Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

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List of archives

Merged Archive WikiProject Preclinical medicine: 1
Merged Archive WikiProject Clinical medicine: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11
WikiProject Medicine Archives: Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 98, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162, 163, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168, 169, 170, 171, 172

Frontier journals

https://www.frontiersin.org/

What are peoples thoughts on these? They have been described as predatory here.

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:30, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For those interested in some background that led to this question, I recommend seeing my talk page, wherein Doc James and I discussed this matter. It also includes my rationale for at least selectively using Frontiers journals as citations to articles so long as the article or study being cited is otherwise acceptable, as well as my stated concerns about considering Frontiers Media to be a predatory publisher. As I said in the aforementioned talk page discussion, I agree that there appear to be some problems with Frontiers journals, but I would nonetheless consider it a problematic publisher (like with Hindawi Publishing Corporation) rather a predatory one. This conclusion was primarily based on a review of sources mentioning or otherwise discussing the status of Frontiers journals as predatory, which I deemed mixed and overall inconclusive. Links to those sources can be found on my talk page, as well.

I would also like to note Archive 78 § On the use of Frontiers journals as sources, whose consensus seemed likewise inconclusive but which appears to accept selective usage so long as that which is being cited is otherwise acceptable. If necessary, I would also support including a {{better source}} template along with any such citation, though I personally do not think that should be necessary. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 04:26, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

at the very least questionable[1] and [2]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 13:05, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes it depends on the claim. Any exceptional claim (e.g. of treatment efficacy) which appears only in a Frontiers journal is a huge WP:REDFLAG, and as for the AIDS denialism &c. stuff they've run .... In general anything worth including that appears in a Frontiers journal will almost certainly be source-able to something more conspicuously reputable. Same goes for Hindawi journals, PLOS ONE, etc. Most of the times we see these sources being raised from WP:PROFRINGE editors banging an altmed drum. Alexbrn (talk) 13:22, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I definitely don't consider Frontiers journals to be predatory -- I have read dozens if not hundreds of useful articles in them. However, the fact that something is published in a Frontiers journal should not imply that it should be treated as a reliable source. They are better than things like Medical Hypotheses, but reliability is not their primary goal. Looie496 (talk) 15:24, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

We should lean on the side of caution if as reported we shold error on the right side. They are by far not alone ...as there are thousands of other publishers we can use instead. Editors are expected to uphold the integrity of Wikipedia....thus simply avoid questionable sources if we want to look credible.--Moxy (talk) 23:50, 28 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This was just added based on Frontier journal: "In vitro and in vivo studies found that methadone significantly inhibited the growth of human lung cancer cells"[3]

An extraordinary claim IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:11, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yup, and it's wacky articles like this that exemplify why Frontiers journals need to be treated with extreme caution. Alexbrn (talk) 16:19, 29 March 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I actually think this Frontiers article is quite good, but the edit to the methadone article does not accurately reflect what it says. The Frontiers article notes that methadone has shown anti-tumor activity in preclinical studies, which is perfectly true; it also notes that these effects have not been tested at the clinical level. Looie496 (talk) 00:26, 1 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The specific subject of methadone as antineoplastic is reviewed in Int J Cancer at PMID 29516505. No need to use the primary source. More generally though, it's worth restating that no source is reliable (or unreliable) for all statements: one can cite an issue of Mad Magazine for a statement describing the cover of that particular issue. LeadSongDog come howl! 18:05, 4 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It appears, at least to me, that the consensus (or lack thereof) on generally citing Frontiers journals has thus far remained the same as I described above. This discussion originated from my citation of two specific review articles, namely the following two: 1 and 2. Does anyone have any opinion on these two particular sources, especially as worthwhile additions to the Asperger syndrome, Autism, Autism spectrum, or other such article? I originally included it as another theory in Asperger syndrome § Mechanism and its reversion is what led to this. If any of you would like more context, I recommend reading the discussion on my talk page. Everything, including relevant diffs, is documented therein. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 08:48, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah, both URLs you give caused my browser to raise a security alert - so I wouldn't include those links! Alexbrn (talk) 09:06, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It does for me, too, specifically SSL_ERROR_BAD_CERT_DOMAIN. This is because the certificate is not valid for the journal.frontiersin.org subdomain, only the www.frontiersin.org subdomain and the subdomain-free frontiersin.org. I have no clue why the website's certificate does not include the journal subdomain, even though it's just used as a hop to the www subdomain anyway (adding a temporary exception demonstrates as much). My guess is that someone misconfigured the certificate and nobody ever bothered to fix it. Regardless, the landing pages for each are as follows: 1 and 2. I was trying to include the original articles, but forgot about the subdomain nonsense. My apologies for not linking them initially, Alexbrn; it has been a long day for me.

I might as well note that in my original edit (which Doc James had moved to Talk:Asperger syndrome § Frontier journals), those bad subdomain links are only available (unavoidably) in the DOI parameter of the citations. The URLs I included were PDF copies from ResearchGate, namely 1 and 2. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 09:31, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So these sources are about the "Intense World Syndrome" which is the idea of a few researchers. The question is has this been picked up and discussed by decent secondary sources? If so, we can cite them; if not we ignore the topic as Wikipedia is meant to be a tertiary publication summarizing "accepted knowledge" (which is generally found only at the secondary level or deeper). Alexbrn (talk) 10:50, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Actually, I think that might be a secondary source. It's not labeled as a review article, which is a particular type of secondary source, but it synthesizes previous work into a coherent whole. Putting together puzzle pieces is pretty much the definition of secondary. (Maybe you meant that this idea needed to be picked up by someone independent of the original authors?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:54, 9 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I'm not sure what content the OP want to source, but if it's about the novel "hypothesis" of Intense World Syndrome so far as I can see these works are primary for that hypothesis. But yes coverage would need to be independent. Alexbrn (talk) 06:27, 10 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, Alexbrn, I specifically want to include this "intense world" theory because I believe it is a relevant and appropriate addition to Asperger syndrome § Mechanism. I was simply stating the theory in a brief paragraph as a significant hypothesis for the neurological mechanism(s) behind Asperger syndrome and the autism spectrum alongside the others. The theory has been mentioned, discussed, or otherwise cited by hundreds of papers, if Google Scholar is any estimate; and it has received significant media coverage from reliable sources (some of which are listed on my talk page). I therefore think a paragraph on the theory is due.

What specifically would constitute sufficient "independent coverage" of this theory (or these specific papers) in your opinion? For example, do you basically just mean a review article about this theory and whatever research may have occurred since its publication by those "independent of the original authors" (as WhatamIdoing stated)? Or do you mean it in some other way? I apologize if my inexperience is showing; although I have been editing Wikipedia for years, I am still new to adding and editing medical content. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 15:36, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

According to the two articles, WhatamIdoing, they are indeed both labeled as review articles. I am talking about these two links specifically: 1 and 2. Am I misunderstanding something here? Are they not technically review articles? I agree that they are both secondary sources, though I understand Alexbrn's point that the "intense world" theory is primary to these papers and their authors. From what I can tell, if there is any basis for excluding these two particular sources, it appears to be on them not being secondary for the theory itself, despite otherwise satisfying WP:MEDRS. Perhaps that is what you meant? That they are not review articles for the theory itself, since the papers are the primary source for them? ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 15:36, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Usually – but not always, and it's not a requirement – journals submit metadata to PubMed about their articles, to identify things such as whether they're review articles. The PubMed records contain no such data for these papers. That's not proof that it's not a review article, but it does mean that the papers are excluded from search results (at PubMed) that are limited to review articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:24, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the explanation, WhatamIdoing. I will be sure to keep that in mind in the future. I also appreciate the work you did to document the potential notability of this "intense world" theory. Given that you mentioned notability, however, do you think that it may be more prudent in this case to focus on developing a separate article about this before including it in a section like Asperger syndrome § Mechanism (which was the original edit)? Or should the focus—at least, at this time—remain with including it somewhere within an appropriate Wikipedia article, assuming it should be included at all? Perhaps someday this "intense world" theory will have its own article, anyway, but I am not sure if that day should be anytime soon. ―Nøkkenbuer (talk • contribs) 07:33, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that this subject meets or exceeds the minimum requirement for having a stand-alone article about just IWS. However, considering everything, I think that you may have an easier time getting it mentioned (perhaps only briefly) in some article(s) first, and later creating the article specifically about that theory. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:46, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Intense world syndrome

I'm looking into this idea, and I think it's probably WP:Notable. Here's some sources:

"A prominent hypothesis about neurodevelopmental disorders in general and autism in particular is the intense world syndrome/theory of autism by Markram and Markram" [4]
"Two theories for which there is limited support but which have attracted much media attention deserve mention. These are the intense world syndrome theory and the broken mirror theory." [5]
"Perhaps autistics don't experience a socially numbed world but rather a socially intense world. In fact, Henry Markram, Tania Rinaldi, and Kamila Markram proposed such a theory in a 2007 article aptly titled,“The Intense World Syndrome—An Alternative Hypothesis for Autism."[6]
Reportedly reviewed in "Sensory Symptoms in Autism: A Blooming, Buzzing Confusion?" (2013).
and more: [7], [8], [9], [10], [11], [12], etc.

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A note

As a note WP:JCW/Target1 will contain usage information about most Frontiers journals. WP:JCW/F17 will have information about the three standalone journals Frontiers in Endocrinology/Frontiers in Plant Science/Frontiers in Psychology. The exact pages may differ over time but you can always find them based on Special:WhatLinksHere/Foobar. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 15:58, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This also works for things like Special:WhatLinksHere/Scientific Research Publishing. This tells you, for instance, that Psychology (journal) is an SCIRP journal, which can be found at WP:JCW/P55, where it is cited 5 times on Wikipedia (with links to those articles). Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:22, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Draft: List of journals accused of being a predatory open access publisher

Extended content

See Category:Potential predatory journals.

I think a List of journals accused of being a predatory open access publisher will be a good article. Before it goes live we can create a draft. Thoughts? QuackGuru (talk) 16:35, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Bad idea. 1/ Will be an enormous list. Beall had over 1000 entries on his list. 2/ Near impossible to maintain. 3/ Magnet for edit warring between supporters and opponents of these journals. Note: Most of the entries in the above list (which is copied from Category:Potential predatory journals were placed in that cat by me, before giving up). --Randykitty (talk) 22:35, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I like a challenge. QuackGuru (talk) 22:38, 15 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This would be a huge undertaking. I have no strong feeling for or against, but if you need help I'm in. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 13:14, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I'm not going to start a draft. I don't know all the sources to cite. If someone else creates it then I will pitch in. Someone who is familiar with the topic can provide sources here. QuackGuru (talk) 14:44, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Neutral. I think we need very clear inclusion criteria, one of which should ideally be a secondary source that claims a publication is predatory. I think there is a lot to be said for maintaining such a list, if Quackguru is game. (Conflict of interest: I get spammed on an almost daily basis by predatory publishers wanting me to "submit my research" to them. All because my email address is on Pubmed.) JFW | T@lk 18:30, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I know very little about this topic. I will wait for sources and wait for others to start the draft. We don't need a source that claims a publication *is* predatory. There could be a source that claims a publication maybe a predatory or potentially or other similar words. In other words, we can follow each source accurately and include supported weasel words such as *possible* predatory. QuackGuru (talk) 20:18, 17 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Starting with Beall's list as a reference seems reasonable. Just make sure every item is referenced. One could group them alphabetically. We have larger lists than this. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:20, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
This is a bad idea. It refers to Beall's list which has been challenged and withdrawn. This list will be out-dated, inaccurate and hedged with weaselly words like "accused", "potential". Yes, those of us who are in academia get invitations all the time to publish in "new" journals and would not aim for this or usually dream of citing them in WP reviews. But occasionally a relevant source may end up in one of them. For instance, World Journal of Gastroenterology has had mistakes along the way but now has an adequate review process and a reasonable impact factor in the top half of Gastro journals. Maybe we should just list journals with citation indices < 1 (or 2 or 20) as Potential low impact journals.Jrfw51 (talk) 12:57, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Including supported weasel words will make it accurate. We can also include a list of journals with a zero impact factor in a separate section. The impact factor for World Journal of Gastroenterology has increased. I'm not sure if this should be included in the list for a new article. QuackGuru (talk) 13:19, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
For transparency, Jytdog has removed a comment that strongly opposes this idea. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:29, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I removed a comment that is or is very close to a BLP violation. That they oppose or support is not the issue. Jytdog (talk) 17:05, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
fwiw i oppose this approach to the issue. i think list articles are generally a waste of time. Jytdog (talk) 17:05, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Please provide sources below. Thank you. QuackGuru (talk) 13:19, 18 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Neutral - It could be a helpful list. My worry is that over time, if an editor or group of editors does not diligently keep it up-to-date, we might end up denigrating a "reformed" journal, as in the example Jrfw51 provided. On a related topic, if we decide to include impact factor, we should include a variety of journal citation metrics, not just the Impact Factor marketed by Clarivate Analytics. - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) 21:26, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
In general, this is a bad idea. The list would feature thousands of entries, if not more. The best way to do this is to add links to those lists in predatory journal/predatory publishing. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 22:47, 19 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Per Headbomb, Randykitty, and others—we shouldn't be trying to place ourselves in the position of creating and curating a list of predatory publishers and journals. While such lists are useful and valuable resources, they're out of scope for Wikipedia's mission. Keeping such a list complete and up to date in perpetuity isn't something we can reliably and robustly do with Wikipedia's general volunteer labor pool, and presenting such a list that is incomplete and out of date does a disservice to our readers. Wikipedia can and should link appropriately to respected outside resources (through external links sections and inline references) on this topic, but we shouldn't try to become the last word ourselves. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:01, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Agree with TenOfAllTrades and others. Bondegezou (talk) 14:54, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
That being said, a Wikipedia-space worklist to make sure those aren't used in our articles for referencing things beyond WP:SELFSOURCE would be entirely fine. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:05, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- I agree. An 'internal' list of useful resources for identifying predatory publishers would be quite handy to have. Lists of publishers and individual journals would be, again, subject to concerns regarding completeness and curation, but editors – as opposed to readers – are much better positioned to understand the limitations of a work-in-progress crib sheet. Such a page might also be used retain and consolidate links to historical discussions on Wikipedia (on article talk pages and on noticeboards like WT:MED, WP:FTN, WP:RSN, etc.) about particular publishers/journals to help reduce the need to 'reinvent the wheel' when questions about a particular source arise.... TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:43, 20 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I like this idea. On a couple of occasions I've had some citation edits reverted because the next editor knew the journal/book I was citing was unreliable for one reason or another - something I wouldn't have known without previous knowledge or a hard lit search. It would be a nice resource to check before including a journal/publisher/etc. It would also be a daunting task though...there's been hundreds of citations I've come across (usually through Google Books) that are just horrible and I couldn't imagine the process it would require to round those all up in a Wiki page. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 16:14, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well... It's great when folks can collaborate together like that, but I also hope that you'd think about whether the other person is correct. Over the years, I've had editors tell me that journals are bad because you have to buy the article, because it's not written in English, because it's not in a particular database, because it's WP:Impact factor is only the median for its field (most editors don't understand how low typical impact factors are, especially for specialized journals) – even because the editor-in-chief wasn't a successful businessman. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

See this request at TWL. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 12:38, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Frankly, I think the main problem here may be that we need to define what qualifies as an "accusation". Does it just have to be some random blogger calling a journal predatory for us to list it on our hypothetical list of such journals? What kind of sources would be used to decide whether a journal should be listed or not? This is aside from the other issues with such a list already mentioned above. Every morning (there's a halo...) 23:49, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

MicroDNA

One of your knowledgely folks may want to have a look at this new article. For my own part, at a certain level or ignorance, a notable topic is indistinguishable from a hoax. GMG ^talk 17:18, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

actually falls underWikipedia:WikiProject_Molecular_and_Cell_Biology--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:52, 23 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It seems to exist, but should probably be merged to Extrachromosomal Circular DNA. Natureium (talk) 17:06, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

And here I thought it was a misspelling of microRNA, like FOXO is sometimes misinterpreted as "Forkhead homeobox" (FOXO transcription factors are a different protein family from Homeodomain transcription factors). Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 18:46, 24 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like the creator of the article is also the author of the paper linked in external links. I don't know whether to call this a COI or just personal promotion. Natureium (talk) 13:52, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Extrachromosomal Circular DNA is certainly sufficiently notable. I've been bold and done the merger, since MicroDNA on its own is too limited I think. I've checked the external link paper (now inline ref) and it is relevant enough to keep. The editor has written sufficiently neutrally that I don't think the COI is an issue in this case. T.Shafee(Evo&Evo)^talk 10:10, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Silent treatment

what should we do with this. it was a cesspool of bad content sourced to pop-psychology crap citations. Jytdog (talk) 04:54, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Not by way of an answer - just to note that i've made some changes to the page.--Iztwoz (talk) 05:59, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Refusing to speak to someone is not a medical subject. The origin of the name (but not the behavior) is in the way that some (Western, mostly English-speaking) prisons treated their inmates. None of that sounds like this group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:22, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The version before i edited it down was all full of pop-psych crap, see here.

I struggle with the perspective that psychology content is completely outside of what we do in WP:MED but please hear me when i say that i have not thought carefully about where the the not-MED line is. Jytdog (talk) 15:27, 27 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you're not sure where MEDRS stops and psychology begins maybe don't edit articles where the line isn't clear to you. I don't agree with some of your edits on Silent Treatment and am wondering whether to make changes or not. Everything human beings do impacts their physiologies so its understandable that the line separating behaviour and health related articles is blurred. However, this is primarily an article about behavior not physical health so I don't think MEDRS applies. I also wonder if Silent Treatment is a clinical term; if not we don't necessarily need research papers to describe it.(Littleolive oil (talk) 15:57, 27 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]

I like it when people say that they don't know everything.

That seemed like an aggressive purge (e.g., blanking the paragraph that says it's a common tactic by bullies in the workplace), but looking at a few sources, I'm thinking that this might be a good candidate for a merge/redirect (as might several others). There are so many different terms for the same basic behavior. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:59, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I had the same thought, that there is a bunch of merging that could be done. maybe we would end up with enough sources by the end of that. Jytdog (talk) 05:02, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Public service announcement about medical advice in Wikipedia articles

It has come to my attention that a number of medical editors are not aware that statements containing opinions – including medical advice – must be attributed to a source per the content policy on WP:NPOV (specifically: WP:WikiVoice and the explanatory supplement WP:ASSERT). Some of our featured articles currently contain statements that do not comply with this content policy.

I don't intend to check every medical FA for the use of unattributed medical advice, but it would be ideal if every medical editor becomes/remains cognizant of the fact that virtually all medical claims which use the verbs must or should to convey obligation^{[note 1]} must include in-text attribution to a source in order to comply with this content policy; i.e., the same form of attribution that is required for direct quotations from a source must be used for these assertions because they are not factual statements; they are expressing a medical opinion about how things that ought to be done.

It is extremely important to keep this in mind when using a clinical practice guideline to write new content given that this type of publication contains a comparatively vast amount of medical advice relative to reviews and meta analyses. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 01:27, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seppi333, medical articles often contain unattributed advice. For example:

Disease X may present as disease Y and should be considered in countries where it is common.
A diagnosis of X should be considered in anyone with symptoms A and B who is over the age of 40.
Symptom A is not specific to disease X and should instead prompt investigations for diseases Y and Z.

Are you arguing that they must all be attributed? If so, that might lead to the problem of attributing to one source practices that are common and that any RS would support. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:52, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. I wasn't arguing that we should be doing this though; the requirement for in-text attribution is already in place. I simply made an announcement to raise awareness of a section of a content policy which states that they must be attributed (given that they're all expressing a medical opinion). I'm aware that unattributed medical advice is present in virtually all medical articles on Wikipedia. My intention isn't to try to get people to fix that problem; rather, it's to reduce the rate at which the problem is growing.

Should it eventually be fixed in all medical articles? Yes, assuming that's even possible.

Should we focus on fixing it in every article right now? No, it's not that big of an issue.

Does it need to be addressed in medical FAs? Yes, ideally sometime soon.

Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:08, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seppi333, I can't see where policy insists that uncontested positions be attributed. As I said, this leads to the problem of attributing to one source something that any RS would support. SarahSV ^(talk) 02:13, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) How is "[Drug name] should not be used if/for [other text goes here]." an opinion? E.g. Aspirin should not be used in children with viral infections because of the risk of Reye's syndrome.[x][y] This is well established. Why isn't sourcing it to pretend sources x and y acceptable? Natureium (talk) 02:14, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Natureium: For context, first see Opinion#Epistemology, then read the single paragraph in normative statement. Observe how these are all normative (i.e., opinion) statements. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:31, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@SlimVirgin: Literally repeating myself from earlier: WP:WikiVoice bullet 1, WP:ASSERT. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:33, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Those aren't helpful because of the way they're written, e.g. opinion should be attributed or "described as widespread views, etc." I'm asking here about advice that has widespread acceptance, such as drug A should not be used with drug B. We don't always have to say "according to regulatory body 1 in the United States and regulatory body 2 in the European Union, etc". SarahSV ^(talk) 02:46, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Well, assuming the advice can be attributed to multiple entities, you could attribute it as you've described, or say something like "according to several agencies/reviews" or "according to X and others", etc. As for saying that a drug is contraindicated for something, yes it still needs to be attributed. Wikipedia itself should not be making value judgments about things and asserting how things ought to be because those are points of view. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 03:03, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seppi333, I assume your posts are connected to Wikipedia:Request for comment on tone in medical writing. It's a good idea to hold an RfC about it. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:15, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree that this RFC is a good idea, but keep in mind that a consensus from that RFC that differs from what I've stated here would necessitate making changes to WP:NPOV. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 04:45, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Seppi333: Unfortunately, I think you've misunderstood our WP:NPOV policy. The relevant guidance is to be found at WP:WikiVoice:

Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice. Unless a topic specifically deals with a disagreement over otherwise uncontested information, there is no need for specific attribution for the assertion, although it is helpful to add a reference link to the source in support of verifiability. Further, the passage should not be worded in any way that makes it appear to be contested.

but you seem to be mistaking it for that at Wikipedia:Neutral point of view #Handling neutrality disputes. Where statements that are made by good quality sources are not contested by equally valid sources, we are instructed not to attribute because that can create the false impression of contention. We assert simple facts – and those are defined in Wikipedia as well supported, uncontested statements, which includes most position statements that seem to be troubling you. --RexxS (talk) 21:06, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: A normative statement is, by definition, not a fact. It is a form of opinion. So why are you quoting this to me? Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:44, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Seppi333: On Wikipedia, a fact is a statement that is asserted by good sources and not contended by equally good sources. That's what you need to understand. Once you have grasped that, you'll stop feeling the need to impose your own views on the sources. --RexxS (talk) 00:04, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: O RLY?

Avoid stating opinions as facts. Usually, articles will contain information about the significant opinions that have been expressed about their subjects. However, these opinions should not be stated in Wikipedia's voice. Rather, they should be attributed in the text to particular sources, or where justified, described as widespread views, etc. For example, an article should not state that "genocide is an evil action", but it may state that "genocide has been described by John X as the epitome of human evil."
— WP:WikiVoice

Apparently, you're wrong.

Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 01:12, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This has been going on for quite a while over at dementia with Lewy bodies (not helped by my poor prose, as I struggle to rephrase things descriptively), so I drafted the RFC to resolved the impasse. (Seppi is determined to oppose the article at FAC if what he calls opinion is not attributed.) It seems counterproductive to hold an RFC when I don't see anyone here agreeing with this peculiar view of fact/opinion/need for attribution. An optimal outcome would be to NOT have to hold an RFC. If we DO have to hold an RFC, the draft I started is not currently in shape to go forward, so please, don't anyone do something silly and put it out there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:28, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Seppi333: Yes, really. You're confusing "significant opinions" with "Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions". You don't get to decide what is opinion and what is fact. The facts are the ones that are not contested by significant sources and are not attributed. The opinions are the ones that represent at least two differing views and require attribution to the source of each view. That's basic NPOV. It's a fact that the driving ability of anyone diagnosed with DLB should be assessed at an early stage, not an opinion. I can tell that because there are no significant contrary sources. If you just apply that simple test, you'll find all these imagined problems simply disappear.--RexxS (talk) 13:39, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: You might consider consulting with a dictionary to learn about the definition of fact and opinion; alternatively, you might read fact and opinion. Or, if you want to continue arguing with me, please quote the definition of "fact" and "opinion" from WP:NPOV that I can't seem to find. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:49, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Don't patronise me. You need to learn this is an encyclopedia, not a dictionary, and that different applications use words in different ways. If you don't understand by now how Wikipedia defines "fact" (a well-sourced, uncontested statement) and "opinion" (a statement that is contested by multiple equally reliable sources), you need to find yourself another hobby where competence isn't required. --RexxS (talk) 14:24, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Just in case you are still unable to read WP:NPOV, here's the guidance again:

Avoid stating facts as opinions. Uncontested and uncontroversial factual assertions made by reliable sources should normally be directly stated in Wikipedia's voice.

Avoid stating seriously contested assertions as facts. If different reliable sources make conflicting assertions about a matter, treat these assertions as opinions rather than facts, and do not present them as direct statements.

Got it now? --RexxS (talk) 14:33, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't understand by now how Wikipedia defines "fact" (a well-sourced, uncontested statement) and "opinion" (a statement that is contested by multiple equally reliable sources) - I literally just asked you to quote where "Wikipedia" defines the terms "fact" and "opinion"; instead, you've simply restated your assertion. Is it really that hard to substantiate this? My entire argument, in really basic logic notation, is simply: prescriptive statement $\Rightarrow$ normative statement ≡ opinion. If "opinion" has a unique, non-standard definition on Wikipedia as it pertains to policies and guidelines, then that logical equivalence (≡) falls apart and I'd concede my entire argument. On the other hand, you're doing nothing more than arguing by repetition if you don't substantiate your assertion. So please, for the love of god, stop repeating yourself and just quote these definitions. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 19:03, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you don't want me to repeat the answer, stop asking me the same question that's already been answered. Those quotes are how Wikipedia treats facts (uncontested statements) and opinions (contested statements). It's all the substantiation needed for everybody else except you. I get what you want: to be able to unilaterally decide what statements are "facts" and which are "opinions", and then force us to attribute a load of uncontested statements. Well, Wikipedia doesn't work like that. We won't be attributing statements that are reliably sourced and that have no significant dissent apart from yours. If I've misconstrued your intentions, please feel free to explain the other outcomes you want; otherwise give it a rest. --RexxS (talk) 20:08, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think this proposal is precisely counter to the WP:PAGs. First, Wikipedia does not give "medical advice"; second, that which is not seriosuly disputed is simply WP:ASSERTed (to take an altmed example: squirting coffee up the bum ain't going to cure cancer, and this isn't just according to Quackwatch or whatever). Alexbrn (talk) 04:50, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I have commented at the draft RFC talk page. This is a bit overboard. Jytdog (talk) 04:52, 28 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Attributing everything within the text would make Wikipedia less readable especially for a general audience. The attribution is WITHIN the reference at the end of the sentence. If everyone reliable agrees one something we do not need to say "X, Y, Z recommend A". We ONLY need attribution when high quality sources disagree. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:15, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The number of statements in an article that this applies to is basically the number of times you find "should" and "must" in a ctrl-f search. Let's not overstate things. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 01:13, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is there an example of a problem? Is there a proposed solution? How would you apply that solution, say, at Field (mathematics) which states a bunch of well-known facts easily found in many undergraduate texts? Johnuniq (talk) 01:25, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The issue isn't with facts; it pertains to medical advice being treated as if it were fact with respect to the specified treatment of facts vs opinions in WP:WikiVoice. Mathematical proofs obviously don't contain any statements of opinion; mathematical statements are necessarily falsifiable, hence the articles on algrebras, rings, groups, ~~sigma algebras~~ (just remembered that this concept is unique to measure theory), and other articles on abstract algebraic concepts very likely contain no statements that are relevant to this discussion.

Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 01:41, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seppi333 said: "The number of statements in an article that this applies to is basically the number of times you find "should" and "must" in a ctrl-f search." This is simplistic, black-and-white thinking. There is no difference between "People with X should not take Y drug" and "Y drug is contraindicated for people with X". They are both medical advice. If the statement is uncontroversial and sourced to high quality sources, and no one disagrees, either statement is fine and doesn't need attribution. "Should" policing won't work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:35, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I really don't care anymore Sandy. We stopped having a civil discussion the moment you posted this: [13][14][15]. The whole point of this RFC was to clarify what the community thought about this issue in order to determine how we should treat these statements in medical articles in general and specifically in the DLB article; yet, instead of approaching this constructively, you act like we already have the answer and that I'm simply being a dick and trying to create obstacles for you because pointless attribution is my "preference" and I want to foist it on you now. Did it ever occur to you that maybe, just maybe, I know what I'm talking about w.r.t. positive/normative analysis and that I simply wanted ensure that promoted featured articles candidates were compliant with a major content policy? In actuality, I wouldn't give the slightest iota of a fuck about this if the differing treatment of fact/opinion is explicitly excepted for medical advice in the policies and guidelines at WP:WikiVoice/WP:ASSERT and WP:MOS subpages that include assertions about treating facts vs opinions.

In any event, I don't think this dispute is reconcilable given how this discussion turned out. We're probably just going to end up at WP:NPOV/Noticeboard if the article goes to FAC because I really don't want to discuss this with you any further; and, I say "if it goes to FAC", because RE:... that I simply wanted ensure that promoted featured articles candidates were compliant with a major content policy?. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 02:18, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Seppi, might you read over the discussion and see if you can find anyone who holds the same view as you do? It seems rather unproductive to hold an RFC if there is already consensus. I appreciate this discussion as it shows how I might clean up and shorten the RFC Draft if needed, but I can't see that there is enough disagreement to warrant an RFC. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:49, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@SandyGeorgia: We don't need to hold an RFC to obtain an answer for the DLB article – that's what the WP:NPOV/Noticeboard is for. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:59, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Should it be necessary to hold the RFC, I have shortened it to reflect the underlying tension revealed in this discussion (where one sees opinion, another sees uncontested fact per WP:WIKIVOICE). See Wikipedia:Request for comment on tone in medical writing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:31, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I feel like we're missing some opportunities. Seppi, regardless of the actual logical merits, I'm convinced that you've got a hold of a losing argument. Wikipedia editors just aren't going to accept your claim that "People who are allergic to Drug X should not take it" is an "opinion" in any meaningful sense, and especially in the Point of view (philosophy) sense that the NPOV policy cares about.

But I agree with you that "You shouldn't do <dangerous thing>" isn't the best we can do. IMO it would be more appropriate and educational to say things like "People who are allergic could have an allergic reaction", or "Among older people with ulcers, taking ibuprofen triples the annual risk of significant GI bleeding or other complications", or whatever the individual facts are. "Old people with ulcers shouldn't take ibuprofen" is much less educational than "ibuprofen triples the risk of GI bleeding".

Also, I think that this group may not have a shared understanding of what constitutes medical advice. For example, AIUI, no statement that begins with (or could begin with) "Healthcare providers [or any other person who is not the patient/acting on behalf of the patient] should..." is medical advice. I am also under the impression that statements similar to "People who are allergic to Drug X should not take it" is medical information rather than medical advice, and that it would transform into medical advice only if I were to say that you personally are allergic to Drug X and therefore you personally should not take it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:36, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So, on the NPOV issue, it seems that most opining here are agreed on how we distinguish fact v. opinion on Wikipedia, and maybe the center of the disagreement is really at WP:MEDMOS, where we say, "Ensure that your writing does not appear to offer medical advice", and "statements using the word should frequently provide inappropriate advice". Maybe we need to address concern about the word should at MEDMOS. Because "contraindicated in" is just another way of saying "should not be used for" in simpler language. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:56, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing:: After stepping away from Wikipedia for a week, I'm feeling much more indifferent about this; even so, I still recognize that when a value judgment is being expressed - like asserting what action should or must performed by a specific group of people (e.g., "readers of this article about city name should go to this historically notable restaurant"; "patients should take x drug for y condition"; etc.) - it's necessarily an opinion; the reason why that should be done is almost always a fact though. Returning to my "patients should take x drug for y condition" example, if you add an explanation to this such as, "patients should take x drug for y condition because of [description of the safety and/or efficacy of drug x for condition y relative to its alternatives]", then you're stating an opinion and justifying it with a fact. We really should just cut the opinion and state the fact IMO, but clearly a lot of people are opposed to that idea. That said, I don't really care enough to push this issue any further at WT:MED anymore. I am still going to intermittently work on addressing the more significant instances of this issue in current medical FAs as well as continue to require medical FACs to address it for my support though.

@Jytdog: Sorry for not addressing your question sooner. On the RFC talk page, you stated the following: "Thalidomide is strictly contraindicated for pregnant women and women who might become pregnant, and is only prescribed with a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy". Plain english: Women who are pregnant or who might become pregnant should not take thalidomide and there are strict regulations to ensure that this cannot happen". Can you please suggest some plain english that you would find acceptable with regard to the woman? ("will cause birth defects to the fetus" doesn't get there) Please answer directly and no, I will not use "contraindicated". Thanks. Now, this is a really important point: you stated "... and is only prescribed with a risk evaluation and mitigation strategy" after writing "Thalidomide is strictly contraindicated for pregnant women and women who might become pregnant". The contraindication clause is essentially like saying "Pregnant women should never use thalidomide", but the clause that follows is asserting the possibility that its use MIGHT be justified under certain circumstances if a "risk evaluation and mitigation strategy" is implemented. These are two contradictory value judgments. The one about pregnant women never using thalidomide - period - is pervasive, but the existence of circumstances where a value judgment doesn't apply is exactly why writing these statements is a bad idea: they don't apply to everyone under all possible/conceivable patient circumstances. So, my answer is that if you simply write the reasons why a certain piece of advice is given - like the occurrence of severe birth defects when it's taken during pregnancy, among other things - then a patient can make their own value judgment about a best course of action given their specific circumstances. Thalidomide is an extreme example though; by that, I mean that the advice that "pregnant women should never use thalidomide" likely applies to something like 99.99999% of all pregnant woman who have or ever will read that Wikipedia article.

I figure it might help to clarify the issue if I reframe it another way though: it's not logical to refer to these value judgments as factual because they're expressing a subjective valuation about a "best action" (i.e., the one that should or must be taken), and subjective valuations obviously differ between people. Statements like "patients should take x drug for y condition" are medical opinions - that should be readily apparent when you consider that assertions like this often vary from doctor to doctor for various reasons (e.g., ignorance, financial incentives for prescribing specific alternatives, quackery, differing assessments of a patient's unique circumstances, etc.) even when high-quality medical evidence supports exactly 1 "best" treatment in terms of a drug's efficacy vs safety relative to alternatives. A similar issue arises with medical diagnoses, hence the term "second opinion" being commonplace in medicine. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 11:57, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for replying Seppi. Nope. The REMS plan requires women to have two negative pregnancy tests, and she and any sexual partners have to certify that they are using two kinds of contraception, before the drug is prescribed, and that has to be recertified regularly. The doctor has to sign off on that. The pharmacist has to see that and mark that they have seen it. There is no way a woman who is pregnant or who has any chance of becoming pregnant, is knowingly given thalidomide. Those are just basic facts. The reason for that is not opinion - we know that thalidomide will harm a fetus. Now you can say it is value judgement that we (being "humanity", or perhaps better, the institutions that allow drugs to be marketed and that market, prescribe, and dispense drugs) will not knowingly harm a fetus iatrogenically, but if you are moving "opinion" to that level then we can all pack up our bags and go home, since then notions of "it is better to be healthy and alive than sick or dead" and "do no harm" are "just opinions" instead of the basis for all that to exist. (and yes, neither or those notions is absolute either)

Some of what you are saying is helpful ("should" can get too casually used) but you have gone way too far into abstract la la land.

I am aware this grew out of the LBD talk page and the effort to bring it to FA. There is something about going to FA that drives absurdity. I get it that FA is meant to be our "best" and things/styles get reified as they become part of FAs but the preening ("I've written so and so FAs") and internecine little wars that get fought over these things are toxic as hell. Jytdog (talk) 12:56, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I get it that FA is meant to be our "best" and things/styles get reified as they become part of FAs but the preening ("I've written so and so FAs") and internecine little wars that get fought over these things are toxic as hell. Yes, unfortunately, that's how FAC is.
Some of what you are saying is helpful ("should" can get too casually used) but you have gone way too far into abstract la la land. The more general issue here is that any statement which uses the word "should" to express an obligation is an opinion and WP:NPOV states that opinions must be attributed. Personally, I don't think that WP:NPOV should be applied to every single statement that uses the word "should" on the basis of WP:IAR in order to avoid wasting editors' time to address the more trivial instances of this problem. Including prescriptive medical statements in Wikipedia articles is generally a good practice IMO, but Wikipedia's policies are at odds with how these medical advisory statements are normally written (i.e., without attribution) in virtually all external sources. The subset of statements that use the word "should" for which I believe attribution is absolutely necessary is any statement where a particular course of action is given to an explicitly specified group of people (e.g., individuals should..., clinicians should..., etc., but not "X should not be taken with...", "Y should be considered if...", etc.). I say this because Wikipedia is telling our readers, some of whom will inevitably belong to that group, what to do (i.e., the modal verb must) or what they ought to do (i.e., the modal verb should); I don't think it's a good idea for Wikipedia to tell specific groups of people to take a specific action because (1) encyclopedia articles are supposed to contain only factual statements, (2) prescriptive statements are not statements of fact when they're not attributed to a source (i.e., "X states that Y should..." is a fact about an opinion, whereas "Y should... " is an opinion and "X states... " is a factual claim about an entity making an assertion of fact, opinion, command, etc.), and, most importantly/relevantly, (3) an encyclopedia, and Wikipedia in particular, should not give medical advice to a specific reader in its own voice, especially when it informs that reader of what he/she should do or must do, except in very exceptional circumstances. This third point is my opinion, but this opinion is justified by Wikipedia policy in the 1st bullet in WP:WikiVoice (again, WikiVoice actually applies to all statements that use the modal verb "should" to express an obligation, not just this subset).

In any event, applying WP:WikiVoice to statements that indicate an obligation for a specified group of people to perform a particular action is a much more specific application of that policy than requiring all statements of "should" to be attributed. Again, I don't think that this should be applied to exceptional cases, such as "thalidomide should not be taken by pregnant women", which is valid (i.e., the "best" course of action given the individual's circumstances) for virtually all past, present, and future pregnant women. FWIW, I also don't think that the rather extreme "genocide is evil" example in WP:WikiVoice should require attribution since everyone with a moral compass that isn't completely fucked up would agree with that sentiment, but this is getting off-topic.
We probably need to have an RFC to determine where to draw the line on attribution though – I imagine some people will feel that all prescriptive statements should be attributed (i.e., full compliance with WikiVoice), none should be attributed (e.g., Sandy), or only some should be attributed (e.g., me).
To reiterate, my motivation for posting about this issue here is that I think medical editors should at least be cognizant of this issue in the future, not because I want people to take action to fix any existing issues in articles right now. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 21:39, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

break

I've been writing some stuff over on the RfC talk page, that i'll try to summarize here with some further thinking. Seppi your approach is bumming me out some but I am glad you are bringing this up.

First, this is really about the main medical activities - namely diagnosis and management, right?

Medical people have to do stuff. That is medicine.

There are layers of things here.

1) What do we know about disease X - about its symptoms, pathophysiology, epidemiology etc?

2) What diagnostic tests and treatments exist?

3) How well do things work and in what contexts? (screening test? confirmatory test? first line treatment? Second line treatment? combinations? Surgery vs drugs vs watching, in what order? for which people?) What are their harms? How much do they cost?

4) How good is each bit of evidence above? What do we know, and what do we not know or just kinda know?

5) Given all the evidence and lack of evidence, what should medical people do? How are these recommendations different where money/resources are factored in based on saving money in developed countries or where there is less money/resources?

6) what do medical people actually do - how do they actually diagnose disease X? how do they actually treat it? (are they following guidelines? We know for antibiotics in cold/flu they are often not, and we know they are often not for the knee surgeries that WAID likes to bring up) How does this vary from place to place (cities vs rural; regional differences, money/resource driven within a country or from country to country)?

The heart of this whole kerfluffle is #5, right? Medicine is still as much art as it is science; guidelines matter and are "accepted knowledge" in their fields. That is why they are written. Doctors and nurses have to do stuff

Again

"Accepted knowledge" in medicine is often a bunch of "should" / "should not" statements in a clinical guideline or textbook

This is why Seppi's campaign is being met with such rejection. I think I understand where Seppi is coming from. In my experience Seppi is very very evidence driven. I don't get the sense that Seppi thinks that much about the practice of medicine per se.

But it is a good question. Have a look at Inflammatory_bowel_disease#Medical_therapies - at the kinds of sources there, and how they are handled. I go hm. A textbook, and two guidelines (sources from bucket #5 and somewhat in #6 -- textbooks describe what doctors actually do and what they should do), and the content is all descriptive (as though the sources were all from bucket #6). Is that even ... real? Are those guidelines actually followed? What are we doing there? This is interesting and important.

Have a look at Oseltamivir#Medical_use for how that reads. What happened there was a straight-up contradiction between clinical guidelines and recommendations from Cochrane-reviews. (we solved it by attributing)

But that kind of conflict between evidence and guidelines is actually rare. Most times they end up aligning, and we can find "accepted knowledge" about what medical people should do (!) in either.

About #6 stuff, briefly... For us, this is often hard to get at. How are people actually diagnosed? How are they actually treated? The clinical review papers like the Lancet often puts out, are just awesome for this kind of stuff, where medical practice is described and we can summarize it. (it bugs me that these descriptions are often ... impressionistic-seeming and not evidence based, using actual billings for procedures done and the like, but they are the best we have. I always wonder how the authors know...)

As for bucket #5 in the specific case of contraindications, I think it is just kooky to not write about contraindications in terms of "should not". That is what contradindicated means. That is science in medicine - we know that if you give person drug X, you will likely harm them (or their fetus). (i'll note the content about pregnancy at the FA Beta-Hydroxy_beta-methylbutyric_acid#Side_effects is fully attributed. But really. This is because nobody knows. The company doesn't know, because it didn't pay for the studies, because it didn't have to, because shitty law and companies doing what companies do (not spend money on expensive stuff if they don't have to). And there is no label reviewed by the FDA because.. oh shitty law again) The company wisely covers its ass by advising pregnant women not to take it. So we attribute that. This is an extremely marginal case and not relevant to most editing about medicine. It is accepted knowledge that women who are pregnant or might get pregnant should not take thalidomidee. Ditto isotretinoin. Anybody saying that this is not accepted knowledge in medicine, is off their rocker or is actually talking about something else.

So - how should we summarize "accepted knowledge" in medicine, where for a significant part of it, "accepted knowledge" is a bunch of "should" / "should-not" statements? It is a good question.

I don't think "never say 'should'" is a helpful approach, nor is "always attribute 'should'". "Use 'should' whenever you like" is also not good. But what? This needs thoughtful working out. Not passionate battering on any side of it. Jytdog (talk) 04:02, 30 April 2018 (UTC) (tweaked the questions a bit without redaction to factor in money/resources Jytdog (talk) 15:22, 30 April 2018 (UTC))[reply]

I agree with you overall.

I think that one solution is to provide more information: If taken during pregnancy, thalidomide can cause severe, including fatal, birth defects. CA125 has poor specificity and worse sensitivity for ovarian cancer in asymptomatic women. Antibiotics are prescribed for half of people seeking medical assistance for an upper respiratory infection, but most people don't seek medical assistance, and many of those who get antibiotics don't benefit from them.

Sometimes we probably need to use the word "should": Psychiatrists should not validate delusional beliefs. Healthcare providers should be truthful and polite.

In general, I think that increasing the diversity of our information about actual practice and experiences from the POV of the patient will help with some of this. I think it's easier to describe facts about what happens in the US and the UK when you are also describing facts about what happens in places that are less familiar. This will mean sometimes accepting less-than-top-tier journals, because we aren't likely to find articles in the NEJM that describes, say, what people do when they have a common cold in a country where they can buy antimalarials over the counter.

What other ideas could we try? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:40, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Section reflist

^ For example:
• "[Drug name] should not be used if/for [other text goes here]."
• "Caregivers should [verb] [other text goes here]."

DLB

Dementia with Lewy bodies is "done" to the best of my ability. Once the fact/opinion issue is resolved, I would like to ask a Wikifriend for a thorough copyedit, so we (all who contributed) can take it to FAC, as a collaboration. So, for anyone who may be interested, now is a good time to comb through the content. Thanks in advance, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:02, 29 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for all that work. Jytdog (talk) 04:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Criticisms of mainstream medicine

This article/essay came up in the new pages queue. Thoughts? Natureium (talk) 23:48, 30 April 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I smell a sock. Hm. This will take some looking into. Jytdog (talk) 04:59, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yeah and it's not a real topic (too vague/general for RS) - the article is full of WP:OR/WP:SYN; needs deleting. Alexbrn (talk) 06:38, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I agree it's quite vague.. it seems like all the subheadings would really be better as their own pages (with better wording of course). For instance, he included a "Scandals" heading and included a handful of scandals, but if we had a "Scandals in medicine" article we could populate it with millions of bytes of information. How did they choose those specific examples? It reads more like an essay because the examples are seemingly arbitrary. The sources are pretty good, it looks like he's interfaced about this article with many members of this WP, as evident through his talk page. I don't think deletion is in order until we figure out which direction to take the article in. I also think each section needs to have a "main article" to direct to if they are going to remain brief. SEMMENDINGER (talk) 13:46, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There's some good material here. I'm not certain it all fits together under that WP:FORKy title. Better to integrate this content into other articles, I'd've thought. Bondegezou (talk) 15:05, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The article is unfortunately all over the place. It also fails to recognize that there is no such thing as "mainstream medicine", but only "medicine". Carl Fredrik^talk 15:39, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That's one POV, and it is not universally shared. And you know, there is actually value in being able to differentiate between different types of legally regulated behavior, e.g., the kind that involves setting broken bones vs. the kind that involves physicians prescribing cough syrup for a cold. I'm not sure what that POV calls prescribing useless stuff, but the law calls it "practicing medicine". WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:16, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I nominated it for deletion: WP:Articles for deletion/Criticisms of medicine. Alexbrn (talk) 16:44, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hans Asperger and the Nazis

A paper recently published in Molecular Autism (full text here) has claimed that, in Nazi Germany, Hans Asperger "joined several organizations affiliated with the NSDAP (although not the Nazi party itself), publicly legitimized race hygiene policies including forced sterilizations and, on several occasions, actively cooperated with the child ‘euthanasia’ program." It has gotten a lot of media attention and I wanted to see if other editors think it is fairly incorporated into the current article on Asperger himself. Every morning (there's a halo...) 21:06, 1 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(not an easy article) however your edit[16] seems consistent w/ source--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:27, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Oppose — Per rationale on that talk page. Carl Fredrik^talk 11:32, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

This has been all over the news recently; I'm surprised that there hasn't been even more effort to expand upon possible Nazi ties. Looking at the article's talk page, I see that it's almost the only thing that readers and editors have posted about for years. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:14, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Psychiatry and neurophysiology

Input would be welcome at Talk:Neurophysiology#Neurophysiology relationship to psychiatry. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:01, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-642-59519-6_9 — Preceding unsigned comment added by Charlotte135 (talk • contribs) 00:24, May 2, 2018 (UTC)

Never mind, we resolved it. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:27, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your self-revert Tryptofish. The relatedness to psychiatry is quite obvious.Charlotte135 (talk) 00:48, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Adenoid vs Pharyngeal tonsil

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.

Hello, as I mentioned here, that text books said "adenoids are a symptomatic pathological hypertrophy of the nasopharyngeal tonsil. That in presence of certain predisposing factors (like allergy, environmental pollution..etc), abnormal hypertrophy of the nasopharyngeal tonsil occurs and normal physiological regression is slowed down (nasopharyngeal tonsil normally starts to diminish in size at the age of 7-8 years), and the hypertrophy condition here called adenoids". So if there's no objection I'll move the article from Adenoid to Pharyngeal tonsil? --Alaa :)..! 11:35, 2 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

علاء — This belong on WT:ANAT, moving it. Carl Fredrik^talk 13:24, 2 May 2018 (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.

Request for a merge

Greetings! I've been combing through stale drafts, and happened upon one User:Garfieldandcows/Pes anserinus bursitis. Wikipedia already has an article over this topic, at Pes anserine bursitis. However, the draft contains a number of useful pieces of information that should be merged into that article. Unfortunately, I lack any expertise in this area, meaning the merge could be better performed by someone here. I was wondering if someone could do me a favor and take care of that. —Compassionate727 ^(T·C) 02:19, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

looks ok[17]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 23:24, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Children in emergencies and conflicts

Opinions are needed on the following: Talk:Children in emergencies and conflicts#Redirecting this article. A permalink for it is here. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 09:39, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:57, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Castleman disease rewrite

Hi everyone, thanks in advance for any help, it is much appreciated! Full disclosure about a potential COI, I am a medical student working for the non-profit Castleman Disease Collaborative Network.

I have been working to rewrite the page for Castleman disease. When I was considering my approach to rewriting the page I figured I would have to include 3 subcategories for each heading reflecting the 3 commonly accepted subtypes of the disease (Unicentric Castleman disease, HHV-8-associated multicentric Castleman disease, idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease). I thought that would be cumbersome and it would be better to have a separate page for each subtype instead. My feeling (which I believe reflects that of experts in the rather small field) is that these 3 diseases likely differ enough in pathogenesis, symptoms, treatment, and prognosis that they are best thought of independently. Recently published high impact articles tend to focus on a single subtype rather than all 3.

I have drafted all 3 articles:

Draft:HHV-8-associated MCD

Draft:Unicentric Castleman disease

Draft:Idiopathic multicentric Castleman disease

I am new to wikipedia and I was hoping to get feedback on:

1) Whether my approach with 3 articles makes sense

2) General feedback on my drafts, is the content appropriate? is the tone correct? Do I have enough sources?

3) What is the fastest way to get these articles up? Should I wait for the formal review process as I am currently doing?

4) Is my COI significant, I tried to be as unbiased as possible. I did mention the CDCN in the article as I feel it is a notable and valuable resource, but I understand if my COI might be concerning.

Thank you so much for any feedback!--CDK55 (talk) 20:15, 3 May 2018 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by CDK55 (talk • contribs) 20:12, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

For rare diseases, it is normal and appropriate to mention the largest non-profit organization in the article.

I started an infobox at the top of the Draft:Unicentric Castleman disease. If you open the page in the visual editor, and click on it, then you can get a list of things you can add (like ICD-10 codes and OMIM numbers). Including an infobox is typical in this kind of article, but if you don't like it, then you can remove it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:32, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks so much for the help! I'll try add an infobox to the other pages and expand on the one you added to the UCD page. CDK55 (talk) 13:49, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

will take a look as well[18]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New articles

Some of you might be interested in another way to find new articles and new redirects that are related to health and medicine: https://tools.wmflabs.org/nppbrowser/index.php?by=group&name=Education+%26+Research

Here's the list that it finds under "health" today:

Extended content

(There's another list for "biology".) WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:37, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

very useful[19] thanks WAID--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:55, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

HTML errors in medicine-related articles

I'm going through Special:LintErrors, and I've found a few high-priority HTML errors in articles tagged by this WikiProject. The wikitext parser is going to change in June, and any page with an error may display strangely.

What's needed right now is for someone to click these links and compare the side-by-side preview of the two parsers. If the "New" page looks okay, then something's maybe technically wrong with the HTML, but there's no immediate worry. If that column looks wrong, then it should be fixed.

The first list is all "deletable table" errors. If you want to know more about how to fix these pages, then see mw:Help:Extension:Linter/deletable-table-tag. Taking the first link as an example, there is highlighting in the wikitext that shows where the lint error is; it's in the ==I== section. The cause is probably the bad wikitext code at the end of the previous section, which currently ends with |-}. In the current parser, this error makes the H and I tables be connected; in the upcoming parser, it will make them separate but the ==I== section heading will still be misplaced. It should be an easy fix.

This second list is "misnested tags". See mw:Help:Extension:Linter/html5-misnesting for more information. For the first link, the highlighting indicates that the problem is in the ==References== section.

For more help, you can ask questions at Wikipedia talk:Linter. Good luck, Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:02, 3 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[20]seems to have additional info--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:24, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

RfC about vitamin B3

Talk:Vitamin_B3#RfC_Do_the_refs_support_this_content? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:29, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 22:00, 4 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Ivanhoe and medical marketing

We have just been through a bit of a slog at the AfD about Greg J. Marchand (about to be deleted), an ob/gyn who got his MD at Spartan Health Sciences University, practices laparoscopic surgery, and likes to go after "world records" for removing biggest X and then put out press releases about them. He uses morcellation to get the big things out but still work laparoscopically.

Here is how it looked when it was created. I one point I pared it down to something as good-as-it-could be given the sources, and got this.

The socks argued that syndicated news stories about this guy each counted toward N and one of them wrote this: these 14 news stories did not come from a press release, they came from national reporter. The original story was produced by Wendy Chioji of Ivanhoe Media (they do a lot of the medical interest national stories for CBS, NBC, ABC. Her original story is easy to find so I suspect you already knew this. It's a real national story shared with many legitimate CBS, NBC, and ABC affiliate stations.

Nobody bought this argument, but it was such a clear (and egregious) example that I thought it worth posting at INDY, and did so here, and have made a bold edit to INDY to explicitly address syndicated stories in discussions of notability and weight.

But what I wanted to discuss here was Ivanhoe Broadcast News (I just nominated that for speedy as it is mostly a copy/paste from their website) which apparently creates pieces about "breakthroughs in medicine" and sells them to other news organizations. I don't know much about them. If they are doing legit news, or are really oriented toward doing PR, or if they don't care what subjects want and will just do anything if they think they can sell it. I can say that their piece on Marchand was pretty much a mouthpiece, and not at all independent journalism. (Here is the one piece i found with INDY reporting on Marchand; the Ivanhoe syndicated pieces - for example this, are nothing like that.)

Anyway, I wanted to post here to see if anybody is aware of Ivanhoe. ?? Their stuff is not MEDRS of course but there is lots of non-biomedical content we all deal with. Is anybody familiar with them? Jytdog (talk) 18:10, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

i checked at healthnewsreview.org and they have some discussion of ivanhoe:

2006 piece cites a piece from Grade the News about Dean Edell, which says

Dean Edell, the syndicated multimedia medical reporter who calls himself "America's Doctor," has built a thriving business dispensing news and advice about everything from cancer treatments to erectile dysfunction. What followers of his "Medical Journal" on KGO Channel 7 may not realize is that the reporting he takes credit for on the air often is not his own. Many of his TV stories, along with transcripts under his byline on the KGO Web site, were taken nearly verbatim from a low-profile news service in Florida that mails out prepackaged video reports to more than 100 TV stations across the country.The company, Ivanhoe Broadcast News, allows local reporters to put their names on stories they didn't report, film or write -- without mentioning Ivanhoe. Stations also are permitted to omit geographical information, giving viewers the false impression that the stories were locally produced and the patients and doctors quoted in the stories could be their neighbors

This 2009 piece which is their most substantial discussion
two 2010 reactions to their "“Pomegranates Prevent Breast Cancer?” "question mark journalism" story -- here and here
another on "blue m&ms" here from 2009

That thats what healthnewsreview has to say... Jytdog (talk) 19:51, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There is nothing about Print syndication that makes it inherently non-independent.

However, WP:N has said (for years and years) that when the same story is republished in a bunch of different media outlets, that's still exactly one (1) story. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:33, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Unfortunately, the wording of WP:GNG

Multiple publications from the same author or organization are usually regarded as a single source for the purposes of establishing notability.

is liable to ambiguous interpretation (the problem is in the "or"). We know it means that when Wendy Chioji of Ivanhoe Media writes a story and gives it to multiple news stations, that counts for only one source for the purpose of satisfying GNG. But you only have to look at the socks voting "keep" at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Greg J. Marchand to realise that the UPEs will read our policy as stating that each news station counts as a separate independent source becaus they are not the same organisation.

Examples:

"In the US [he] has articles all over the national news about him";
"There's no way this can fail WP:GNG. If you read WP:GNG it plainly says:""Independent of the subject" excludes works produced by the article's subject or someone affiliated with it. For example, advertising, press releases, autobiographies, and the subject's website are not considered independent." Individual ABC, NBC and CBS stations all over the nation ran the story.";
"That is not what WP:GNG says. It says they have to be independent from the Subject, not independent from each other. Most stories you see on the news will come from the same Associated Press press releases no matter where you are in the United States."

and so on. That's the sort of persuasive crap that leads to AfDs ending in "no consensus to delete", because not even the closers pay enough attention to the point that "1 story = 1 source for GNG". It's time you spruced up that policy again, WAID

--RexxS (talk) 20:59, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The rule is explained in Wikipedia:Notability#cite_note-3, but Wikipedia:Nobody reads the directions. If it's a pervasive and good-faith problem (e.g., not just a bunch of socks at AFD), then it might be worth expanding. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:01, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The snag with the current system is that you have to prove that the comments are coming from socks before their deceptive comments can be exposed for what they are. Most of the time we just don't know whether the SPAs are socks or not. I shudder to think how many AfDs may have given free passes to UPEs and their sockfarms because the nominator lacked Jytdog's insight and tenacity. My vote is for spelling the guidance out clearly in GNG. Something like

"Multiple publications from the same author or organization, and the same source repeated by multiple organizations are almost always regarded as a single source for the purposes of establishing notability."

--RexxS (talk) 23:45, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I spent a little while looking into Ivanhoe. It appears that they're basically a standard news media organization. It's sort of freelancing on a larger scale: they write stories, and they sell stories to outlets. It's licensing rules are different from (i.e., worse than) the Associated Press's, but it's not necessarily different in kind. Since they are profitable, I assume that they're talking to media outlets about the kinds of content that will get bought, but I also assume that their independence is approximately the same as every other newsroom: they get jillions of press releases whether they want them or not, they are under a lot of time/productivity pressure, and they are more skilled than the average person at noticing when someone's trying to twist the facts.

I think that there may be some confusion of "hard-hitting" with "independent". Glowing puff pieces can be absolutely independent, just like critical pieces can be wildly non-independent (see: every attack ad ever published during a political campaign). You can build a journalistic career on writing positive stories, without compromising your independence. There's a market for good/hopeful news, especially for health content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your thoughts on Invanhoe, WAID. The whole point of journalistic independence is that we look for them to actually look into stuff and report what they find. A "piece" that is just a puff piece providing a mouthpiece for the subject is not independent, in the spirit of what we are looking for. This is a much murkier ball of wax, I know... Jytdog (talk) 23:50, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

No, that's not what journalistic independence means. Journalistic independence does not mean that you get a complete or accurate story. It means that you get a story that was published because the journalists (e.g., not the advertisers or the government) wanted to publish it.

This is why journalistic independence is so valuable for determining notability: the decision to publish a story on X tells us that someone with no vested interest in X thought that X was important enough to bring X to the attention of the world at large. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:27, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

happy to have dialogue but I intended this thread to be about Ivanhoe as source of medical "news". My sense is we should avoid it like the plague.

Folks have seemed tetchy lately, about what is "in-scope" here on this talk page. The general issues should (in my view) be discussed at the INDY talk page, here as they are not specific to MED. If folks agree there, it might well be worth adding a clarification about syndidated stories at N, BIO, CORP, etc. but those are discussions for those guidelines/essays.... Jytdog (talk) 22:06, 5 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Ivanhoe is probably every bit as good a source of medical news as your typical local newspaper.

I am curious where you draw the line between "medical news" and information that needs to meet MEDRS standards for biomedical content. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:09, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So something like Marchand getting a guinness world record would be Society and Culture. something about first X would be history (although popular media is generally bad for that). Perhaps for public controversy. That's not a surprising answer is it? Jytdog (talk) 00:53, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that Ivanhoe is a reliable source for that kind of news.

I also think that news stories (in any typical news media) that are initiated through press releases and PR campaigns are reliable for that kind of news, too. What we need from a source for WP:V is a reason to think that the facts are accurate; a typical news story provides us with that. What we need from a source for WP:N is their "gatekeeper" function, to determine what deserves their readers' attention; the fact that they can't (and won't) run a story on every single press release provides us with that.

The main problem with the Marchand stuff isn't the "wow, modern medicine is so amazing" aspect of the stories. It's just that there's not much to say about him. Stripped of puffery, trivia, and stuff pulled from self-published and non-independent sources, the article would probably be a WP:PERMASTUB – a few sentences that would say little more than "He did this, and he was criticized for it". WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:33, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That sounds reasonable. Jytdog (talk) 03:43, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

New editor

A few here might want to assess Olivia482 (talk · contribs)'s edits and help her improve as an editor. I've left a brief message on her talk page about WP:MEDRS. The good thing is that she is sourcing her material and it's usually not essay-like. Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 22:20, 6 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I said hello and invited this person to post to this board anytime for feedback. I recommend the same to all new editors. Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:55, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Video reboot

Video explanation (based on this version of the script)

A number of concerns were raised regarding our use of videos summaries uploaded to Commons by the Osmosis group. I have taken one video and worked to resolve these concerns:

Done Full inline references to WP:MEDRS compliant sources to comply with WP:V and WP:MEDRS
Done Front and back bumpers removed (super easy to do by the way)
Not done Front and back bumpers not removed as best practice per Creative Commons is to include them.[21][22][23]
Done Scripts and individual slides available on Wikipedia. These can be seen here
Done Improved the body of the measles article such that the video now summarizes the body of the article in question
Done I have fixed one small issue with the video in question as it mentioned that immune problems only lasted for up to six weeks following infection. This was the first time I have ever edited video and it is actually not that hard.

Were there other concerns I missed?

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:45, 8 May 2018 (UTC) [edited by Doc James, 10 May 2018 (diff)].[reply]

seems all issues that were brought up have been resolved--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:54, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What software did you use to edit the video? Did you have to convert the file to or from webm? Blue Rasberry (talk) 13:53, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

OpenShot Video Editor.[24] The videos are already in WebM so no conversion needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:33, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The biggest issue as I remember it has more to do with the summary/explainer style of video and what we should do with them. I.e. they stand in for the article in some ways but cannot be edited in the same way. Is that outside the scope of what you're looking to determine with this thread? — Rhododendrites ^talk \\ 13:58, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

There was a number of issues raised. It is true that the videos are a different way to present content than text. There is and was no plan to "replace" articles by video, only to add video to articles. Hopefully us having videos will help us bring back some of our readers who left for youtube and other video services. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:37, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think the major issue with editing videos was the difficulty per se, but that you need to have the software for it. Natureium (talk) 14:13, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User:Natureium how is this any different than editing pictures? One needs software for that aswell. Open source software exists for both. Including software within commons might be possible if people wanted video. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:27, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Removing content from a video is actually not that hard no, provided you have the software for it. Adding or changing content in a video is really hard, in comparison to editing text, independently of whether you have the software or not. Due to the video format itself, videos are tricky to update without re-making the whole video or creating weird cuts, using a new voice etc, which I believe was a point rased in the previous discussion. --Treetear (talk) 14:37, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Agree completely remaking a video would be harder. But it is becoming easier and we already do lots of hard stuff. Not sure something being hard is a good reason not to do it :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:37, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Difficulty in itself might indeed not be a good reason not to do something, but let's not forget that Wikipedia is the free encyclopedia that anyone can edit.--Treetear (talk) 10:35, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Never seen the old videos so I don't have a lot to compare to. Some of this is fairly technical (understandably) but overall, I like the videos. No fluff. There are some concerns about the ability to edit the video, but since videos aren't required and can be completely removed by consensus, I don't see an issue. As long as they can be tied to MEDRS, I like. Dennis Brown - 2¢ 15:15, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
- Thanks User:Dennis Brown. Will look at starting a formal RfC soon. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:17, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I like the script link at the bottom of the video and how it is laid out (and cited) in a similar fashion as a WP article.JenOttawa (talk) 15:33, 8 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Having reviewed the measles video, I think this is really quite good. I would be happy to support the placement of videos under the following conditions:
1. The video does not include information not contained in the article, and definitely does not contradict the article at the time of placement.
2. All videos have a script that is easily verifiable for readers who actually want to know the source of certain claims
3. We need a robust process by which a video can be updated if the evidence base changes. For instance, if a high-quality review or guideline drastically revises the treatment protocol it should be easy for us to have the relevant part of the video revised. Given that the videos are meant to be summaries this should be an infrequent occurrence, but I really want to avoid 1. and therefore this needs to work well (the law of the least surprise). If this process does not function, it should be possible to retire a video.
- I may not follow this discussion over the next few days, but please ping me if there are major follow-up questions/challenges. JFW | T@lk 08:06, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  - Why in the minute 4:13 there is a big jump? --Liang (WMTW) (talk) 11:23, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
    - "Big jump" is an exaggeration. There is a somewhat rough cut there, due I think to the last bullet above. Jytdog (talk) 17:10, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
      - Yup that is the reason. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:44, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: might have more, but there were some other concerns. 1) That the videos were placed in the lead rather than at the bottom of the article where most commons or external links are placed. 2) That there was no talk page notification of pending videos so that users familiar with the content area could review the scripts pre-production. 3) The comical font and unencyclopedic tone. 4) That it should not be difficult for the average reader to access the sources for verifiability. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:40, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Another big issue was that one person was acting on behalf of Osmosis, allowing them to run free ads in Wikipedia articles. The community opined on the Osmosis videos in an RFC; there has not yet been (as suggested) a guideline drawn up for what kinds of videos Wikipedia might accept (example, WP:NOTYOUTUBE). Why are we revisiting Osmosis.org videos a month after a community-wide RFC? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:49, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Because a number of the issues such as "inline citations" and "WP:MEDRS" were address. Some of use are still interested in video though. Yes I realize that others do not want to see explanations of diseases by video on Wikipedia. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:11, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Logo at the beginning

Not even a hint of consensus for this. There is no benefit to anyone in continuing the discussion. Jytdog (talk) 15:50, 11 May 2018 (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.

Measles video with logo

Wondering peoples thoughts on the logo at the beginning? Osmosis is looking at dropping an open license for what they produce going forwards as some have been uninterested in seeing their content used on Wikipedia and others are pushing for removal of this attribution. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:51, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at the parallel case of an image being donated under an BY- licence, we would tend to remove any watermarks and rely on the description page to do the attribution. I understand that further re-users of such content may not have a description page, and may not attribute properly, but that has not swayed us against removing watermarks from images. I'm not sure there's any fundamentally different argument for retaining a logo for attribution at the start of a video. Personally, it wouldn't bother me as it's gone after a few moments, but I accept that others may feel more strongly. At the end of the day, it's Osmosis' decision on whether they release videos under an open licence, but when they do, they have to understand that they can't control re-use of subsequent derivatives, beyond insisting on attribution and maintenance of any share-alike licence. --RexxS (talk) 15:03, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Is that "dropping" as in "delivering" or "dropping" as in "no longer supporting"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:34, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

As they own the rights to these videos the "SA" does not apply to them and updates of current videos we have will not be under an open license.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:37, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think that using their logo in the video is against one of the fundamental principles, in that everything here is cooperative. We don't sign our contributions in articles, and that's essentially what adding a logo to a video is. If they choose not to release them under an open license, so be it. The purpose of videos on wikipedia is not to provide exposure to their company. Natureium (talk) 16:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I think our conventions are more nuanced than that. To continue the image analogy, have a look at c:File:Albert Memorial, London 2.jpg by my friend Mike Peel (I hope he won't mind me using him as an example). Note the custom template describing the CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence: "permission to freely use the image for any purpose, so long as you attribute it as requested here", the actual permission: "CC-BY-SA-4.0. Please attribute as per the author line above", and the required text: "Photograph by Mike Peel (www.mikepeel.net)". The image is released under an open licence; it still requires attribution; and that attribution is specified to include a link to Mike's personal website. Now Mike isn't a professional photographer (he's an astronomer and a FRAS), but it's only fair that he gets credit for the images he's donated, which run into many thousands over the years. Nobody I'm aware of has ever complained that such attribution is promotional.

So, if Osmosis were to require attribution in a similar way for their videos, with a link to their website, would that cause us problems? I'm just trying to balance in mind the degree of promotion caused by a logo which brands a video, and the promotion caused by having a website link on the description page. I understand they are not the same thing, but in my head, the logo seems less promotional than a website link on the description page would be. Maybe others would perceive that differently from me. --RexxS (talk) 18:23, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts - It bothers me that Doc is communicating with Osmosis while they never did respond at their WP communication page to my and another editor's questions. Also I am wondering how importing these videos would be any different than importing the "children in war" article (from UNESCO if I remember correctly) which did include references and could be (and most likely would be) easily edited. Re that article SarahSV said, "We shouldn't allow outside organizations to use Wikipedia as extensions of their websites." I don't think that very many of us doubt that Sarah generally is an expert on such things. How would this be any different? Gandydancer (talk) 18:59, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Were did we import the children in war article?[25]

With respect to best practice around attribution of video Creative Commons says "Include the relevant attribution information with the work when it appears on screen during the film; and If this is not possible, attribute the work in the credits, just as you would see with music in a commercial film."

Examples here are also similar to what has been done in these videos. Not sure why we would not follow the recommendations by Creative Commons?

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:01, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Doc that is the Children in emergencies and conflicts that I speak of. Gandydancer (talk) 20:07, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

So the question is how is a video different than an article that original came from UNESCO, the NIH, or Britannica 1911? Well a video is just one of a number of potential parts of an article. How is a video different from this 1989 poster from the CDC? Similar in some ways different in others. Needs to be addressed as different entities.

Our goal is to "compile the sum of all human knowledge" so yah disagree with the sentiment that we should not work with / collaborate with other content producers / websites. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:38, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

IIRC, the MOS says watermarks aren't desirable, but personally I don't really mind the logo if that's the condition for continued release of these videos under CC-BY-SA-4.0. The benefit that these videos provide our articles outweighs the relatively trivial cost of non-compliance with the MOS's stance on logos in graphical media. In any event, the MOS is just a guideline, not a policy. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:54, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you look at exactly the same table, two rows up, the suggestion for Photos and Images is to "Provide the relevant attribution next to the photograph, or close by (eg on the edge or bottom of the page) if that is too obtrusive." While that suggestion is certainly one valid approach to giving credit, it isn't the only one—and that just isn't how we handle image (or other) media credits on Wikipedia.

We let our readers click on images (and other media) to see attribution information, just as we do for the body text of the articles. Osmosis can put whatever they want (within reason) in the attribution field on Commons when they upload their videos: names, company affiliations, not-too-spammy external links, logos. They can receive credit for their contributions in exactly the same manner as every other Wikipedia contributor.

Letting Osmosis run a bumper ad before every video just isn't cool, even if they're threatening to take their ball and go home if we don't give them what they want. (And why isn't there an Osmosis rep here to advocate on their own behalf, instead of sending – semi-official(?) – messages through James?) They've already gotten tens (possibly hundreds) of thousands of dollars of advertising value out of Wikipedia; we're not going to reopen that tap. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 03:17, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Per "why isn't there an Osmosis rep here" because Osmosis is no long working with us in any capacity. What I do is entirely on my own behalf and I do not represent Osmosis in any way shape or form. This is a discussion about OA content for which I am an advocate. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:06, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If they are retaining rights, they are just another external link, and we don't typically include external links that provide no information beyond what the article would provide if brought to FA status, so it's hard to see why we would include them at all-- just free publicity to one video company? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:44, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Retaining some rights is how CC-BY-SA licensing works. Also, a video that you can see without leaving the Wikipedia article doesn't qualify as an "external" link.

I believe that the motivation for including them is primarily about reaching readers who prefer video/audio. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:31, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

What are the attribution requirements for using their videos on Wikipedia? According to their website we must indicate the video is a derivative of their work and follow the attribution guidelines. See "For any video that was published under CC-BY-SA between May 3rd, 2017, and May 7, 2018 we require that you retain the front (first 2 seconds of the video) and back bumper (the last 30 seconds of the video)."[26] File:Tobacco dependence.webm is the original file. File:Tobacco dependence 1.webm has the beginning and end removed. Is the modifed video with the beginning and end removed allowed to be used? If the video must attribute the work in the manner specified by the author or licensor then the video must be deleted unless they allow for the modification. QuackGuru (talk) 13:33, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The permission instructions would need to be included on commons if they wish them to apply to that video.[27] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:16, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The attribution was removed at the beginning and end of the video. The file may have to be deleted. Editors may not be allowed to remove the attribution at the beginning and end of the video because of the type of licensing. The video itself is good but it is my understanding that editors don't want the beginning and end of the video with all that information about the company. QuackGuru (talk) 14:26, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(ec) I note that the post you've linked regarding their requirements to have the front and back bumpers indicates that it was "updated this week". Unfortunately it's not available on the Wayback Machine so I can't tell when the post was originally created. It certainly looks like a close-the-barn-door-after-the-horse-is-out move by Osmosis.

Spot-checking a handful of Osmosis videos on Commons, I wasn't able to find any such condition on any of the videos when originally uploaded by Osmosis (or since). I also couldn't find any reference to that specific attribution format requirement on any of the YouTube videos I looked at (either in the video or in the associated Osmosis-submitted description material below). Can anyone locate any evidence anywhere that the "ad bumper" attribution format was explicitly required at the time of uploading? TenOfAllTrades(talk) 14:33, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

User:TenOfAllTrades agree. Since they were uploaded originally without that requirement we could technically and legally remove them from the videos we have. Would that be the right thing to do, IMO no, and thus I will not be involved.

Some are against any videos of this format, so it is unlikely we will be able to create guidelines around what would be required before accepting them. If on the very slight chance our community can come to an agreement on requirements for these types of videos, not following the best practices recommendations of Creative Commons will make it very hard to find anyone to collaborate on this.

User:SlimVirgin thinks she can put out a "request for tender" to find organizations to create high quality medical videos for free and without such attribution. I am not so hopeful. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:41, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't say that I "can put out a 'request for tender' to find organizations to create high quality medical videos for free and without such attribution". I wrote in March: "If you had put that out to tender, other parties—including mission-aligned organizations—might have been willing to supply much higher quality videos, in exchange for that amount of advertising. Instead, the partnership went to a couple of people that you knew and liked. Can you see the problem with that?" SarahSV ^(talk) 15:29, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Here was the original upload. The "ad bumper" attribution is not mandatory because it was not indicated in the original upload. There was no link to their website at the time that we must leave the attribution in the video. The notice on their website is irrelevant. They can't add a new requirement to each video after they were uploaded. User:SlimVirgin, if you are able to find someone to create new videos for free please let me know. QuackGuru (talk) 14:45, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict) Doc James, bringing up the videos at all was somewhat surprising, but the original post was at least aligned, more or less, with the RfC outcome.

Bringing up the logos was a very, very bad idea. I know that you really want more of this kind of openly licensed, plain English, accessible video content, and I get it, that you were hoping that perhaps Osmosis could be persuaded to keep providing them if the videos could be attributed within the videos. But given the very strong reaction in the community against the logos and against the way that Osmosis described the relationship with Wikipedia in its PR, there was and is no way in hell that there could be consensus for the logos. Please do not bring this up again. It is good for nobody. Jytdog (talk) 15:20, 11 May 2018 (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.

COI

We've just had an RfC on the Knowledge Diffusion Inc./Osmosis videos, and the consensus to remove them was clear. See Osmosis RfC (opened 28 March 2018) and Archive 110. Any attempt to deviate from the consensus would require another RfC. If there is another RfC, I hope it will be carefully worded after discussion, rather than rushed into.

Doc James and Wiki Project Med Foundation Inc. (a 501(c)(3) nonprofit registered in New York) have a COI in relation to these videos. According to several statements from James and Ocaasi, Knowledge Diffusion, Inc., a private company trading as Osmosis, formed a partnership with WikiProject Med Foundation Inc. in 2015 to add the videos to Wikipedia, which even included deciding that they would be placed under the infobox. Osmosis was also involved in a request for a $100,000 grant from the Wikimedia Foundation (recently withdrawn).

Given how contentious this issue has become, James should not add these videos to articles or otherwise engage editorially in a way that benefits Knowledge Diffusion/Osmosis. It's a concern that he has recently rewritten parts of the measles article to accommodate one of the videos—"Done. Improved the body of the measles article such that the video now summarizes the body of the article in question"[28]—and is arguing that a company link (i.e. advertising) ought to be permitted at the start of the video or else Knowledge Diffusion won't release any others. Pinging Jbhunley and Colin, who (as I recall) previously commented on the COI aspect. SarahSV ^(talk) 04:47, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@SlimVirgin: if http://open.osmosis.org created these videos, published them under the CC-BY-SA-4.0 license, and explicitly requested that attribution be included in the video when their content is reused, then what you refer to as "advertising" is nothing more than the requisite attribution under the licensing terms (in particular, see Section 3.a.1.A.i). If any of those three conditions aren't true, then the logo is not necessary for attribution and can be cut from the video. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 07:34, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Seppi333: in the case of images and video, we place attribution on the file pages; in the case of edits, it's in the article history. We don't allow editors to add URLs of their choice to their edits. This was all discussed during the RfC and in archive 110. SarahSV ^(talk) 07:40, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, I'm well aware of how attribution is typically done for media in Wikipedia articles; however, the vast majority of CC-licensed media on WP is not subject to the "attribution... in any reasonable manner requested by the Licensor" clause - e.g., I don't care where attribution of my content is provided, so I never request any specific manner of attribution on the file pages of my Commons uploads. If there's an explicit request for attribution of their media in a reasonable manner and said attribution isn't provided in that manner, that would constitute a copyright violation according to the terms of the license. The only issue here is whether or not attribution within the media itself is a "reasonable manner" of attribution. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 07:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Editors insisting on attribution within their images/texts/videos would constitute advertising and so would not be deemed reasonable. The question now is why this discussion is taking place again almost as soon as the previous discussion was archived, and as if the archived discussion had not occurred. SarahSV ^(talk) 08:19, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

with all due respect...SV you really did not answer Seppi333 question...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:58, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

That "reasonable manner" phrase is more of a legal concern than a Wikipedia one; that's really something that a court would decide, not us. In a nutshell: If (1) a request for attribution within the media itself is a "reasonable manner" of attribution (in a legal sense), (2) we continue to host the file on Commons (NB: whether or not it's used on Wikipedia is irrelevant), and (3) the attribution logo is cut out of the video, then Commons is violating the copyright if the attribution within the media is removed. It may actually not be a reasonable manner of attribution to attribute within media, but I don't think that's likely to be the case for videos given that this is a common practice for video. Virtually all films, TV media, and animated videos include credits/attribution to all relevant contributors at the beginning or end of those videos. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 19:22, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

"Advertising" versus "Attribution" isn't really an either-or choice. It's possible for a contributor to request attribution in a format that also constitutes advertising in the context of Wikipedia policy, practice, and consensus. While such content may be acceptable/tolerated for archiving on Wikimedia Commons (and that's up to Commons to decide for themselves), we are not required to accept or use such material on (English) Wikipedia. Placing, effectively, a bumper ad at the beginning of each segment is not in line with usual Wikipedia attribution practices; it's also (one of) the major concerns highlighted in the still-very-recent RfC rejecting the use of the Osmosis videos. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 13:07, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Okay yes En Wikipedia does not need to follow the best practice guidelines for attribution of video by Creative Commons.[29][30][31]

I was not aware that consensus was not to follow them. But if that is the case no further discussion is really needed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

None of the CC best practices documents that you keep linking require or recommend an advertising bumper at the beginning of the video. It's really not helpful for you to keep suggesting that we're uninterested in giving suitable credit to CC content creators in a manner appropriate to and consistent with our articles' usual content and formatting—or, as the CC guidelines say, "best practices for attribution apply as reasonable to the medium you're working with". TenOfAllTrades(talk) 15:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Giving warning about hounding over COI Jytdog (talk) 14:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Take a look at these edits from Jytdog. [32][33] SarahSV ^(talk) 15:11, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Your removal of the hat stranded my hatting comment, leaving it without context and therefore nonsense to anyone reading it. I have removed it from there, and am adding it above in this same diff. Jytdog (talk) 15:27, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@SlimVirgin: Thank you for the ping. As to the attribution, strip the bumpers an add a discrete overlay (like subtitles/closed captioning) that says Produced by Osmosis Inc plus whatever else is needed to meet the license terms. I guess a small logo there would be OK but no full screen, web addresses etc.

Regardless of how things work going forward it is clear Doc James and the rest of WPMEDINC have a COI with regards to these videos and Osmosis as is clearly shown by the editing of one of our articles to comply with a commercial source so that source can be posted on Wikipedia clearly shows. Doc James says he re-wrote the article so " the video now summarizes the body of the article in question". So Osmosis is now determining content?! What happens when the article is edited so that the video no longer summarizes the content? Do we accept 'frozen' articles? Do we start seeing changes reverted because they contradict something the video says? All of that is completely unacceptable so even if the video is a summary now it will not continue to be.

The above section, asking about leaving the Osmosis logo in to 'motivate' them to continue releasing videos under CC license indicates to me that Doc James both understands the financial value of having one's logo placed across Wikipedia and shows a clear willingness to sell that space in exchange for content. When an editor starts forcing Wikipedia content into a mold determined by a third party or, they are willing to use Wikipedia as a de facto billboard, it is clear to me that they have lost sight of what Wikipedia is and that their judgement is hopelessly compromised with respect to that third party.

The videos are interesting and possibly useful in some circumstances — just as any external link may be — or, in some cases, as a source for segments illustrating specific points in an article. Trying to make them be summaries of articles and place them near/in the lead was clearly rejected by the RfC as was allowing Osmosis to use Wikipedia as an advertising platform. Jbh ^Talk 18:17, 11 May 2018 (UTC) Last edited: 18:21, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

A dead horse

Oh dear. I did suspect that James didn't really take on board the community feeling on these videos. The arguments explained in Wikipedia:Wikipedia is not YouTube still remain. The most fundamental of which is that Wikipedia is a text-based online collaborative editing project. Above James claims adding/modifying content is "difficult". No, James, it is impossible. None of us can impersonate the narrator. None of us have access to the graphic design software/templates used to create the artwork. The most any of us can do is cut bits out using offline tools, leaving awkward jumps in the narration. This is not like images at all, since images are a single frame and can be inserted or replaced at will with another.

It is now clear that Osmosis have given up with free licences and have no intention to collaborate further. Therefore James really is beating a dead horse. There is zero chance Osmosis will fix mistakes. There is zero opportunity for Wikipedians to amend or add to them. And the new legal attribution requirement is not compatible with CC BY-SA 4.0 which absolutely states that a re-user may attribute in any reasonable manner. If they insist on this, then it may be that all 300 videos will need to be removed from Commons, which will have to decide between the fact that the original licence terms are perpetual and so Osmosis can go take a run and jump, or whether there now exists a legal threat to our re-users that is unacceptable.

James does not understand the CC licence recommendations. They suggest that if you include CC material in your video (e.g. a photograph by someone else) that you attribute it as it is being displayed in the video, or at least you do so in the credits at the end. After all, for most videos, the video itself is the only place to do this. What that doesn't cover is how to attribute a CC video in your text based website. And generally the best way to do that is in your text based website. On Wikipedia we tend to do it on the file description page hosted on Commons and mirrored on Wikipedia. We don't do it in-article, we don't do it in captions and we don't do it with watermarks or credits overlaid on still images.

James has uploaded a modified version of the measles video, but has not amended the end-credits on the video. He has instead relied on Commons File History comments to track what changes he did, along with a note on the file-description page. Unlike Wikipedia, where we can view diffs, we cannot easily confirm if these are in fact the changes claimed. This means the end credits are no longer correct. By making a change "removed the up to six weeks", the script/audio/video is no longer the sole work of "Tanner Marshall MS" but also Doc James. I don't think "Folks from Osmosis" is at all a professional way to attribute a company. The original video credited Osmosis, who is likely the copyright owner.

The script page at Wikipedia:Osmosis/Measles is in Wikipedia namespace. This is not article space and should not be linked to by articles. We have little policy/guideline on the content of such spaces. What are the rules for editing it? Certainly it would be utterly fruitless to discuss changes to it, since ..... we can't make practical changes to the video in any general sense of the word.

Guys, if you just want to view free educational media content, the place for that is Commons. Go out and make them or encourage others to make them, and upload them there. Wikipedia isn't just a free educational media site, but is a text-based encyclopaedia that is collaboratively edited online by anyone who wishes to. That is absolutely fundamentally what it is. Collaboratively edited online. By anyone. Every day, someone makes a change. Edit. Add. Change. Move. Remove. Discuss. Cite. Edit. Add. Change. Move. Remove. Discuss. Cite. Again and again and never finished. These videos are not that. The are frozen in amber. Please James, drop the stick and move away from the dead horse. -- Colin°^Talk 15:52, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Osmosis's attribution requirement

QuackGuru Yeah that just came to my attention today and is something I'm trying to fix right now (adding the requirement to all the videos currently). When I originally uploaded these videos I didn't think to include the Osmosis's attribution within the videos requirement as part of the license. The modified video you linked to does violate that request so I'm going to have to talk with the editor there and explain the situation. OsmoseIt (talk) 16:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

The above Moved from my draft talk page.

OsmoseIt seems to think they can change the attribution requirement to all the videos. When the videos were originally uploaded they did not include any of Osmosis's attribution requirement. Therefore, modified videos that do not include the beginning and ending attribution does not violate any requirement. There was no requirement or request when they were uploaded. I do not believe they are allowed to change the requirement to all the videos currently. We can discuss this here before anyone decides to change the attribution requirement to all the videos. Can the attribution requirement be changed a month later after the videos were updated? Not sure. QuackGuru (talk) 17:19, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

IMO that should be discussed at Commons, not here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:32, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

In essence, they're trying to change the requirements retroactively? I don't think so... Natureium (talk) 17:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

While the issues wrt licence and uploading modified works is a matter for Commons, as WhatamIdoing says, it still comes back to the discussion and this community here. User:RexxS uploaded a version of the Tobacco dependence video with credits trimmed. Now it seems Osmosis is unhappy with that. As I warned here removing credits from a work can have legal implications. Commons does not advise anyone doing so without consulting their lawyer first. You do have a lawyer don't you? The CC BY-SA 4.0 legal code says attribution may be "in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information.". So we have two legal concerns in conflict with each other, and only a judge can decide. Some people thought my concerns were unfounded, but it seems Osmosis do not share your opinion and are unhappy to see their credits removed from the video. Also see Celiac disease video talk page for what happens when a Wikipedia content dispute moves over to Commons. A mess.

OsmoseIt, the most you can do, per CC BY-SA 4.0 is to kindly "request" people retain your title/end credits, you cannot "require" them to attribute you in that way. They may wish to re-use a single frame, or just a short clip. If you feel this is unreasonable, then you have chosen CC BY-SA 4.0 unwisely, since its legal terms are perpetual and not up for discussion. We would greatly appreciate if you could reword your FAQ to "request" and not "require". You may ask users here, and on Commons, to respect your wishes, but you can't demand. -- Colin°^Talk 17:54, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin:. Yes I have plenty of lawyers, thanks, and I'm absolutely confident that the derivative I created complied with the CC-BY-SA 4.0 licence as it appeared on Commons when I made it. The CC-BY-SA licence is irrevocable, but the terms of attribution are amendable as long as they remain reasonable (although such changes cannot be applied retrospectively to already-created derivatives, of course). It is perfectly reasonable to insist on attribution by means of the logo and end-credits, and had Osmosis made that stipulation before I made the derivative, then I would have respected it as part of what the licence would have been. Now that I'm aware of Osmosis' more recent request concerning the manner of attribution, I will naturally be happy to accede to that going forward. However, unless Osmosis make clear their requirements for attribution on each video on Commons, I cannot guarantee that other pseudonymous editors will not create derivatives similar to mine. I hope that makes the position clear for you, Colin. --RexxS (talk) 19:24, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

IANL and all however a plain reading of CC-BY-SA-4.0 does not say there is requirement to maintain attribution within the adapted work. Section 3.a.1. is the 'retain reasonable attribution' clause. Section 3.2 says ("You may satisfy the conditions in Section 3(a)(1) in any reasonable manner based on the medium, means, and context in which You Share the Licensed Material. For example, it may be reasonable to satisfy the conditions by providing a URI or hyperlink to a resource that includes the required information."^[34]^{(emp mine)}) I see nothing in the license which allows the grantor to specify the format of the attribution. There is some expository material relating to the 3.0 license at [35] (I do not see anything in 4.0 which would differ ) where it says

To sum up, the license foresees three provisions: “requested attribution,” “unwanted attribution,” and “non endorsement.” “Requested attribution” allows the Licensor to require from the Licensee a particular way to attribute the work by citing:

- The name of the author, Licensor, or any applicable party

- The title of the work

- The source URL of the work

- For derivatives, a credit identifying the original author, the use of the original work and changes which have been made.

Note, the license specifies the content of attribution and the 'manner' term seems to refer to the manner of referring to the author ie "Mister Pseudonym" vs "John Smith" vs "John 'The Super Dude' Smith" not the manner of display. As near as I can tell they may ask that the bumpers may be retained but they may not require it. I am pretty confident in this reading because the bumpers are integral to the licensed work and CC-BY-SA allows modification of that work. Specifying the format of attribution would, in effect, be adding a requirement which would prevent the reuse/adaptation/remixing of the material as envisioned by the license that could make reuse impossible ie requiring 30 seconds of attribution for one frame used as a still. Jbh ^Talk 20:44, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Jbhunley: You may find https://creativecommons.org/faq/#can-i-insist-on-the-exact-placement-of-the-attribution-credit gives a little more context to your reasoning. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:14, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@RexxS: Thank you :) Jbh ^Talk 21:42, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Hi folks, this discussion should be happening on WikiMedia Commons. Moving the discussion over to there. Thanks! OsmoseIt (talk) 21:49, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone knows where the discussion should take place on Commons please start it and provide a link to the discussion here. I do not know if anyone can change the requirements a month later. QuackGuru (talk) 17:42, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm pinging OsmoseIt to make sure he's aware that he can't change the releases after the fact. SarahSV ^(talk) 17:55, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

c:Commons:Village_pump/Copyright is the place to ask general questions about Commons' approach to copyright issues. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:50, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If anyone who can code Lua modules cares

See Template talk:Infobox journal#Need parameter Medline_abbreviation for the dozens of journals where it does not match ISO 4. Quercus solaris (talk) 01:14, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

thank you for posting--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 00:58, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

BTW, no LUA was needed for this, and {{Infobox journal}} now supports |nlm=. It will prompt you to create relevant redirects if the parameter is not empty. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 01:01, 10 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Still more links to DAB pages

The following are all recent (within the last 6 weeks or so?) medicine-related links to DAB pages where expert attention seems needed. Some may need minor rewriting or unlinking. Two are about dinosaur anatomy, but I have a strong suspicion that paleontologists borrowed existing terms rather than attributed new meanings to existing ones. As always, search for "disam" in the displayed text; and if you solve one of these puzzles, remove the {{dn}} tag and post {{done}} here.

Lck Done
Zambiasaurus Done
Thoracic inlet Done
Histotripsy Done, merged the bit that was good to High-intensity focused ultrasound
Ruth McCorkle Done
Haplogroup CF (Y-DNA) Done
Phantomosaurus Done
Pulp (tooth) Done
Pascual-Castroviejo syndrome Done
Veratrum album (the links to renal and mesentery may also need checking) Done
Laura Stachel Done, but not sure this article is notable. Done, rewrote the article; is notable.

Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 19:21, 9 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

checked the remaining ones..Jytdog (talk) 00:27, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Impressed, again. Narky Blert (talk) 04:39, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your work rounding up this disambigs! Jytdog (talk) 14:52, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Merger of Ultrasoft/soft/hard radiation to Ionizing radiation

I have suggested that

Ultrasoft radiation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Soft radiation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)
Hard radiation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

be merged into

Ionizing radiation (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views)

For the discussion, see Talk: Ionizing radiation#Merge (2018) from Ultrasoft radiation & soft radiation & hard radiation to Ionizing radiation

-- 65.94.42.219 (talk) 11:28, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to Talk: Ionizing radiation § Merge (2018) from Ultrasoft radiation & soft radiation & hard radiation to Ionizing radiation

Template talk:Infobox journal#RFC on abbreviation usage

Please comment above. This concerns the usage of NLM/MEDLINE abbreviations in {{infobox journal}}. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 16:25, 11 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

[1] For example:
• "[Drug name] should not be used if/for [other text goes here]."
• "Caregivers should [verb] [other text goes here]."

[note 1]