User talk:WhatamIdoing

If you expected a reply on another page and didn't get it, then please feel free to remind me. I've given up on my watchlist. You can also use the magic summoning tool if you remember to link my userpage in the same edit in which you sign the message.

Please add notes to the end of this page. If you notice the page size getting out of control (>100,000 bytes), then please tell me. I'll probably reply here unless you suggest another page for a reply. Thanks, WhatamIdoing

Please Help me

Hello WhatamIdoing, I want to continue to administrate the Haitian wikipedia. I created a section to vote for me in the "Kafe". Could you help me by encouraging contributors to vote quickly?--Gilles2014 (talk) 18:03, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Gilles2014. I noticed that your admin status had expired just a few days ago. I've pinged the recent active editors, and of course you still have my support. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:17, 3 November 2019 (UTC)

Gilles2014, it's been 15 days. Have you contacted the Stewards yet, or would you like me to? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:21, 19 November 2019 (UTC)

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Google Code-In 2019 is coming - please mentor some documentation tasks!

Hello,

Google Code-In, Google-organized contest in which the Wikimedia Foundation participates, starts in a few weeks. This contest is about taking high school students into the world of opensource. I'm sending you this message because you recently edited a documentation page at the English Wikipedia.

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--User:Martin Urbanec (talk) 21:58, 23 November 2019 (UTC)

Brilliant Idea Barnstar

		What a Brilliant Idea Barnstar
		For adding a very useful sidebar at WP:RMT, hope this will help to reduce the unnecessary requests there. DBigXrayᗙ 12:38, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Thank you very much for the barnstar, DBigXray. Here's hoping that it works! WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:11, 28 November 2019 (UTC)

User:Colin

I don't NEED to do anything. But YOU need to mind your own damned business. --Calton | Talk 01:54, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

User:Calton, your response is rude and needlessly aggressive. Please do not post profanity on my user talk page. I have mentioned your error and your response in the ANI discussion. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

"brilliantly summarized"

Hah, thanks for that :-)

It was interesting what you wrote about the different historical phases of WPMED. As a relative newbie (7 years?) I don't really "get" the historical context for some of the current drama, which is saddening to see ... Alexbrn (talk) 06:31, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Your brilliant insight deserved wider recognition, and I thought that it might help people at ANI see that the fundamental dispute is about different conceptions of what Wikipedia should be.

WPMED has changed over time. We've lost some good editors, and we've gained some new ones. I miss the folks we've lost, but it's still my favorite group of people online. I think that will always be the case. :-D WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Second Source Barrett Watten

Hi WhatamIdoing,

Writing to follow up on the sourcing requirements for biography of living persons re: the Barrett Watten page. Namely, would a second source need to be from a separate publication, or would a follow-up article in the Chronicle of Higher Ed be sufficient as corroboration? Thank you for taking the time! --Justanotherpoet (talk) 19:09, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello, Justanotherpoet. The short answer is "yes". The accurate answer is "it depends".

If, say, a second CHR article said "Oops, sorry about that", then the correct answer might be to never mention it. Wikipedia's BLP rules would normally treat that like the police accidentally arresting an innocent person: it might have been personally traumatizing for all concerned, but it's not important to know about this temporary incident to understand the person's overall life and work (unless the person makes it important later, e.g., by dedicating the rest of their career to solving that problem).

If a second CHR article said very little, then that wouldn't change matters at all.

But if a second CHR article was relatively long and provided more (i.e., different) information, then that would normally make editors want to reassess the situation.

That said, even a short article (or a few paragraphs from a longer article) in a different publication would be more valuable in terms of showing that these allegations should be included. 200 words in CHR would probably get no change in the article. 200 words in The Detroit Free Press would be grounds for re-evaluation.

It's also possible that (based entirely on what direction subsequent sources take), editors would decide that the problem is less about the individual, and more about the organization. In that case, it's possible that they'd decide that this information (with or without anyone's names) really belongs in the article about Wayne State University.

I see that you have also asked a similar question of User:StarryGrandma. It's great to ask for help. We know that this is an endlessly confusing and overly complicated place. But please consider asking questions on the talk page or on a central noticeboard, such as Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons/Noticeboard. It's easier for everyone to see the questions then, and if the advice you get from the first person isn't complete or quite correct, then someone else might jump in to help clarify matters. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:42, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the quick followup; your explanation makes perfect sense, and I'll let the process work itself out beyond helping to identify the new sources. My first thought was to edit the article's Talk Page, but I believe the protections have been extended beyond to that space as well. Is it alright if I communicate directly with you or User:StarryGrandma? --Justanotherpoet (talk) 20:55, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

It looks like you're stuck for a few more days. (You can avoid this problem by making sure that your web browser saves your username and password. You normally won't be logged out for about a year, but you will need to login again every time you clear your cookies. A "slightly used" account lets you do a lot more things than a brand-new one.)

Yes, it's okay to post here until you're able to post there. BTW, if you link to someone's username, just like you did for StarryGrandma in that comment, that person will get notified. This means you can post on one of the pages and ping the other editor, and you won't have to post anything twice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:59, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello WhatamIdoing,

Writing to you to follow up on my previous questions, and thank you for opening your talk page for this matter. It seems a follow-up article has been published in The Chronicle of Higher Education (https://www.chronicle.com/article/This-Professor-Was-Accused-of/247705?cid=wcontentlist_hp_latest). I hope this is helpful, and I'll "take my comment off the air." --Justanotherpoet (talk) 02:48, 12 December 2019 (UTC)

Pricing examples

It would very much help if you were able to give examples, on talk-medmos, of the kind of drug prices (or cost knowledge) you might light to see in articles. Or indeed, the sort of thing you don't think should appear. Along with sources and an explanation of how any figures arise, limitations, etc. You mentioned the existing examples weren't exactly Wikipedia at its finest. But a sole editor, with an openly stated agenda, isn't Wikipedia at its finest either. I am concerned, just like with the article-videos, that perhaps Wikipedia is no longer a collaborative editing project. In previous times, if faults were found with article text, or proposed article text, we'd see a bunch of editors offering suggested variants and ideally all working towards a consensus version. Instead, well, we don't see any serious attempt to address the problems raised. There's zero specific input from other editors in support of or critical of text/source. Instead those wanting prices are focused entirely on the "drug pricing is important" soundbite. I can't believe wiki now lacks editors who are skilled in WP:V and WP:NOR policy review or are brilliant at identifying what our sources say and therefore what we can say. Are there any other editors you think could be pinged to help out here, other than your good self? -- Colin°^Talk 14:00, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

From a bystander, even us video gamers have guidelines against pricing/costs at WP:VGSCOPE#8. (See also the fourth bullet at WP:VG/MOS#Exceptions.) --Izno (talk) 14:04, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the note, Colin. I'm sorry to say that I'm not likely to be able to devote the time this really needs until at least Thursday. I'll try to drop in later just to have a quick look, but this needs hours and hours of attention.

(By "existing" examples, I mean the content already in the articles.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 10 December 2019 (UTC)

Merry XMAS!

Merry Christmas everybody!!!

"And the angel said unto them, Fear not: for, behold,

I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people.

For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Saviour, which is Christ the Lord."

Luke 2:10-11 (King James Version)

Ozzie10aaaa (talk) is wishing you a Merry Christmas.

This greeting (and season) promotes WikiLove.

Spread the cheer by adding {{Subst:Xmas4}} to their talk page with a friendly message.

--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:24, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Season's Greetings

		Season's Greetings
		Wishing you a Happy Holiday Season, and all best wishes for the New Year! Mystical Nativity (Filippo Lippi) is my Wiki-Christmas card to all for this year. Johnbod (talk) 16:39, 17 December 2019 (UTC)

Wikipedia:External links/Noticeboard reply July 2019

Thank you for this reply - I have been mostly off-Wiki and this slipped by me until now. I have amended the article Dan Kneen with the archived website link as suggested in infobox, leaving the modern version with a different description under the Ext Links heading. Compliments of the Season to you.--Rocknrollmancer (talk) 21:41, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for following up on that when you got back, Rocknrollmancer. And thanks for bringing an interesting question to that noticeboard. :-D WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:42, 21 December 2019 (UTC)

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Seasons Greetings

	Seasons Greetings
	Merry Christmas nd a happy new year. I tried to clone a Xmas card but failed and have to do each one individually. Have a lovely new year and thank you for everything. Whispyhistory (talk) 22:34, 24 December 2019 (UTC)

Merry Christmas to you, too, Whispyhistory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 25 December 2019 (UTC)

Hello

Hello WhatamIdoing, I want to add two sentences to the talk page on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (to which I have made very occasional small edits over the last decade), but even the talk page is locked. You seem to be at the center of the conversation and stick to the rules, neutral between the warring factions. What do I do, or should I simply wait? The editors do not seem to understand that (1) the medical literature on MCS was distorted 25 years ago by well funded and unethical PR on the chemical companies' side; and (2) MCS as experienced by people like me cannot possibly occur given the basic theory underlying the practice of medicine, so debating what is happening assuming that theory is correct is at best a waste of time. I advocate shortening the page by 10x, summarizing the two sides' positions succinctly, and removing all of the advocacy and disinformation from both sides. -Fstevenchalmers Fstevenchalmers (talk) 06:29, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi Fstevenchalmers,

I agree with you that one of the problems we've been having is confusing the theorized etiologies with the reality of what people experience. Those are entirely separate questions.

What kind of sources have you found? So far, I've found one highly reputable (though not super recent) medical textbook, which is a good way to represent the mainstream medical viewpoint. I haven't "used up" this source yet, so I haven't spent a lot of time looking for another, but I would like to get a couple of more recent sources. Ideally, when we're done with this round of updates, almost all the sources in the article will be from the current decade. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:50, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

From a practical point of view, research into physical causes of MCS stopped 25 years ago when ESRI, run by Ron Gots and funded as a litigation defense effort largely by the chemical industry, went to the grant funders, institutions, researchers, and the journals with a story which painted the research as enabling these poor, poor mentally ill people and in so doing harming them. Best retelling (in a non peer reviewed form, of course) http://annmccampbell.com/publicationswritings/publication-1/ .

There was a bequest to Harvard to study this area but I see no useful results. https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hoffman-program/

There is work by Ann Steinemann, who in the last few years left the US for a university in Australia, carefully never using the words "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity", the best of which is https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11869-019-00699-4 . Her work more generally is linked at https://www.drsteinemann.com/publications.html .

There is also work by Claudia Miller (who co wrote a seminal book almost 30 years ago, and invented the term TILT for Toxicant Induced Loss of Tolerance, and the QUEESI questionnaire). https://tiltresearch.org/ None of this comes close to forming a theory of how a minute exposure could, in a sensitized person, rapidly produce a subjectively noticeable change in the operation of the nervous system. Neither does anything the Environmental Medicine community has done since Theron Randolph. Martin Pall was in the right space, but even there IMHO was looking at a special case and not the general case.

None of these papers are of the quality Wikipedia's rules treat as the gold standard. The fact that Ron Gots' name was featured on the Wikipedia MCS page for over a decade says his disinformation effort of 25 years ago continues to bear fruit. It also bore fruit in litigation, shutting down chemical injury claims (including my own) for decades. The people with MCS (my side) were so totally outgunned that we lost decisively. I assume paid advocacy for the chemical industry is still occurring, but not through a visible organization.

The reason why I advocate radically shrinking this page is that it has been used to distribute disinformation in the past, disinformation which was deliberately injected into the science/medicine literature so it could be cited for litigation defense. There is no one really working directly on research, or trying to publish, papers which disagree. They're just sidestepping the issue and trying to chip away at its edges. It will be decades before science and medicine are ready to invest in looking here again.

Thank you for listening. Not sure if anything I've shared here is useful. Oh, and for the record, I hypothesize MCS is an autoimmune disease of the system of circulating proteins in the bloodstream allowing what are normally haptens on those proteins to interfere with the miniscule supplies of neurotransmitters and ion-channel ions supplying the nervous system. Utter heresy in medical circles, no possibility of discussion or publication of a hypothesis remotely like this, any more than Semmelweiss could get heard about washing hands. And I'm just a retired computer designer, no credentials.

-Fstevenchalmers Fstevenchalmers (talk) 07:26, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Fstevenchalmers, those look like they'll give me a clearer idea of the clinical ecology POV.

I understand that the one thing that they've settled on recently is that the original cause is "multifactorial". What I think doesn't matter for the article, either, but I'm currently liking the neurological notions myself, which connects to your hypothesis. The neurological notions seem to explain more than the psychological hypothesis.

The litigation thing is another area that I'm not sure how to represent. The history section is a mess, and that might be the place to talk about various organizations and lawsuits. We're also spending too much time on who "recognizes" MCS. Most of those aren't even about recognition as a practical syndrome; they're about whether the organization has stated a belief in a particular etiological hypothesis. Wikipedia then ends up with self-contradictory claims, in which 5% of people have been medically diagnosed with MCS, but the people issuing those diagnoses supposedly "don't recognize" MCS as a valid diagnosis.

The debate over etiology reminds me a bit of cancer patients. When people get past the initial shock of being diagnosed with cancer, they're usually desperate to identify (and control) the cause. When the cause isn't obvious, the thing they decide to blame can be almost random. It's not unusual to have cancers grow for five or ten years before they're diagnosed, and yet cancer patients almost always pick a cause that produced a strong emotional response (e.g., disgust or fear, which are both primary emotions) and happened just one or two years before the cancer was diagnosed (i.e., when the tumor had likely been growing for three to nine years already). Humans are wired to think this way, and humans with MCS are presumably no different in that regard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for listening, WhatamIdoing, and I apologize for my mishaps on both style/indentation/formatting and almost certain etiquette errors. Four more thoughts for you:

First, on the "recognition" issue, here's the real story. There are somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people like me in the US, who simply don't function well in the presence of everyday things which are routinely tolerated by the rest of the population. We can't work in a normal work environment, we can't socialize, we have a limited ability to go in stores. The recognition of this under ADA varies, and quite frankly in many cases it's too hard to practically accommodate. There is a 30 year old battle for accommodation. It's existential for the disabled: without the ability to work, without the ability to have housing one can function in, without the ability to go about one's business in public, one generally falls through the social safety net. These recognitions are about precedent for ADA accommodation and precedent for landing in rather than falling through the social safety net. Again, it's existential for a lot of people with my disability, and to be honest, what's written in Wikipedia may well affect the perceptions of those who approve and deny accommodation and social services. A good reference on this is a Yale Law Review article from about 6 years ago, . From that piece:

" Much about MCS remains unknown and undefined, and unlike fibromyalgia, the development of MCS as a diagnosis has met with resistance from industry, as well as the medical community. Manufacturers of everything from fragrances to chemical pesticides have billions of dollars at stake; some doctors suggest that industry public relations efforts are the only reason MCS research has moved so slowly and remained so controversial. 02 If this is the case, the anti-MCS movement has certainly been effective: Even in the most recent material, highly contentious debate about the condition continues. 103" (Pages 20-21)

Second, the Clinical Ecologists (now called Environmental Medicine) can serve only the well off. A normal person doesn't have $10,000-$20,000 and the resources to live in special rental housing for a few months to visit the Environmental Health Center at Dallas. Insurance doesn't cover non-mainstream medicine. A normal person doesn't even have $500 for a normal intake exam at a local Environmental Medicine practice, much less all the tests they'll call for to see if there is anything wrong with you that medicine does know how to fix. So mainstream people with MCS are a different constituency from the MCS doctors.

Third, the term "Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance" was created and driven into the literature by the chemical industry funded disinformation team 25ish years ago, as part of their litigation defense effort to separate the chemical industry's products from what patients were experiencing. As author and advocate of that era Bonnye Mathews said at the time, "There is nothing idiopathic about being poisoned." I have no credible cite for you here. I want to be neutral on your proposed change (moving the disinformation under a header created by its proponents is poetic justice) but think there will be political blowback from the pro-MCS-recognition side if that is done.

Fourth, I'm sure you've seen the extraordinarily well done lit review from 2 years ago done in Italy. I don't speak academic, so it took my son to translate the last few sections into plain English for me, but those last sections are very important.

Will have to think about the cancer patients thing. Some folks with MCS can point to a single large exposure (read up on Cindy Duehring, who was poisoned by improper professional use of an organophosphate pesticide) while in others it creeps up gradually. I tend to agree that there is a blame game after the fact. In the end, I can tell you the chain of events which created whatever soup it was that poisoned my family in our sick house 24 years ago, but none of the over $10,000 of chemical tests we ran found the exact culprit. A consultant we flew in told me that no customer of his had ever found the [culprit] in a situation like ours before running out of money, and he was right.

Again, thank you for listening. FStevenChalmers Fstevenchalmers (talk) 06:15, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem with some of the names is that they claim that the "poisoning" is the original cause, and not merely the trigger for the everyday symptoms. (You see this thinking in cancer patients, too: when the patient decides that the cancer was caused by poor diet, then it's difficult to resist the temptation to believe that drinking vegetable juice will make the cancer go away. It doesn't work that way: bacon causes colorectal cancer, and surgery cures it.)

Identifying a single incident or sudden onset was one of the requirements in an older MCS definition. (It seems to have disappeared at some point, but I haven't found any explanation why. Perhaps it just wasn't pointful?) I'm seeing that a number of new MCS diagnoses have identified a single incident as the cause, but that incident is physical trauma rather than a chemical exposure. For the MCS person with sudden onset after a car wreck, "toxicant-induced" sounds factually wrong. "Concussion-induced" seems like a more plausible explanation. This isn't even a new idea among clinical ecologists and related fields; William Phillpott published a book about what he called "brain allergies" 20 years ago.

The Yale paper is probably usable in the article. I'll try to finish reading it later this week. I'm not hoping for a quick fix on this article. It's taken a year to get this much done, and I think that moving slowly is going to be ultimately more effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you again for listening, WhatamIdoing. A few thoughts in response, then I'll stand down, but I am around if needed/helpful. Your choice to go slow is wise, as I see it.

Your cancer analogy is a good one, it just took me looking from a totally different perspective to understand it. Your description of two phases of cancer (bacon to cause onset, polyps which result) is very true of MCS as Claudia Miller articulates in her TILT writings. But I think it's also spot on in another way: I've had polyps removed but do not have cancer. I have moles on my skin, but no cancer there either. Ann Steinemann's work in the last few years shows a prevalence of about 25% in the US of fragrance sensitivity, that is, some impact on the nervous or respiratory system from exposure to one or more ingredients. Other work in the last 30 years has varied from 33% of the population noticing they were affected, to about 16% who had modified their life (the example given at the time was not walking down the laundry detergent aisle in the grocery store). Full blown MCS is more analogous to cancer which has metastasized. The anti MCS recognition folks have a valid point in fearing bad PR from people in the 16% who freak out at normal, everyday perturbations of their nervous system caused by everyday things in our lives, and end up in anxiety or phobia as a result. But the across the board denial means if there are a handful of common solvents and enhancers (think MSG, but for the nose) which are impacting the ability to function of a large fraction of the population, they aren't being identified and phased out. To the cancer analogy I would add that EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity) is in the same family of syndromes as MCS, as are Gulf War Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, maybe ME/Chronic Fatigue and a few others. In all cases something changes in the body, leaving the nervous system malfunctioning either momentarily in response to trace environmental stimuli, or seemingly permanently malfunctioning.

On the MCS sensitization phase: the diversity of experience of people both here and in the being-sensitive phase has led to a lot of infighting in the MCS community over definition. Any time someone writes down a clear definition, it excludes someone else's experience, which makes that person afraid whatever disability income and accommodations are keeping them functioning will be withdrawn, and they react like a cornered animal. There are absolutely people like me who can point to a specific experience in a specific place on a specific day and say I was normal before this and had MCS afterward. There are other people like those who worked in the EPA building in Washington DC when the chemically defective carpet was put in 30 years ago who can point to a continuing exposure as their cause. A lot of people slowly develop MCS after their residence has construction work of some sort, as did a number of people who worked in unventilated spaces where large amounts of carbonless paper copies (the colored back sheets of the NCR forms of 30-50 years ago) (formaldehyde), as did a number of people exposed to certain materials at certain Boeing aircraft manufacturing facilities 20-30 years ago as well. But there are also people who say "I got the flu and when I got over it I had MCS" or simply that it came on gradually over a period of years or decades with no discernible cause. Just as cancer finally settled on I look at a tissue sample under a microscope and it looks like cancer cells, regardless of where they are or what caused them, I favor a very inclusive definition of MCS which leaves no one behind. In the end, the rigorous definition will require measurements (laboratory work, instruments) which do not exist today, and just as the invention of the EEG ended 2000 years of the medical profession thinking epilepsy was psychological, there will be something we can measure which all of a sudden makes MCS, EHS, GWS, and the like make perfect sense, from a viewpoint we do not have today.

-Fstevenchalmers (by the way this is my real name and I can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Medium as @Fsteven...) Fstevenchalmers (talk) 01:46, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Fstevenchalmers, if you wanted help from the best of the best you came to the right place. . Waid, still thinking about including WHO. I've tried but have been unable to find their list of current diseases. I'm wondering if they include Gulf War syndrome or Post-Ebola virus syndrome. Can you help me? Gandydancer (talk) 19:35, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

You're very kind, User:Gandydancer.

When editors write that something isn't "recognized" by the WHO, they usually mean that there is no separate International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems code for it. I believe that GWS gets coded (and therefore billed) based on the separate components. For example, if the symptom is headaches, you bill for headaches, and if it's PTSD, then you bill for PTSD, etc. This page on the WHO's website shows information for WHO and IPCS's 1996 Berlin meeting, which produced one of the definitions. It links to two publications from this century which might be useful.

The other thing that's going on there is that various orgs have said "Yes, you're sick, but it wasn't triggered by the chemical you claim". It's not recognized as being chemical-caused, which is different from being recognized as people having symptoms under certain circumstances.

Post-Ebola virus syndrome may be too new for an ICD code to be available (in the master list; there's a system for individual countries to add anything they want at any time, so some individual countries might have done so already). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

That

This might help. --Brogo13 (talk) 19:07, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Brogo13, the unsourced assertions by an IP, which have now been WP:CHALLENGEd by four (two IPs and two registered editors – I am the fourth) do not convince me of anything. Furthermore, that would only matter if policies were supposed to be written in the American or Canadian WP:ENGVAR, which they aren't. Please stop making those stylistic changes to policy, guideline, and help pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

From the article's only ref (caveat: curlies):

The word that can be omitted in standard English where it introduces a subordinate clause, as in she said (that) she was satisfied. It can also be dropped in a relative clause where the subject of the subordinate clause is not the same as the subject of the main clause, as in the book (that) I've just written (‘the book’ and ‘I’ are two different subjects). Where the subject of the subordinate clause and the main clause are the same, use of the word that is obligatory, as in the woman that owns the place (‘the woman’ is the subject of both clauses).

Kthxbai

Brogo13, there's a significant difference between saying that the word "can be omitted" and that "In American and Canadian English" is is "only" used under certain limited circumstances. If you want to restore the claim that American and Candadian English "only" include the word that to avoid confusion, then you need to produce a source that includes words like Canadian, and that actually says anything at all about it "only" being used under certain circumstances.

And, in reference to our previous discussion, the fact that it "can be omitted" under certain grammatical circumstances does not mean that editors should go around and remove it from policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Gender issues

Yea ... here. A whole new approach. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

Notice of noticeboard discussion

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "An update on and a request for involvement at the Medicine MOS". Thank you. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:37, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Council page

Not sure I like the changes at the council page at all.... Seems to be used for recruitment for a few projects rather than an explanation of what we do. Really don't like the changes at all.....all the main links are now scattered throughout the page rather than being in a nice paragraph in the the lead. Plus why are we listing names ...most I have never been active in the council... they agreed to be spokesman for the council? I would normal revert....but there is an ongoing talk.-'Moxy 🍁 03:11, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Am I seeing this right - recruiting to form a new council? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Request help with new Council for WikiProjects--Moxy 🍁 05:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Anyone can create a new WikiProject. I wish them lots of luck. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Enabling Visual Editor Citation Tool for Twi Wikipedia

Hello WhatamIdoing I am an editor from Ghana. Recently I have been working increasing content on https://tw.wikipedia.org/. Unlike in English Wikipedia where one can click the cite tool from the visual editor to easily add a reference, one has to use the source editing to add reference on Twi Wikipedia. I would be very glad if you can help me enable the cite tool in the visual editor for Twi Wikipedia. Also It would be very cool if references from a translated article could be added to the article using the the translation tool. Celestinesucess (talk) 09:05, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Celestinesucess. User:Mvolz (WMF) is the expert on the mw:citoid service. Have you used the mw:Content translation tool before? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing yes I have used the Have you used the mw:Content translation tool before. I will reach out to User:Mvolz (WMF) then but I also need help on how to enable the cite feature in the visual editor that makes it easy to city articles without using the source code.Celestinesucess (talk) 21:51, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you're starting at the beginning. Celestinesucess, have you found mw:Citoid/Enabling Citoid on your wiki? I think it has links to the instructions.

Also, while you're thinking about templates, I think you should consider w:es:Template:Ficha de persona and similar infoboxes from the Spanish Wikipedia. It's a Wikidata-enabled infobox, which could be very useful for getting basic information on the wiki with minimal effort – just type {{ficha de persona}} (or whatever the Twi translation is) at the top of any article (about a person, in this case), and it will figure out most of the contents by itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

Two replies...

I don't have a clue what happened! You or I could revert, but then I don't know what would be lost. Could two users have been editing at the same time??? Can an Admin solve it?

AHA! There are TWO styles of page! The one I use is the old style while your link directs to the new one. I don't know who, what or how.

My reply to user: Colin further down that discussion should clarify my point: "...the lack of balanced research and reporting in various medical areas does not originate with WP: it has been inherent in the medical profession as a whole for lo these many hundreds - if not thousands - of years." (Like the fairly recent discovery that men and women DO NOT react the same way to the same medication, because clinical trials were performed on men only.) Cheers! Shir-El too 18:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

That "fairly recent discovery" was made before Wikipedia was created. That therefore does not seem like a logical explanation of why Wikipedia editors have not repeatedly omitted that information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I find the above confusing: are you saying editors 'are' or 'are not' including that data? As to my main point: it's going to take time to reverse the cultural and personal bias, the thought patterns, that have been accepted as fact for centuries and millennia. I agree that it can and should be done but humans are not as flexible as electronics: it will take time for many to 'shift gears' - and many will not be aware of their own blind spots. So I wish you Good Luck and will do my best to support an unbiased WP. Cheers! Shir-El too 10:38, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

PS Glad you solved the problem! Thank you.

Sorry about the confusion. I blame the fever for that typo. 🤒

Yes, it takes time. IMO the time will likely be shorter if we tell people that there are plenty of high-quality sources available, and have been for years, and that they need to include this kind of information. We need all the diversity-type information – not just articles on conditions affecting female anatomical parts, but also things like urban vs rural medicine in Africa and Asia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I added "2017 medical review" to Man flu and had trouble keeping it there - or having it taken seriously. I even contacted the BMJ to confirm that it was for real, but emails are not citable on WP. So I understand the problem first-hand. Back to the salt mines! Cheers! Shir-El too 18:41, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

thanks for the laugh

I know the discussion isn't funny, but If you feel like adding "by Colonel Mustard with the vaping products", you've got the right idea. was just the laugh I needed today, thanks! Schazjmd (talk) 20:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Thank you

I was fucking close to cry after reading your Quack post at ARB and I mean that literally. You've seen what I've seen and you managed to write it down in a comprehensive way I'm not capable of. You've hit the nail many times over. Thank you.--TMCk (talk) 23:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

Multiple Chemical Sensitivity Definition

On the MCS Talk page you asked "One difference between the 1999 and 1987 definitions .. is that the older one requires a "documentable" event that caused the symptoms. ... I haven't yet figured out why this changed."

Are you sure the 1987 (Cullen) definition does require a documentable event? I don't have access to his original papers and can only find it in second-hand sources as: "Multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) is an acquired disorder characterized by current symptoms, referable to multiple organ systems, occurring in response to demonstrable exposure to many chemically unrelated compounds at doses far below those established in the general population to cause harmful effects. No single widely accepted test of physiologic function can be shown to correlate with symptoms. (Cullen 1987a)" . The criteria of 'acquired' is much weaker than a specific identifiable event and wouldn't be seriously disputed by other authors on the subject I'm aware of. In any case his focus was occupational medicine and he diagnosed industrial workers. An initial toxic exposure event would have been more common and more noticeable among them than the wider population of patients. If there is that difference in definitions then that's probably the explanation.

The 1999 consensus definition was published by 34 physicians and researchers, and built on a wide survey 10 years earlier which drew on work going back before Cullen's time. This seems, to me at least, more authoritative and I'm not aware of any more recent similar effort. It's citation rate in recent years seems to be increasing.

There are some more recent definitions, however all that I'm aware of are by lone or small groups of authors and tend to exhibit bias. An example is Lacour's which is quite widely cited. It's based on a literature survey and the authors don't appear to have much first hand experience with patients. I don't have a citation refuting it's conclusions - there may well be one - but the logic of it is that since central nervous symptoms are - just barely - the most often mentioned by MCS patients they should be required and all other symptoms are secondary. That's in keeping with the perspective of a psychosomatic origin for MCS but on very flimsy grounds. There's also a telling reference to odour hypersensitivity thrown in without any justification. Odour isn't part of the other definitions because many patients report reactions to odourless compounds (notwithstanding the distinction between odourful and odourless chemicals isn't clear cut, varying from person to person). Definitions such as this should really be regarded as controversial. 82.24.190.199 (talk) 13:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)