Talk:Titin/Archive 1

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Hello. This page is a talk page. It is used to discuss the article. Good ways to use it include asking why some editor made changes to what you did (instead of just reverting it back and forth), trying to reach a compromise, making plans for suggested additions to the article, and so forth. You should definitely use this as the first step to trying to reach an agreement. Please use it. Thank you. DreamGuy 05:17, Apr 6, 2005 (UTC)

Long word

I observe that the text "The full chemical name, containing 189,819 letters, can be viewed at Wikisource:Methionylthreonylthreonyl...isoleucine." which was once in the article was then moved to external links and finally to a wikilink box. This is all very well, but it isn't clear why this was done, no comments in the log to say. I think it is much less likely that a person reading this article will now leave it with this information in their head: external links are not a substitute for mentioning interesting stuff...so I propose some form of words be reinstated into the article. Justification: (1) this is an interesting fact for some (2) this is a general encyclopedia not a pure scientific text, so things outside the scope of the actual science may have a place. Notinasnaid 16:08, 15 February 2006 (UTC)

Full name

Got this from Wikisource. It was listed for deletion so I figured I'd put it here before it was lost forever (imagine having to type the whole thing out by hand!) It took 2 minutes just to scroll down in the edit box. Get ready.

Are you ready?

({{titin}} transclusion removed. --David Iberri (talk) 22:24, 17 January 2007 (UTC))

And just think, it's so small you can't even see it. Jeez.

User:Flameviper12/sig 14:55, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

I hope people will notice my comment all the way down here. I fully agree with Flameviper12, as I came upon this page from Longest Word in English. While I see it's importance in Biology, it seems like it is also known biologically for being the biggest protein. As such, I am going to add the full word to the bottom of the article, below the external links. I know that I came to this page with the express purpose of seeing what appears to be the single longest word in any language, so why should I have to dig for it? And regarding size: I feel that if one article should be this long, this should be it. After all, I'd guess that more people come to this page from the Longest Word than from some other place. Auricfuzz 18:57, 8 July 2006 (UTC)

I observe that you were immediately reverted, which is disappointing as you had asked for a discussion. I'm not sure about the full word, but I do think it is important to mention the word, and its length. This is not a biochemistry textbook, it is a general encyclopedia. Notinasnaid 13:06, 11 July 2006 (UTC)


Come on, the most prominent thing surrounding this whole article is the word and its length, let's be serious and move the word back onto the page where people can find it. That's what I came looking for, that's what all these people on the discussion page came looking for, and it's why people will return to this page in the future. THIS WORD IS THE REASON WE'RE HERE, DON'T HIDE IT.


Hi I'm somebody else. Yeah, I agree with flameviper, i came looking for the full name and i couldn't find it. It took me a while to decide to turn to the discussion page, and Blip! There it was right in front of my face. Someone's got to copy the whole thing and stick it on the main page. no one's ever going to find it over here.

I came to see it too. I hate that you don't have it here!!!!!! —Preceding unsigned comment added by 130.13.221.253 (talk) 05:16, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

Ditto -Deltajuliet

As the vast majority of people here want it (and with good, logical reason) on the main page, I put it there a while ago. Thanks to the guy who circumnavigated the system and deleted it to just be a jerk, not even commenting. Anyhoo, I will post it again, and if anybody deletes it without talking, I will be very, very angry, and I will write you a letter telling you how angry I am. Just kidding. But seriously, don't just delete it without talking (and, for heaven's sake, just don't delete it at all). -Deltajuliet

Removing the full word

It's pretty obnoxious putting the full word in an encyclopedia article. Let's just describe it (189k+ characters, etc.) and if people want to see the word in all its glory, they can link over to Wikisource, where the full word rightly belongs. But placing it in the article clutters an otherwise useful page about the structure and function of titin, which is IMNSHO much more important than an obscenely long string of amino acid names. --David Iberri (talk) 05:11, 19 October 2006 (UTC) P.S. Not to mention the ridiculous amount of time it takes to preview this page since it's got the full word on it. Grr...

The only reason anybody ever comes here is to see the word. ~ Flameviper 22:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)
I see no reason that it should be deleted. It has a factual basis and because it's appended to the bottom, people can still read the page normally without unnecessary scrolling. I don't think David's criticisms are valid given that the word isn't there at the expense of good information. And as Flameviper put it, the word is the only reason people come here! Cyril Washbrook 12:25, 28 October 2006 (UTC)
Cyril, I believe Dave's comment was made on the previous includion of the name (not the current Java box), and thus is no longer correct. ~ Flameviper 17:48, 30 October 2006 (UTC)

Java?

I just had a stroke of genius that would solve all the problems.

How about including a Java hide/show box that had the full name in it?

And also, if it's that big of a deal, I could even make the Java box its own template and transclude it onto this page. I'm going to be bold and do it. Tell me if you disagree with my actions. ~ Flameviper 22:30, 19 October 2006 (UTC)


Flame Viper, good call. That should make everyone happy, hopefully. Anyhow, no offense, Iberri, but I think 99% of people on this page couldn't care less about "titin," they're here for the word. -Deltajuliet

Thanks. ~ Flameviper 16:44, 23 October 2006 (UTC)
I strongly suspect you underestimate the number of folks interested in muscle physiology, but I'm not interested in arguing about it right now. --David Iberri (talk) 03:01, 24 October 2006 (UTC)
Still, the Java is the best of both worlds; it allows folks to see the unmigitated bulk of the name while still allowing people to hide it, AND it doesn't show up huge in the edit box. ~ Flameviper 15:14, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

Sorry, just a bit of an issue here with terminology. JavaScript is not Java. Using Java would be a bad idea, as it's an exernal dependency, which Wikipedia generally frowns dependence upon. JavaScript is however widely available and reasonable to use (especially considering a lot o Wikipedia uses it itself.)

As for this page only being referenced by people looking for the Longest known Organic Compound Name, yes, there will be a large number of people flocking to this page for that purpose, but don't offset that it's a biologically significant compound, and the page should not be targetted directly for the name. --Puellanivis 00:45, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

Unfortunately, this page is probably targeted quite often just for the name. It's unfortunate that people are fascinated by an unholy number of amino acid names strung together. And why stop there? What's to stop someone from using IUPAC rules to get the full chemical name (which would be considerably longer than the current name)? Of course I'm being facetious: no one calls it anything but titin. Folks need to get over it. --David Iberri (talk) 01:11, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Why is it unfortunate? They might leave learning a little more about amino acids (and if they don't, the article needs to be fixed). This also seems to imply a point of view that biochemistry is "more important" than linguistics...! Notinasnaid 01:13, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
Well clearly it is more important, otherwise I'm in the wrong career path. ;-) By "unfortunate", I just mean that it's mildly depressing that some people get giddy over an obscenely long word that has no real meaning to them. And why should it? If someone read me all the amino acids for hemoglobin, it'd have no meaning to me either, and I've studied the damn thing for years. I don't see how this is a matter of linguistics. And how is a series of amino acid names supposed to convey any useful information about amino acids to the reader? The only bit of information it could possibly impart is how oligopeptides are often named, but that is best learned from a page on amino acid nomenclature or similar. --David Iberri (talk) 02:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
David, I don't think titin is an oligopeptide! ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 17:17, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
My point exactly. The convention is to use the amino acid name for oligopeptides in general, not for peptides of great size. --David Iberri (talk) 18:24, 16 January 2007 (UTC)
No, they won't learn jack about the amino acids. The only thing they learn is how to spell their names if they try to write the whole name as a part of their home work. As said it in the comment about my edit. The full text of the titin's sequence presented with the name of the full amino acid residues has no place here whatsoever. There is no scientist in their right mind that will ever use it that way. It has no encyclopedia value either. I would only agree to let it stay if the sequence is presented in a single letter code and provides information (color coded) about the different domains, the amino acid residues that are post-translationally modified, where the protein is affected by speccific mutations, etc. untill then this information is just an article polutant. Speaking of long words, there are words that are unimaginable longer than this one - the longest one that comes to mind represents the human Chromosome 1 (245 milion letters). And lastly the whole category with the articles about the longest words has been deleted. -- Boris 14:11, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
The name has been removed from the article again despite no obvious consensus being reached. I made this clear when reverting, but I seem to have been reverted again. Let's try and discuss this properly. A category may have been deleted but Longest word in English still links here. Sucessive edits have now removed all places that the curious can go to find the word. The body of this article may not be the best place for this information, but it should be somewhere. I don't think claims that "biochemistry is more important" than other fields of knowledge have any place in Wikipedia, however. Notinasnaid 14:20, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
A 189,819 character "word" does not belong in any article. --Arcadian 16:00, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
There are two perspectives to any argument over inclusion, lawfulness, and anything that can be disallowed. Those two perspectives are "Why" and "Why Not". And therein lies the division between inclusionism and deletionism. I personally favor the Why Not perspective, being an Inclusionist myself. And so we apply it to this debate.
Why include the full chemical name? It's cumbersome and nobody needs to see it.
Why not include the full chemical name? It's easily hidden and there is no dire need to have it unseen.
The Why argument states that there is no need to include it. But the Why Not argument states that there is no need to remove it. As I have stated before, I favor the "why not" argument myself.
Because if we are to truly call ourselves a great encyclopedia, we must not reject good data. We must not refute cited articles and claims, for they add to our greatness.
And with that final thought I close my argument. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 17:31, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
Why not? It clutters an otherwise readable page. It is information that doesn't help to the understanding of titin or its function and interferes with readers trying to access this information (eg, the page takes quite a bit longer to download). The amino acid "name" by itself is meaningless to *everyone* because, per BorisTM's comment, it's given entirely out of context. --David Iberri (talk) 17:59, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
That presupposes the user has come here to find out about biochemistry, and could be argued to show bias. Comments above from more than one user indicate some people come here just to gawk at the long word. Are they not to be considered in this great general enyclopedia? Notinasnaid 18:06, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
And therein lies the disappointment I mentioned above. A word that carries no meaning is not encyclopedic; it satisfies only those looking for novelty and is a major distraction to everyone else coming to this page for a legitimate reason. In case I'm being too subtle: we should not cater to people coming here merely to gawk at a long word. The word is of no encyclopedic value, so at the most, we should link to another non-WP page containing the full word. Another problem is that putting the full word here perpetuates the apparent misconception people have that proteins are called by their amino acid names. --David Iberri (talk) 18:45, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
It appears we have a conflict of interest here, but your argument is very narrow-minded and caters to only one of the two interests of visitors to this page. Let's compromise and say that half the people who come here want to know about muscle physiology and half want to see the longest word ever. Now wouldn't it be a tad selfish to deprive those people of knowledge for no good reason? And in reply to the accusation of it being "unreadable", the infobox is at the bottom. THE BOTTOM. By the time it gets to downloading the full name, everything else has already loaded. So even if you had dial-up, you could still read the page and even leave it, you don't have to wait for it to completely load. And in a final response, what is unencyclopedic about the name? It is a correct scientific amino acid name, included in its own article. It may be cumbersome, granted, but it's incredibly selfish to pretend that your interests are the only ones that exist and that "nobody" wants to see the name. If it were true that nobody wanted to see it, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we? Now I must be attending to business. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 20:30, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

(Out-denting to keep the discussion readable)
I never said that nobody wants to see the name. On the contrary, you said that the only reason people ever come here is for the word. I simply pointed out that you're probably grossly underestimating the fraction of readers interested titin's molecular biology and role in muscle contraction. I'm not catering to anyone; I've only said that we should not cater this page to those readers interested only in viewing the term. My hope is that the suggestion I made (ie, adding a link to the full term in the external links section) will satisfy both camps. --David Iberri (talk) 02:31, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Continuation

I've removed the {{titin}} template from the article again pending a decision here. Independently of whether it ought to be included from an encyclopedic perspective, the template at it stands is badly formatted: first, it defaults to "show"; second, it contains unnecessary hyphenation (obviously copies wholesale from some other site (apparently now-deleted material from Wikisource) making the claim that this is the 'longest word'); third, including the additional text in the template still forces the reader to download it all even if the default were set to 'hide'. In the section title above, you presumably mean JavaScript, which not all browsers or users have enabled; there's no good reason to drop 180k characters on someone just for having JS turned off. The obvious solution here is to provide a link to an external source of this text, if a suitable one can be found.
Also, Flameviper, this edit summary was entirely inappropriate; you don't get to call edits you disagree with "vandalism", especially when you are in a long-term dispute over the issue. Opabinia regalis 07:05, 19 January 2007 (UTC)
  • Excellent points; thanks. I've added this article to my watch list. Keesiewonder talk 10:47, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
You make several good points. I would like to counter that with a question. Is it possible to make a java box default to hide? ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 13:24, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Probably, but that still forces everyone to download the whole term regardless of whether they want to see it. With your default-hide solution, interested readers would have to click a link to show the box, right? Then why not just forgo the JavaScript altogether and instead link to an external site containing the full term? Seems to be the best solution to me. --David Iberri (talk) 14:27, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
THEY DON'T.
BY THE TIME THE INFOBOX STARTS DOWNLODING, THE REST OF THE PAGE HAS ALREADY BEEN COMPLETELY FINISHED. IF YOU DON'T WANT TO WAIT FOR THE INFOBOX TO DOWNLOAD, YOU CAN CLICK ON A LINK TO LEAVE. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 20:57, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
First off, please don't scream. Second, I don't think you understand my point. By adding the term, you're 1) chewing up unnecessary bandwidth (which irks some like myself), and 2) forcing some (admittedly dumb) browsers to download the entire page (term included) before they can start reading the article. Also, you haven't responded to my second point, which is that your solution to leave the term hidden by default adds an extra click for users who wish to view the term in full. So your proposed solution is no different than simply linking to the full term on an external site, which is something I'd happily support. Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 23:41, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, default-hiding a transcluded template is possibly the worst option, since those who want to see it still have to click, but those who don't still have to download the whole thing. An external link resolves the latter problem and still allows those who want to see it to do so. Opabinia regalis 01:58, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
An external link is a good solution. -- Boris 10:48, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
External links are, for the most part, unreliable. You don't know when some webmaster is going to decide that the page in question is unnecessary, move his website, or forget to mail his payment and have his site shut down. There was actually a link to a Wikisource page, but the page was since deleted. The only viable option in that direction would be a userspace link, or else the creation of an entire page especially for the word. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 16:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
To resolve this issue, I'd support having a page on Wikisource for the full name. --David Iberri (talk) 16:26, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Flameviper just created Full chemical name of titin, but that's not the consensus solution we're trying to establish. The idea is to have an external link (ie, outside Wikipedia). A Wikisource page would be fine, IMO. I've created one at Wikisource:Chemical name of titin. --David Iberri (talk) 16:49, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
  • It sounds like one user wants the long word in the article and everyone else does not. (Deltajuliet did not apparently sign his/her last post and has not been active since September or October 2006.) Keesiewonder talk 23:04, 24 January 2007 (UTC)
Are you insinuating that Deltajuliet is my sockpuppet? It isn't, you can do a CheckUser if you don't believe me. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 16:23, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Actually, no the thought had not crossed my mind. I noticed that up above, there is a post from Deltajuliet who appears to have an IP address of 24.179.217.145. The post does not have a link to the user account or a time/date stamp but appears to have been from October 20, 2006. Since the post is not recent, and we're talking about this now, I chose to not include his/her implied support of having the long word on this page in my rough tally of the state of affairs. Please assume good faith, yourself, of other users. Keesiewonder talk 23:10, 25 January 2007 (UTC)
Tally: Everyone to Flameviper. Flameviper just gave up. End. ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 18:20, 26 January 2007 (UTC)

It's done

Okay, David. You did it. Consensus has now been reached. Now can we unwatch this article and go home? ~ Flameviper Who's a Peach? 20:11, 25 January 2007 (UTC)

I'm glad we reached consensus, but I think I'll keep this page on my watchlist for now. Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 20:25, 25 January 2007 (UTC)


---

[previous comment erased after rethinking what I had to say]

Alright. I have only this to say. I'm disgusted by the way people were carrying on about the entire thing. First off, it's a word and Flameviper is right. The majority of the people who actually came to the page just wanted to see the word itself (I did as well).

To remove the word is catering to yourself and your narrowminded interest because it doesn't fit the utopia image that you have for wikipedia. The whole purpose of wikipedia is to EDUCATE visitors of things that they would like to know about. It may be something to do with piercing, first swing of golf on the moon, or even the longest word. To remove the longest word removes the knowledge from people and slowly edge its way into a facist control by the, pardon the expression, wikisnobs.

With love from the duck. QUACK

Feb 26, 2007
  • 07:54, 25 February 2007 Gogo Dodo (Talk | contribs) (Rm, dead link)
No, the consensus is now invalid due to the "amendment" that you proposed earlier in the past. The external link to wikisource became invalid and now ignores the majority of the people (btw, they are more interested by curiosity.) who actually make use of wikipedia.
You have to keep in mind that Wikipedia is regarded by post secondary institution as an unreliable source of information and should not be use for research purposes (Surprise, surprise!). For you guys to keep pushing that it is and trying to make it a personal "utopia."
If we were to try to figure out a percentage of people who actually come to the Titin page to do research in comparison to the people who go there to see the longest word. Let me help you with an general idea: 2% for research and 98% for curiosity. Please keep in mind that I'm actually being very generous for the research percentage.
Until you can actually make an amendment to appease to both sides of the argument (and it has to be reliable), the longest word will continue to remain on the page.
If you keep editing the page without discussing it, I will continue to edit the page to restore it to the rightful manner it deserves to be in.
Love,
The Duck 64.180.240.190 09:51, 26 February 2007 (UTC)
a) Don't threaten to edit-war. The article is temporarily semiprotected in its readable state to avoid back-and-forthing. b) The onus is on the person who wants to include information to provide a source. c) Don't talk about yourself in the third person, no matter how many socks you have. Opabinia regalis 06:17, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Actually, I did not threaten to edit-war. The editor took it upon himself to not discuss it here and I was stating that I will continue to put back the original word until they can provide a reliable external link that will not go dead (as what just happened). Secondly, what the hell do you mean by talking in third person? Thirdly, the article cannot be semiprotected due to the following condition.
When not to use semi-protection
Semi-protection should not be used
  • As a response to regular content disputes, since it may restrict some editors and not others.
Thus, the restriction is not permitted.
As for the word itself, I will be looking for the source. I also have some doubts to the length of the word itself (it might be reaching the 200k). Until then, ta ta.
With love from moi. 64.180.240.190 08:10, 28 February 2007 (UTC)
Hm, completely forgot about this. Who would imagine that someone would turn up to carry on a banned user's edit war at the same time that said banned user creates a bunch of socks to appeal his ban? No, that would never happen.
None of the last several months of intermittent dispute have been about 'content'. Kindly read the rest of this page to understand the damning technical flaws inherent in the template. In fact, since it is not the type of content that we host on Wikipedia, I'm going to nominate it for deletion; see below for an invitation to comment there. Opabinia regalis 03:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)


Okay, first off. I'm not a sockpuppet. Please look at my IP address and his IP address. I came across this page through people on IRC where we were discussing about what is the longest word possible. A friend commented that she remember seeing the longest word but can't spell it even if her life depends on it (obviously we know why). She managed to find it by going through the history since a "reliable" source was deleted and the link was not kept like it should have been in the first place.
The dispute was as to whether to keep the word on the page or not. Quite frankly, I was disgusted at how you people seem to give the impression that Wikipedia is a "reliable source of information" when all reputable post secondary educations ARGUES that Wikipedia should not be using Wikipedia for research resources.
When I was wondering why the hell the word didn't stay on the page like it should be (since it's a contribution to the page and longest word page), I found the discussion and was suprised by the amount of (pardon the expression) wikifaggotry that went on revolving around the word itself.
Also, if you actually went through the text itself, the consensus was reached on the basis that an external/wikisource link would be provided for the template (and the infobox could have been automatically set to "HIDE" instead of the default "SHOW"). But of course, I'm preaching to a chorus of deaf wikisnobs (btw, ironic since I'm deaf myself).
The onus should not have been on me to PROVE the existence of the word but the onus should have been on ALL OF YOU to DISPROVE the word. You have to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the word is not what it is as well.
With that said, you should learn to read.
With love from the duck, 64.180.240.190 09:52, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
That you are disgusted by our attempt to create a reliable source of information in Wikipedia is irrelevant. Of course it should not be generally be used as a primary source for research; no encyclopedia is intended for this purpose. And your labeling of our contributions to this discussion as "wikifaggotry" is bigoted and reprehensible. The consensus reached was that an external link would be added, not that the infobox would be set to "hide" by default. Opibinia noted that the latter solution was actually less favorable and therefore should be avoided. The reason no external link exists is that it was deleted from Wikisource for reasons I'm not entirely sure of. (I'm not familiar with inclusion criteria for Wikisource.) Also, no one has asked you to prove the existence of the 189k term. The onus is on you and other interested parties to provide a rational explanation for why it should be included in an encyclopedia article about a protein. Personally, I think it's laughable to consider the term the longest "word" when it's never written down and never spoken--even by the community of scientists that deals with titin on a regular basis. That is why I feel this argument is a bit silly. Nevertheless, if you can find a reliable, verifiable, respectable reference that says titin's expanded amino acid name is the longest word in the English language, then I suppose I'd have to reevaluate my position. If you think that's wikisnobbery, then you should spend some more time on Wikipedia. :-) Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 02:22, 29 May 2007 (UTC)
I would like to point out, for the less computer-savvy ones out there, that the word in full would logically be about 189KB, the size of a 2,000x2,000 .jpg file. Is it just me, or does wikipedia host a lot of images? Plus, even on a 56k connection (which is steadily growing less common) it would take 30 seconds to load. An acceptable speed, considering that most people coming to this page are here for the word anyway. Isn't that enough reason enough to create a wikisource page? I have the full text (with a little help from the internet) so I would be willing to provide. 67.188.89.50 00:24, 29 May 2007 (UTC) Serge

TfD nomination of Template:Titin

Template:Titin has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for Deletion page. Thank you. --Opabinia regalis 03:10, 5 March 2007 (UTC)

  • From the "deletion" page -
Additional comment, I did some research. What happened was that a string of letters representing amino acids was posted by a wikipedia adminstrator (brian0918 - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Brian0918) according to a quote from science.slashdot.org forum
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144207&threshold=1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&cid=12085345
http://science.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=144207&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=12087069#12088788
Along came FlameViper who took the string of letters representing amino acids and TRANSLATE it into the names themselves, creating the "official" name. Therefore, I would strongly suggest that you talk to both members before you even delete the template itself. I find it mindboggling and confounding that a Wikipedia adminstrator was involved in this somehow (reminds me of a government pointing fingers at "terrorists" for using firearms provided by said government in the past). If anything, the name should be kept and find a reasonable solution that can benefit everyone in whole (including the users). I strongly suggest putting the template itself on protection (to avoid undetectable vandalism) and setting the template to (HIDE) instead of (SHOW).
64.180.240.190 11:13, 5 March 2007 (UTC)
edit- also, I believe that brian0918 and FlameViper should be included in the discussion as they are the ones who are directly responsible for the name itself.

Actually, I converted the string of letters into the name, and posted it on Wikisource. Flameviper just copied that text into the template. — BRIAN0918 • 2007-03-05 14:46Z

No reference to the word in full ... :(

Okay, great, so now there's no reference to the word itself.

I'm probably a Wikipedia inclussionist, but I agree that having all 160 000 letters in the article might be a bit if an issue - that's why I want to see them in full - but none of the repositories have it - the one on wikisource has been removed.
I tried looking at the article history and both diffs were not accurate - the one has the word cut off, the other has the word with ... 's everywhere (which the real word would never have). I'm hoping for a compromise of having the ... (elipsis) after every 256 characters.
Can somebody please add the word to wikisource! Or show me where I can find the word and I'll do it myself!
Rfwoolf 15:56, 15 May 2007 (UTC)

I have the word (among others) stored on my computer. It came from the original Wikisource article and I think that it is accurate (it has the correct number of letters last I checked). I would put it here, but it would be deleted. --76.188.148.173 00:49, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
The term just plain isn't encyclopedic, so I don't think it'll ever make it into the 'pedia. My suggestion would be to make your case over at Wikisource and see what happens. --David Iberri (talk) 03:02, 23 July 2007 (UTC)
Told you the people just want to see the word. They never cared about the articles. Also, this is DuckBlurQuackster if you were wondering. 70.69.73.49 08:41, 17 August 2007 (UTC)
I just put up the word on an external site off of what had been deleted in the article, and linked to it. I hope this is a solution everyone is fine with. Email me at titin @at OTHYR DaWT com if there are any issues with it. --71.112.43.223 18:57, 30 August 2007 (UTC)Othyr
I'm personally fine with it. I might prefer if the word were hosted on Wikisource, but apparently folks over there disagree (I don't have too much experience with Wikisource so I can't tell whether titin's full chemical name is appropriate there). Thanks for offering this, Othyr. --David Iberri (talk) 19:02, 30 August 2007 (UTC)
It is separated by huge spaces and is hard to read. I wish there was another place! you're not colorblind, it's colored this way. Or maybe you are. Misteryoshi 23:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Image

I have a suggestion: maybe place an image in a show/hide box? The image could be shrunk down to thumbnail size and then expanded like any other. I know it is the same as placing a link, but at least we can guarantee it will stay here. | Falk Flyer | My Page | My Talk | 12:32, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

What image? Are you by chance talking about a show/hide box for the full chemical name of titin? That option has already been tried and we reached a consensus that it was suboptimal. --David Iberri (talk) 23:06, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

Full name

user:TheNamer attempted to include the full chemical name. One very good reason for excluding it is that a "word" more than 180 kbytes long without any hyphenation is likely to break any browser in one way or another. Anyone prepared to risk it, may follow this link. They may or may not actually see the word. -- RHaworth (Talk | contribs) 08:56, 12 March 2008 (UTC)

Hello, I think that the word should be put in and some jerk deleted it just above. I believe that it should be put in, it would not make the article the longest in wiki, there are articles with more info, and this is an encyclopedia, and the idea of this website is to get all the info that we can, so lets add it!!!Ericschulz (talk) 22:23, 10 April 2008 (UTC)
Please familiarize yourself with the quite extensive discussion above, in which we achieved consensus that the full term should not be displayed on Wikipedia, before making personal attacks. As it stands, if the term is added to this page, it will be removed without warning. --David Iberri (talk) 00:50, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Longest IUPAC Name?

Wikipedia consistently refers to this as the longest IUPAC name (or incorrectly as the longest word in the English language), but wouldn't DNA chromosomes actually have the longest names, as they are far, far longer than titin? I mean, if you wrote out the full chemical name of, say, the first chromosome of some random skin cell on my hand, is should be billions of letters long, shouldn't it? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Eebster the Great (talk • contribs) 18:16, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

No. The concept of a longest IUPAC or other systematic chemical name is grossly misguided, as I'd hoped to illustrate with the largest number analogy above. --David Iberri (talk) 23:03, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
My point wasn't that titin is properly named in IUPAC, but that if one were to accept IUPAC names of real molecules to be words, there's no reason titin should be the longest. That is, even if we wanted to compare IUPAC names of random molecules to find the largest, titin definitely would not be the winner. Eebster the Great (talk) 06:50, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

The full name

What is Wikipedia Here for? Education. Okay, I think that is proof enough that we should put the word on here. People that want the word will be educated of what it is. Any one with me? If so post below! Syntheticalconnections (talk) 19:55, 8 July 2008 (UTC)

Please familiarize yourself with the extensive discussion on this talk page concerning the inclusion of titin's full chemical name. Several strong arguments have been offered from both sides, including the one you mention, and the consensus decision has been to exclude the name here. --David Iberri (talk) 23:44, 8 July 2008 (UTC)
Do you think that more people are in your favour that against you? Perhaps _you_ should read the talk page to see all the people who disagree with you. Looks like consensus to me. -93.96.212.203 (talk) 14:04, 21 July 2008 (UTC)
Consensus does not necessarily mean majority wins. I'm well aware that there are many people that disagree with the opinion I and many others have expressed. Unfortunately, they have not supplied reasonable arguments for including the full term. --David Iberri (talk) 00:29, 22 July 2008 (UTC)
The only consenus David is you being overly outspoken about not wanting the word on here. If you fail to see why "because it is the longest formulaic 'word' in the English language" is a reason in and of itself then well I don't know what to tell you. -Not A Sock Puppet 66.171.71.135 (talk) 04:21, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
I'm happy to continue the discussion about inclusion/exclusion of the term, but I don't see the point in rehashing arguments that have already been thoughtfully considered and discussed on this talk page. The bottom line is that the concept of "longest formulaic word in a language" is flawed from the beginning. To include the term here would appear to lend merit to this misguided notion. This is the basis of my "overly outspoken" nature here. --David Iberri (talk) 20:58, 30 July 2008 (UTC)
First of all, what does consensus mean? Second, Doesn't it seem like everyone is in favor to put the word in and only one person disfavors it due to a poor connection or some other conclusion nobody agrees with? -Zedek
It's not that Diberri is the only one opposed. It's that he's the only one patient enough to keep explaining why adding a 189,819 letter non-word to a Wikipedia page is highly inappropriate. --Arcadian (talk) 18:26, 22 August 2008 (UTC)
Soooo what does consensus mean!? Plus I say screw rationality and appropriate-ness we want the word on here therfore it should be. -Zedek —Preceding unsigned comment added by 76.171.28.160 (talk) 19:39, 23 August 2008 (UTC)
According to Wikipedia:Consensus: Wikipedia's decisions are not based on the number of people who show up and vote a particular way on a particular day; they are based on a system of good reasons. As already explained in the article and elaborated by and Diberri and Arcadian, good reasons for not including a non-word in this article have already been presented. Furthermore, you have not presented a persuasive counter argument. --Boghog2 (talk) 20:47, 23 August 2008 (UTC)

Just to add my thoughts, Yes I came here out of curiosity to see 'the word' but then also was interested in what titin is. Just show it or continue to link to it. To do otherwise would be to limit the usefulness of the page. 82.39.200.155 (talk) 23:43, 13 October 2008 (UTC)

I think there is general agreement that a link to the word is fine. Unfortunately the othyr.com link has recently 404'd. Let us know if an alternative surfaces. --David Iberri (talk) 00:37, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

For reference, this is the full word

In my opinion, wikipedia is a place for learning. It was very difficult to find it, but here is the full word. In my opinion, it should be added to the entry.

(Chemical name of titin removed. --David Iberri (talk) 00:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC))

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.246.236.238 (talk) 23:49, 26 October 2008 (UTC)

Please do not add the chemical name of titin. Reasons why have been extensively discussed on this talk page. Thanks, David Iberri (talk) 00:28, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

but why not? —Preceding unsigned comment added by BlackTooth93 (talk • contribs) 02:02, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

Removal of External Link

I'm not quite sure why

was removed from the External Links sections. It seems to be what people want to find on this page, and the link works. I remember having this discussion a long time ago, and it was agreed that this was the best solution. Myusrnm (talk) 07:56, 2 November 2008 (UTC)

That URL recently 404'd, as noted above. I've replaced it since it's no longer 404'ing. --David Iberri (talk) 15:09, 2 November 2008 (UTC)
I emailed the owner of the site ( webmaster@site.com, where site is replaced by othyr obviously). He said it was a hosting error and he switched to another provider because of the error. We should be fine. Myusrnm (talk) 07:49, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

It was removed and replaced with another external link to the full chemical name of Titin by myself because the Othyr site listed it on one continuous line, which is extremely inaccessible (I had to copy and paste in to a word document to look at t). I have thus created a webspage on my own personal website where the word is displayed but in a wrapped column that people can see Titin much better with. Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 21:22, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

The only reason I have reverted the external link to its previous state is that I do not see the issue you are talking about on http://othyr.com/titin.html, and therefore think you must have some ulterior motive for changing the link. I am sorry if this is not the case and I have missed something. Perhaps the othyr.com site has changed. In addition, I am not aware of the circumstances by which othyr.com acquired their information. Direct copy-pasting may be completely illegally.Myusrnm (talk) 04:28, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
Of course I have an ulterior motive. Let us disregard assuming good faith, let us disregard my explicit reasoning in my original edit summary, why not just go accusing people of ulterior motives, shall we? Makes more more sense that way.
Furthermore this word is a *word*, it doesn't vary in spelling, you can't plagiarise it. It's like saying because you have written the word "ulterior" I can't use it because copying is illegal.
In regards to my complaint, when I have looked at that page from several computers I see the entire chemical name on one line i.e. it is not broken into several like at http://luminaryuprise.wikidot.com/longest-word. This makes it very difficult to see. Is no-one else having this trouble? Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 14:59, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, having just looked at your contribs, Myusrnm, I find it mildly suspicious to say the least that the only edits you have made have been either to your userpage or to add this Othyr site to the Titin page and defend its inclusion here. One has to wonder why. In light of this and that I just checked with someone else on a different OS and browser and he is suffering the same problem, I am going to switch it back. Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 15:08, 16 December 2008 (UTC)

(Neutral-ish party butting in here...) Myusrnm, please assume good faith. Your accusations that Dev920 is being anything but genuine are unfounded, and frankly, silly. Both pages present identical data but in distinct layouts. I agree with Dev920 that the othyr page is unreadable, and that a column-based view is preferred for readability. I say this from a considerably neutral point on this subject, because I find the word (and thus both pages) utterly irrelevant to Wikipedia. :-) While I'm here, Dev920: you might consider adding explicit <br>s to each line of text, because currently the last line isn't wrapping properly. Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 22:19, 16 December 2008 (UTC)
I just tried and it seems Wikidot does not like breaks. It will have to suffice until another option presents itself.It was a bitch to wrap first time round, I tell you. Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 02:53, 17 December 2008 (UTC)
  • Hi, I'm the owner of othyr.com if you have any use for the page still, just ask. If you want a change in the code, please tell me how. I'm not quite sure how to do it. Myusrnm is wrong, I don't have any "right" to the word. I don't really use wikipedia, so I'll come back here for the next week or so, and if there are no comments completely disregard this message because I'm not going to see it again. The page does not wrap in Opera or Firefox, but does wrap in Chrome from testing on my side. If anyone has an ulterior motive, it's me. There is some profit to be made off of a site like that (although hosting is somewhat expensive and no one clicks the ads about chicken nuggets which appear way too often so it's net a few dollars a year). I'm not sure, but there was some argument over moving the word to wikisource when I came here last. If that can be done (I suggest we try again), it is the best place for the word. 24.16.83.241 (talk) 00:22, 3 January 2009 (UTC)othyr

Full form of titin

Separate page suggestion: Full Form Of Titin to satisfy people, which would fnction like a list: simple introduction, then just the word and sources. Link to from main article. I shouldn't have to visit other sites to find ths encyclopaedic content, but I understand concerns of use in this article. A good comprimise for creationists ad deletionists alike. --90.198.213.160 (talk) 20:00, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

Similar ideas have been suggested before. However, the proposal doesn't address the core problems with adding the chemical name to this article; those problems have been well articulated on this talk page, and include the unencyclopedic nature of verbal formulae, the disruption associated with adding a 189,000-character term to an encyclopedia article, and the notion that providing the formula here would lend credence to the misguided notion that there is such a thing as a "longest word" in any language. The absolute only reason people want to add the term is for sheer spectacle. That is far from an appropriate criterion for inclusion in Wikipedia. Cheers, David Iberri (talk) 23:21, 5 February 2009 (UTC)

What is the word?

I can't find it !

See the external links section. Boghog2 (talk) 05:54, 21 June 2009 (UTC)

THE WORD

For every one who wants to see it... Sorry, but everyone comes here to see it!! Who cares about "Titin" I want the whole word and tons will see it...

I removed the word because article talk pages are for discussing changes to the article. Your argument that no one wants to read about titin the protein is common among laypeople, but very far from the truth. Among students of science, including biologists, physiologists, and physicians, titin's properties as a protein are very interesting. Please read the above discussion. If you want to challenge the consensus that the full chemical name should not be included on the article (or this talk page), I and others would love to hear your opinion. But do not post the word here. --David Iberri (talk) 20:44, 20 October 2007 (UTC)

I think that's pretty ridiculous myself, as mostly laymen will read this. Shouldn't the people you mentionned have they're own adequate sources?--Vatic7 (talk) 02:58, 7 January 2008 (UTC)

There's no way for us to quantitatively say how many laypeople vs. scientists read this article, so your first point is moot. As for your second, yes, there are many alternative avenues for researching proteins and other scientific topics that are covered on Wikipedia. But are you seriously arguing that Wikipedia science articles should ignore material that isn't readily known and understood by laypeople? --David Iberri (talk) 11:54, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
No I am arguing the exact opposite. Laymen on Wikipedia will probably be the only ones wanting to know the full name. A professional in the domain of biology would surely have access to the full name, so why go on WIkipedia (which isn't a recognized source anyway). We cannot say that quantitatively, but we can say qualitatively, using logic. I only used a qualitative term, not a quantitative one.--Vatic7 (talk) 22:53, 7 January 2008 (UTC)
Biologists only have access to the name insofar as they're aware of freely available protein databases and can query them for the primary structure of titin. But when a protein (eg, titin) is more than a few amino acids long, the "methionylaspartylglutamyl..."-style nomenclature is replaced with a concise form where each amino acid is represented as a single character, as in "MDEFQTS..." That's because both styles convey the exact same information, but the former is much more cumbersome. No legitimate biologist would consider the full name of titin even remotely useful.
That said, let's imagine that laypeople comprise 100% of the titin article's readership. Let's say that all of them are here because they've heard that the full name of titin is the longest word in English. Does that mean this article should contain the word? That's the crux of the issue here, and until we answer that question, we're just spinning our wheels, arguing around the real point.
Not surprisingly, my stance is that even given this hypothetical scenario, we still shouldn't provide the word here. Instead, we should provide a section in the article that discusses the misguided notion that chemical names should be contenders for the longest word in a language. Exactly how to explain this might be difficult, but I imagine that an analogy to the common childhood question "what's the biggest number?" would be especially illustrative. --David Iberri (talk) 18:56, 11 January 2008 (UTC)
"let's imagine that laypeople comprise 100% of the titin article's readership. Let's say that all of them are here because they've heard that the full name of titin is the longest word in English. Does that mean this article should contain the word?" Frankly: Yes, and you appear to be the only one arguing against it. If you want to write a section or article why the IUPAC name shouldn't count as a word, find sources and write it. User:Dorftrottel 01:30, January 13, 2008
Diberri's not the only one arguing against it. Adding a 189,819 letter word to any page, under any circumstance, is vandalism, and is a blockable offense. If you don't understand why, or if you disagree, the place to discuss it is at Wikipedia talk:Vandalism, not here. --Arcadian (talk) 02:19, 13 January 2008 (UTC)
Please reread WP:VAND. Vandalism is defined by a deliberate effort to compromise Wikipedia. Very nice of you to threaten to abuse your tools through an admitted lack of familarity with such a very important policy. I added it once, didn't revert and have no intention to do so. The award I get for asking why is blocking threats. Good thing Wikipedia isn't compromised by the stupidity of some of its admins, that would be a real bummer, no? User:Dorftrottel 14:28, January 13, 2008
Another thing: Looking at Special:Longpages, I have to admit I don't really get it. There are quite a few bigger articles still. Adding it, as I did, not as plain text but within a <div style="overflow:auto"> layer doesn't impair the appearance of the page in the least and at 192,691 bytes the page will still load quicker than
I freely admit (or "claim", depending on your individual understanding of WP:VAND...) that I did not notice the hidden text message that reads
<!--
DO NOT ADD THE FULL CHEMICAL NAME OF TITIN TO THIS ARTICLE
This has been discussed extensively on this article's talk page and the consensus is to *not* provide the full chemical name of titin here. Please see the talk page for details.
-->
However, I won't revert to the version with the full name and I never intended to. Now, I would greatly appreciate if you could please reply to those arguments without resorting to your complete and utter misunderstanding of what vandalism is according to WP:VAND and/or please assume sufficient good faith not to jump to the conclusion that my intention is to deliberately compromise Wikipedia by adding the full name. Please address the arguments I made with regard to several considerably longer existing articles, and to add the name not as plain text but within a scrollable overflow layer (as I did). And: Looking through this page, I doubt consensus is to not include the name. Please consider that consensus is not achieved by admins assuming bad faith and threating to block based on that assumption of bad faith. Please address the arguments. User:Dorftrottel 14:47, January 13, 2008

(un-indent)
In all of this hub-ub, it seems like my attempt to refocus our arguments has gotten off track before it even left the station. First off, I disagree that adding the name constitutes vandalism, especially if it's added by someone unfamiliar with the discussion that's been going on here. I also don't see much sense in the argument that excessive page length should dictate that we not add the chemical name.

That said, the name should not be added for the fundamental reason that it is not relevant to the page, and therefore unencyclopedic. Biologists have no need for the term, as alluded to above. Laypeople have no need for the term either. The latter is what I want to bring people's attention to. And the rationale is that laypeople interested in seeing the whole term have been misguided, somehow believing that chemical names can be contenders for the longest word in a language. As I pointed out above, subscribing to this belief is no different than a child's curiosity about numbers. When a child asks the question "what is the biggest number?", we adults see an opportunity to educate. When laypeople look to titin's chemical name as the longest word in the English language, Wikipedians should do the same. --David Iberri (talk) 16:12, 13 January 2008 (UTC)

The name is not relevant to the page? - Excuse me, but that's your opinion. Please at least explain how you arrive at that conclusion. People turn to Wikipedia looking for that information, and Wikipedia should provide that information. It won't get much more encyclopedic than that. Mind you, I'm usually rather strictly opposed to the unprofessional, adolescent nightmare that is Trivia sections in pop culture articles. But here, I see a clear demand for a specific information. Why not at least keep the weblink (asking since you removed it as well)? Saying that it is not the longest term is not mutually exclusive with including the full name. Just include all relevant info, citing reliable sources. The fact that the earth is not flat doesn't mean that we get to censor that information [clarification: the information=the verifiable fact that people have in the past been and some keep claiming that Earth is flat] from Wikipedia. We may (and should always) set all info into perspective, using reliable sources, to avoid undue weight for fringe science and original research etcpp. The fact is, the name has been notably cited as the longest English word, and even though we both share the opinion that generic IUPAC names are not proper words of the English language, it doesn't mean we can simply censor it out of Wikipedia.
I agree with education entirely. I would go even further and say that as Wikipedians, we have the duty to educate each other. But: We must educate our readers only (!) by citing reliable sources and explaining, in neutral language, that and why exactly the name should not be considered an English word. Beyond that, we do not have the right to keep information away from the people. Set in into proper perspective: Absolutely, yes. Censor it: No. User:Dorftrottel 21:24, January 13, 2008 [Clarification: In my humble opinion, one can only educate others if s/he himself is open to be educated in turn.]
Ignore the above. I have now included a reference from the Oxford University Press, where the essential notion that generic names of chemical compounds are not regarded as English words is explicitly mentioned. Also, I did a bit of Googling, and did not find any half-way reliable source where the claim of Titin to be an English word, or the longest penis word for that matter, is mentioned. Seems to be more of an internet meme. The Oxford text, though short, is really interesting though. User:Dorftrottel 15:10, January 14, 2008
Thank you, Dorftrottel. Very nicely done. --David Iberri (talk) 18:01, 14 January 2008 (UTC)

David Iberri, that is good point I must agree with. But ( I don't know if this was suggested previously) but would WikiSource accept?--Vatic7 (talk) 02:29, 15 January 2008 (UTC)

So far, no. The term was placed on WikiSource some time last year I believe, and was relatively promptly removed by staff, citing WikiSource policies with which I am not familiar. --David Iberri (talk) 00:52, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

I added a link to the name. It's the same site that's used as a reference for the start and end of the name.Pisharov (talk) 16:39, 18 April 2009 (UTC)

It's been vandalized and deleted for no reason. I put it back. Two more reverts/undos and it's a war. Idiots.Pisharov (talk) 22:53, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

By the way, that linkworks just fine, Dev920 talk) 23:16, 16 May 2009 (UTC)

My link has been removed, so I leave this page to you all. I don't want to keep going back and forth, so goodbye. Idiots.Pisharov (talk) 21:43, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Please be civil. For what it's worth, I left some information at Talk:Titin#External link to the full name as to the likely reasoning behind the link's repeated removal. --David Iberri (talk) 01:33, 18 May 2009 (UTC)

Full word

So this is an article about the longest english word and the longest english word isn't there. You're so smart. THIS is an encyclopedia and should contain information, darnit!!! It's an interesting fact and this kind of censure is completely Inappropriate and unfair--ITInfinity (talk) 20:20, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

  • Please familiarize yourself with the comprehensive discussion that's been happening on that very issue in the sections above. As it has been said, while this is an encyclopedia, we are excluding information for the sake of practicality. If you are truly interested in finding the full name of Titin, there are many websites available through a simple Google search which can show you. 24.15.197.87 (talk) 05:21, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
    • The bottom line here is nobody is understanding the definition of a word. Many MANY compounds have more letters than the "longest word" in any language when spelled out in full. Surely nobody would say that 239,959,330,096,284,868,394,104,... when scripted out in word form is the longest word in the English language, and you can always add more numbers to that. Titin's significance is that it's the largest protein. I would say the linguistic section is plenty and the article is fine the way it is. No other protein is spelled out and this meme can be located all over the web.Kingdomcarts (talk) 06:26, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Actually, it can't be. The reason I ended up here in the first was in an attempt to find the full chemical name of Titin. There are many, many websites referring to the longest word in the English language being a protein, but few say which protein, and even fewer list the full 189,000 chemical name. Dev920, who misses Jeffpw. 08:37, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
The reference for the section "Linguistic Significance" immediately points to the word.Kingdomcarts (talk) 02:37, 16 March 2009 (UTC)

I would like to bring up this point. An encyclopedia is a tool used for dispensing knowledge not only to people involved(such as student reports or professionals) in the subject matter, but also people generally interested in the subject. As such, an encyclopedia should provide relevant information to both of these groups. Relevancy on the professional level is subjective, whatever a professional deems necessary to complete a task or to assist with said task becomes necessary and/or relevant information. However, on the public level, objectivity is obsolete due to the sheer mass of opinions contained in the public. For this reason, opinions must be collected objectively. This means using statistics to obtain a general view of the public opinion. From what I have seen, the same amount of people, if not more, are in support of displaying the full name of titin as opposed to the amount of people against this. From this standpoint, the obvious choice would be to show the full name.

My personal standpoint is that this would be frivolous, however, as encyclopedias, like many other forms of media, serve the masses, it would be best to listen to the majority standpoint. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 173.57.114.181 (talk) 23:53, 15 April 2009 (UTC)

I revived and linked a separate page just for the name : Titin (full chemical name). It's notable, people will expect to find it, and it's too big for the main page, so it makes sense. If you disagree, you can discuss here or on said page's talk.--Musaran (talk) 12:34, 22 September 2009 (UTC)

I think the full name should be added, or at least a separate page, (that doesn't just redirect to this page), should be established. Whatever your reasoning it should be added. And for "Google Searching" the wikipedia article comes here, and many websites only mention it. I believe that wikipedia being an Encyclopedia should list this as it is a very unique word, that for indexing purposes needs to be stated. 75.172.176.141 (talk) 05:41, 11 January 2010 (UTC) Noaru

If the full name for Acetylseryltyrosylseryliso...serine is listed in that article, why can't the name (or at least the first hundred and last hundred letters of it) be listed in this article? External links are occasionally slow, unreliable, and may become dead links soon. 69.233.5.51 (talk) 22:58, 17 March 2010 (UTC)

Archive

Should this page be archived soon? --♪♫The New Mikemoraltalkcontribs 02:28, 20 February 2009 (UTC)

Yup. I just set up automated archiving with MiszaBot. --David Iberri (talk) 01:46, 12 March 2009 (UTC)
Thanks. ♪♫The New Mikemoraltalkcontribs 00:46, 15 March 2009 (UTC)

External link to the full name

Presently there two commonly used external links to the full chemical name of titin:

  1. http://othyr.com/titin.html
  2. http://luminaryuprise.wikidot.com/longest-word

Link #1 has had issues with inaccessibility and server errors; for example, its server returned a 404 error for sometime over the past year as I mentioned above. The inaccessibility complaints relate to the formatting of the chemical name on this page; it is listed on a single line, and so it scrolls horizontally and is rather difficult to read. I'm not aware of any browser that will render this text correctly. As far as I am aware, there have been no server errors with link #2, and it is considerably more "accessible" (ie, readable) because it lists the chemical name in multiple lines.

Link #2 has been listed in the "external links" section of this page for some time. Recently User:Pisharov added some text that reintroduced link #1, noting that link #1 no longer returns a 404 error. However, the link was reintroduced in a conversational tone and was placed in the main article text instead of the "external links" section, and so I removed it. In addition, link #1 remains largely unreadable. And so I much prefer that we keep link #2 here, listed in the "external links" section as it has been for some time. --David Iberri (talk) 01:26, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

88.107.131.85 (talk · contribs) has added the othyr.com link [1] to the article text as a reference for the claim that titin is the longest word in the English language. While efforts to properly cite Wikipedia are much appreciated and are certainly to be encouraged, I've removed the link because 1) there are already sufficient references to titin's chemical name being the longest English term, 2) the existing references (eg, CliffsNotes.com) are more notable than othyr.com, and 3) the othyr.com link presents a poorly formatted version of titin's full chemical name. Best regards, David Iberri (talk) 16:48, 28 May 2009 (UTC)


Protein vs. peptide

I changed the record from "largest protein" to "largest polypeptide". Some proteins are agregates of numerous polypeptides with combined mass exceeding that of titin. Furthermore, what counts as "protein" is a matter of definition, since the strength of the association between polypeptides varies from covalent bonds to brief and reversible binding. "Polypeptide", on the other hand, is a clearly defined concept. I also added information about the record number of introns in the titin gene. --Chino (talk) 07:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)

External Link

Like many laypersons, I came to this page hoping to find the full chemical name of titin. Here, I find a rather lengthy discussion on whether or not to add it. The current state of the article seems to be the best approach. The full chemical name is not included in the article, but a link to an external site with that name is included. This is as it should be. However, I notice in the history of this page that someone new adds the full chemical name and is reverted about once a week. I humbly suggest that the reason is because these people are unaware that the full name is contained in an external link, since the external link is at the very bottom of the page, below a lengthy references list. I myself didn't notice that link until I saw it was mentioned in the discussion here. I have added a small sentence to the Linguistic Significance section containing a self-link to the External Links section. It is my hope that this will help all laypersons (like myself) interested primarily in the name while not infringing on the scientific integrity of the article. YardsGreen (talk) 15:11, 10 March 2010 (UTC)

I disagree. I think it is unnecessary, and I'm sure it's against policy to say "go to the external links at the bottom for more." Let's see what other people think. Eagles 24/7 (C) 20:39, 10 March 2010 (UTC)
I concur; I'm not a fan of these sorts of self-references and they're generally frowned upon as a whole. I wonder whether linking the phrase "full chemical name", which appears in the article, would be a reasonable compromise. --David Iberri (talk) 01:46, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Good idea, let's do that. Eagles 24/7 (C) 01:48, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Done and done. [2] --David Iberri (talk) 01:59, 11 March 2010 (UTC)
Yes, this looks much better. And I think it will still have the desired effect. Thank you Diberri. YardsGreen (talk) 14:21, 11 March 2010 (UTC)

Question

(I'm still fairly new to wikipedia and therefore do not know if I am contributing the right way. But here goes) would it be alright if I put the first hundred or so and last hundred or so letters on the page? —Preceding unsigned comment added by Toonboy799 (talk • contribs) 21:49, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

No, because it messes up the entire format of the article. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:52, 28 March 2010 (UTC)
The full chemical name of the compound is accessable by a link in the article. Anyone that's interested will be able to find the info. Regards Tiderolls 21:55, 28 March 2010 (UTC)

Linguistic significance

The section "Linguistic significance" is completely erroneous:

  1. Titin is the largest known protein but not the largest compound. E.g. DNA strands consist of millions of nucleotides and their IUPAC names would be orders of magnitude longer than that of titin.
  2. There is no "largest compound" at all, similarly as there is no "largest number". Every compound compound can be modified and increased. Titin can be e.g. peracetylated, that would increase its name by thousands of letters. Two titin molecules can be coupled, giving a compound with a doubled name length.
  3. Titin has many isoforms. To which isoform this "longest word" refers to? The name cited in http://www.sarahmcculloch.com/luminaryuprise/longest-word.html is not consistent neither with isoform 1 (34,350 AA) nor isoform 8 (34,474 AA) of the human titin (the largest listed in http://www.uniprot.org/uniprot/Q8WZ42). Titin from mouse has 35,213 AA. An immature protein has 38,138 AA (~4200 kDa, see ref. 3).

IMHO the web page on which the section is based (http://www.sarahmcculloch.com/luminaryuprise/longest-word.html) should be treated as WP:OR with the conclusion based on erroneous assumptions. Well, it is fun but Wikipedia should not be based on funny sources. Thus I opt for deleting the whole section. Michał Sobkowski (talk) 08:20, 9 April 2010 (UTC)

This protein has been reported as in various media and (non-Wikipedia) news/language articles as a linguistic curiosity. It is also discussed in the longest word in English Wikipedia article. You can incorporate your criticisms into the linguistic significance section if you can back them up with citations, but removing the section entirely is not appropriate. —Lowellian (reply) 19:13, 18 April 2010 (UTC)

Pronunciation?

Can someone put in the pronunciation for this word? Despite its brevity and apparent ease in pronouncing, the lay person (like me) can't really be sure if it's pronounced like Titan or otherwise. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 02:50, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

I have added the IPA pronunication for titin (rhymes with Titan from which it is named after). I am not certain that I have accurately written the IPA transcription. Please correct if wrong. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 09:16, 9 May 2010 (UTC)
Looks good to me. Thanks so much! If my suggestion was just pathetic, obviously someone can remove it, but I really wasn't sure. – Kerαunoςcopia◁galaxies 19:25, 9 May 2010 (UTC)

Redirect spelling and copyvio

A few issues about a redirect pointing at this page that I wanted to raise:

  • (1) The redirect is: Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylala…. This is possibly spelt incorrectly (the last three letters appear to be wrong).
  • (2) Comment from the redirect talk page (which I undeleted and turned into a redirect until it is clear what needs doing here):

    copyvio: Not sure this is really a copyright infringement, as you can't copyright a fact nor a chemical name, and there is no copied content here except the name. DES (talk) 22:55, 5 February 2010 (UTC)

  • (3) Should we have the full name of proteins on Wikipedia? Some (most) are too long, I think, but how should they be handled and is a truncated name redirect like the one above appropriate (once the spelling is sorted out)? One problem is that truncated ones may start to clash and anyway, no-one would search for those names. The question then comes whether thy should be in the text of the article, and again, the answer seems to be no (verification problems, for a start). I would say link to reliable sites that give the full name and details.

So three questions to answer: (i) Is the content at the page history of the redirect a copyvio? I agree with DES that it probably isn't, but it still doesn't seem like the sort of content Wikipedia can really handle; (ii) Is the current spelling of the redirect correct or not? I'm not sure about this; (iii) How have other full protein names been handled (maybe see how long chemical formulae have been handled)? Carcharoth (talk) 16:03, 22 May 2010 (UTC)

(i) Per DES, not a copyvio. (ii) Regardless of whether the spelling is correct or incorrect, I do not see the point of having an arbitrarily chosen small portion of very long protein name as a redirect. (iii) Full chemical names of small molecules are routinely included in Wikipedia pharmacology articles. On the other hand, the "verbal formula" of proteins and other biopolymers are never used in the scientific literature. Hence I do not see the point of including them in Wikipedia articles. This has been extensively discussed previously on this talk page (see archive) and the consensus has been not to add the full chemical name of titin to this article. Redirects that are appropriate are alternative Q8WZ42 protein names or HUGO TTN gene names. Boghog (talk) 17:11, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks. I now have to agonize over whether to suggest deleting the redirect (I very rarely support redirect deletion, but may do so in this case). The current uses of the link can be piped from "Titin", and this article should probably have a small portion of the name included so people realise what this claimed longest word stuff is all about (though there is a case for limiting all that stuff to the longest word page and not having it here). Maybe someone else will nominate the redirect while I agonize about it? :-) Thanks for pointing to the previous discussions - should have found those. Carcharoth (talk) 17:57, 22 May 2010 (UTC)
The article mentions titin's claim to the longest English word and contains a truncated version of the name (first amino acid ... last amino acid) with a link to the full name here. Hence I think the article already adequately addresses its controversial notability as the longest word. Concerning the redirect, I believe deletion is justified based on WP:R#DELETE: ("7. If the redirect is a novel or very obscure synonym for an article name, it is unlikely to be useful."). Furthermore the title of this redirect only contains the first five amino acids (Met-Thr-Thr-Glu-Ala or MTTEA) of titin and therefore is not specific to titin. There are an infinite number of proteins whose sequence starts with MTTEA. Boghog (talk) 08:34, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
You've convinced me. I'll nominate it right now. along with several others. Could you check here and both add to the nomination (I will come back here to link to it) any that should be deleted and add any redirects that are missing? Carcharoth (talk) 10:30, 23 May 2010 (UTC)
Thanks for nominating the link for deletion to which I have added my support. The remaining links look OK to me. For completeness I have added a few other links that are aliases for either the titin protein or the TTN gene that encodes the protein. Cheers. Boghog (talk) 12:31, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Titin redirects listed at Redirects for discussion

I've started a discussion to address the redirects associated with Titin. Leaving a note here for those who watch this page: redirect discussion. Carcharoth (talk) 11:56, 23 May 2010 (UTC)

Dimensions, please

I was just wondering how big (as in length or volume) this protein is. Is there an answer in nm or nm3? I'm trying to get a handle on the physical dimension so proteins. Thank you. JKeck (talk) 19:12, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

An extremely rough estimate based on the length between the N- and C-terminus of the subunits: PDB: 2J8O​ (immunoglobulin domain) 85 Å X 122 copies + PDB: 3LPW​ (fibronectin domain) 48 Å X 132 = ~ 17,000 Å. This estimate ignores the loops between modules and also ignores that the subunits may not be laid out in a completely linear array (i.e., adjacent domains may form a zig-zag pattern instead of a straight line). Boghog (talk) 21:22, 11 November 2010 (UTC)

full word

I thought it would be to long to put in the artical but i thought it would be ok to let it lie here for the people who want to know, please "(removed)" —Preceding unsigned comment added by 184.18.128.183 (talk) 21:02, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

There is a link to the full name of the word in the external links section. Also see previous discussions about the name on this talk page as to why we don't include it on the main page. Eagles 24/7 (C) 21:15, 12 April 2011 (UTC)

Stop already with the full name.

Adding the full name is just stupid and has no practical use. There are versions of it on various userpages such as this one but it has no place on the real wiki. Can we just agree on this one and stop the edit wars? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 123.2.85.49 (talk) 06:36, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

It's already been agreed upon, but other IPs keep adding it back. Eagles 24/7 (C) 15:59, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

???? practical use. It may not have scientific value, but it has a great deal linguistic significance. It is also to many people the most interesting thing that could be on that page. Add the full name. --76.69.87.6 (talk) 02:46, 21 June 2010 (UTC)

Completley agreed on the above. Syntheticalconnections (talk)(my contribs) 18:49, 29 July 2010 (UTC)
I agree as well. I personally came to the page because of its status as one of the longest words in any language. It's definitely a notable part of the article, and really, isn't that what Wikipedia's about? Ejg930 (talk) 17:26, 10 August 2010 (UTC)
The problem is that the full chemical name of titin not a word. In addition, one could easily construct much longer non-words (starting with the titin mRNA sequence) or the DNA sequence of chromosome 2 on which the titin gene resides. The later would be orders of magnitude longer than the IUPAC name of the amino acid sequence of titin. By this criteria of name length, which is dubious to start with, the full name of titin cannot be consider notable since it is no where close to the longest chemical name that could be constructed. So what is the point? Boghog (talk) 19:05, 10 August 2010 (UTC)

Semiprotected for a month due to continued vandalism. SpencerT♦C 21:32, 11 September 2010 (UTC)

The full name should not be added on this page. Firstly, it lacks notability. Also, it completely screws up the look of the Wikipedia page. It can be added as an external link, as it is now. --Stickee (talk) 02:52, 15 September 2010 (UTC)

Dumb question, but if it lacks notability, why is it noted on several other articles? It's the reason that probably 75% (or more) people click onto this article - it seems just plain stupid to not include it. 50.103.168.170 (talk) 11:49, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Arguments based on what other web sites contain does not establish notability and is not a valid reason for including material in a Wikipedia article (see WP:OTHERSTUFF). In addition, there has been extensive previous discussion on whether including the full name is appropriate and the consensus is that it is not. Boghog (talk) 21:31, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Sorry, I should clarify - I meant that it's included in several other Wikipedia articles. If it's not notable here, why would it be notable in the other topics? Do we need to go into them and remove it? Additionally, while I understand consensus, what does precedent say? Are there any other articles here on Wikipedia that do not include the full name of the subject? 50.103.168.170 (talk) 22:04, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
Yes, see any article about proteins similar to Titin like Actinin and Gelsolin for example. Eagles 24/7 (C) 22:10, 1 June 2011 (UTC)
There are approximately 10,000 Gene Wiki articles in Wikipedia (the subject of each article is a human gene and the protein encoded by that gene), and to the best of my knowledge, not a single one of them contains the IUPAC protein name. What is the point of including the IUPAC name? These names were designed to provide an unambiguous name for organic compounds. While it is possible to extend this nomenclature to proteins, the resulting IUPAC protein names are so cumbersome, that no one, scientists included, use them for serious work. They are incredibly long and difficult for humans to parse. If one is interested in the protein sequence, using one letter amino acid abbreviations is much more concise and far easier to read. IUPAC protein names are very long and including them in Wikipedia entries would overwhelm the rest of the article making it difficult for readers to find information that they are looking for. And as Mokele points out below, there are many variants of the same protein each with a different name. Including one IUPAC name is impractical, including several to designate different isoforms and species differences becomes absurd. Boghog (talk) 08:29, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

A further point worth considering - any IUPAC name will only apply to *one* isoform of titin, in one organism. Every single isoform will have a different IUPAC name, and these may also vary between species. Mokele (talk) 00:43, 2 June 2011 (UTC)

"Longest word" in collapsible box

This topic was split off from Talk:Titin#Stop already with the full name., above.

Why not put the full name in a collapsible box? Because I think, based on the times I've been redirected here by reddit (et al.) nearly all of the visitors on this page are here to see the name, and not facts about the protein. In a box with a button on it, all the linguistically interested people get what they want, and the biologists are not completely annoyed. May I try that out? Wuschelkopf (talk) 17:08, 18 November 2013 (UTC)

Ok. I've done my best to give you the best box out there. This is as concise as I can do it. Please do not delete it for a given time, and wait if everyone is happy with this solution. Thanks. Wuschelkopf (talk) 14:21, 19 November 2013 (UTC)

This issue has been extensively discuss above and in the talk archives. I urge anyone who wants to insert the chemical name of titin into this article carefully read the previous discussions. The consensus that has been reached is that titin's verbal formula is unencyclopedic and should not be included in this article.

Summarizing the previous discussions:

  • This "longest word" is neither a word nor is anywhere close to the longest such non-word. (For more details, see longest words in English).
  • Inserting the "full word" into this article perpetuates the myth that it is the world's longest word and the misconception that proteins are called by their amino acid names.
  • The amino acid sequence of titin differs between species. Furthermore within humans there are several splice variants. Hence there is a large family of related but distinct protein sequences that can be called titin and hence are a large number of names that can be assigned to titin. Which is the correct name? All of them. What makes this one arbitrarily chosen name so special?
  • Adding the full name has increased the size of this article by more than ten fold (24,341 → 344,379 bytes) and hence has unnecessarily increased the load times. This is especially annoying to editors that are trying to improve the article. Selecting the edit button at the top of the page results in an incredibly long editing box that takes forever to scroll through.
  • For those interested, an external link is provided to the "longest word".

Once again, the full name has been reintroduced in this edit, but this time in a collapsable box. This text, whether hidden or not, is still unencyclopedic. Furthermore, per MOS:COLLAPSE, hiding text within an article is generally frowned upon. If text must be hidden to be included, then it probably does not belong in the article in the first place. Given that the current consensus is not to include the full name, inserting the name would require a new consensus before it is reinserted. Hence I am once again removing the name. If you disagree, please explain your reasons below. Boghog (talk) 20:36, 20 November 2013 (UTC)

Basic Information Missing

Discovered when??? Discovered by whom??? Answers that should be somewhere near the top of the article I would think. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.177.197.205 (talk) 07:58, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

 Fixed – a Discovery section is now added. Boghog (talk) 17:30, 9 September 2014 (UTC)

What's with 9+10=21 in the infobox?

Seriously. We don't want a joke here. What's with the 9+10=21 in the infobox title? I'm editing that right now. JamesJNHu (talk) 00:32, 3 December 2014 (UTC)

EDIT: I tested it out in the sandbox, in either this is a template problem or something with me and molecular biology that I don't understand. The title is 9+10=21, but the caption is 9+10+21. JamesJNHu (talk) 00:41, 3 December 2014 (UTC)
The text "9+10=21" was vandalism which has now been reverted. Thanks for the heads up. Boghog (talk) 07:08, 3 Decembe

Titin is a structural protein for chromosomes?

"It has also been identified as a structural protein for chromosomes"

I have never heard of this, and its source is not cited. Please add more information if this is true. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Kippjohnson (talk • contribs) 16:23, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

There is this:
  • Machado C, Andrew DJ (2000). "Titin as a chromosomal protein". Adv. Exp. Med. Biol. 481: 221–32, discussion 232–6. doi:10.1007/978-1-4615-4267-4_13. PMID 10987075.
although I am skeptical since it has not been widely cited by others. In any case, I will add the citation to the article. Boghog (talk) 17:07, 9 February 2015 (UTC)

The word

As discussed before, the version of the word published by sarahmcculloch.com is made up and incorrect, it starts with Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylarginyl... and ends with ...glutaminylserxisoleucine and contains 20 copies of one and the same sequence which includes once the name titin itself and once the nonexistent amino acid acetyl.

The Wiktionary article uses the version found here, which starts with Methionylthreonylthreonylglutaminylalanyl... and ends with ...arginylserylisoleucine, and does not repeat itself.

The geekologie.com page shows the video of a Russian guy reading out the McCulloch version, and gives a link to, "a 65KB text file of the entire 189,819 letter word" (yes, 66,691 bytes, uncompressed!) No idea where that was created from. That article may be entertaining, but I don't think it is encyclopedic. Could we better link to some really encyclopedic pages instead? --androl (talk) 14:13, 3 October 2016 (UTC)

Titin's longest single exon

The intro section lists titin as having the longest single exon, at 17,106 bp in ("Furthermore, the gene for titin contains [...] the longest single exon (17,106 bp).") While it's true titin's exon 276 is 17,106 bp long, MUC16 isoform-201's exon 3 is longer (21,693 bp). See http://www.ensembl.org/Homo_sapiens/Transcript/Exons?db=core;g=ENSG00000181143;r=19:8848844-8981342;t=ENST00000397910. Strachan and Read's Human Molecular Genetics (4th edition) page 267 (http://kirschner.med.harvard.edu/files/bionumbers/Human%20genome%20and%20human%20gene%20statistics.pdf) lists MUC16 as having the longest exon (although they write it has only 18.2 kb).

The sentence should be changed to "one of the longest exons" or be removed.

- Betzalel, 132.69.208.212 (talk) 21:48, 7 February 2018 (UTC)

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