Userboxes en This user is a native speaker of the English language. This user is ace and proud. This user's pronouns are they, them. This user is a (neo-)Platonist. Erdős 5 This user has an Erdős number of 5. This user has published peer-reviewed articles in academic journals. This user is an advocate of open research and open access. This user has an undergraduate degree with double majors in mathematics and computer science, and a minor in physics. MSc This user has a Master of Science degree in mathematics. MA This user has a Master of Arts degree in human rights. Ph.Don't This user is a Ph.D. dropout. This user's degree has little or nothing to do with their chosen profession.

Mathematician and policy wonk by education, educator by profession, professional despite myself. I read patents for fun.

I lean inclusionist for scientific information, as it can be hard to find reliable information on obscure chemicals even before the AI age started insisting that I meant "nitrate" when I typed "nitrite". Still, there are some criteria I have generally used when I encounter a compound on my curiosity dives that doesn't have a page here.

1. Is it useful? Everything has potential applications. Something should only have a "uses" section if there's evidence that it is being actively used for the listed purpose, not merely at the suggestion that it might.
   1. Is it produced commercially? A generally good indicator of something being useful is that someone's willing to spend money to prepare it and put it on the market. Not a perfect indicator - plenty of chemical suppliers will put up procedurally-generated "contact us for pricing" listings for all manner of bullshittamine hydrochloride - but if something's being claimed as a reagent, there's usually someone supplying it.
   2. Is in situ preparation well documented? Chemical suppliers only sell things stable enough to ship, so obviously there's some asterisks on the above test. If a reagent needs to be prepared in situ, though, that means the preparation of the reagent is going to be documented by users - check supplementary materials of papers.
   3. Is it of interest to multiple researchers? If the only articles on a compound are from a specific lab, that specific compound is only as notable as that lab's work.
2. What distinguishes it from the broader class(es) of chemicals to which it belongs? Many chemicals are part of large (up to countably infinite) classes with similar properties, and not every member of a large family needs a page explaining that it does approximately what all its relatives do. Palmitic acid and stearic acid are ordinary fatty acids chemically but have a lot more significance than e.g. trigintiseptanoic acid in light of their biological role.
   1. Extremal cases are in my eyes inherently notable (although they also often have unique chemistry). Oxalic anhydride may not even exist, but is notable as the smallest possible cyclic anhydride; while malonic anhydride is notable as the smallest known compound, even though it's essentially useless.
   2. Firsts are more relevant for history than chemistry, and I'd weight them less than extrema in general - they probably warrant a section on the larger family page. That said, the first member of a family may also be the first usage of a new synthesis method, and the more firsts stack up in one place, the more notable that place looks.
   3. Economics is a fair factor. If a number of different reagents have similar effects, but one of them is cheaper, that's the one people will be using - and the one people will be searching for, often. (Of course, if there's enough economic data to establish this, it's probably notable on volume!)