I don't really agree (and have chemical reasons). (Absolutely all periodic tables?

That must exclude all of them I've seen that are coloured!)
(1) s-block metals Covered already in Archive 15: they have different properties
and can be compared with one another readily (name me one book that compares the s-
block elements, not counting H and He, by some OTHER method than group 1/group 2).
E.g. density uniformly goes down down group 1, but goes down then up down group 2.
Also, as DePiep mentioned there: is it possible to write the article s-block metal
without consistently dividing them by group? And the names alkali metal and
alkaline earth metal are much more established and are not merely descriptive.
Descriptive names are also not too informative. I can see these metals are in the
s-block just by looking at the PT. So? Whereas "alkali metal" gives me an inkling
that they are somehow related to alkalis (and indeed they are). See Wikipedia
talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 15#A streamlined option. Transition metal
splitting is much less clear (except the line between group 12 and the others) and
I would leave it as one whole group. We can talk about group 12 another time.
(2) multiatomic nonmetals The polyatomic/diatomic division corresponds neatly with
reactivity and metallic character while simultaneously being much more clearly
defined. See User:Sandbh/sandbox#Categories. So I would submit that this is quite
helpful to the reader. On why to split the nonmetals in the first place, it's been
discussed to death at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Elements/Archive 15 (which is why
I won't give a separate section link – it's literally everywhere!)
(3) lanthanides/actinides They are actually quite distinct in chemical properties;
early actinides are very different from the early lanthanides (up to around Am) and
behave much more like the corresponding transition metals. Meanwhile late actinides
can have weird main oxidation states like No having +2 as the main state. The
former alone seems to justify splitting them.
(4) p-block metals: very descriptive and not very informative. Would prefer a label
which gives far more information about their character than what you see in the PT
(I can see they're in the p-block; so?)
So, I would consider Sandbh's Option 10 scheme much more informative and helpful to
the reader. Double sharp (talk) 05:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I struggled a while, wanting to have fewer total categories, but ultimately came to
support Option 10 because it was easy to envision a unified encyclopedia article
about each category, whereas the broader categories had so much variation within
them that an encyclopedia article would continually have to talk about the more
fine-grained categories. Nevertheless, it might be useful to include "s-block", "p-
block", "d-block" and "f-block" on the charts somehow, with sufficient explanation
somehow to explain why the groups of elements are labeled with the name of electron
shells. I know it is pretty obvious to people in the know, but I suspect it isn't
that obvious to the average WP reader. Also, in the table footer that explains the
different colors, it might be nice to include the number of elements so classified.
YBG (talk) 07:16, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
I'm not really a fan of the block terminology for the reason that the elements in
many of them (especially the p-block) are chemically very diverse. It is primarily
an atomic category rather than a chemical category; most people who look up the
periodic table are probably looking for info from a chemical perspective (ask
yourself: what class did you first learn it in at school? Odds are it was
chemistry, not physics.), so I wouldn't really want to explicitly mark out the
blocks in the periodic table template. In periodic table and block (periodic
table), we of course should (and indeed we do) discuss it, but I do not think it
should be one of our coloured categories or even should be marked in the legend,
because it simply doesn't give much info.
About my "informative" point; this is admittedly somewhat weak, but it is basically
that the reader gets more info from seeing "transition metal" (because he now knows
there is some sort of transition involved) than seeing "d-block metal" (which will
usually get one of two reactions, depending on whether or not the reader in
question knows what blocks are in the periodic table: (1) "What on Earth is a d-
block"? or (2) "I can see they're in the d-block already just by looking at the
table, so? What's your point?") Double sharp (talk) 07:31, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
OK, I suppose including the "block" nomenclature in addition what is already there
is trying to make the PT include both Chemistry and Physics info, which is probably
trying to cram too much info into it. What about including a count of elements in
the legend, so you can tell at a glance that there are 6 Alkali metals, 15
Lanthanides, etc. Could that be done without making things too crammed? YBG (talk)
10:12, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
Not really a major issue, right? I mean, it's good to know there are 15 lanthanides
and 15 actinides (those were pretty much the second-to-last and last pieces of the
modern periodic table to fall into place), but who really cares that there are XXX
transition metals? It's not a really major thing about them... Double sharp (talk)
11:07, 7 August 2013 (UTC)
re two off topic posts:
On marking the blocks. For specialised pages like block (periodic table) we could
make a PT that uses our standard categrory colors and that impressively outlines a
block by a border. That border should have a legend and a link. A bit like:  
s-block  -DePiep (talk) 13:57, 9 August 2013 (UTC)
On adding the number of elements to the legend. Can be done, of course. But does
that belong there? The legend entry is there first of all to identify the element
property we have marked: what is it? Expanding that with info about that
identification (info about that category) is not just zooming in too much, but also
crossing the line of wich info should or shouldn't be there. We could end up adding
the etymology of the word "alkali" too. But actually that information is better in
its place on the alkali metal page itself. One click away. Also there is
crowdedness. We have reduced the size of the legend to reduce its brick size: small
font, remove text: minimalistic to the essence. Still I think it is crowded,
especially when we have these three themes to define.
In the future, such information could be in a popup box that appears when hovering
over (probably the alkali metal article lead?). Wikicode does not have that for us
yet. References do have that already. -DePiep (talk) 13:57, 9 August 2013 (UTC)