User:Michael D. Turnbull

Userboxes This user is a citizen of the United Kingdom. This user is a chemist. This user is a Valencian. @ This user can be reached by email. This user is a mentor to new editors. This user has been on Wikipedia for 13 years, 10 months and 10 days.

This is the user page for Michael (Mike) D. Turnbull, created on 26 April 2018. My first contribution was a major re-write and expansion of the biography of Ralph Raphael, followed by additions on other pages to cross-reference him. I have done the same for Alan Battersby. I work to improve articles on ICI; pesticides invented at Jealott's Hill, for example 2,4-D, MCPA, diquat, cyhalothrin, paclobutrazol, tefluthrin, fluazifop and azoxystrobin; plus others in Syngenta's product range such as butafenacil, mesotrione, pydiflumetofen and acibenzolar. I also write about biosynthetic routes, for example vitamin B₁₂ and chlorophyll, adding oddments related to chemistry in general.

Chemistry is the study of the behaviour of the chemical elements and there is a simple template here which gives their names on hover-over and allows readers to jump to the relevant pages in the encyclopaedia by clicking on the cell of interest. My professional focus is organic chemistry and during my career I have made many novel compounds containing the marked elements.

I prefer to edit existing articles rather than create new ones. At present there are 6,916,536 articles on the English WIkipedia and my opinion is that this is too many. For every new article it might be best to delete a less worthwhile one, so new editors should consider using WP:AfD before WP:AfC.

In October 2020 I assisted Ed Gold by uploading some of his remarkable photos to Wikimedia Commons with {{CC BY-SA 4.0}} licenses, which means not only that they can be incorporated in articles here but also that they may be freely downloaded for any purpose whatever, provided that Ed Gold and/or Wikipedia is acknowledged if they are subsequently published. Note, however that many are portraits of living people and these persons are protected by {{Personality rights}}, which means that they must be contacted before the image can be used for a commercial venture. This is not a hurdle for re-use within Wikipedia articles or for personal non-commercial use.