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Anatomy pages with clinical content

The Med project has discussed this before and the consensus opinion was that pages with significant clinical content can be part of the WP Medicine and that they should have a WP Medicine template banner on the talk page. There are over 540 Anatomy pages with a heading in the article relevant to medicine. The section heading is often called Clinical significance, but other are also seen (ie Clinical examination). I am planning to sort through these articles and tag the appropriate ones with the WP Medicine banner, so I would like to be clearer about where to draw the line between articles that have a small clinical section that would not be part of WP Med and those with a significant clinical section that should be part of WP Med. Alternatively, I could tag them all? Any comments? Snowman (talk) 21:32, 13 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hi, consensus speaks that we tag none of them, and WP:MEDMOS states all applicable anatomy articles should have a clinical significance section (would be nearly all of them once sufficiently expanded). -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 04:29, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes I oppose tagging them with WP:MED. They are well served by WP:AN. Of course all medical content regardless of tagging needs to be supported by WP:MEDRS sources.

We should keep this project more clinically oriented. Yes we also include people and hospitals as there is no other project for them. But for anatomy there is a project. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:41, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:MED?, which says; "Hospitals and other medical facilities where healthcare is undertaken: Use {{WikiProject Hospitals}} instead of WPMED.". There are WP projects for biographies and also for buildings. Snowman (talk) 10:21, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

See WP:MED?: which says "Human anatomy: Tag with {{WikiProject Anatomy}}. Additionally, tag with {{WikiProject Medicine}} only for anatomy articles with prominent clinical content. Other tags may also be appropriate.". As I was saying, there is a consensus to tag anatomy articles with a large section on clinical medicine and the last discussion about this is here: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine/Archive_49#Task_forces_and_related_WikiProjects. My question was not to re-establish this principal, but to clarify what is prominent clinical content in Anatomy articles. Snowman (talk) 10:01, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
As a rule of thumb, I would like to suggest, as least for discussion, that if the clinical section seen in an anatomy article when considered in isolation looks bigger in size to a Stub and would appear to have qualities exceeding a Stub, then it can be included in WP Medicine. Or, in other words, if the clinical content, has the sort of features that can be seen in a minimal Start class article, then it can be included in WP Med. Of course, the clinical section may not stand alone well as a Start article; however, considering Stub and Start class articles in this way may be useful yardsticks. Snowman (talk) 10:54, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- This is a good rule of thumb; I would definitely tag all such articles with WPMED. I might tag articles that have a couple of paragraphs. Also, we've tended to tag articles about major anatomy (e.g., body parts and organs that children have heard about) with both. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
I have found over 100 Anatomy articles that are tagged with WP Med. I assume that these are tagged with the WP Med banner, because each contains a sizable clinical content section consistent with WP:MED?. I might check through these too, but I would also need to be fairly certain about what criteria to apply to asses if clinical content section is suitable for the article to be kept in WP Med or not. Snowman (talk) 11:15, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- The assumption (that these all have sizeable clinical sections) is unfortunately not warranted. It's just as likely that the page hasn't been re-evaluated since WP:MED? last changed. You will also find some anatomy articles tagged with WPMED only, because some taggers (from outside these projects) aren't aware that WPANAT exists. I recommend re-evaluating them all from scratch. Speaking as the person who has, over the years, done more WPMED assessment work than anyone else, I am unlikely to object if you remove WPMED tags from articles that are primarily anatomy-focused whenever that seems reasonable to you. I trust your judgment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:23, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have not been looking for Anatomy articles that are only tagged with WP Med. If well known body parts are in WP Med, then is this documented anywhere? Note that Arm, Finger, Eyelash, Gland, Hamstring, Abdomen, Humerus, Iris (anatomy), Jugular vein, Frontal lobe, Lens (anatomy), Left atrium, Epiglottis, Cerebellum are not part of WP Med. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 18:00, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

No, it's not documented anywhere. It's been done, and it gets undone periodically, and we don't worry too much about it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I propose we remove "Additionally, tag with {{WikiProject Medicine}} only for anatomy articles with prominent clinical content." WPAN is enough. Snowman it would be great if you remove the WPMED tags from the anatomy articles you find with it and make sure WPAN is there. We here should concentrate on disease related articles. The problem we encounter if we tag all anatomy articles is that sex related topics will become our most viewed articles. The media pays attention to this and we already have received some poor press regarding this. It makes recruitment of physicians more difficult. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:26, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that I can run through all these pages and do the necessary tagging or un-tagging, but I need a clear criteria to work by. Currently the consensus is looking somewhat unclear, and so I can not do anything. I am not promising anything. I would like to know;

1. Are the current statements at WP:MED? about tagging the rules for me to work by. If so:

1a. What is significant clinical content in an anatomy article? Snowman (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1b. Is that the clinical content alone looks like better than a Stub workable for a WP Med article? Snowman (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

1c. Are basic anatomy parts that a child would know automatially classified within WP Med?

2. Is there so much disagreement in this discussion that a new consensus is needed? If so;

1a. Any suggestions? Snowman (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

3. WP:MED? stats that hospitals and people are not part of WP Med. Snowman (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

3a. What does people mean - famous doctors, famous people with diseases, authors or what?

3b. Is everyone happy that hospitals are not in WP Med or not? Snowman (talk) 20:24, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Here are my clear criteria: Do what seems sensible according to your own very good judgment, based on your already good understanding of the situation, and don't worry about it beyond that. If someone really, really needs one of these to be double-tagged, then they'll re-add it. If the response is silence, then assume that you did it correctly.

(Firm answers: 1c, definitely not. It happens, it's not consistent, we don't worry about it. 3a means mostly famous people with diseases. We tolerate articles about healthcare workers, businesses, etc. 3b, definitely happy.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:55, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I appreciate the confidence that User WhatamIdoing has in me; nevertheless, doing a lot of quick edits tends to attract scrutiny. I think that it is best to have a long run of edits well planned and have a consensus in support. Snowman (talk) 23:22, 14 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I am happy for hospitals not to be tagged with WPMED now that we have WP:HOSPITAL. Maybe we should develop clear consensus before wide ranging changes are made. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:03, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have found 66 WP Hospital articles that are currently in WP Med. Some of these are general pages; such as clinic, hospital, field hospital, birth centre, burn centre, sanatorium, teaching hospital, and more. Most of the others are about specific hospital buildings. If there is a consensus, I would remove the unwanted WP Med banners. I am not promising anything. I am anticipating a consensus in favour of removing names hospital buildings consistent with "WP:MED?". I would welcome opinions on removing tags from the more general pages. Any comments? Snowman (talk) 20:30, 15 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You have my support to remove WPMED from the specific hospitals. I have no strong opinion WRT the terms above. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:30, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that removing WP Med banners from named hospital buildings does not have any opposition at this juncture. This should not be controversial as this is consistent with "WP:MED?". I plan to wait a few more days to let other people have a chance to have a say, before removing these from WP Med. Snowman (talk) 18:05, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Personally speaking, I think that WP Med should include general hospital pages like; hospital, clinic, burn unit, and so on, so I will not remove the WP Med banners from these unless there is a consensus. "WP:MED?" refers to "Hospitals and other medical facilities where healthcare is undertaken", which could be interpreted as being named buildings and not general pages. Comments awaited. Snowman (talk) 18:05, 16 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with that. NB the Hospitals project are covered in the current Signpost - see Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Signpost/2014-11-12/WikiProject_report, if people want to know where they are coming from. Nice things said about Endometrial cancer as a new FA too:"Endometrial cancer (nominated by Keilana) Something of a rarity: a health and medicine FA, (and a fantastic article it is too). The article concerns that cancer which .... [v quick summary] ... The re-write and review process included an expert review from Cancer Research UK." Wiki CRUK John (talk) 10:50, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I also agree: we keep Hospital (as does the other project, of course) but not individual hospitals. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 17 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Update: I found and removed just under 40 hospital buildings from WP Med. This includes teaching hospitals. I found over a dozen general pages (such as hospital, clinic, trauma centre, teaching hospital and so on) which retain the WP Med banner. There were three medical schools as well, which I removed. Snowman (talk) 10:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have returned the WP Med banners to the three medical schools, which are not hospitals. Snowman (talk) 19:34, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Paper from 1966

Just on the off chance, does anyone happen to have access to (or, heaven forbid, a physical copy they could take cellphone pics of) this older reference:^[1]

References

^ Gluck, L; Wood, HF; Fousek, MD (1966). "Septicemia of the newborn". Pediatric clinics of North America. 13 (4): 1131–48. ISSN 0031-3955. PMID 5332055.

I'm trying to track down a historical claim. Gluck was probably behind the first NICU, although it really depends how you define NICU. I have a couple of other supporting refs. Yale-New Haven was certainly key to the development of the modern unit, and it's a much-cited paper... but sadly, my university library doesn't have a full-text option. Cheers, Basie (talk) 08:49, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I looked, but no luck here. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 01:34, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I can send you a copy in a few days - please send me an email. -- Scray (talk) 02:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Basie: I have the Gluck PDF now; I just need a way to send it to you. BTW, a challenge with attributing "first" NICU will be defining when modern NICUs came into being (i.e. what constitutes a modern NICU). For example, here has a competing claim, and the citation in that article (supporting Stahlman) suffers from the same self-referential COI issues that Gluck's claim has in the current lead paragraph of our NICU article. -- Scray (talk) 22:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're not kidding! To make matters worse, the latest change to that article was from an IP... when I did a geolocate, it was from Yale-New Haven Hospital! So that editor got warned about COI. The safest thing may be not to make any claims at all, but to acknowledge that Stahlman may have been the first to ventilate a neonate, and Gluck was a pioneer in NICU design. I've emailed you so you can send the PDF, thanks so much for your help! Cheers, Basie (talk) 02:03, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Done -- Scray (talk) 13:44, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Use of the term "homosexual."

Gay rights advocates have been protesting the use of the term "homosexual" for about 40 years, stating that it is homophobic, reflective of the pathologization and criminalization that LGBT people have faced for decades. It is a term for a type of psychosis. Most LGBT people, as well as scholars in the field of gender and sexuality studies, find the term offensive. The preferred terms are gay, gay/lesbian, LGBT, same-sex, and queer.

Therefore I implore you to cease using the term "homosexual," to avoid causing distress to readers.

Jeffery P. Dennis, Ph.D. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.115.110.100 (talk • contribs) 19:14, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry Jeffery, however Wikipedia policy follows the general norms of what wording third-party reliable sources use, instead of what certain advocates may consider to be a "morally correct" alternative. Wikipedia is not here to right great injustices, and can only follow the language used in mainstream literature. --benlisquare_T•C•E 19:34, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This has been discussed at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style. It is possible that linguistically conservative people are highly correlated with morally conservative people, and that they seldom have occasion to refer to such persons except in regard to morals. Appropriation of the word "gay" can also be seen as offensive. See also "Euphemism treadmill".

—Wavelength (talk) 20:05, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Jeffrey, thanks for your note. Is there a particular page that caught your eye and might benefit from a review? As Belinsqure notes, we follow the sources. Most recent, medicine-oriented English-language sources don't use homosexual as their general term for people with non-straight sexual orientations, so we normally shouldn't be, either.

I don't really understand why this reversion was made, as that seems to be a pretty straightforward effort to match the words chosen by the sources (which, in my quick check, use the word gay about four times for every time they use homosexual). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So the term gay is prefered? The word also means happy. I have no preference really. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:04, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For goodness sake—it lost this meaning about 40 years ago. Just like "suffer" no longer means "allow". The two terms are analogous; we should use the one that causes no offense. I think the use of "homosexual" is a borderline contravention of WP:NPOV. Graham Beards (talk) 22:23, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry I guess I live in a backwater and missed that this term is now an insult. Often I see the term men who have sex with men (MSM) used instead. I am happy to be educated and will use gay or MSM if these are prefered.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:27, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gay is an identity and orientation. Men who have sex with men is an action. You can "be gay" and never have any sexual activity, and you can "be a man who has sex with men" and not "be gay". You'll see both terms in the formal literature, because "being gay" is a risk factor for some things (e.g., suicide) and "being a man who has sex with men" is a risk factor for other things (e.g., bloodborne pathogens). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:58, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Spot on! Graham Beards (talk) 23:03, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I agree, I see nothing objectionable about using the terms suggested above in place of the term homosexual since mainstream literature likely (I'm not 100% sure) acknowledges these as synonyms (e.g., I'm pretty sure I've seen same-sex used many times in mainstream literature). I do think it would be helpful as WAID suggested to mention a few specific pages that are raising concerns for you Dr. Dennis. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 22:19, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

68.115.110.100 clearly has strong feelings on this. His last edit note said; "I changed the extremely offensive and outdated term "homosexual" to the contemporary term "gay." Nearly all gay people are extremely offended by this homophobic term, and scholars in the fields of gender studies agree." I am far from expert in this, but that seems to be an extreme perspective. wikipedia's article on the term doesn't describe it that way. however I did some googling and found this 2014 NY Times article on usage of "homosexual" which reports that the term is souring and becoming associated with social conservatives. but that is a far cry from "Nearly all gay people are extremely offended" by it. 68.115.110.100 should bring a very reliable source for that strong claim, and also for the claim that the term is widely indeed seen as homophobic. Language changes, and activism changes it more. My sense is that 68.115.110.100's perspective is not mainstream on this, and WP is not the place to right great wrongs.... Jytdog (talk) 22:55, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, if we are not here to right great wrongs, is it acceptable on WP to use words like "negro", "colored", "yid", "pervert", "moron", "imbecile", and so forth. It is not only gay people who find the word offensive; it's offensive to others because it is a restrictive, outdated pejorative label. To discuss "homosexuality" is probably ok; but to call someone a "homosexual" is like calling a Nigerian a "nigger". Discussions of mainstream usage is a red herring IMHO. Graham Beards (talk) 23:36, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not what i said nor even close to what i meant. Jytdog (talk) 23:59, 18 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So what did you mean? Other WP articles are not reliable sources and carry no weight in these discussions. All of those pejorative nouns were once in common usage. And there are others such as "mongol", "spastic", "hunchback", "leper", and a lot more that I don't care to list. All of which have no place in our general articles. This is not about our friend's "perspective" - it is about common decency and showing respect for our fellow humans. Graham Beards (talk) 00:19, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If those were the common terms today, we would use them because people would know what we are talking about. "Homosexual" and "heterosexual" are, in general, considered neutral terms. If they at some point stop being neutral terms used in mainstream, reliable sources, they'll stop showing up here as well. It's not that hard. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 00:21, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) They have not been used in reliable sources for decades, as WhatamIdoing has alluded to above. See [1]. Graham Beards (talk) 00:42, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know how convincing an abstract and title search will be for me, because I distinctly remember an episode of This American Life where a sexuality researcher mentioned that conservative groups do keyword searches on grant proposals and raise hell over ones with certain key phrases relating to homosexuality. Of course, that could be a cause of a shift in terminology, which of course I imagine should be reflected in Wikipedia, but I'd want to compare it to similar statistics in mainstream secondary and tertiary sources which are not under similar pressures (we're looking to emulate tertiary sources anyway, not write articles that sound like scientific articles). 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 01:47, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Graham Beards thank you for asking. but you appear to be too far up there on your horse to be able to hear much. Jytdog (talk) 00:33, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Comparing the term homosexual to the term nigger is like comparing apples and oranges; these two terms are not on the same offensive level at all. And the terms homosexual and homosexuality are still commonly accepted among mainstream scholars for some sexual orientation aspects. And the terms heterosexual and heterosexuality are hardly considered offensive or non-neutral. Flyer22 (talk) 12:55, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I heard the claim made in the New York Times article (that political conservatives prefer the term homosexual) at least two presidential elections ago, so it's hardly a new idea.

Homosexual is at the top of the list of offensive terms on GLAAD's media page and their copies of the AP and NYT style guides similarly (but not as absolutely) discourage it. When both the biggest activist groups and multiple major media outlets are saying to avoid the term, then it's not "neutral". The news orgs are weaker about avoiding it in medical-related contexts, but the logged-out editor above appears to be looking at theater and culture subjects, where none of the mainstream, non-political sources seem to use it. (Go ahead: see what your favorite web search engine gives you. Google News gives me zero hits on the quoted phrase "homosexual actor", but 112 on "gay actor".)

Jytdog, you need to read Terminology of homosexuality#Prescribed usage for statements about current social acceptance. What you linked to is a subsection of the history for different terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I was assuming we were talking about clinical descriptions here because this is WikiProject Medicine not WP:MOS. In my personal experience, I generally hear "lesbian" and "gay" to describe women and men respectively, with "gay" occasionally referring to women as well. When talking about homosexuality in general (non-gender specific), I almost always hear "homosexual", or, depending on the context, it is referred to as a part of the broader umbrella term LGBT. In my experience, the register where you'd use "straight" is where you'd use "gay" or "lesbian" and the register where you'd use "heterosexual" is the same one where you'd use "homosexual". In those contexts, they seem entirely neutral. Either way, if the argument is that we should get ahead of the sources on this, then it's pretty clear that's not something we should be doing, even if we have some evidence that activists feel that certain words should be proscribed. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 00:48, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

thanks WAID. Those links are helpful and make it clear that the term is offensive, and we should avoid it, yes. Jytdog (talk) 01:08, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I can't tell if that's sarcastic. The on-wiki page has 1 citation in the whole thing. GLAAD is an activist organization, not a descriptivist source. I haven't seen any evidence whatsoever that in a medical/clinical context homosexual is considered offensive or disused. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 01:24, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

nope not sarcastic. Jytdog (talk) 01:44, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not sarcastic. GLAAD's got a position that's more extreme than some (notice, though, that it describes homosexual as offensive but not derogatory), but their copy of the AP's and NYT's style manual basically agree.

I also assumed that this was about medicine, but then I looked at the OP's contributions. Perhaps this page was the only place he could find that looked useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:49, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

My bad, I was looking at the source code and didn't realize that there were two links, one of which was a mirror of portions of the AP and NYT style guide - I thought that the first link was a style guide provided for the NYT and AP by GLAAD. I think the NYT and AP style guides describe more or less exactly what I was saying, which is that in clinical and similar contexts with a formal register (e.g. wherever you'd use "heterosexual" when referring to straight people), "homosexual" is likely the proper term. Frankly, I don't think offense should come into play at all, we should try to write using the kind of language that would be used in well-written mainstream sources. Regardless of offensiveness, it would seem like a strange tone to use overly clinical descriptions of homosexuality (or heterosexuality) anyway. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 12:11, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The appropriateness of the word homosexual has been discussed various times at WP:LGBT, and I might invite that project to this discussion. In the most recent discussion we had about that there, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Archive 49#Homosexual vs Gay in articles, I stated: "[W]hether or not to use gay or lesbian as opposed to homosexual -- has been discussed a few times at this WikiProject; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Archive 40#LGBT instead of homosexuality, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Archive 43#Style guideline of gay vs homosexual, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Archive 46#Guidelines regarding gay/lesbian vs. homosexual and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Archive 47#Replacing "homosexuality" with "LGBT" in article titles. We should go ahead and have a FAQ on it since it keeps coming up at this WikiProject. In that second discussion and third discussion, you can see a general agreement (well, more so in that second discussion) to not use homosexual as a noun, unless somehow necessary because of clarity. Using the word homosexual will be needed in some cases, such as at certain points when speaking of sexual orientation or same-sex sexual activity, as is demonstrated by some aspects of the Homosexuality article. Some LGBT people find the term homosexual offensive because they consider it too clinical and stigmatizing (for the reasons that EvergreenFir noted above); see the Gay article for more detail; other LGBT people don't find the term offensive at all. The term homosexuality (which often, not always, indicates behavior more than sexual orientation, as opposed to the term homosexual) is commonly seen as more acceptable than the term homosexual." Flyer22 (talk) 12:27, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I thought Wikipedia was not censored? As a homosexual man myself, I don't find the term "homosexual" as being homophobic nor offensive. Wes Mouse | ^T@lk 14:59, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Note: I pointed Wesley Mouse to this discussion because of a similar instance. Flyer22 (talk) 15:04, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for awareness of this discussion too, Flyer22, really appreciate it. Wes Mouse | ^T@lk 15:07, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You're welcome. And like I stated above, some LGBT people are not offended by the term homosexual at all. Flyer22 (talk) 15:10, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wes Mouse, you might be surprised to hear this, given how some people fling NOTCENSORED around, but NOTCENSORED is not actually a license to be pointlessly offensive. It does not authorize reflectoporn in articles about shiny objects, or needless use of potentially offensive (including overly medicalized) language anywhere. "Homosexual theater" is an example of needless use of a term that is verifiably offensive to some people and easily avoided by following the sources (95% of which use gay theater instead). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:22, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Wesley Mouse, see the WP:Offensive material guideline. Flyer22 (talk) 17:40, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: Honestly, I don't see how Wes Mouse was incorrectly referring to WP:NOTCENSORED. The relevant text that people seem to constantly miss is: "Discussion of potentially objectionable content should not focus on its offensiveness but on whether it is an appropriate image, text or link." Basically, it doesn't matter if anyone finds the word "homosexual" offensive, that is, at its core, irrelevant. The question is whether or not it's the appropriate term under any given set of circumstances. The top-level discussion here is about removal of homosexual writ large from the encyclopedia. The answer to that request is, "No, we're not going to ban a word." No one here or elsewhere (as far as I have seen) is advocating that homosexual always be used, nor have I even seen any advocacy for preferring "homosexual". The only discussion I'm seeing is whether to prefer to avoid homosexual because it's "offensive", which is precisely the kind of discussion that WP:NOTCENSORED is designed to put a full stop to as not productive. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 20:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

0x0077BE fwiw, here is my take. the original poster is an extremist, but at the end of the day would win most content disputes on the merits (unless he lost on behavioral issues) if people fought him over replacing "homosexual" with something else like "gay". here is why. what GLAAD and our article on homosexuality-related terminology lays out about usage makes it clear that a) there are extremely objectionable terms (you know the slurs), b) there are objectionable terms (like certain ways of using "homosexual"); and c) there is preferred language (which doesn't include "homosexual"). MOS:IDENTITY guides us to follow the preferences of the groups being named as well as the standard VERIFY policy... so it seems pretty clear that we should use "homosexual" with care, if at all, and instead should used preferred language. And I reckon that if any given instance of a naming-term in an article became subject to serious dispute, MOS:IDENTITY would end up being the governing principle. Focusing on "free speech" is kind of... off point; its more about optimal style. That's my take anyway. (and CENSORED is really about hiding things that would be offensive - like an image of Mohammed... or about discussing homosexuality at all. CENSORED is not about word choice) Jytdog (talk) 20:53, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

0x0077BE, if offensiveness didn't matter, the WP:Offensive material guideline wouldn't exist; like that guideline states, "Material that would be considered vulgar or obscene by typical Wikipedia readers should be used if and only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available." In the case of the term homosexual, there usually is an equally suitable alternative. The term homosexuality is a different matter, however, since that is the term that is most commonly used to refer to same-sex sexual behavior. We have the Homosexuality article, which can refer to a sexual orientation or to sexual behavior; we don't have the Same-sex sexual behavior article; nor should we, per WP:Content fork. Flyer22 (talk) 21:01, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Let's look at the context here, which matters. Currently, the article on Thornton Wilder says: "Although Wilder never discussed being homosexual publicly or in his writings, his close friend Samuel Steward is considered by some to have been a lover." Wilder's active period was before the modern gay rights movement. To change the wording here to "discussed being gay" would be an anachronism. The word "homosexual" is not offensive in this context. I say this as someone who happens to be gay. Jonathunder (talk) 21:57, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

seems like there are many instances where people in good faith could have differing perspectives. This is not something Project Medicine is going to resolve or even advance much. I for one am glad to be aware of the issue and will consider it going forward. Jytdog (talk) 21:59, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I pointed Jonathunder to this discussion. Jonathunder has a point about the setting in history mattering. I ask you all to refer to the LGBT discussions I linked to above, if you have not already. WP:LGBT editors addressed "the setting in history" aspect as well; this is because the term homosexual, and similar, did not exist in, for example, the Sappho period. See the Wikipedia talk:WikiProject LGBT studies/Archive 43#Style guideline of gay vs homosexual discussion. Flyer22 (talk) 22:14, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In that discussion, Rivertorch makes excellent points. Flyer22 (talk) 22:24, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Jytdog: The question is whether it's the appropriate word in a given context, something which really shouldn't be addressed in general, as this thread has been about. The point of WP:NOTCENSORED is precisely that the main consideration is what's best for the content, not what will ruffle the fewest number of feathers. Essentially, the point of WP:NOTCENSORED is that we're in the service of creating a clear and factual encyclopedia, not a minimally offensive one (not a maximally offensive one either, mind you).

You'll note that more or less this entire discussion is preempted by simple stylistic rules about register, and doesn't need to involve polling people to determine who is offended. Take the sentence given by Jonathunder. If I switch it to "Although Wilder never discussed being a faggot publicly or in his writings, his close friend..." - obviously that's got a high likelihood of offense, but even if you don't care if it offends people it's in the wrong register. Making a similar high->low register substitution in the same sentence that doesn't have the offensiveness baggage: "Although Wilder never discussed being homosexual publicly or in his writings, his bro-dog-4-life Samuel Steward..." Now it's not offensive, but again it's rejected for being tonally inappropriate. And it's not always going high-to-low register. Compare, "As a young girl, Madeline preferred blue socks." to "As a young human female, Madeline preferred blue socks." The meaning is the same, but the tone is inappropriately formal and clinical.

Either way, it is entirely inappropriate to be trying to gauge the offensiveness of material when discussing how it is portrayed. Who gets a vote on what's offensive? What percentage of people need to be offended? Does everyone get a vote, or only the "target" population? It all gets bogged down and terrible and can lead to horrible mangling of phrases to be more "neutral" when it was never necessary at all, because these matters are best handled by style questions and by trying to emulate the sources.

@Flyer22: As to whether or not WP:NOTCENSORED applies to words - of course it does - one of the most unquestioningly legitimate points of that policy (and the guideline WP:Offensive materials) is to prevent people from replacing instances of "fuck" with "f***" or some other such bowdlerizations. The fact that WP:Offensive materials exists doesn't mean that it's a legitimate concern in discussions of whether a given word should be used.

As to whether or not context matters, I strongly believe that it does, which is why this whole discussion is problematic, and why it's appropriate to call out WP:NOTCENSORED on it. This discussion has been entirely abstract because there don't seem to be any legitimate medicine-related conflicts on the subject, and the original poster seems to want a blanket ban on the word. I don't think anyone is interested in that (and, in fact, my guess is that on most content disputes we'd probably mostly end up on the same side anyway), so if there are specific disputes they should be on the relevant talk pages. It definitely seems out of scope for this article to be discussing theater articles. Sorry for the wall of text everyone. To make up for it, here's a pleasant and calming bucolic landscape. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 02:33, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

0x0077BE all i can do is repeat myself. It is a question of word choice, which is a style question. Our Manual of Style addresses this. Please read MOS:IDENTITY. thanks Jytdog (talk) 02:36, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which part did you want me to read? Basically nothing in it is related to offensiveness, and the most relevant portion is the first bullet, which is essentially making my argument (that we should follow the sources, not trying to figure out what gay people preferred to be called, basically - I think the stuff about register and tone are in other sections of the MOS). 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 02:41, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I never stated that WP:NOTCENSORED does not apply to words. I pointed to WP:Offensive material because it should be followed as well; just because it is a guideline instead of a policy does not mean that it is automatically trumped by WP:NOTCENSORED. WP:Offensive material is clear; its "Not censored" does not give special favor to offensive content section states: "A cornerstone of Wikipedia policy is that the project is not censored. Wikipedia editors should not remove material solely because it may be offensive, unpleasant, or unsuitable for some readers. However, this does not mean that Wikipedia should include material simply because it is offensive, nor does it mean that offensive content is exempted from regular inclusion guidelines. Material that could be considered vulgar, obscene or offensive should not be included unless it is treated in an encyclopedic manner. Offensive material should be used only if its omission would cause the article to be less informative, relevant, or accurate, and no equally suitable alternative is available." Exactly. Yes, we should indeed go with the "equally suitable alternative" when it exists (and by "exists," I am, of course, including the aspect of whether or not use of the alternative is just as good in the circumstance at the time). Flyer22 (talk) 03:29, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

0x0077BE, I'm willing to go further than Flyer in this instance: when talking about a theater genre that is associated with a particular sexual minority, the exact word used to identify that minority group is not actually the "content". NOTCENSORED is meant to protect content—think "ideas" or "information"—rather than specific word choices. If someone is unhappy because the English Wikipedia contains sentences and paragraphs that talk about this type of theater, then NOTCENSORED says they're out of luck: the content stays. However, if they are unhappy because the English Wikipedia uses needlessly offensive words when writing about this content, then NOTCENSORED says nothing against re-writing that content in an inoffensive manner. NOTCENSORED does not demand that we use the words homosexual theater (or Gypsies or any number of other offensive non-profanities). It only protects the content, i.e., the information rather than the particular expressions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I got my goggle-eyes for today with the suggestion above that “homosexual” has now become offensive for the purpose of describing a person with a same-sex sexual orientation, but that “queer” has unaccountably now become more acceptable instead. I can well imagine what would happen if we were to make that policy on WP, and go through all the medical articles and make this change.

Did it not occur to anybody in this conversation between gullibles, to simply GO to the current medical literature on Pubmed, type in “homosexual,” and see what appears in the last few months of 2014? I did that. Just in the abstracts, in the first two and a half pages, I quickly found “homosexual” used as a term to describe patients (that is, to describe people for purposes of the publication description, not just behavior) in J Sex Marital Ther. [2] Psychol Med. [3], J. Int. AIDS Soc. [4], Am. J. Men’s Health [5], Sex Health [6], Glob Health Action [7], Dev Psychobiol [8], PLoS One [9], Am. J Case Rep. [10], and Fam. Pract. [11]. At that point, having found this use of the word “homosexual” to refer to persons of same-sex orientation in 10 different international medical journals on MEDLINE in just the first 47 references (out of 26,000), and not having gone past Sept. 2014, I quit. Hypothesis is rejected. The published peer-reviewed medical literature, upon which WP and MEDMOS/MEDRS is based, uses the word as part of the text of the article, as a descriptor of persons, to reference their sexual orientation. If there is some community which frowns upon this usage, they have yet to make it clear to the international medical science community, which continues to employ it in this fashion, as well as others.

Now, of course, “homosexual” is used as an adjective as well as a noun, and the term “men who have sex with men” (MSM) occurs also, but it refers to a quite different thing, inasmuch as early HIV/AIDS researchers found it necessary to ask about practices, not sexual orientation (on close questioning, a large number of self-identified heterosexual men are MSM nevertheless). But this distinction will continue, and one term will be used by those interested in behavior and epidemiology, and the other for people interested in sexual orientation (where, of course, there are many terms, and many types). S B H arris 03:53, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Sbharris, in my " 12:55, 19 November 2014 (UTC)" post above, I stated, "Comparing the term homosexual to the term nigger is like comparing apples and oranges; these two terms are not on the same offensive level at all. And the terms homosexual and homosexuality are still commonly accepted among mainstream scholars for some sexual orientation aspects. And the terms heterosexual and heterosexuality are hardly considered offensive or non-neutral." So the "international medical science community" aspect that you mention is something I was already aware of. The point is that the term homosexual is considered offensive to many in the gay community/also known as the LGBT community, so it is completely reasonable for us to go with the less-offensive terms gay, lesbian, same-sex, or some other equally suitable alternative, when we can validly do so. Above, I also supported the fact that homosexual should sometimes be used. Also, as noted above, the IP started this thread because of use of the term homosexual at a non-medical article. Flyer22 (talk) 04:12, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

And Flyer22, I repeat, you’re preaching to the wrong crowd. If you think that “person of homosexual orientation” is okay, but ‘homosexual person” is offensive, you'll have to convince the editors of 50 medical journals of this. I listed 10 just above. So write them. Until that time, however, on Wikipedia, in medical articles, we will use the style and terminology of the current medical literature, because we’re an encyclopedia, not a trendsetter.

Now, it’s possible you may succeed, as things nearly as silly have happened. The people who deprecated “colored people” as a term over “people of color” actually won, I think. On the other hand, the people who thought that “Jewish person” might possibly be more politically correct than simply “Jew” (an idea very similar) did not win. It all depends on whether or not some group being described just can’t take the political correctness game any more, and has finally had enough.

Finally, if somebody came here complaining about “homosexual” used in a non-medical article, they are preaching to the wrong group, too. Personally, I suggest you take it to Jimbo Wales’ TALK page, as he’s in charge of that kind of stuff. (Don’t believe this? You should have seen what he did to the people with pedophile userboxes a few years ago, even though there were no formal rules. Jesus didn’t get the temple any cleaner). So maybe you can get Him to enlist in your cause. ;’p) S B H arris 04:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not preaching. I have argued for both sides, and the gray area in between, on this matter...as shown above. You are confusing me with some editor heavily advocating for forgoing use of the term homosexual. But what wrong crowd is that anyway? Medical editors? I am a part of WP:Med, as many at this WikiProject know, and so are most of the editors above, who have stated that it is best not to use the term homosexual when a different word will suffice. It's also well known that I do not tolerate WP:Activism editing, as recently as this discussion at the WP:MEDMOS talk page. My intolerance for WP:Activism editing is also currently noted at the top of my user talk page, where it points to the WP:Neutral policy and what that policy actually means. The above is not about WP:Activism editing, however. Not generally anyway. It's about following the WP:Offensive material guideline and not thinking that WP:Not censored rules everything when it comes to offensiveness. And use of "person of homosexual orientation"? LOL, no. And going to Jimbo Wales's talk page? That's also a no. I stay away from all that drama; I have enough drama to deal with on Wikipedia. Flyer22 (talk) 06:49, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which word to use is a style choice where context is always relevant. The best place to continue this is the article's talk page. This isn't a medical issue. Jonathunder (talk) 23:02, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Which one? The OP made changes to multiple articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Endometrial cancer for Today's Featured Article

I've set-up Endometrial cancer as a blurb for the Today's Featured Article requests process.

You can see it at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests/Endometrial cancer.

However, as I myself have nominated a bunch of other articles lately, I won't actually transclude it at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests.

If anyone else wishes to do so, they can follow the instructions at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/requests, and then a discussion will start as to the article's consideration for the Main Page.

Thank you,

— Cirt (talk) 01:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I think that most of the work is too new. I think that it is best to let it settle for a few months. Snowman (talk) 19:39, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ludwig-McGill HPV Cohort

I just discovered the article Ludwig-McGill HPV Cohort, which languished unreferenced for years until I added a source, but more work is needed on this article as almost everything in it is unreferenced. Everymorning talk to me 03:20, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

RN class on communication

Lead by User:LynnMcCleary. Working on a number of articles including hearing loss and impaired vision aswell as many others. Some could use some guidance / copyediting. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! We need more of the collaborative, practical, patient-focused nursing perspective on Wikipedia. A meta-analysis on which treatment works best is never going to be a comprehensive description of any medical condition. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yep, several of us have been commenting back and forth with these students. Their course page: Education Program:Brock University/NUSC 1P10 Professional and Therapeutic Communications (Fall 2014). The articles involved include: Psychological stress, Visual impairment, Patient safety, Elderspeak, SBAR, Nurse-client relationship, Interpersonal communication, Hildegard Peplau, Hearing loss, Crisis, Aging. Cheers, Basie (talk) 06:50, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Also some really good recent editing [12] on Doctor-patient relationship. Just what the patient and doctor are calling for... 109.157.83.50 (talk) 09:29, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Medical schools and WPMED

Medical schools are not mentioned in "WP:MED?". Are medical school articles part of WP Med or not? Snowman (talk) 11:45, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ones on institutions are like the hospitals surely. Ones on what is taught are, I'd say. Johnbod (talk) 15:16, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Right now they can be classified into Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine/Society_and_medicine_task_force. They are part of WP:MED if no one else wants them, but WP:MED does not want them much either. I want people with questions to have a place to ask them but I wish they had someplace to go other than here. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:19, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- The scope at wp:HOS explicitly descopes from education establishments, directing editors to WPMED. The page at Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/Science is rather confusingly self-referential. I'd suggest that lack of progress here has mainly been because of unclear guidance. Instead, we should have words at wp:HOS that explicitly say where teaching hospitals and medical schools belong. There's probably room for guidance somewhere at wp:Business and wp:WikiProject Education too. Category talk:Hospitals is interesting in what it doesn't say. Similarly, is interestingly in , , and . It seems like the category tree may not precisely align with the projects. I suppose it comes down to this question: Is a teaching hospital a hospital that also teaches or an educational establishment that also provides medical and surgical care? Is one answer always correct, or do they vary in their orientation? LeadSongDog come howl! 17:12, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- We usually keep medical schools (but not the hospitals that they are connected with), on the grounds that training for any healthcare profession is related to medicine. As Doc James says, they should be marked as |society=yes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:44, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, there is a difference between a teaching hospital and a medical school. Snowman (talk) 19:36, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Right. Teaching hospitals make for better prime-time TV soap opera ;\) Anyhow, where and what should we tell editors approaching each category of topic? LeadSongDog come howl! 22:07, 19 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

In the UK many ordinary hospitals formally teach medical students. They used to have (T) or (Teaching) after the name of hospital or the heath authority to indicate this. What about the definitions of institute, clinic, or college?. A Wiki article about a medical school will probably say what teaching hospitals and other hospitals, clinics, and institutes are attached. I would think that WP Med would be interested in medical schools. Logically, WP Med would also be interested in hospitals where medical students are taught, but there would be rather a lot. I looked in dictionaries; "teaching hospital" or "university hospital" tend to be regional hospitals and also provide teaching, but "medical school" was not in two medical dictionaries I looked at. I am not sure if the terminology means different things in different parts of the world or if the medical set-up is different in different part of the world. I think that WP Hospital are interested in hospital administration, so they might know. Snowman (talk) 00:13, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Correlations

This corelation was added [13] based on this review [14]. Decent impact factor [15]. Just have not seen it reported elsewear. Peoples thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:28, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Always the tease, Doc! This is about, according to the original edit, "correlation between lack of water assumption and fatal coronary artery disease", 2002 research, which doesn't seem to have had much specific impact on health advice, although everybody does now drink more water. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 12:06, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Nonsense and gobblydygook, James! The study concludes that CVD was reduced by drinking more water and increased by other beverages such as soda, tea, and alcoholic beverages. It was performed among 7th Day Adventists, members of a faith that discourages consumption of soda, tea, and alcohol as well as meat consumption and other healthy dietary practices. Increased consumption of water / decreased consumption of other beverages is likely a surrogate marker for a 7th Day Adventist's overall compliance with the healthy diet encouraged by the faith, and it is the reduced animal fat consumption that leads to the reduced CHD.

Tea and coffee have not been shown to adversely affect CVD/mortality in many other studies, so any effect of drinking more of these on CVD would have to arise because it is consumed instead of pure water, and the water content of these two beverages is somehow processed and used differently. Perhaps a memory effect similar to that which forms the basis of homeopathy?

I ran across a situation like this a few weeks ago and simply deleted the statement based on the absence of any reference to the proposed behavior modfication in statements and recommendations of major medical groups. The argument was that if the utility of the proposed behavior was medical consensus, it would be in these statements and guidelines. Formerly 98 (talk) 12:39, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - removed Wiki CRUK John (talk) 15:36, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Similar info was added to these cancer related articles here and here. The last one may be plausible. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:19, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, on a quick survey, neither water nor fluid are mentioned for colorectal cancer prevention by NCI, NHS, WebMD, CRUK. For bladder ACS & Mayo cautiously mention fluid, and there's also this. I'm asking for specialized advice, & more recent papers, but for now will remove #1 & leave #2. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:42, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

So, I'm pointed to CRUK risk factors page, which actually has more on increased risk from tap water (bec of chlorine, maybe) and its ref here. "Conclusion: Although this meta-analysis suggested that greater consumption of fluid may have a protective effect on bladder cancer in Asian people, there was no convincing evidence on this association because of the limitations of the individual trials." Will adjust the article. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 14:54, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Eating recovery

what do we do with it - discuss at talk page. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 15:01, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Rename to management of eating disorders for starters. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:40, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gluten sensitivity and peripheral neuropathy

Someone has just added gluten sensitivity to the list of inflammatory diseases that can cause peripheral neuropathy, citing a Lancet Neurology Personal View. I can't access Lancet Neurology. Do we cite "personal views"? I see there are two responses in the same journal 3 months later, which is concerning. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:51, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Are there other sources that support the same claim? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:46, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes (I think). [16] Everymorning talk to me 22:49, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I went to bed after noticing that. This sounds familiar. I'll look for other sources. "Personal Views" sounds dodgy to me, so if I can't find something solid for this claim I'll remove it, regardless of whether any of us has read the article. There seems to be support for peripheral neuropathy in coeliac disease - not sure about in the umbrella class, gluten sensitivity. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 23:14, 20 November 2014 (UTC) + 23:48, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like this gluten/coeliac/neuropathy hypothesis is being pushed by one small group centred around one main proponent. So I'm removing that addition and nominating Gluten-sensitive idiopathic neuropathies for deletion. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 00:13, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not qualified to really comment about this issue, but while that standalone article probably isn't the way to go, the hypothesis might deserves mention somewhere (making it clear it hasn't been well accepted by the scientific community). Besides the articles written by the apparent main proponent, there is also PMID 21056914, PMID 17175889 and PMID 16227563 (among others). NW (Talk) 00:41, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ugh. Yes. I'm conflating gluten intolerance/"peripheral neuropathy" (for which there is virtually no support) with gluten intolerance/"neuropathy" (for which there is some support). Sorry. I'll withdraw the AFD if it's not too late. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:25, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WebCite

This website is run by Gunther Eysenbach. He edits Wikipedia as User:Eysen. Software is open source. It could be a solution for dead links within our articles. He would love to hand the site over to the WMF. Currently he pays for it himself and it runs in the Amazon cloud.

Discussion took place here previously [17] with concerns that the WMF would not be interested in hosting such a site due to copyright concerns. I have emailed legal to ask for clarification. Maybe User:Sj could comment.

User:Hydroxonium was involved but is now inactive. User:ThaddeusB discussed working on this but not sure where they are at with it. Not sure how much space it would take to archive links in medical articles. Peoples thoughts? Something we should pursue? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:13, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The Russian Wikipedia has a WebCite Archiver bot, which automatically archives {{Cite web}} instances via WebCite. I'd like to see a similar automated tool active here. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 22:21, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Likewise; however, if we do this large scale we will need to see about covering some of the costs of archiving as Amazon charges per Gb. Maybe it could run on labs? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:15, 20 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The bot development issues are pretty much independent from the site hosting issues. I've previously advocated WMF pitching in on WebCite hosting (or its funding), but most of it isn't really central to the WMF mission. There are other archivers that do it better in many ways. I'd still like to see WMF help with funding the archiving of articles as they are referenced by WP, but a good archiver won't be anyghing like that restrictive. WebCitation has been archiving all content from member journals, much as the big commercial journal publishers do for their own products. What is really needed is an indirection layer between "what article am I citing" and "where is that article archived". This is just a small subset of the whole problem we have of needing better bibliographic tools. Statement S is supported by a citation C to page P of reference R, which is an edition E of work W in language L, indexed on I and archived at A. We have partial solutions to each part of the puzzle, but we lump far too much into articlespace and templatespace. We really need to get some professional-grade tools that can handle these thing, while tolerating and fixing the minor errors that always creep in. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:36, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I've been inactive for a while, but am just now getting back into Wikipedia. Hopefully I can get the original WebCiteBot back up and running soon. --ThaddeusB (talk) 21:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks User:ThaddeusB if you let me know how many Gbs it would take to archive all of WPMEDs external links I will than discuss funding with Gunther. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:43, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CC BY SA NC

IMO opinion it is unfortunate that we do not allow this license for images and videos. WHO releases some content under this license as does the Khan academy. Ideally it would be nice to get them to change their license however per the license we could use NC and it is just our local consensus which is against it. Do others support pushing for allowing some local uploading and use of CC BY SA NC images / videos?

We already allow logos, screenshots of video games, and movie posters that are fully copyrighted images. Am looking for an exception for medical images but just for NC. Spoke with the WMF and they are okay with this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:09, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

For videos, take a look at how the Khan Academy art history ones are done at the bottom of William Holman Hunt - there are hundreds of these boxes on WP. Of course the image is not Khan. It is essentially an external link in a box. No special consensus was asked for to do that, afaik. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 11:23, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Would love to see it accessible by Wikipedia Zero. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:28, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I guess the argument to be made is that if we allow them, then they'd have to be explicitly removed from any commercial products with Wikipedia. The argument for why they are disallowed from the commons is in this cartoon. The fair use stuff is fine for commercial use because fair use is essentially a limited public domain, so as long as we're within the fair use guidelines there's no license incompatibility with the material, whereas adding -NC into the mix could cause problems with derivative works. That said, I don't do any work with the preparation of these derivative works - it would probably be good to get feedback from those people on how difficult it would make their lives. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 15:10, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Moonriddengirl: will, I'm sure, have some useful insights, but it seems to me the key would be that re-users must be able to automagically identify and strip out the -NC material. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:43, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

That cartoon is wrong. Wikipedia is itself is a non-commercial product, and therefore NC-licensed files can legally be used here. We don't choose to use NC-licensed files (because we want to make it easy for commercial users to use our work without having to look at the licenses for each image individually, and because we have ideological issues around whether anything that is restricted is really, truly "free"), but that's our freely-made choice. The person who chooses a non-commercial license is not forbidding Wikipedia from using it; we are forbidding us from using it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I don't understand where you got all that. The cartoon doesn't say they can't be used on Wikipedia (though they can't under current policy), it says they can't be used in inexpensive books and DVDs published by Wikipedia, which is true, since those are commercial ventures. 0x0077BE ^{(talk · contrib)} 00:09, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

The WP:1.0 team is the only group I know of that's actually "Wikipedia" publishing things, and I'm sure that they would be surprised to hear that their efforts to make CDs and DVDs of articles, which primarily get sent to schools and places with limited internet access, constituted a "commercial venture", or that their volunteer work here was "primarily intended for or directed toward commercial advantage or monetary compensation", to quote the relevant line from the CC-NC license. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:02, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

One opportunity for reform is asking organizations like Khan Academy and World Health Organization to explain why they made the strange decision to use non-free licenses when they profess to be sharing free content. I think they could be convinced to change. I suspect that these organizations are not self-conscious about what use non-free licenses while mistakenly they advertise that their content is free and that it can be used in the ways that they forbid with their licensing. I was thinking about this when Khan had their Wikipedia video outreach program, Wikipedia:GLAM/smarthistory.

With Khan in particular, I looked some years ago to see if they explained why they used non-free licenses when they market themselves as an organization which promotes free content. I think they got so big that no one ever questioned them, and that whatever they did it was without anyone talking to them. It would be interesting to get any explanation out of them, if they would share one. Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:08, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have been working on convincing WHO to go CC BY SA for many years (at least 4) with no success.

I have been working on Khan for about a year with no success.

Convincing a big organization to change is VERY hard.

We simply need to make it easy for re-users to identify NC content and strip it out. Else we are denying our readers access to this content and shooting ourselves in the foot. And agree with WAID it is us who is disallowing NC content not them. We can change our mind. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:35, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Doc James WhatamIdoing Stripping NC content may or may not be feasible, but I think in the case of Khan Academy videos it almost never would be possible.

No one has ever even asked Khan Academy why they use a license which is contrary to everything they profess to be. I think they would be caught off guard if for the first time in their existence someone came to them with serious criticism instead of praising them. A letter from the Wikipedia community could have weight. I expect that they would take offense just from being asked, and I doubt they could have anything reasonable to say if they were politely asked why they use non-free licenses.

I drafted an outline for doing this at Wikipedia:WikiProject Sharing, where I propose that the Wikipedia community make media requests with an open letter system that is discoverable and timestamped. MuckRock does this to the US Federal Government, and has deeply upset the process for requesting public records just by removing the request process from being a polite private process between two individuals to being something which creates a permanent public record.

Neither Khan Academy nor the WHO has made a correct or reasonable decision. They persist mostly because they are not publicly accountable for the harm they are causing. We have a legitimate grievance and they owe it to us as stakeholders to explain themselves.

I have never considered that Wikipedia should change its mission to forbid commercial use because commercial use right now is inseparable from education and so far as I know, there is no way to support NC content without forbidding its use in most educational outreach and placing an extreme burden on teachers to understand extremely complicated copyright usage issues.

sample letter

Hello Khan Academy,

We are writing to ask if you can please direct us to any explanation of why Khan Academy publishes using non-free Creative Commons licenses. We looked for an explanation and have been unable to find one, and some of us have been wondering why Khan Academy advertises free educational content when the content seems to not be free for most use in education. We are hoping to start a conversation with you about this.

We are contributors to Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia. Both Wikipedia and Khan Academy are educational resources. You might be aware that Wikipedia is the most consulted source of information on just about every topic, and likely very popular with the people who use Khan Academy resources. We in the Wikipedia community recognize the high quality of Khan Academy educational tools, and have often wished that we could distribute your high quality but relatively less popular content through our extremely popular but relatively lower quality communication channels.

We are unable to share any Khan Academy content in Wikipedia because Khan Academy only publishes using non-free licenses, whereas Wikipedia can only accept free content with free licenses. I am writing to ask for you to direct me to any explanation of Khan Academy's choice of licensing, so that we can reflect upon how experts in Khan Academy and years of Wikipedia discussions have seen the same problem and come to radically different and opposing solutions. It would be our wish that we could find ground for collaboration but to do that we would like to better understand your point of view.

Some of the things that we would like to do with your content but cannot include the following:

Putting it in traditional commercial textbooks
Distributing it through traditional commercial teaching packages including DVDs and jumpdrives
Pre-loading it on commercially distributed hardware, including laptops and cell phones
Presenting it in for-profit schools
Sharing it in for-profit conferences

Note that none of these uses is very profitable and they would be even less profitable if all of these distribution systems were advertised as being pay options for content which is free anyway. Still, commercial distribution is normal in education.

We look forward to talking with you. If you like we can talk privately for now, but eventually we need to report what you say to the broader Wikipedia and Internet activist community. Thanks for your attention.

Love, ????

Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:54, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I have been trying to convince them to consider it for a year. I have gone to a couple of meetings and send dozens of emails. WHO and Khan simply do not see Wikipedia as important. And if we do not want to use their content (they see this is our problem) not their problem as they allow us to use some of their content already. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:10, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Very supportive of allowing NC content. There is such a wealth of NC content out there we could use. As far as the cartoon/comments above I personally feel they fall far from the mark. If I could choose to do so myself I would disallow anything I write from appearing through Google or Ask.com without linking here. The question is whether it is feasible to pursue allowing these images? It would be an immense resource for us, but if there is strong opposition it might only be a time-sink. I could probably list 100 different sites which have content we could use, and have been in touch with several academics that would feel much more comfortable allowing use of their content under a NC license. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 19:49, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
Unless there is a fair use justification, then I am sure that NC is not allowed on en Wiki. I would think that it will be hard to justify fair use of copyrighted science images, because there is no reason why a skilled illustrator or photographer could make another one. NC is not allowed on Commons. It is one of the basic principals of the Wiki that all the images can be copied, modified and distributed without restriction as long the license follows the copies. Snowman (talk) 23:06, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yes that is the current situation. The question is should this position be changed. We are here to "image a word in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge". Our current position inhibits trying to achieve thus. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:40, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I recall that Jimbo has considered this issue. Donations to the Wiki have always been with the understanding that all the material will be free to use, copy, and distribute under a suitable CC license (or fair use when relevant) including for commercial reasons. As far as I am aware, it is too complex to use a copyright license that is not consistent with the terms of the funding of the Wiki. Hence, I would say that for all practical purposes and for the foreseeable future, NC licenses will not be used on the Wiki (unless justified with a fair use explanation). Snowman (talk) 17:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If Snowman is correct, and I think he is, I'm puzzled why Doc can say "Spoke with the WMF and they are okay with this". I'm sure somebody said that, but I wonder if they reflected the actual WMF position? Johnbod (talk) 19:22, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I spoke with Lila Tretikov at the WMF. I will contact Jimmy Wales to get his position as well and will touch base with some of the boards of directors. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:49, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, and Geoff the lawyer maybe. Fair use is fair use in all contexts, but NC obviously depends completely on context, and it would certainly change the basic "copyability" claim of WP if commercial re-uses could not take some elements. Wikipedia:Reusing Wikipedia content would have to be rewritten to be a much more complex document. Don't know if it is a WMF decision or one for the community, but I would think this needs wider exposure, & will encounter opposition. There is also the copyability of stuff to other language WP with their own rules to consider. Do you know if any of them take this position already? Wiki CRUK John / Johnbod (talk) 15:24, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure if any other languages allow NC. Many/most do not follow our licensing requirements now so really it will change little. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:47, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Good news

Some good news on the copyright front. Gates has moved to a CC BY SA license [18] requirement for what they fund. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:48, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yay! Really. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:46, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Gates funds Khan Academy. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:55, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Yup sent those emails off yesterday. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:51, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

NonFreeWiki

meta:NonFreeWiki is a project proposal, made first and with most organization by Green Giant, to have a Commons with non-free content. The basic problem is that some Wikimedia projects, notably English Wikipedia, allow local hosting of non-free content. If multiple Wikimedia projects allow, for example, movie posters, then each of those projects needs to upload the same file locally instead of in one reusable place centrally.

I agree with Green Giant that this is a major problem which must be addressed eventually. In my view, the reason why this has been delayed is because there is no project other than English Wikipedia which allows non-free content and has any voice, love, or respect in the international Wikimedia community. If it happened that multiple popular Wikimedia projects needed file management of non-free content then I expect that would force the issue of how to manage it, and so far as I know, Green Giant's proposal is the only one which has been viewed as pleasant for the community. The alternative is to have continually increasing confusion from crowdsourcing file review in multiple languages, which everyone agrees would be a waste of labor. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:31, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

If there was support for CC BY SA NC or CC BY SA ND than I would support the need for a Commons with non-free content. I really simply do not care about company logos, screen shots of video games and move posters. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:04, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

M2-PK Test

Hi, I'm a new editor that works in the field. I've noticed this page, I've never heard of this test and hardly any recent references. It is also mentioned in the screening section of Colorectal Cancer. I doubt this is in use/approved. BenBon7 (talk) 16:44, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

There are several reviews that discuss this test. It seems relatively new and there is currently insufficient data (1) but it certainly deserves an article imo and seems to be in use in some (other) parts of the world. (2), (3) Ochiwar (talk) 19:33, 21 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Poi (food)#Special dietary and medical uses

Could someone take a look at this? I was tempted to just delete the section as not complying with WP:MEDRS, but it may be there are legitimate grounds for including at least some of the content. AndyTheGrump (talk) 08:37, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

AndyTheGrump thank you for bringing this to attention. The paragraph on poi and colorectal cancer is written in a balanced way, but this doesn't exempt it from deletion: it is based on one primary source from an in vitro study. Cancer prevention is a serious issue that is of interest to a huge proportion of the general readers; no mention of it, even a balanced one, is warrantied unless there is serious evidence to back it. The paragraph must be deleted.

The same goes for its use in celiac disease: the very article that is cited to support the claim mentions that "there are no reported formal studies in the literature". This phrase must be deleted too.

And the same goes for its use as a milk substitute in babies, as it is based on 50-year-old scientific papers.

I have no comment to make on its dietary value.

But I must admit the thing looks tasty. --NikosGouliaros (talk) 09:15, 22 November 2014 (UTC)\[reply]

Doc James pulled the cancer claims, and I've cleaned up the rest a bit, but what was left didn't worry me much.

Taro (poi is basically gruel made from taro) is gluten-free, so like all gluten-free foods, you could eat it if you have celiac disease. The same could be said of carrots, beans, potatoes and thousands of other foods: no gluten = safe for celiac. This is not an extraordinary medical claim. The claim that it could substitute for wheat is actually a culinary claim, not a medical one: either you can make (for example) pancakes with it, or you can't, and there's nothing medical about that.

The claim that it has been fed to babies is pretty much WP:BLUE territory: Taro was a staple food. Pretty much every staple food in the history of the world has been used as a "milk substitute" or baby food for babies. Maternal mortality means that breastmilk isn't always an option, and given a choice between "baby starves to death" and "baby gets fed the gruel that we're eating", people pick gruel (almost) every time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:43, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Network medicine

This article was recently created by a new (and so far single purpose) editor and is too technical for me to understand if it is a valid and previously unwritten article or if it is synthesis or original research, or whatever. I tagged it for technical jargon, but thought I would bring it up here, too. Couple someone check it out? Thank you!! EBY (talk) 15:52, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. As I said at the talk page, I've tagged this article for speedy deletion for being promotional ({{Db-g11}}). This is an article about a neologism, but it does not follow WP:NEO, it cites primary sources, etc. to push the concept, and then it names people and companies one might connect with. It would need to be fundamentally rewritten, if it is notable. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 21:49, 22 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I see the speedy delete tag has been removed. The topic is notable [19] and it seems the (new) contributor, Puccio.b, may have an expert interest in the subject. 109.157.83.50 (talk) 12:27, 23 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Puccio.b has been the only editor I've seen on the topic. I appreciate the eyes on the article. Thanks. EBY (talk) 03:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Cold abscess

User:Crypticface has recently created the page Cold abscess, which is almost entirely unsourced. Eyes would be appreciated over there. Everymorning talk to me 13:11, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Taged for speedy delition A10, cold abscess is a common name for Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis which exists already. The same editor has also created Collar stud abscess today, another synonym, no sources. Ochiwar (talk) 14:22, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

PROD removed because cold abscesses occur in TB, fungal infection, and even staph infections when the host has a condition like Job syndrome. I've improved the article a bit, still needs work but it has potential (as the discussion here highlights). -- Scray (talk) 14:25, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Ok. The reference for others causes appart from those by TB is from 1966? Ochiwar (talk) 14:38, 24 November 2014 (UTC) And what do we do with Collar stud abscess? Ochiwar (talk) 14:43, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

I noted in that 1966 ref that I was looking for a more recent one - already replaced with a recent NEJM review. -- Scray (talk) 14:50, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wonderful, now we have something to built upon. Collar stub abscess might be a candidate for deletion on grounds it is completely uncited? -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 18:12, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MalaCards www.malacards.org

I'm Marilyn Safran, head of GeneCards suite development at the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel. GeneCards and the Gene Wiki project have had cross links for some time now. I posted a previous version of the following proposal over a year ago on a different forum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cellular_Biology/Proposals where a discussion ensued together with a recommendation to move the discussion to this forum in order to achieve consensus: I'd like to introduce this forum to our MalaCards database of human diseases (see www.malacards.org) and publications Rappaport et al: MalaCards: an integrated compendium for diseases and their annotation, Database 2013; http://database.oxfordjournals.org/content/2013/bat018.full?%250Aijkey=MEtqc5V6fAKchaq&keytype=ref. and Rappaport et al: MalaCards: A Comprehensive Automatically-Mined Database of Human Diseases. Curr Protoc Bioinformatics. 2014 Sep 8;47:1.24.1-1.24.19. doi: 10.1002/0471250953.bi0124s47 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25199789 MalaCards now comprises >19K entries consolidated from 65 sources, leveraging GeneCards and GeneDecks annotations, and including links to Wikipedia. The resource has gotten positive feedback, we continue to develop and improve it, and has motivated our PI Doron Lancet to organize and chair a special session on Human Disease Bioinformatics at ISMB 2013 in Berlin in July. He also presented an invited keynote address at ECCB 2014 in Strasbourg in Sept 2014. Further, over the last year, we have received and responded to requests for data dumps from international academic and medical researchers. We feel that just as Gene Wiki has symbiotic cross-links to/from GeneCards, it would be beneficial to the community to have the right-hand-sidebar of relevant Wikipedia pages (e.g. Huntingtons_disease) link to the corresponding MalaCard (e.g.at http://malacards.org/card/huntingtons_disease Your comments on how to achieve consensus on including links to MalaCards in the disease infobox would be very much appreciated. Marilyn Safran (talk) 15:34, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hmm, very oriented towards genetics. Is this generated by a computer algorithm? Wiki CRUK John (talk) 18:05, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

This has previously been discussed elsehwere:

Blue Rasberry (talk) 19:15, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks! So that's a no then. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 21:34, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wiki CRUK John I am not sure. This person has been asking for engagement for about two years. They do have valuable content which Wikipedia could share. Some things that are less certain include the limits of their data's quality, the stability of their database, and the reputation of their data processing. There are options for going forward with a partnership but it is not straightforward and there would need to be conversation. At this point it is not even easy to understand who uses this data or how it is used. Blue Rasberry (talk) 22:54, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikidata seems the appropriate place, at least for now. The last discussion was against including it in the infobox, & I'm not sure what else we can really do here. Sometimes it's best all round just to say no at the start. Johnbod (talk) 00:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Correcting the link: d:Wikidata:Property_proposal/Archive/27#P1583. And restating my opinion: The infobox should contain small bits of useful generalized information and not links to external resources. And identifiers for people (for example VIAF) go into a template at the bottom of the page. And that is where the ICD (and other) identifiers should go. --Tobias1984 (talk) 08:40, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Tobias1984 That is a good idea that I have not heard before and I think it should be applied in most or all cases. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:45, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What is this "useful generalized information"? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:07, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

@Bluerasberry and Doc James: I hope that didn't sound like a marketing slogan. But to elaborate: In my opinion the current infobox is the outcome of the Curse of knowledge. People with a lot of expert-knowledge and good intentions have made many infoboxes, and especially disease-infobox, into a very complex summary of information and links to even more in-depth information. This is somewhat of an educational Matthew effect (Coined to my knowledge by math scholar Jörn Loviscach), where somebody that already knows a lot about a topic will learn more, while a person that knows little, will either be overwhelmed by reading, or gives up on reading. A really uncontroversial page to demonstrate this is Myocardial infarction. Why don't we have a row in the infobox called "common symptoms" with the value "chest pain". Then we put a little annotation-link next to the value which could have the tooltip "Other symptoms might occur" and the link leads you to the section in the article where the symptoms are discussed in depth. In my opinion that would be the famous quantum-leap in medical knowledge dissemination. But instead we are confusing many people with a list of identifiers that are meaningless by definition (they are just strings). And these identifiers link to pages which are indigestible to most people that don’t have an university degree in natural science. And yes there are more controversial diseases (don't use an infobox or the row in that case) and yes there are diseases where generalization is difficult (just use a link to the section in that case: symptoms = its complicated*). But if we really ask our self, what is the most benefit to the most readers, then this is the only conclusions one can reach. --Tobias1984 (talk) 13:41, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We already have the "table of contents" that lists signs and symptoms at the top such that people can click on it and be lead to that section. Lupus has at least 11 core symptoms. Summaries of diseases do not fit well in infoboxes IMO.

The infobox disease is better than the infobox chemistry such as seen at Lead because our is shorter. Thus I agree we should not add more complicated stuff to it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:17, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Similar objections to linking ICD/MeSH codes in the infobox (rather than somewhere less prominent on the page, or even not at all) have been discussed before, as has the feasibility/practicality of reporting summary clinical/epidemiological information in the infobox (sorry I can't find the thread, though I suspect Colin or WAID, for example, may remember). Anyhow, the tenor of such discussions here clearly illustrate imo how hard it would be to reach anything like consensus here for the inclusion of a database like MalaCards in disease infoboxes. 31.49.13.194 (talk) 16:17, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Management of cancer

New editor insisting on adding Burzynski Antineoplaston_therapy to Management of cancer (see Burzynski Clinic). The American Cancer Society says that there is no convincing evidence showing that antineoplastons actually work. Eyes would be useful. Ochiwar (talk) 16:25, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Indeed - yanked it out again. He's been putting a great slab above "surgery" at "types of treatment"! These are his only edits. Wiki CRUK John (talk) 17:56, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Breast milk has some major issues

The above article has a large number of issues on the sections on benefits and health effects. Very many poor sources and quite a few lobby-group sources, apart from being of generally poor quality (was previously B-class, I've bumped it down). -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 18:15, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Quite a lot of content that should be deleted or moved to Breastfeeding. -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 18:18, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

WikiProject Academia?

Please see here: Wikipedia:WikiProject Council/Proposals/Academia. Thanks. Fgnievinski (talk) 18:40, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Patient choice?

Surely this isn't just a question of NHS hospital bookings?
(Though, to be fair, the initial draft seems to have been trying to title the page Hospital Choice in the NHS, which is currently a redirect, but seems a fair enough page name in the wider scheme of things...)
109.157.83.50 (talk) 20:03, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Hum, I was going to suggest renaming that page and redirecting [[Patient choice]] to Concordance (medicine). But I see that, in turn is a redirect to Compliance (medicine), which isn't quite the same thing... And that page, which correctly underlines in the lead that "Compliance should not be confused with concordance", doesn't actually doesn't actually seem to use the phrase "patient choice/s" as such. Which kind of leaves me wondering.... 109.157.83.50 (talk) 20:28, 24 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Medically healthy obesity

I am working on a page for metabolically healthy obesity in my userspace; the page can be found here. I wanted to post here to get some feedback on it and possibly get some of you to improve it directly. Everymorning talk to me 01:28, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Everymorning At first look it seems like a great start to an article and that you have been thoughtful in trying to find WP:MEDRS sources. I did not check all of the sources, but the ones I did check seemed relevant and appropriate. Your article is 1400 characters right now. If it gets to 1500 characters before going live then it can be submitted to Wikipedia:Did you know and get more attention for being on the front page.

Thanks for collecting all of the information on this topic. I had never heard of this condition and was surprised to see so many papers published that have used this term. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:44, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

A *proposed* phenotype rather than a generally accepted one? PMID 23928851 looks like a reasonably balanced review of the concept (though I don't have access to the full text). 31.49.13.194 (talk) 15:56, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks for the review! I didn't see that one in my search; I have added it to the draft. Everymorning talk to me 16:15, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]
  - I have moved it into article space. Everymorning talk to me 22:57, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

MEDRS assistance please

Can someone assist with MEDRS compliance? It's the article Cucurbita, section Cucurbita#Medicinal_uses. In this talk page thread, there is this discussion: Talk:Cucurbita#Pre-FAC_comments, see the part that starts "medical uses of the plant...". Thank you. HalfGig talk 02:03, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia (talk · contribs), thank you for the prompt review. That was very kind of you. HalfGig talk 02:24, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

You are most welcome, and good luck at FAC! However, I was/am in quite a hurry when I looked, so I do hope others will also peek in. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:34, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia talk:Articles for creation/Cardiometabolic Risk again

Hello, medical experts. I brought this page here a few months ago, and Snowmanradio and Johnbod both commented that it had useful content that could be either merged into Metabolic syndrome or made into an article about "Global variation in metabolic syndrome rates". It's up for deletion again. I'd take care of it if I could, but my medical knowledge is limited to proper application of Band-aids. (I have also memorized the phone number for 911). —Anne Delong (talk) 14:09, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Translation Project needs helping hands!

We're in dire need of helping hands for the translation project. We're in the process of migrating our tracking from Wikipedia to google-docs – some pretty time-consuming manual work. If anyone could lend a helping hand with it we'd be so grateful!

What needs to be done is the links need to be copied to:

New tracking file

from

-- -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 15:35, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

CFCF What is happening here? First you say that you are migrating from Wikipedia to Google, then you say that links need to be copied from Google to Wikipedia. Can you explain again more directly? Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:39, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Had mixed up the to/from tags. :) Thanks for pointing that out! -- CFCF 🍌 (email) 15:40, 25 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

We nearly have it all done. Just a small amount of tweaking still needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:13, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Khan academy

Great news from the copyright front. The Khan academy has agree to release 5 videos under an open license as a pilot project. They have about 900 medical related videos. If people can propose ones they feel are most beneficial to us would appreciate it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:41, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Suggest we deprecate Toxnet as reference source

I propose we consider if Toxnet fails to qualify as a reliable source. The back story on my concern can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:MDMA#Lack_of_appropriate_reference_for_MDA_as_.22direct_neurotoxin.22 Essentially, a cursory inspection of an article showed that they refer to a non-peer-reviewed source as peer reviewed. In addition, they appear to disown accuracy of their own contents: From the FAQ ( http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/newtoxnet/faq.html ): "Can an error in a citation be corrected? Corrections can be made if the error is in a PubMed citation found TOXLINE or DART because these databases are produced by NLM. Visit Reporting an Error in PubMed for more information. If the error is in other parts of TOXLINE, DART or the other TOXNET databases corrections cannot be made because NLM does not produce these databases." I therefore suggest we consider if Toxnet should be deprecated as a reliable source. 173.228.54.200 (talk) 06:04, 26 November 2014 (UTC)[reply]

[1] Gluck, L; Wood, HF; Fousek, MD (1966). "Septicemia of the newborn". Pediatric clinics of North America. 13 (4): 1131–48. ISSN 0031-3955. PMID 5332055.

[1]