton (talk) 18:53, 28 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Scaled. Keres🌕Luna edits! 15:01, 29 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Build-up in the atmosphere

I find the section "Build-up in the atmosphere" to be a confusing jumble. I set out to re-write it only to discover that the topic has quite a bit of significant new work. To provide a proper summary of Geological history of oxygen I will need to rewrite that article first. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:27, 24 August 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I completed a pass through Geological history of oxygen and replaced most of the content in this article in the section "Build-up in the atmosphere" with a new summary based on new review sources. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:29, 3 September 2025 (UTC)[reply]

A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion

The following Wikimedia Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion:

Participate in the deletion discussion at the nomination page. —Community Tech bot (talk) 17:40, 6 October 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Typo in the "Extraterrestrial free oxygen" section

in the "Extraterrestrial free oxygen" section of this article it says "...that oxygen may produced abiotically..."

shouldn't it be "...that oxygen may be produced abiotically..."? WigglyB (talk) 19:46, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, please fix it. Johnjbarton (talk) 23:37, 30 November 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnjbarton: the article is semi-protected and WigglyB is not autoconfirmed. @WigglyB: thanks for reporting it; I have fixed the grammar issue. In the future I suggest making an edit request to alert others about your proposed edit. OutsideNormality (talk) 02:04, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]
thanks Johnjbarton (talk) 02:09, 1 December 2025 (UTC)[reply]