Talk:Silicon

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the Silicon article.
This is not a forum for general discussion of the subject of the article.

Add new text under old text.
New to Wikipedia? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help.

Start a new topic

Article policies

Find sources: Google (books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL

Archives: 1: 4 months

Silicon has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Review: March 18, 2018. (Reviewed version).

Elements Top‑importance

	Chemistry portal This article is supported by WikiProject Elements, which gives a central approach to the chemical elements and their isotopes on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing this article, or visit the project page for more details.ElementsWikipedia:WikiProject ElementsTemplate:WikiProject Elementschemical elements
Top	This article has been rated as Top-importance on the importance scale.

Materials High‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Materials, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Materials on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.MaterialsWikipedia:WikiProject MaterialsTemplate:WikiProject MaterialsMaterials
High	This article has been rated as High-importance on the importance scale.

Rocks and minerals Low‑importance

	Earth sciences portal Silicon is part of WikiProject Rocks and minerals, an attempt at creating a standardized, informative, comprehensive and easy-to-use rocks and minerals resource. If you would like to participate, you can choose to edit this article, or visit the project page for more information.Rocks and mineralsWikipedia:WikiProject Rocks and mineralsTemplate:WikiProject Rocks and mineralsRocks and minerals
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

Moving references between infobox and article.

Latest comment: 17 days ago2 comments2 people in discussion

@Retro, in this edit and on tm:infobox silicon, this one you moved the source definition from the article to the infobox. Why? I think this makes editing the article more complex. Less experienced editors will needlessly be confused by not seeing the source defined in the article. More experienced editors working on the infobox will know to look in the article for definitions. Johnjbarton (talk) 20:18, 15 August 2026 (UTC)Reply

The undefined named reference created a reference error on {{Infobox silicon}} itself. Not a huge issue in this case, since the template as used on this article would render the citations properly, but it still creates extra noise in Category:Pages with reference errors.

My solution fixed this issue, but like you point out, obscures the reference sources. So I've made a further edit to improve clarity a bit.

It's not the only possible solution, by the way. Another approach is to wrap the template's undefined named citations (or the whole template even) with <includeonly>...</includeonly> so the template page doesn't render it and trigger an error.

Fixing reference errors is often very case-by-case, but I'll keep this clarity issue in mind going forward. Retro (talk | contribs) 14:15, 16 September 2026 (UTC)Reply

This page was redesigned at the edge.

Moving references between infobox and article.