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Index templates

 Moved to Template talk:Medicine navs for further development. All interested editors are encouraged to watchlist that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Some time ago, I came upon Nervous system, which at the time had an insane collection of navboxes - three containers with a total of 10 navboxes, each of which had a complex structure. With the help of Tryptofish, I narrowed the list down to two. But each of these templates, in addition to a large number of its own links, transcludes two "Indexes" to more templates. This was my first hint of a broader problem.

The articles in this WikiProject are in an advanced state of template creep and need surgery. I have never seen such a maze of templates before. Indeed, medical articles have a monopoly of the so-called index templates, also called subnavs, which are footer templates that provide links between templates instead of articles (see Category:Medicine navigational box footer templates).

I would like to explore a recent example of the supposed usefulness of these subnavs provided by at a recent TfD:

  • Case study 1: A person is diagnosed with heart disease and wants to know more about treatment and relevant anatomy. The subnavs provide easy links.
To see how this works, I go to Heart disease, which redirects to Cardiovascular disease. At the bottom of the page, I see four navboxes. If I expand the second ({{Heart diseases}}), I see a three-layered hierarchy of link groups. Seeing something like that, my inclination would be to abandon the navbox and try a search (see below). But suppose I carry on, wading through dozens of terms like Monckeberg's arteriosclerosis, and eventually make it down to a box titled "Index of the circulatory system" (which is {{Vascular navs}}). And there I see a link to anatomy and a group devoted to treatment. If I click on "Anatomy" I get another template, {{Arteries and veins}}, with another two-level hierarchy and {{Vascular navs}} transcluded at the bottom. At which point only the fear of death would keep me from giving up.

But is that how someone is likely to look for this information? The first thing I would try is searching Cardiovascular disease for "anatomy" and "treatment". If I search "anatomy" and the navboxes are in their normal, hidden state (because there are four of them), I get no hits. So how about "treatment"? Now here is something really strange. The word appears nine times in the article - and none of them are linked to anything, despite the existence of Management of heart failure. There is a section, Cardiovascular disease#Management, with a single sentence in it: "Cardiovascular disease is treatable with initial treatment primarily focused on diet and lifestyle interventions."

Anyone who really wants to help that person diagnosed with heart disease would do something like this: Expand Cardiovascular disease#Management into a decent summary of Management of heart failure and link to it with a {{main}} template. Or, if that is not general enough, create Management of cardiovascular disease and summarize it.

So much for "easy links". But it goes much further than that. Say we click on one of the less general links in {{Heart diseases}}, like Mitral valve. This is an anatomy article, and does not itself transclude {{Heart diseases}}. But it does transclude {{Heart anatomy}}, which transcludes {{Heart navs}}. So this anatomy article has access to several templates for drugs. How likely is it that a user will find this useful?

Wikipedia provides guidelines that are intended to make navboxes useful. It states,

Navigation templates are particularly useful for a small, well-defined group of articles; templates with a large numbers of links are not forbidden, but can appear overly busy and be hard to read and use. Good templates generally follow some of these guidelines:

  1. All articles within a template relate to a single, coherent subject.
  2. The subject of the template should be mentioned in every article.
  3. The articles should refer to each other, to a reasonable extent.
  4. There should be a Wikipedia article on the subject of the template.
  5. If not for the navigation template, an editor would be inclined to link many of these articles in the See also sections of the articles.

But what is the subject of {{Heart navs}} - Heart or Heart navboxes? As for the other guidelines, how would you even check them? Over 750 articles transclude {{Heart navs}}, but it wasn't placed directly on any of them. However, it is pretty obvious that any given article will refer only to a very small fraction of the others. When you add a subnav to a template, you are, in effect, giving up on the guidelines.

The guidelines also suggest, "If the collection of articles does not meet these tests, that indicates that the articles are loosely related, and a list or category may be more appropriate." I am going to make a proposal here rather than at a TfD, because I would like to give editors the chance to cooperatively brainstorm a solution.

Proposal: Delete all of the templates in Category:Medicine navigational box footer templates, or replace them by lists or categories. RockMagnetist(talk) 21:27, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Clarification: Replace some of the templates in Category:Medicine navigational box footer templates by lists or categories, delete the rest. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

so..you do seem to have a point, however something "in between" 1. deleting all the templates (in Med[1]) and 2.replace with lists might be more balanced (having said that, I believe more opinions would be best)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:47, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you mean, delete some and replace others by lists, that sounds reasonable (I wasn't really implying an all or nothing scenario). Some templates might convert into good categories or lists, others may not be suitable. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:26, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
exactly what I meant, this might be better,(but we need more opinions)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:31, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Rock, this may seem a little indirect, but I can offer you a complete and immediate, if superficial, solution to the problem. Just go to https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heart_disease and you will see the the navbox problem is completely removed. Also, if you are reaching the age at which presbyopia becomes an issue, then you may find that you like that display anyway. Quite a few readers using that even on desktop systems. And, on a more serious note, if anyone's hoping that readers will use navboxes to reach important, related articles, you should note that navboxes are completely invisible to 30% of our readers. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:46, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, but I wear glasses. What do you mean by invisible? RockMagnetist(talk) 22:49, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I mean "not able to be seen". Follow the link, scroll to the bottom, and see what you see. Navboxes are not displayed on the Mobile site, and that's about 30% of our page views. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:15, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Naturally, if navboxes are useless, we could delete them all. But I believe they are useful if done right. RockMagnetist(talk) 22:55, 9 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ping LT910001 who I think is/ has worked on these. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 02:28, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

RockMagnetist might help if you did a mock up by way of demonstration of what you are proposing. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 02:30, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

O.k., here is a demo where I replace {{Ear navs}} by Outline of the ear. Mostly the links in this demo are to articles, but "Inner ear" links to Outline of the inner ear. There would also be outlines of the outer and middle ears, but the rest of the links would continue to be to articles. This outline cuts across the templates listed by {{Ear navs}}, many of which have a group for the inner ear. Links to these outlines would have to be added to the See also section of articles. This would increase the likelihood of it only being added where it is useful. RockMagnetist(talk) 04:16, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your gentle introduction to this topic, RockMagnetist. Links between medical templates have existed since at least 2008, and recently with some other users I attempted to make these templates somewhat more useable, with a goal to reduce the (huge) amount of navboxes plastered on our many articles by linking them .

Part of your frustration with this template series seems to relate to the incomprehensible jargon we use to describe medical articles and medical diagnosis. This is a frustrating fact of life and with any luck will improve within the next 200-300 years as we move away from Latin and Greek-based names.

For these "indexes", I use these links occasionally myself but having been editing them I am not too impartial about their use. I would love to hear from any editors who have used these to good end. A question that hasn't been asked at any point in the last 6+ years is are these templates actually useful. A few long-term editors agreed last TFD but I am really unsure what other users think and if actual readers use them.

If we get rid of them we should consider removing them completely, as in my experience in the dusty corners of Wikipedia outlines are either forgotten for many years and unusable for that reason, or excessively edited with links from all and sundry that they are also unusable. On the other hand I fear if we remove these links we may end up with users adding more and more navboxes again. Hoping to hear from other users, --Tom (LT) (talk) 09:06, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@Tom (LT): Thanks for keeping an open mind on this - always hard when something you have worked on is challenged. I hope that anyone who has found them useful will provide some details. In the TfD, you were the only one who did. Some people will go to a deletion debate and more or less equate "navbox" with "useful navigation tool." But is it as useful as it could be? RockMagnetist(talk) 15:52, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As for delete vs. outline, I lean towards delete; I just provided the demo as an option to consider. Also, I don't think the way to prevent users from adding navboxes is to add meta-navboxes; that just changes the baseline for template creep, and navboxes get added anyway, as the Nervous system example demonstrated. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:57, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I think that considering specific examples will make it easier to think about these templates. So I will do two more case studies from the TfD. I will describe my experience as I try the exercises:

  • Case study 2: A student has an exam on the nervous system. The subnav provides links to all the relevant anatomical templates for the said area.
    The first thing that occurs to me is, if I were facing an exam, would I rely on Wikipedia instead of a textbook? But, pressing on, I go to Nervous system. I look at the table of contents and see Anatomy in vertebrates. This section has a link at the top to List of nerves of the human body, and it has a discussion in prose of how the nervous system is organized. Possibly good enough already. Now I go to the bottom of the page, and see {{Nervous system}}. This has a nice, compact list of articles on the main parts of the nervous system. Below it are {{Central nervous system navs}} and {{Peripheral nervous system navs}}, with links to templates on many of the same subjects. However, if I want to know more about the meninges, I have already clicked on the article link. I know that meninges is different from meninges; but that would never occur to a first-time user. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:18, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Case study 3: A lay reader wants to know about what bones we have in our body, but don't know their names. The templates provide easy links to said bones by body part.
    I start at bone. A quick scan gives me the impression that this article is mainly about the structure, development and so on of individual bones. I try human anatomy, which redirects me to human body. Browsing this, I see a link to human skeleton (now why didn't I think of that immediately?). This has the section Divisions, with a few lines each for Axial skeleton and Appendicular skeleton. Now, I must admit, this is a bit slow, so I try going to the bottom. I find a box, "Bones of the human skeleton", with 7 templates inside of it, all but one of them massive and multi-leveled, and all of them transcluding {{Bone and cartilage navs}}, which in turn links to all of them. Just think of the reduction in complexity if {{Bone and cartilage navs}} were here instead of all those templates! But {{Bones of skeleton}} without any subnav might be even better.
At this point it occurs to me that I went to the navboxes earlier than usual because I am discussing them. Normally, I would look at See also first. So I go there, and what do I find? List of bones of the human skeleton. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:45, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I must be crazy, because I don't find this system terribly difficult to navigate, and these little user vignettes read to me like scripts for the wiki-equivalent of those late-night infomercials involving someone who sets their kitchen on fire trying to boil water. I don't object to simplifying it - it's certainly unusual to have meta-templates that navigate between other templates - but converting to outlines doesn't really appeal to me; those things are un-watched and un-edited backwaters, and the vertical-ness makes them harder to read than the condensed navbox format. Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:10, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt the more you use this system, the better you get at using them - and the less you need them. Each of the indexes has a doc page that says "These are geared towards lay readers". I am an appropriate person to test them on - lots of experience with Wikipedia, but not a lot of medical knowledge. And the thing to note about my case studies is that I can get the information I'm looking for very quickly if I ignore the navboxes. Hardly setting the kitchen on fire. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:24, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I don't really use this system often - I work on molecular biology articles; anything as big as a bone is beyond me ;) - though I did look into it when one of these was TfD'd awhile ago. No doubt the navbox pileup at the bottom of an article like human skeleton is a problem, but I'm not sure what the best solution is. Separate "outline"-type articles with navbox-y formatting maybe. Opabinia regalis (talk) 17:43, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The truth is, the above scenarios are how I would search for information if I started within Wikipedia (because otherwise navboxes couldn't possibly help me). But that's not how I really look for information. I would go to Google and do the following (by case number):
  1. Search heart disease treatment. No Wikipedia pages in sight, so maybe I would go to the Mayo Clinic page.
  2. Search anatomy of nervous system. No Wikipedia pages in sight, so just for the heck of it I restrict it to en.wikipedia.org. The first hit is for Nervous system, and I follow "Jump to anatomy in vertebrates", which lands me at the section by that name, where the link to List of nerves of the human body is at the top.
  3. Search bones in the human body. The top link is to List of bones of the human skeleton.
That was 30 seconds or less for each search. I think the moral of this story is, structure the articles well and you won't need navboxes at all. RockMagnetist(talk) 17:44, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On the question of usefulness: They are doubtless "useful" for de-WP:ORPHANing articles. They may be used significantly by a small number of editors. Whether anyone else uses them is unclear. It seems unlikely that typical readers use them very much. As I said above, they're systematically stripped out of the mobile version. You can't see them, and therefore you can't use them (even if you go to the navbox's page in the template namespace) there. Therefore we can guarantee that 30% of readers aren't using them, and despite these being invisible on the mobile site for a very long time, I have never heard a complaint about their absence. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:39, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
So what is your recommendation? Get rid of all the templates? Leave them as they are because it doesn't matter? Or something else? RockMagnetist(talk) 21:49, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

@RockMagnetist I think you are conflating three issues, all quite relevant:

  1. We do not name articles in a way that is easy for readers to understand
  2. We use way too many navboxes in our articles
  3. Our navboxes are overburned by these internal link boxes.

Issues (1) and (2) won't be solved in this discussion but will be by editing away -- and I've opened a thread at the talk page of Wikiproject Anatomy to see what we can do there, also. With regard to these internal navboxes, what would you think about moving them to template space or template documentation? You may a good point as to why they may not be used by readers, but they are supremely useful in part because they help keep track of our project's numerous templates, ensuring that we don't start to have duplicate ones. So one option would be to move them all so they only display in template namespace. This will mean readers are no longer confused. An alternate option would be to include all of the 'index' templates as collapsed, so that only a line "Index of..." is displayed and users can open it at will. --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:59, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Conflating these issues is hard to avoid in a case study. I think the naming is not a big problem because the redirects work well. Article content may be more of an issue (more below). Absolutely you use too many navboxes and the navboxes have too many links. I'm not sure what you mean by moving the internal navboxes to template space, since they are already there; but moving them to documentation pages is a good idea. RockMagnetist(talk) 23:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
And now I would like to say something positive about the internal navboxes. They are well organized; I like the division into description, disease and treatment. Some of the articles like Cardiovascular disease would benefit from closer alignment with their content. And, converted into regular templates linking to articles, they would be an improvement over some of the existing regular templates. RockMagnetist(talk) 23:55, 11 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
While a navbox may appear redundant to a category or list, it is not the same as a single category, a group of categories under one parent category, or a list. Each section of a navbox may seem to be a carbon copy of a category or list, but that is not always the case, and in many cases, the navbox "categories" do not reflect Wikipedia's custom for creating and organizing categories or for lists.,,,The success of navboxes can be seen in this (uncontrolled) study of this navbox, which has shown that in the month following its creation, readership of the articles contained within increased by 8.5% (an average of 406 views per article) and editing of these pages increased by 37% from the month prior to its creation [2]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:44, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
We already agree that some form of navbox is useful. RockMagnetist(talk) 02:40, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Reading through the above, I'm not convinced you've really shown a convincing reason or consensus for a change. I've minimised the extraneous comments in your case studies to illustrate this. I think unfortunately most of your frustration emerges from the way we've structured our articles. I just don't see a way to solve the problem you pose (how to keep navboxes small and compact in an up-to-date way) without using a system like this to ensure that the templates are compartmentalised. Perhaps "Index of..." could be renamed to be even more clear, or a small (?) question mark could be provided with an explanation for lay users to explain what these subnavs do.--Tom (LT) (talk) 10:21, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Case study 1: A person is diagnosed with heart disease and wants to know more about treatment and relevant anatomy. The subnavs provide easy links.
To see how this works, I go to Heart disease, which redirects to Cardiovascular disease. At the bottom of the page, I see four navboxes. If I expand the second ({{Heart diseases}}), I see a three-layered hierarchy of link groups. Seeing something like that, my inclination would be to abandon the navbox and try a search (see below). But suppose I carry on, wading through dozens of terms like Monckeberg's arteriosclerosis, and eventually make it down to a box titled "Index of the circulatory system" (which is {{Vascular navs}}). And there I see a link to anatomy and a group devoted to treatment. If I click on "Anatomy" I get another template, {{Arteries and veins}}, with another two-level hierarchy and {{Vascular navs}} transcluded at the bottom. At which point only the fear of death would keep me from giving up.
  • Case study 2: A student has an exam on the nervous system. The subnav provides links to all the relevant anatomical templates for the said area.
    The first thing that occurs to me is, if I were facing an exam, would I rely on Wikipedia instead of a textbook? But, pressing on, I go to Nervous system. I look at the table of contents and see Anatomy in vertebrates. This section has a link at the top to List of nerves of the human body, and it has a discussion in prose of how the nervous system is organized. Possibly good enough already. Now I go to the bottom of the page, and see {{Nervous system}}. This has a nice, compact list of articles on the main parts of the nervous system. Below it are {{Central nervous system navs}} and {{Peripheral nervous system navs}}, with links to templates on many of the same subjects. However, if I want to know more about the meninges, I have already clicked on the article link. I know that meninges is different from meninges; but that would never occur to a first-time user. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:18, 10 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Case study 3: A lay reader wants to know about what bones we have in our body, but don't know their names. The templates provide easy links to said bones by body part.
    I start at bone. A quick scan gives me the impression that this article is mainly about the structure, development and so on of individual bones. I try human anatomy, which redirects me to human body. Browsing this, I see a link to human skeleton (now why didn't I think of that immediately?). This has the section Divisions, with a few lines each for Axial skeleton and Appendicular skeleton. Now, I must admit, this is a bit slow, so I try going to the bottom. I find a box, "Bones of the human skeleton", with 7 templates inside of it, all but one of them massive and multi-leveled, and all of them transcluding {{Bone and cartilage navs}}, which in turn links to all of them. Just think of the reduction in complexity if {{Bone and cartilage navs}} were here instead of all those templates! But {{Bones of skeleton}} without any subnav might be even better.
So basically you're saying, skip the article and the regular navboxes and go straight to the index boxes? All the rest is "extraneous"? I think you're having a hard time visualizing how a first-time user might approach this page because you have been developing these indices for so long. One view of how regular users behave is to look at page views, because if you use a link in an index box, you actually visit a navbox. In the last 30 days, 29,049 readers visited Cardiovascular disease, 492 visited {{Arteries and veins}}. And the latter is linked to over 50 other navboxes through {{Vascular navs}}. One of the links in {{Arteries and veins}} is to Venous plexus. This is a stub with no references, yet it got 781 hits in the last 30 days. Unfortunately, I know of no way to determine how often a regular navbox is used because readers can click one of its links without visiting it. But clearly it's the index boxes that are extraneous. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:19, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
On second thought, I can get some idea of how often the regular navboxes are used because a lot of them duplicate lists. For example, {{Heart diseases}} duplicates a lot of List of ICD-9 codes 390–459: diseases of the circulatory system, which got 4430 hits in the last 30 days, and List of ICD-9 codes 760–779: certain conditions originating in the perinatal period, which got 2606 hits. And they got all of these hits even though most of the links to them are through navboxes. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:51, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually I'm equally confused about what you're saying, RockMagnetist. You identify that index boxes are confusing. Yet you also lump together a whole lot of other concerns about they way our articles are linked. My point is that removing index boxes won't fix any of those other concerns. So by fixing index boxes (or removing them) we get rid of any of the problems in clear text. However the preceding problems (which I have struck through) remain. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
These things you refer to as "conflating" and "lumping together" are what I call "context". The purpose of all those numbers is to compare the use of an index box with the use of links from the article itself and in regular navboxes. The answer is not definitive, but it does seem to suggest that index boxes are used very little compared to the alternatives. However, I think it is worth exploring the usefulness of certain groups of regular navboxes as well. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:09, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Here is another statistic that might be easier to understand: {{Vascular navs}} links to 32 navboxes. Collectively, in the past 30 days, they were visited 13,856 times.[1] The index box appears in about 1600 articles. Thus, it was used an average of 9 times per article over 30 days.[2] At the other end, I would estimate the navboxes have a total of about 1000 links, so on average each target article was accessed about 13 times. Is it really necessary to gather more information? RockMagnetist(talk) 02:12, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

References

  1. ^ for an average of 433 per navbox (the min was 142 and the max was 676 - a remarkably tight grouping).
  2. ^ What we don't know is how many of the people who arrived at the navboxes actually made use of them

Note that the above only provides information on access to the navboxes through the index template. The navboxes themselves might be useful because they are transcluded in each of the articles that they are linked to. That is the kind of thing that could be studied by the method described below. RockMagnetist(talk) 07:09, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Decision point

Okay, guys: How serious about this are we? I see some comments here that may degenerate into my-link-is-better-than-your-link, but the fact is that nobody has the overall data.

There is a kludge that will let us see how often links in navboxes get clicked on, if we really want the information. It won't let us separate search engine spiders from real humans, but it will let us get page view counts for clicking a link in a navbox vs other ways of reaching the page. It's not elegant, and it's got some small WP:PERF costs, so we shouldn't do this on a grand scale, but we could certainly try it out for a small number of links in one or two navboxes.

Is that interesting to you? More to the point, is it interesting enough to two or three editors to do the work involved? It'll take an hour to pick templates and links, an hour to set it up, a few minutes each day to check the links for problems/potential corruption, and (after a few weeks or so) an hour to revert the whole setup, and an hour or two to collect the data and write it up. Whether anybody uses these navboxes would actually be a useful thing for WPMED to know, and the results would probably be more or less applicable to all subject areas at the English Wikipedia. But it takes sustained work over the course of a month, and there's no point in starting if the project won't be finished. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:10, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I like that. It would be interesting to gather some information. I can't guarantee that I could be involved the whole way - next month, real life will be pretty demanding for me. I think the experiment should be carefully designed, with links to closely related and more remote articles. Here is one possible set:
One article that is mentioned frequently in Cardiovascular disease: e.g., Vascular disease
One that is not mentioned as such but is in at least one regular navbox: e.g., Mitral stenosis
One that is not linked in the article or any regular navbox: e.g., Superficial vein
For a bonus, we might want to look at connections between these lower-level articles.
A possible control experiment: replace any templates that duplicate lists by links to the lists in ‘’See also’’:
RockMagnetist(talk) 05:22, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There's no rush. If somebody else volunteers to help out (always good to have more than one editor involved, because real life happens) and nobody objects, then we could start by picking a couple of navboxes and targets, which will save us some time when we actually want to do it. We could make a list of things to test and how to do it at a page like WP:WikiProject Medicine/Navboxes.
I kind of like the idea of using an actual random number generator to pick which links we'll test in the navbox. We can change some links and not others. Does that sound good to you? WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:25, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, a separate page sounds like a good idea. I think random choices are good in principle, but some thought still needs to go in the implementation. I think it's best to have controls in the experiment, which is why I suggested comparing different ways of getting between the same pair of articles. Also, since the purpose of index boxes (as I see it) is to provide links that are not in the article or regular navboxes, we should compare links from each of the three groups I described above. Another control experiment is my idea of replacing navboxes by lists and monitoring them for the same length of time as the navboxes. RockMagnetist(talk) 14:57, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'd be very interested in a data-driven approach that may have implications for our navboxes in general. Template_talk:Medicine_navs is a place we've been centralising discussion about this and may be a suitable hub while we investigate what impact (if any) these index boxes have. --Tom (LT) (talk) 23:43, 26 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It's not very active. I tried to ask a question about eponymous categories and got zero response. RockMagnetist(talk) 01:02, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
[3] yes its a little slow--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:15, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It might be slow, but it'll be higher traffic than a brand-new page. Why don't we copy this whole thing over there, and make some plans? We can always post reminders here about it if we need extra input. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:23, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Good point. I think it should be prefaced by a set of proposals, so we know what we're trying to find out. I will do that in a new subsection. RockMagnetist(talk) 15:53, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proposals

Here are my suggestions for how to fix the template creep in the articles covered by this project. They go beyond my initial point about index templates, but that is necessary because the index templates themselves were designed to fix template creep. I think the suggestions below are consistent with the principles behind good navbox design.

  1. Delete the index templates or move them to project space.
  2. Before deleting each index template, examine each navbox that they link to, and do two things:
    1. Eliminate excessive levels of hierarchy (for example, in {{Arteries of head and neck}}, go no deeper than the link to Maxillary artery).
    2. Make sure that each navbox is transcluded on the remaining pages that it links to and only those pages.
  3. If there are still a lot of boxes on some pages, for each page see if the article subject is closely related to the other subjects in each navbox (i.e., the articles are likely to link to each other directly). If not, take them off the template.

I would also recommend removing those templates that duplicate lists of ICD-9 codes and ICD-10 codes and replace them by links to those lists in See also. In general, these templates are long and intricate, and the information is better presented as a list. RockMagnetist(talk) 16:09, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Engaging academic experts in creation of WP content

I am unsure of the "right" solution for engaging academic experts in WP content creation. Obviously, the best approach will be multi-faceted, but as a physician-professor I'm not sure that directly editing WP is the best way for me to contribute. If that seems anathema, please tell me why after noting the following:

  1. The standards for sourcing biomedical academic manuscripts (e.g. journal articles and book chapters) differ significantly from WP standards (e.g. MEDRS). While this difference can be learned and is actually a helpful perspective (in my estimation), it's a barrier for new WP editors who have experience as academic authors.
  2. Biomedical experts are expected to synthesize prior work (with their own in primary reports) to generate new knowledge. This is as it should be, but is another important difference from editing WP.
  3. The forces that drive academics to create secondary sources (i.e. MEDRS) are currently almost arbitrary - an invitation to write a chapter of a textbook that will be ridiculously expensive (and therefore of limited distribution), a tenuous decision to write a review article (perhaps driven by a perceived misunderstanding in the field, or the need for a trainee to have a mentored writing exercise). I speak from experience on this.

Consider an alternative approach (leveraging that last point):

  1. Convey to experts WP editors' need for MEDRS addressing particular topics (e.g. create a sortable list).
  2. Encourage experts to publish in open-access, rigorously peer-reviewed journal (or similar medium) with WP-friendly CC licensing. Note that as an author it may cost me in excess of US$3000 to make a paper open access in a first- or second-tier journal.
  3. Consider creating/supporting a new open-access, rigorously peer-reviewed journal to serve these purposes.

If I (and my colleagues) spent writing energies doing this, it would advance WP's goals in a qualitatively-different way from direct involvement as a WP editor (the two are not mutually exclusive, of course). In a peer-reviewed publication I would be able to use my expertise, modulated by co-authors and peer referees, to make clear statements that could find their way into WP. Similarly, I would have motivation to make high-quality vector graphics that could be re-used in WP. These are just some off-the-cuff thoughts that I've been mulling for a possible discussion at the upcoming WikiConference in Washington DC. Perhaps something like this has been proposed before (and shot down, perhaps)? Stuart Ray soupvector (talk) 20:39, 14 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The journal (#3) has certainly been proposed. Really the problem is not the availability of sources (we have unfilled offers of access to (some) Elsevier and BMJ content for example), but a shortage of editors with the knowledge to understand the sources and (much easier to accquire) the Wikipedian experience to write them up in articles for a wide general readership. Suggestions as to sources (#1) on talk pages are helpful, but don't think that there's a pool of editors who will fall on them & write them up. There isn't. The first factors you mention are true, but can be relatively easily overcome - the different style required for a broad audience is actually probably more difficult (or so many of our articles suggest). If you already have the knowledge, improving, correcting and updating articles within your area of expertise is probably the most efficient way to help. Johnbod (talk) 00:25, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The journal has been proposed but only would publish the 61 Project Medicine Featured Articles, according to the description. Sixty one articles does not a journal make. The guidelines for a WP article to be included in such an open access journal would have to be altered OR a massive effort to improve med articles to FA status would have to begin. It is difficult enough to get an article to GA status in Project Medicine. Soupvector I would love to see your ideas take hold and come to be. I don't think I will be able to make the conference in Washington D.C. only because it costs so much to find lodging. Let's keep this discussion going and feel free to take it to my talk page-only because this talk page is so busy this conversation will soon be archived. Best Regards,
  Bfpage |leave a message  14:51, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is not about re-publishing WP articles in journals. It the opposite - it is about getting review articles written that we want or need, so we have sources on which to base WP articles. Soupvector says that experts (doctors, scientists) generate reviews randomly/haphazardly and it costs them money if they publish the review in an open access journal. What soupvector is proposing is that Wikipedia somehow sponsor/drive/commission/promote the writing of reviews that it needs written to keep medical articles up to date. My take on the suggestion, is that I am uncomfortable with it. There is something cart-driving-the-horse about it. Jytdog (talk) 16:49, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I don't generally think that we need reviews on whole subjects; outside of the (jillions of) rare diseases and experimental treatments, we can usually find something on what we need. But we fairly often need a source that explicitly states some fact that experts consider too WP:BLUE to bother writing down—especially when we're dealing with a MEDRS warrior or POV pusher who is demanding a recent review article in a decent journal for not-exactly biomedical things, like how long a surgery usually takes or how satisfied patients are with the treatment or something like that. But these are idiosyncratic things, and there's no good way to predict what we might find handy. As a systematic issue, though, reviews that "compare and contrast" actual practice in different countries is very helpful. An open-access source that says, "In Rich Country, when we suspect malaria, we run all these tests, we treat with X and Y, we test again (and ignore the patient's social situation entirely), but in Poor Country, when we suspect malaria, we just tell them to go down to the corner store and pick up some anti-malarials over the counter (and then make sure that there's an auntie nearby to take care of the house and kids this week)" is incredibly important. A lot of review articles (especially systematic reviews) talk about what ought to be done in developed countries. Finding good sources about actual reality, in all of its breadth and diversity, is harder than finding good sources about the ideal treatment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:09, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Heck yes WAID reliable sources that discuss actual clinical practice would be amazing; the compare and contrast b/n rich/poor countries would be amazinger. In my experience, it is not easy to find good, current sources describing what practitioners and sick people actually do most commonly, for many conditions. Jytdog (talk) 16:31, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As for option 3, a variant thereof exists as Topic Pages in PLOS Computational Biology. I have discussed with PLOS an expansion of this scheme to their other journals, and they are open to it but need someone to drive it. Perhaps soupvector could drive this for PLOS Medicine? -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:38, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This seems like a fantastic idea. Let's let the discussion mature a bit, but I'm game (though I might be more inclined toward PLoSPathogens). Intriguing. soupvector (talk) 00:29, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
it does seem like an idea(but more opinions should be sought)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:56, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
PLOS Pathogens should work too. Do you have an article in mind that's missing here or just a stub? -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 10:27, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As just mentioned in the section below, annotating Wikipedia articles by way of Hypothes.is may be worth a thought in terms of getting expert feedback. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:35, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have been talking a bit with some people at PLOS Medicine about a wiki-collaboration. I am especially interested in PLOS's continued outstanding success of integrating with reddit to convene scientific conversations of hundreds of participants multiple times weekly, and to format, document, and archive the discussion with a doi on it. I think history is being made with this project of theirs, and I wish Wiki could be a part of it merely by being a partner to be sure to include the paper discussed in a relevant Wikipedia article. I wrote some about this at meta:Grants:IdeaLab/Reddit Science AMA + PLOS + Wikimedia. A couple of weeks ago I met in person with a PLOS staffer doing communications outreach and discussed doing more. He is open to hearing proposals and I am still thinking of what to suggest. If anyone wants to talk through something with me then consider emailing me for a video chat. Personally - considering that the Wikimedia Foundation invests money in partnerships with closed access journals, I would like to see a WMF investment in paid staff - perhaps in PLOS' own nonprofit open access office - to encourage them to develop their relationship with the Wikimedia community and make for more seamless conversation between us. In the long term Wikipedia and PLOS must have a close relationship as leading nonprofit publishers. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I can see advantages to making a list of topics for this purpose, as long as a few safeguards are in place. So e.g. I'd say that entries should be subject to consensus, they shouldn't be too specific (like a request for reporting of a specific fact or a specific research result), there shouldn't already be reviews available, and there should be enough primary literature available to support one - otherwise, we might end up promoting biased or low-quality sources. The list could double as a collection of topics for which editors could search for MEDRS that others may have missed. I also wouldn't prioritize open-access status over journal quality, since a few editors will still be able to access the articles, and the increased weight would let us include more information. Sunrise (talk) 00:01, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
having given it further thought I would go with My take on the suggestion, is that I am uncomfortable with it. There is something cart-driving-the-horse about it [4] thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:46, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

BMJ is offering us an expert-review service

Fiona Godlee, editor-in-chief, and Peter Ashman, Publishing Director of BMJ (the company owned by the British Medical Association that publishes a suite of first-tier journals including The BMJ) have offered to put their best reviewers on the job if we would like them to check our medical articles for accuracy, up-to-dateness, completeness and neutrality (due weight). There's no rush. (I've told them I think we'd be lucky to submit ten articles in the first year.) So, if you've got an article that has recently passed the Featured Article or Featured Article Review process, and you'd like it rigorously peer-reviewed, let me know. (Peter mentioned their list of reviewers is particularly strong in the fields of rheumatic diseases, gastroenterology and sports medicine but any medical topic should be fine.)

Assuming we can get it past the community, there will be a badge at the top of the current version of any reviewed article, pointing the reader to the version that passed peer-review, and that reviewed version will have a doi and will be a WP:RS (and may well be PubMed indexed - though discussions on that haven't yet begun). --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 01:56, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks Anthony, this is a great offer, which I know you've put a lot of work into over a long period! Well done, and thanks to the BMJ too. Johnbod (talk) 03:10, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, great, Anthony! I am exploring the possibility of using Hypothes.is as a way to provide feedback (example), which a group of climate change experts has recently applied to news articles in their field. I spoke with them, and they are willing to give Wikipedia articles a try, so I have notified WP:ENV of that. Hypothesis said they would be interested in helping with similar review efforts in other fields, including medicine, so perhaps we can combine or complement this with the BMJ initiative. -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 23:05, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
both (BMI and h.) ideas seem good(however more opinions should be sought)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:42, 15 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I like the annotation idea (e.g. using hypothes.is; reminds me of the defunct Third Voice that I thought was cool at the time) and I just created an account there, and the overlay on WP is nice, but I don't see a way out-of-the-box to make those profiles authoritative or the annotations sufficiently visible to be compelling as peer review. As is, it doesn't seem like a big leap from the Talk page. -- soupvector (talk) 00:15, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Hypothesis is integrating annotations with ORCIDs, which will be one way of assessing authority. The current plug in requires activation, but if it is embedded in the Wiki, then that won't be necessary. I think the larger question is how can annotations be used to improve the quality of Wikipedia articles. In my view, annotation is an immediate and quick way for individuals to add knowledge to a page. It takes me a few seconds to note a typo, for example; a little longer to add a reference. These same individuals, in my domain biomedical researchers, may not be willing to go in and actively edit an article, which requires a steeper learning curve but might be willing to give feedback by Hypothesis. In-line annotation is incredibly useful as you can target the specific phrase or sentence that needs attention. A talk page is removed from the article and requires more effort to add information; annotation involves highlighting and adding short bits of text. Those used to working with Wikis can often forget that the majority of researchers don't do this regularly and there is a definite activation barrier). Editors would then have the option of incorporating the feedback or not. So my experience as a researcher (who, in full disclosure,now works for Hypothesis) is that it is a lighter weight, more efficient means to solicit feedback from experts. I think it is definitely worth testing as at least in my domain (neuroscience), it has been difficult to get experts to go in and edit Wiki pages. Memartone (talk) 17:11, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Perhaps this is off-topic here (say so and I'll go away) but for a physician-scientist like me, hypothes.is may be a non-starter - the browser extension requires access to all sites I visit, which would be disallowed in my clinical environment. Theoretically this could be something that gets relegated to computers or browsers from which I would never look at clinical content in a browser, but practically this isn't something I'll sign up to track. Not sure how to crack that nut - maybe non-physician experts will agree to those terms (but I'm not sure they should). soupvector (talk) 20:53, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The browser extension isn't required. There is a proxy service which will inject the annotation layer on to any open page. For instance, this one: [5]. The proxy is available via the Hypothes.is home page, or you can just edit the URL by hand. Also, we have a bookmarklet available there which does not have access to all your browsing. For the record, with the extension, we do not record, save or track that data even though we have access to it. (Full disclosure, I work at Hypothes.is) dano5050 (talk) 17:27, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is a really interesting idea; assigning DOIs to specific revisions (by crossref?) would be a big step forward in integrating Wikipedia into the academic literature. I don't have much investment in the types of articles BMJ would review, but I like the idea of working in this direction - pointing the citation to Wikipedia - as an alternative PLoS approach of hosting static copies on their own site as citable "topic pages". How is this going to work - will the text of the reviews be publicly available, or the changes made in response to the reviews annotated somehow? Will the reviewers' identities be known? Opabinia regalis (talk) 01:14, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Opabinia regalis, the review will happen on the article's talk page as a conversation between the reviewers and the authors. The reviewers will use their own names and will have affiliations and potential COIs listed on their user page. I'm hoping we'll have a lead reviewer who is a scholar in the E.M. Forster sense, who "masters all [of the subject's] facts and the leading facts of the subjects neighbouring", to assess the article's neutrality and comprehensiveness, and enough specialists in the sub-topics to be reasonably confident about its accuracy and up-to-datenes. We'll somehow highlight who is endorsing which sections. And yes, Geoffrey Bilder from CrossRef said he'd help us with the DOI when we're ready.
Daniel, I'll look more carefully at the Hypothesis.is proposal later tonight. I confess I was so jet-lagged during the recent Wikipedia Science Conference that I was struggling to take in all the new ideas coming at me. The annotation idea is hot, though, and I'd like to see that or something like it built into Wikipedia for all "post-publication review".
I can envision lots of off-wiki entities wanting to review our stuff in all sorts of knowledge domains. We'll need to evolve a set of policies on whose endorsed versions we point our readers to. But there is plenty of time for that discussion and, for now, I'd prefer that we let a thousand flowers bloom and see how they develop. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:55, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks, I like the idea of preserving the review as a dialogue - the current open-review efforts in journals still seem a little stilted to me. (See e.g. the F1000 Research model.) I've always been very resistant to the idea of importing "authoritativeness" onto Wikipedia by soliciting endorsements from specific identified academics; I think academic publishing is already too reliant on trading on individual people's reputations - a feature that brings with it all kinds of systemic-bias problems. But my opinions on the matter mostly derive from basic science, not anything anywhere in throwing distance of the clinic, and from being involved in various aspects of the open-access debate. I'm really interested to see how this goes. Opabinia regalis (talk) 19:56, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • How about if as a first step we try Parkinson's disease? The editor who did the main work in bringing it to FA status, Garrondo (talk · contribs), has not been around for quite a while, but I have been involved with the article the whole time and would be happy to interact with a reviewer as needed. One thing I would like to see is whether their reviewers are able to work according to Wikipedia's criteria rather than the usual criteria for a journal article, and this seems like a good test case for finding out. Looie496 (talk) 12:33, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looie496, absolutely. Any article that has recently passed the Featured Article or Featured Article Review process and is about diseases or treatments will be fine, I think. Somebody at the conference last week (I'm sorry I can't remember who) asked if we'd please consider Malaria, so if anyone's interested in that, please work on it.
I and BMJ will be giving them clear, concise guidelines, but I gather peer-reviewers "never" read the guidelines, so yes, it'll be interesting to see how those discussions go. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:52, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Parkinson's article passed in 2011. I don't know if that counts as recent, but it has been pretty rigorously maintained, and has the advantage that it is ready to go right now. Looie496 (talk) 13:05, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
OK, if you're confident about its up-to-dateness. I'll give it a bit of a scan over the next couple of days and get back to you here. I've had an email from an editor proposing an article that passed FA fairly recently, which I'm looking at just now. So this is all happening much quicker than I expected. Thank you both. I'm much relieved. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 13:20, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I just reached out to a group of malaria experts to see whether they would be willing to make suggestions or contribute to the Malaria article - will circle back when I have responses (and I'll try to ensure that this doesn't become a mess of newbie changes to an already-good article, but rather a clearly-communicated endeavor compliant with WP guidance). This should not interfere but rather enhance any effort to have BMJ help review downstream. -- soupvector (talk) 13:48, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
That is exactly what we're hoping to engender here: topic experts working up articles in their field and Wikipedia experts guiding them through our MOS and policy maze, ending in a review by highly-regarded colleagues, and a doi. Thank you, soupvector. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 15:17, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It was me who had suggested Malaria, for various reasons. Glad to see things moving forward so quickly, soupvector! -- Daniel Mietchen (talk) 20:30, 16 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
 :o) That's the jet-lag. Sorry Daniel. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 02:04, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looie496, I'm happy to submit Parkinson's disease and have pointed Peter to it. We have a few things to make up yet, but will keep you informed. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:52, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Great! Looie496 (talk) 18:25, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Excellent initiative. PD should probably be updated before we submit it though if it passed on 2011.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:20, 19 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Lots of criticism and improvement (if warranted) of Parkinson's disease before the review begins would be very much appreciated. (Welcome back, James.) --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 07:37, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Looie, today I had a meeting with Peter Ashman and Josie Breen - we're still talking about the reviewer guidelines and the process. Regarding the latter, it looks like being a fairly unstructured conversation on the talk page. Before that conversation begins, I'll give the reviewers an introduction to policy and wiki markup and create a user page for them listing their relevant affiliations and possible conflicts of interest.

Peter and Josie are approaching the editor-in-chief of the relavent journal in their suite for advice but they will choose the reviewers..

They'd like to do one article at a time and will start with Parkinson's disease. I'll keep you informed. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 12:07, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Cool. I'll make a detailed pass through the article in the near future to make sure everything is review-ready -- of course others are also encouraged to go over it. Looie496 (talk) 12:14, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
will look as well--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:26, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Magnetogenetics

Can editors here please look at this new article? I fully protected it to stop the edit warring but the sources may not meet WP:MEDRS. --NeilN talk to me 13:32, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

reference #1 is a comment/news [6] and #3 is abstract only [7] (plus the "advantages section" has no references)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:48, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I do have access to Sciencedirect and I can't find anything about magnetism in that third reference.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 14:30, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is there consensus for specific edits now, or do editors want to wait for protection to expire? --NeilN talk to me 15:44, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
it could go either way, its odd that editors on that page are very recent accounts([8] [9])?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:59, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
No doubt there's some COI involved. Added notes to both editors' talk pages. --NeilN talk to me 16:09, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hi. It's the first time I created a Wiki page. I was hoping to do some better research so I can polish the details. It appears to me Abs2017 holds some grudge against the author of the first reference? Qisq2 (talk) 16:40, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I believe both you and your associate should answer the relevant COI questions at each talk page ([10][11] placed by NeilN talk to me thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:51, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Nice catch, shutting that down. The article should be deleted/redirected to optogenetics. it is not ripe yet. (two hits on "magenetogenetics" in pubmed, neither of them reviews). article appears to be written by someone violating WP:SELFCITE, and it appears to be edit warred over by another academic trying to claim credit for the work, who is in any case violating WP:BLPCOI which is policy. Jytdog (talk) 17:02, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Well, I have only read reference #1 (2010) and #2 (2015) on the topic so far. It doesn't seem to be a hot topic, but it's definitely not new either. Just found another reference by some different guys [12].Qisq2 (talk) 18:36, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yeah it's fine.Qisq2 (talk) 22:49, 17 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Done, thanks. --NeilN talk to me 03:28, 18 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
NeilN thank you--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:32, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Draft:Dr Franklin Lowe

Hello medical experts! This draft about a doctor has claims to notability, but I am having trouble confirming them. Is this a notable subject, or should it be deleted as a stale draft?—Anne Delong (talk) 14:27, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

notable per Wikipedia:Notability--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:15, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The draft reads too much like a CV, and the user who created it Claireawheeler has a grand total of 10 edits, of which all are on the draft. CFCF 💌 📧 13:10, 21 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, Ozzie10aaaa and CFCF, I have postponed its deletion, and started moving it away from its resumé-like style. My descriptions are likely too simplistic, though; someone may want to reword. —Anne Delong (talk) 03:49, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Everymorning, can you please link to the Google Scholar report? I am having trouble finding it.—Anne Delong (talk) 03:57, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Here. You'll have to figure out his h-index by counting unless, as I do, you have this tool installed on your browser. Everymorning (talk) 15:43, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
very useful tool for any article[16]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:28, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Stroke recovery

Stroke recovery is a bit of a mess (IMO). Is it still B-class? (last assessed in 2008 by @WhatamIdoing:) Would copyeditting be enough or does it need expert input? Little pob (talk) 13:12, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

the placement of the references is unusualHelp:Referencing_for_beginners--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:40, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
It looks like someone merged together a bunch of small pieces. User:Little pob, copyediting (including wholesale restructuring) would be an important improvement, and it would probably make it easier to get expert input. The assessment level is not entirely wrong, but I would probably rate it as C-class (which didn't exist back then) on the grounds that the ==Lateral medullary syndrome== section has no inline citations (only WP:General references). WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:49, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
agree--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dua's layer

Please keep an eye on Dua's layer: [17] - üser:Altenmann >t 18:00, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ping Altenmann, moved from WT:MEDRSCFCF 💌 📧 16:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

watching--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:56, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

FODMAP

The FODMAP diet is receiving media attention, but the article itself is chock full of lousy primary sources claiming the diet works for irritable bowel syndrome sufferers. Please lend a hand. Abductive (reasoning) 18:39, 20 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Ping Abductive, moved from WT:MEDRSCFCF 💌 📧 16:22, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Eek, nearly 1,000 views a day! Johnbod (talk) 16:37, 22 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Actually pretty good evidence for efficacy for IBS /FGID in high quality trials in good journals covered in systematic review and and meta-analysis. I have added these. Jrfw51 (talk) 20:12, 23 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
tagged reference #13 (per MEDRS)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:02, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox type for norepinephrine

Norepinephrine structure

Comments are solicited at Talk:Norepinephrine#Drug box or "infobox neurotransmitter"?. Looie496 (talk) 13:35, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Great to see this posted. Agree it is an important discussion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:48, 24 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Drying (food)

Drying (food) is rather a mess. But, looking on the bright side, it seems not to attract the same level of controversy, pseudo-science or promotionalism as most other nutrition-related topics. The most medical claim there is "Dehydrated grapes have been shown to be depleted in antioxidants (Vitamin C, E, ORAC) and B vitamins", which is relatively uncontroversial. Unfortunately, it's sourced to an unidentified author writing on the not-so-wonderful Yahoo! Voices. For now I've just slapped a [unreliable source?] tag on it, but I wonder if more should be done. Arthur goes shopping (talk) 08:34, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe check Google Scholar and PubMed for better sources.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 08:42, 25 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
maybe [18]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:32, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Congenital lobar emphysema

The redirect from Congenital lobar emphysema to Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease seems not to be correct. The first is a congenital/in newbornage manifesting disease often needing emergency surgery. See Orphanet Zieger M (talk) 11:24, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

COPD is usually not congenital last I checked either. Maybe CLE is a specific form of COPD but probably no more than scarlet fever is a specific form of bacterial infection.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 11:33, 27 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I agree that they aren't the same thing. I've taken a stab at the Congenital lobar emphysema article, but it's only a start that I can return to flesh out soon. soupvector (talk) 04:00, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've put the ICD-10 code as P25.0, as this is where congenital emphysema "trails" to. However, this code is also used to describe Pulmonary interstitial emphysema. If they're not relatable terms, the code choice may need input from a paediatrician with ICD-10 coding/medical billing knowledge. User talk:Little pob (talk) 08:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
[19] [20] --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:15, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Should it not better be Q33.8 Other congenital malformations of lung? Pulmonary interstitional emphysema is not congenital but aquired due to respiration techniques. (The syntax in enWP ist quite different from deWP) Zieger M (talk) 12:55, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(Re:ICD-10 discussion) I've copied the relevant replies to the article talk page for continuation. Little pob (talk) 14:03, 28 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Extremely frivolous deletion request over at Commons

This image is being sent for deletion on entirely wrong and frankly stupid grounds.

The image commons:File:Sobo 1909 260.png, which is a featured picture on Wikipedia and of exceptional quality has been nominated for deletion on grounds that the illustrators are out of this world.

commons:Commons:Deletion requests/File:Sobo 1909 260.png
  • The image was published before 1923 in the United States -> PD-US-pre-1923
  • The copyright is owned by the author of the atlas, not by the illustrators, Johannes Sobotta
  • The independent group Hathitrust as well as Google have deemed this image to be in the public domain as stated at [21].

Please comment or close the request at commons, as I was unable to do despite its non-nature. CFCF 💌 📧 00:22, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have added a comment. I recommend you not try to forcibly close deletion requests however absurd they are -- that's never a productive approach. Since the image would not be deleted until the end of the process in any case, it's best to let the process play out. Looie496 (talk) 02:19, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I didn't realize that Commons has nothing like WP:SNOWBALL for things like this, thanks for the tip.CFCF 💌 📧 12:05, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Even on en.wikipedia you should never try to "snow close" an AfD for an article you yourself created -- even if it is snowing like a blizzard. Let somebody else do it. Looie496 (talk) 19:25, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

"Frivolous" is a little unfair to the initiator of the deletion request. It might have been mistaken, but it was coherent and made in good faith. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 12:54, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

From my understanding

  1. This image is PD in the US and therefore all the WPs can use them. Commons however requires the image not only to be PD in the US but also in the first country the content was every published in.
  2. A version was published in 1904 in Germany in German and therefore some consider the 1909 US EN published version to be a derivative to which German law still applies. (not sure if that is true)
  3. If German law applies the author died 70 years ago so would most likely be PD in Germany in 2 months. However there were two illustrators who could theoretically also be authors. They do not have full names and no one knows their date of death. If they are unknown supposedly copyright ends 100 years after publication. And thus it would still be PD in Germany in 2 months.
  4. However some think a last name is sufficient for them to be "known" which would mean copyright would never expire in Germany and these images could never go on Commons. And interesting precedent may be set.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:55, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Driver's foot

Dear medical experts: Is this draft: User:Pawangangwar/sandbox about a recognized medical condition?—Anne Delong (talk) 12:02, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No evidence of such on PubMed and nothing on Google Scholar either. Not a recognized medical condition based on this I'd say. More like a colloquial term for a discomfort, I guess.Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 12:11, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've got it in both right feet. The turmeric cure works, I've seen it myself, but I'm not sure about the roasted ayurvedic herbs. -Roxy the dog™ (Resonate) 13:35, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You have two right feet? I thought that people only had two left feet.
At least three of us have right feet fore and aft: Jyt, Roxy, and I. LeadSongDog come howl! 13:56, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Is this really a "thing", or is it basically a case of foot pain caused by over-use? And how do you differentiate it from things like poor posture or plantar fasciitis? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:13, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Deleted as untouched for more than 6 months. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:47, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I see that it's been deleted now. Thanks for helping decide its fate.—Anne Delong (talk) 20:58, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Honey

Recent spate of editing on this article, and some disagreement over source quality and how to summarize. More eyes welcome. Alexbrn (talk) 17:29, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

will keep eye on--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:44, 29 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Shielding lotion

We've had an AFD, that ended in delete, now a new article has been created. It's different enough to invalidate G4, but I think it needs an eye from someone who knows anything about the topic. Thanks. Courcelles (talk) 01:52, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

will look--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:43, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Please look harder. I think the first source is not a review. In fact, there are several sources that fail WP:MEDRS. The first sentence is incoherent. It does not say what is the "complex mixtures of chemical agents". That's because it is a marketing gimmick. User:Courcelles, the article is clearly an advertisement. QuackGuru (talk) 16:17, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
If you can't figure out what brand is being promoted from the article, then it's not "clearly an advertisement". "Buy Flim Flam Futuristic if you have dry skin" is clearly an advertisement. "There's a dosage form that's used in multiple products, none of which are mentioned by name anywhere in the article" is not clearly an advertisement.
I think this is unlikely to be deleted at AFD, and especially not on the grounds previously claimed (e.g., "fails GNG", but there are a dozen journal articles cited). Therefore, we should stop worrying about it. The more relevant question is whether a Shielding lotion is the same thing as a Barrier cream. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:52, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:Dr. James Schultz might have an opinion on that question. We could WP:MERGE the two if they are sufficiently similar. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As a class of lotions, the particular ingredients of a shielding lotion will depend on the manufacturer and product. What sets a shielding lotion apart from a standard lotion or moisturizer is the fact that while a standard lotion or moisturizer coats the skin with a petroleum or wax-based substance, a shielding lotion simply binds with the dead skin cells to reinforce the exterior layer of skin cells. If you know of a more appropriate way to explain this, I'm open to suggestions. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 16:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I have taken great lengths to write this article from a neutral position. I even left out research that was conducted by manufacturers in an attempt to be informative but not promotional.
My interest in this subject is simply to bring light to an important topic that has yet to be adequately addressed in Wikipedia. As a class of lotion that has been recognized and discussed in a pretty wide range of medical journals and studies, it warrants being addressed. But as shielding lotions are a class in themselves and cannot be effectively covered in Moisturizer or Lotion, I feel it should have its own article. Again, I am all for neutrality and substantiality, so I'm always open to suggestions on improving the article. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 17:14, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
WhatamIdoing asked about barrier creams, not moisturizers. Almost all of the references in your article refer to barrier creams. "Shielding lotion" seems to be a marketing term that is rarely used in the literature: "Skin MD Natural [...] launched their lotion in social media and created interest in the phrase “shielding lotion” as a search term. [...] There are now search queries for their brand and the generic phrase “shielding lotion” in many countries in the world."[24] KateWishing (talk) 17:21, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Dr. James Schultz, do you think these are studies or WP:MEDRS compliant reviews?
Dr. James Schultz, please read my concerns again. The first sentence is poorly written because our readers do not no what the difference is. Is it intentionally vague because it is a marketing scam? QuackGuru (talk) 17:27, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
KateWishing, I hope the severe MEDRS violations will not be merged. QuackGuru (talk) 17:27, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm not overly familiar with this website. It came up in the search results when I was writing the article. The reason much of the research refers to "barrier creams" is because while shielding lotions are technically barrier creams, not all barrier creams qualify as a shielding lotion. Many barrier creams actually coat the outer layer of skin, but a shielding lotion simply reinforces the already existent outer layer of skin.Dr. James Schultz (talk) 17:33, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I would also point out that the pdf file you cited, KateWishing, mentions a blogging campaign to "popularize" the search term "Shielding Lotion", many reputable scholarly sources (not blogs) specifically use the terminology "Shielding Lotion" [1][2][3] (to name a few)Dr. James Schultz (talk) 17:38, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  1. ^ Tankovich, Nikolai. "Radiation separating shield for skin treatment." U.S. Patent Application 11/395,811
  2. ^ Pace, William E. "A benzoyl peroxide-sulfur cream for acne vulgaris." Canadian Medical Association Journal 93.6 (1965): 252.
  3. ^ Williams, D. (2005). Shielding Lotions. Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, 24(4), 181-182.
  • I'm a bit puzzled by the history. I wasn't aware of the existence of the version that was deleted, and can't look at it to see who created it, but I notice that the "Dr. James Schultz" account is brand new yet clearly has a lot of editing experience. Is this the same editor who created the earlier article? It seems very likely, and if so there is deception going on here. Let me remind "Dr. James Schultz" that undisclosed paid editing is a violation of Wikipedia's terms of use. Looie496 (talk) 17:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did not write the original article. In fact I wasn't aware that there even was a previous article until I came across the discussion for deletion. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 17:42, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My previous editing experience stems from some minor past editing experience in 2008 and my ability to look things up and read how to use templates and what not. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 17:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Courcelles has restored the history of the deleted version, which is very helpful. I notice that a Google Scholar search for "shielding lotion" (in quotes) finds hardly anything, but one thing it does find is http://www.saiompublications.com/journal/index.php/ISSN-2347-7571/article/download/516/pdf_113, which contains this illuminating passage: "For every marketer it is very important that customer is aware about his product, then only he thinks about putting the product into the consideration set of the consumer and finally purchase. Skin MD Natural used this media to increase the brand awareness. They launched their lotion in social media and created interest in the phrase 'shielding lotion' as a search term. It got huge success as there were more than 400 mommy bloggers who wrote about the product and it spread across various social media sites like Stumble Upon, curtsy and delicious." Looie496 (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proposed redirect to Barrier cream

Dr. James Schultz, do you think these are studies or WP:MEDRS compliant reviews? If my question is not answered and the page is not improved I think it is best the page is redirected soon. QuackGuru (talk) 17:49, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

QuackGuru, what are you specifically asking? The studies are relevant and valid for the reason's I already outlined. The problem with redirecting Shielding lotion to Barrier Creams is that while shielding lotions do qualify as a type of barrier cream, not all barrier creams are shielding lotions. The same reasoning applies to Moisturizers having their own page rather than being redirected to Lotion. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 17:57, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I will ask again. Are they WP:MEDRS compliant reviews[25]? QuackGuru (talk) 17:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Absolutely. U.S. National Institutes of Health is a recognized repository of clinical studies and each study is complete with results. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Studies are not reviews.[26][27] Primary sources are usually not allowed per MEDRS. This change is unsourced? QuackGuru (talk) 18:16, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
These are Clinical Studies, as the section states and there is nothing in WP:MEDRS that says they are not permitted. What it says is that when cited to substantiate a piece of information, reliable secondary sources must also be used. In this case, nothing is being substantiated by these studies. They are merely listed for informational purposes, just like adding the dosage chart and other information. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:24, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
See WP:MEDRS: "The best evidence is mainly from meta-analyses of randomized controlled trials (RCTs).[12] Systematic reviews of literature of overall good quality and consistency, addressing specific recommendation, have less reliability when they include non-randomized studies.[13]"
Please remove all the MEDRS violations including all the studies and all the unsourced text or redirect page. Thanks. QuackGuru (talk) 18:29, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm just going to be honest here. The criticism about this article has evolved from that it was promotional in nature, to not being notable, to being a neologism and now an attempt to redirect it to another article as well as a barrage of criticism about the validity of listing valid clinical studies in the article. It really seems like an attack on the article itself because some folks just don't want it to be an article. As soon as one criticism gets discredited, someone throws out another criticism. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:29, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

QuackGuru I will not remove the clinical studies. You are misinterpreting the MEDRS. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:31, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You are adding primary sources[28][29] and unsourced text.[30] The page is unencyclopedic. QuackGuru (talk) 18:33, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You're misinterpreting things and taking things out of context. There is not prohibition against using studies, provided they are cited from reliable sources, which the U.S. National Institutes of Health is. In cases where studies are cited to prove something, additional secondary sources are required. In this case, that does not apply because nothing is being "proven" by these studies. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:39, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I did remove the unsourced text you spoke of.Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The Shielding_lotion#Clinical studies section is a problem. It is not encyclopedic. A list does not improve the page. Please cite reviews.
The first sentence says "A shielding lotion is a complex mixture of chemical agents that bond with dead skin cells on the outer layer of the skin (epidermis) to form a protective external layer." Which review (not study) verifies the claim? The part "complex mixture of chemical agents" is incoherent. Is it because there is no complex mixture? QuackGuru (talk) 18:49, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I seem to recall reading somewhere on Wikipedia that "it is not encyclopedic" is not a valid argument for deletion of something, as we all have our own ideas what is and isn't "encyclopedic". Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:58, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
As for the sentence in question, what makes it complex is the fact that the actual chemical substances used differ from shielding lotion to shielding lotion. In fact, this very statement is present in many cosmetic-related articles including Moisturizer... Now that you brought yet another complaint up, QuackGuru let me ask you, are you just trying to get this article deleted, no matter what it takes, cause that is exactly what it looks like. If that's the case, let me know and I'll simply stop responding to every new criticism you throw at my article. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 18:59, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I gave you an opportunity to verify the claim using a review. For now I tagged the text. Please provide a review or reviews to verify the claims. QuackGuru (talk) 19:07, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You plastered tags all over the article about medical citations, stating that the citations are "unreliable medical source". The first is directly taken from Dimensions of Critical Care Nursing, uses the terminology "Shielding Lotion" and affirms exactly what I stated in the sentence. The second comes from the Journal of Cosmetic Dermatology, another valid source for medical information. The bulk of your (recent) criticisms stem from your confusion about the barrier cream / shielding lotion relationship. Nonetheless, your steadily evolving criticisms and present tagging probably falls under WP:CTDAPE. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 19:18, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You are not using reviews and there is unsourced text in the article. Please do not remove the tags without fixing the problems.
I did find a review (PMID 18940542). The part "as sunscreen,[9]" is sourced to a review but there may be a problem. I have a copy of the PDF file. I could not verify the claim. Shielding sunscreens are different than shielding lotions. Please provide verification. QuackGuru (talk) 19:33, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Are you really suggesting that "reviews" are the only reliable source to validate content? That isn't accurate at all. Medical journals are actually the "prefered" sources for medical articles, not "reviews". Dr. James Schultz (talk) 19:35, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I asked you a question about verification. Please reply or delete the claim from the article. QuackGuru (talk) 19:37, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The tags I removed you had no business adding. The sources are reliable in every sense of the word according to WP:MEDRS Dr. James Schultz (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Again, I asked you a question about verification. Please reply or delete the claim from the article. QuackGuru (talk) 19:38, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm through arguing with you. Either nominate the article for whatever or leave it alone. I used legitimate sources that abide by WP:MEDRS. I am continuing to work on it and add more content and sources, but there isn't an article in Wikipedia that sources every single line of text, so quit breaking my balls here. Thanks. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 19:40, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You are refusing to provide verification. This suggests the text FV. The source does not mention "Shielding lotion". You are also using sources that are not reviews and are not about "Shielding lotion". QuackGuru (talk) 19:42, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Shielding lotions are a type of barrier lotion. Did you not get that? Dr. James Schultz (talk) 19:49, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You claim "there isn't an article in Wikipedia that sources every single line of text" I created new articles that are completely sourced using reviews and WP:MEDORG compliant sources. See Electronic cigarette aerosol for example.
"Shielding lotions are a type of barrier lotion." does not verify the claim. QuackGuru (talk) 19:54, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
You think you clarified the wording? Please cite a review that verifies the claim or delete the sentence.
Please show not assert how these sources are valid. I think one is not a review and the other (PMID 17134447) source is about barrier creams. There is a separate page for barrier creams. QuackGuru (talk) 20:24, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Quack, I think that you can best promote Wikipedia's aims by backing off for a bit. We've got a new, occasional visitor, and he actually knows what he's talking about. This is the kind of editor that pro-science editors desperately want to keep here. Sure, he doesn't know everything about Wikipedia's weird rules, but you are being over-zealous and combative in enforcing guidelines that not only permit far more types of sources than review articles, but which also explicitly state at the top that we should make occasional exceptions. If you want to help, then please go work on serious problems, which do not happen to include someone accurately citing primary, peer-reviewed sources with no industry funding. Start replacing the dozens of primary sources in medicinal mushrooms with reviews and textbooks, if you can't think of anything else to do.

Dr. James Schultz, all I can really say is: Welcome to Wikipedia. I'm sorry that your efforts have been met this way. You might be interested in Wikipedia:Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. Also, please don't quit. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:32, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

And now for something completely different

After some investigation I believe it would actually be possible for us to have a separate article on this topic. Here is what it would look like:

Shielding lotion is a term coined around 2005 by a company called California 21st Century Formulations to describe a group of skin cream products called Skin MD Natural.[1] The term was promoted by the internet marketing agency Expansion Plus, who ran a highly successful campaign that relied on planting information in social media so that it would be picked up and spread virally.[2] The basic principle was to place articles on the skinmdnatural.com website that appeared to be reviews, and then distribute links via news sites and press releases, so that the purported reviews would be replicated elsewhere.[3]

The publicity material claims that these "shielding lotions" are a superior version of barrier creams, which are sometimes used for skin protection by athletes and other people who may be exposed to harmful substances, although their efficacy has long been disputed.[4] The claims of superiority for "shielding lotions" have not been tested scientifically, however.

A Wikipedia article on this topic was created in 2008 by an editor who made a total of three edits and then fell silent. In spite of a strongly promotional tone the article continued to exist in essentially the same form until 2015.

References

  1. ^ "About Us". California 21st Century Formulations.
  2. ^ "SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING-AN OVERVIEW". Sai Om Journal of Commerce & Management: A Peer Reviewed International Journal. 2: 1–6. 2015. {{cite journal}}: Cite uses deprecated parameter |authors= (help)
  3. ^ "Case Study: SkinMD" (PDF). press-feed.com.
  4. ^ Zhai H, Maibach HI (2002). "Barrier creams--skin protectants: can you protect skin?". J Cosmet Dermatol. 1 (1): 20–3. PMID 17134447.

What do you think? Looie496 (talk) 20:30, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There are issues with some of the text. This (PMID 17134447) source is about barrier creams. QuackGuru (talk) 20:45, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
My view is that the web sources are reliable for the purposes for which I used them. And I know that the second source is about barrier creams -- it is intended to support the statement that the efficacy of barrier creams has long been disputed. Looie496 (talk) 21:06, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
There is some primary sources and MEDRS violations and unsourced text and text that FV. QuackGuru (talk) 21:25, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This is sourced. Not sure what that source is doing on that page. QuackGuru (talk) 21:35, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The problem, Looie496, is that "Shielding Lotion" was not "coined" in 2005. It was already in use as far back as the 1960s, as I illustrated in the sources. And QuackGuru, your article on e-cigarettes is full of sources that are not "reviews". I don't know what your deal is with "reviews", but much of your source material is of the exact same type as what I used. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 21:01, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I'm going to advise you again to closely read Wikipedia's terms of use. You might not be aware that they were revised a few months ago to include a strong requirement for disclosure of sponsored editing. Violating the terms of use carries with it a risk of bringing unwanted attention to the sponsoring agency. Looie496 (talk) 21:28, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looie496 I am not a paid writer and I have not once promoted any company or manufacturer anywhere in the article. I am a dermatologist. I have had to address 8 different criticisms since writing this article so far. Each time one criticism gets addressed, another comes up and this last one is an indictment against my own personal character and motivations. This is my final contribution to this discussion. I have addressed every criticism that has come up and do not feel compelled to remain on the defensive against every new "concern" that comes up. You gentlemen have a wonderful day. Dr. James Schultz (talk) 21:42, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Removing the quotation marks violated a copyvio. QuackGuru (talk) 21:51, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The copyvio was restored. QuackGuru (talk) 21:55, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Looie496, I think that your version would get deleted as WP:NEO. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:34, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article was recently deleted and then a new article popped up littered with too many problems. User:Dr. James Schultz, I'm done and I'm taking the page off of my watchlist. I had enough. QuackGuru (talk) 22:13, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I have merged the articles in question. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:52, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Face lift dentistry

Not sure if this topic even merits an article, but it's always been a bit of a mess and with recent edits may be getting worse. Thoughts and eyes welcome. Alexbrn (talk) 02:08, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Due to lack of editor interest dentistry articles are very commonly in poor condition. Seems like an advertising gimmick. There is no revolutionary, notable technique here, this is standard treatment given a fancy name. Really this is increasing occlusal vertical dimension, repairing lost lower facial height due to the various forms of tooth wear. I also suspect an article is not needed for this topic. Can be dealt with on tooth wear and related articles. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 07:29, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I had a look at this earlier, and it was not obvious to me how I could salvage any of this by merging and redirecting. This might need someone who knows more about it, or it might need a trip to AFD. An article about one dentist's trademarked package of services is probably not actually notable. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:35, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Never mind [31]. Probably this is for the best, I just ran a quick google books and pubmed search, article title was not found. Matthew Ferguson (talk) 10:43, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on Draft:Psychoterratic Illnesses

Your comments on Draft:Psychoterratic Illnesses are welcomed. Please use Preferences → Gadgets → Yet Another AFC Helper Script, or use {{afc comment|your comment here}} directly in the draft. -- Sam Sailor Talk! 11:39, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

have commented on the draft it basically needs to follow Wikipedia:Citing_sources (once inline reference is done, reference #3 is not MEDRS compliant see Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:06, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've removed your comment, because it is factually wrong. The article already uses inline citations throughout. The formatting of those citations is unpopular, but it is "legal". Please read Wikipedia:Inline citation#Manual citations if you would like to know more about this citation style.
Also, as a general note for everyone, AFC has exactly one job: to determine whether a submitted article should be deleted on grounds of non-notability. Citation styles, links, copyediting, etc., are completely irrelevant. AFC drafts should never be declined on the grounds that you don't like the formatting of the citations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:04, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
the citation style per [32] makes it easier to see references like #3 (already listed above) which is a blog--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:47, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]
This might qualify for deletion under WP:NEO. Talk:Solastalgia (User:Dbachmann may remember that conversation) is an enlightening read. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:09, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comment on Draft:Ileal interposition

Your comments on Draft:Ileal interposition are welcomed. Please use Preferences → Gadgets → Yet Another AFC Helper Script, or use {{afc comment|your comment here}} directly in the draft. -- Sam Sailor Talk! 14:44, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with the reviewer Wikipedia:What_Wikipedia_is_not#HOWTO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:31, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Neuroangiogenesis

It appears the newly created article Neuroangiogenesis is the subject of some sort of student editing going on at the University of Edinburgh. Eyes on this article would be appreciated. Everymorning (talk) 16:08, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They are participating in a Wikipedia training workshop according to their user pages, and the quality of their editing looks very good. Looie496 (talk) 16:41, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Congestive hepatopathy

have not had time for this very important article, any help is appreciated--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:36, 30 September 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Request upload

Teens Using E-cigarettes More Likely to Start Smoking Tobacco (NIDA)

Can someone upload this video for Electronic cigarette#Frequency? User:Sizeofint, I think this may be useful to upload. The electronic cigarette page does not have any videos. QuackGuru (talk) 20:16, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

That should work Sizeofint (talk) 21:42, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
User:Sizeofint, can you upload it? QuackGuru (talk) 21:49, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Working on it now. Sizeofint (talk) 21:52, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks. QuackGuru (talk) 21:55, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Finished. Sizeofint (talk) 21:59, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

WPMedicine contributors in the Philadelphia area

I'm tentatively planning a WPMedicine event in the Philadelphia area for Spring 2016, and would love to get the input and assistance of any MD/DO/PhD editors who would be interested in participating. If you're geographically proximate, and marginally interested, let me know. Richardjames444 (talk) 21:05, 1 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Proposal to add sources that have a PMID to Wikidata

I have proposed this here on Wikidata.

This proposal is NOT to have WPs references be pulled from Wikidata. But having all PMIDs within Wikidata would be very powerful.

For all PMIDs that are systematic reviews we are than hoping to list all RCTs that are within the systematic review in question.

This will than allow us to have a bot that creates a list of all RCTs within medical articles for which their is a systematic review that contains the RCT in question. This will make updating / releasing RCTs on WP easier.

Peoples thoughts appreciated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:44, 2 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • Just to make sure that I understand this proposal, is the ultimate intention to facilitate the replacement of primary sources [randomized clinical trials (RCTs)] with secondary systematic reviews and/or the most up-to-date reviews? (For background, see Trials in PubMed linking to systematic reviews). But does this require Wikidata? If you use Wikidata to solve a problem, now you have two problems. A bot could do this completely independently of Wikidata. Boghog (talk) 09:56, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • True it could be done without Wikidata. One however wants a list of RCTs contained in a review for the bot run. Rather than a list of reviews that contain an RCT. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:12, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • What is behind this request? What exactly would the bot run do? Just create lists? If would be easier to do this without resorting to WikiData. Given a pmid for a RCT, pubmed provides a list of systematic reviews that mention that RCT. What you are asking for is the reverse. I would not be surprised if this data was already available directly from PubMed. If it isn't, it would not be that hard to create a reverse list by downloading the forward lists from PubMed and writing a script to transform the forward into reverse lists. Using WikiData for this task would make more sense if there was some specific one-to-one link between an RCT and a Wikipedia article. With a few notable exceptions (for example Women's Health Initiative), we normally do not have specific Wikipedia articles about individual clinical trials. So I am still puzzled why it is necessary or even desirable to resort to WikiData for this task. Furthermore it is not clear to me what the task is. Boghog (talk) 14:57, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
        • The belief that references are important. That having the ability to add further meta data could have many useful research purposes and also be useful for the improvement of Wikipedia. The task is similar to that of the Cochrane update bot. Except this will suggest Cochrane reviews and other reviews which could be used to update any RCTs we are using.
        • Additionally it may allow the searching for RCTs about a medications which are not already included in a Cochrane review. This would make it easier for Cochrane authors to determine when they need to update the review. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:26, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • OK, it is now clear that you are requesting a forward list that PubMed already provides and the task is to suggest systematic review citations that can be used to augment or replace RCT citations. Correct? If so, the task is to scan all medical related articles that contain citations to primary RCT publications and provide a list of suggested systematic reviews for each of these RCTs. This list could also be used to identify cited RCTs for which a corresponding review article is currently lacking. Also correct? I still fail to see why it is necessary to involve WikiData. Does the Cochrane update bot use WikiData? IMHO, it would make more sense to create maintenance categories to flag articles that (1) contain a reference to a RCT that does not also cite the most up-to-date systematic review and (2) articles that contain a reference to an RCT for which a corresponding review does not yet exist. Boghog (talk) 16:00, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
          • Boghog, there could be several different ways to accomplish this on Wikipedia English. But it appears that other language Wikipedia's would find the data useful, too. So, putting it in Wikidata would make it useful across the different languages Wikipedias. Also since RCT are done all around the world in research centers, a central place to collaborate makes sense. Most likely there is a later aspect of this project that could benefit from human scrutiny of the data. Pulling people from around the world to improve the data about people and institutions from around the world makes Wikidata the perfect place to hold the data. Sydney Poore/FloNight♥♥♥♥ 17:47, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Dopamine at FAC

The dopamine article is now at Wikipedia:Featured article candidates. Any interested editor is invited to participate in the review. Looie496 (talk) 14:47, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Skipping GA? There is no requirement to do so, but it might be easier to take this in steps and first run it through the less rigorous GA process. Also the FAC reviewers might be more sympathetic to an article that has already been promoted to GA. Boghog (talk) 15:11, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
agree ( GA then FA)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 15:47, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've done a lot with GA in the past, and it's an uneven process. Some reviews are great, and some are merely an exercise in frustration (see: "This is a famous scientific award. You should add a section about the food that's served at the celebratory dinner" and "This is about a particular religious sect's view on this subject. It says at the top, 'for non-religious aspects, see this completely separate article'. So why does this article talk so much about that one religious organization?" and many other instances of incompetence). As a result, if an editor feels the article is ready for FAC, then I have no objection to skipping GA and heading straight to FAC. The responses there may be more difficult and even unfriendly, and the article may fail, but the reviews tend to be higher quality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:07, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've taken articles through the FA and GA processes, and reviewed articles for both. So it might be a bad idea, but I didn't do it out of ignorance. Looie496 (talk) 20:19, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Disagree. Most FAC candidates these days are not GAs; I suspect that analysis might show that FACs that are GAs are slightly less likely to pass. The GA process can take months, and seems wholly random, depending on the sole reviewer. The chances of a reviewer with knowledge of the subject is low. Peer review is a better preliminary step, but often attracts few comments. This article seems clearly at/above GA standard (whatever that is), but some of the sources are rather older than MEDRS likes - I don't know if more recent ones exist. Johnbod (talk) 12:55, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I've been paying attention to that point. Basically there is no place where I could find a "better" source (in the MEDRS sense) than the one that is cited -- with perhaps one exception: for the Dahlstrom-Fuxe classification of aminergic areas, I thought it made more sense to cite their original paper rather than any of the numerous later reviews that use their schema. Still, the article covers a lot of ground, and I welcome sourcing improvements if anybody is aware of superior sources for anything. Looie496 (talk) 15:13, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I've done a quick check for any accessibility issues and it's in very good shape. I added the scope attributes for the column headers in the table. The {{infobox neurotransmitter}} needed to be fixed because it was showing "{{{catalog number}}}" as its image alt text, so I've also now added the ability for that infobox to use an alt parameter and updated the documentation. --RexxS (talk) 00:51, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks, that's cool. Looie496 (talk) 12:13, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I've never thought that GA is a necessary step on the path to FA. They are separate processes, and the criteria are different. In particular, the prose standards are higher for FA, so if you're shooting for FA, there's no point writing only GA standard prose, only to have to rewrite it all over again up to FA standard later on.  — Amakuru (talk) 13:19, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Digital motion X-ray

Does anyone know anything about Digital motion X-ray? There's a list of WP:General references at the end, but the newest are 11 years old. I don't know if these are important reference works (e.g., is the 1978 one the first paper describing the technique?) that should be kept under ==Further reading==, or if it's just a list of everything that PubMed had on a given date. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:45, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

[33] digital motion x-ray (DMX) are able to adequately depict cervical instability pathology--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:23, 3 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Request upload of video

CDC launches powerful new ads in “Tips From Former Smokers” campaign

User:Sizeofint, can you upload this video for Electronic cigarette#Smoking cessation? This is a really good video. QuackGuru (talk) 05:25, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

It's very specific to a particular American ad campaign. I don't think I would support it being in the article. Johnbod (talk) 12:42, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Uploaded but since Commons has a limit of 100 MB I had to reduce the quality. Didn't watch it through so I can't comment on the content, however it may be a bit on the long side to place in the article. There may be a way to show only certain sections of the video. I haven't really looked into it. Sizeofint (talk) 20:47, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Sizeofint – Commons has no filesize limit, and it is very easy to upload files up to 1GB (above that you need to host a FTP-server). To upload files between 100–1000MB check the section "Chunked uploads for files over 5 MB in Upload Wizard" at [34]. CFCF 💌 📧 22:15, 4 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Cool, I did not know that. I'll replace it with a better version then. Sizeofint (talk) 03:45, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
videos should be used on more (or almost all) articles as they enhance the topic...good move--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:58, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Expert input request for help with "guide" / "editorial" article issues

AustralianRupert of WP:MILHIST previously gave a lot of helpful comments from A-class review at Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States.

I think the article Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States still has some major issues = it reads more like a manual or guide and not encyclopedic, doesn't read like a descriptive encyclopedic article.

And I think the issues AustralianRupert already mentioned at Wikipedia:WikiProject Military history/Assessment/Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States of:

  1. WP:NOTGUIDE
  2. WP:EDITORIALIZING

I think these above issues are still the most obvious glaring areas where there could be significant improvements made.

Maybe someone from this WikiProject could leave some more specific comments about that, at Talk:Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States/GA1 ?

Thank you for your time,

— Cirt (talk) 03:53, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

have commented (at talk)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:40, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Need an admin

We need an admin to clean up after a move: Talk:Minister of Health (Argentina) should be at Talk:Ministry of Health (Argentina), which is currently a redirect to an irrelevant article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 5 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Done Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:09, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Human parasite

This article is something of a trainwreck. It might be possible to fix, but I have my doubts if it is worth the bother. Opinions? Anyone want to tackle it? LeadSongDog come howl! 15:49, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

PubMed seems to have several reviews [35]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 16:52, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
One fundamental mistake it makes is to cover only those parasites that cause disease, which many don't. Johnbod (talk) 18:19, 6 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
I'm surprised at how rarely it's vandalized. I expected the page history to be filled with edits like "A human parasite is my ex-boyfriend". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:54, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Hmm, odd that this has avoided our attention for so long (it isn't even tagged to our project). To me it seems like a broad concept article that doesn't really provide anything useful. I'd probably try to merge and redirect it to Parasitic disease or make a list out of it. CFCF 💌 📧 11:18, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Articles in desperate need of work

Anyone interested in helping out with two articles? I came across Medical Common Sense at AfD and the work appears to have been pretty influential and controversial in its day - it looks like its author Edward Bliss Foote (whose article also needs work) was even arrested for publishing it. Well, that or its expanded version. I'm having some trouble looking for sources since I'm not as savvy knowing where to look for medical related books as I am with popular fiction and more recent works. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 04:48, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]

  • I was wondering if anyone knew a specific place to find a listing of Foote's work. A lot of his work is mentioned at the same time and while some of it is obviously an expansion of an earlier work, some portions aren't. I'm finding evidence that suggests that "Words in Pearl for the Married" is the material that he removed from "Medical Common Sense" (per this article), but I'd like to be able to make sure of this before I outright claim this in the article. I can only do so much digging on this since I have some schoolwork I need to complete before this weekend. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 07:19, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • The book itself (or at least the third revision) is on Archive.org.[36] With a quick glance at the contents pages for part IV, I couldn't see a section titled "Words in Pearl for the Married". However, downloading the plain text version from openlibrary.org[37] and searching is probably the quickest way of checking the whole text. Little pob (talk) 08:30, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • it might be best to merge both articles...IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:06, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • I'm wondering that as well, but I'm hesitant to suggest that before looking into the author as a whole more fully. His article is pretty nonexistent and it needs to be fleshed out. I'm finding some mention of him as a whole and while he's viewed as an important figure in women's rights/birth control somewhat, I don't know that all of it is specific to this book. I don't want to argue for a merge, only for it to end up that there's enough of this separate from the book to where the book would merit its own article. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡) 11:21, 7 October 2015 (UTC)[reply]
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