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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Audrey at Mayo Clinic (talk | contribs) at 13:44, 24 September 2019 (→‎Seeking additional feedback for history of Mayo Clinic: new section). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

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WikiProject iconThis page is within the scope of WikiProject Hospitals, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of Hospitals on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.HospitalsWikipedia:WikiProject HospitalsTemplate:WikiProject HospitalsHospital articles
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The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.
  • Summary:-There is a numerical as well as policy based consensus to ☒N reject the usage of rating(s)/reputation-review(s) by NGOs and other private entities.Government rating(s) may be used at editorial discretion, without being subject to the outcome of this RFC.
    • Local editorial discussions (over some centralized place, which might be here) may carve out individual exceptions for those private-reviews which have been extensively relied upon by other reliable sources/have been extensively covered in reliable sources and have not been near-unanimously criticized by the academic community.
  • Details:-In light of BlueRaspberry's comment that:--The academic papers I found all had significant criticism of the quality of the ratings (which seems to be quite true) and the numerical strength of Jytdog's, Septentrionalis's and Anaxial's quasi-unproven arguments which equates them with typical marketing-puffery (and this is quite prevalent in these rating(s)-field for a large number of topics.....), this RFC leads to but a clear outcome.
  • Signed by ∯WBGconverse at 05:24, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I'm seeking further comment to see if it is possible to make the rules clearer for how hospital reputation, rankings, ratings, and awards are handled on Wikipedia. What should the established standard be for how ratings and rankings are included on hospital Wikipedia articles?

A bit more background, in case it's helpful: As I have proposed updates to Cleveland Clinic's existing Reputation section, a common response from volunteer editors is that other hospital articles should not be used for guidance. I looked at the Wikipedia articles for the nine hospitals in U.S. News & World Report's Top 10. Of those, six of the articles either listed the hospitals' specialty rankings or contained a table: Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, UCSF Medical Center, Michigan Medicine, New York-Presbyterian Hospital, and Stanford Health Care. Three did not: Massachusetts General Hospital, Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center, and Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. There are other differences in how this info is handled: While the Cleveland Clinic article has a Reputation section, Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins Hospital, and Michigan Medicine have Rankings, New York-Presbyterian Hospital has Awards and recognition, UCSF Medical Center and Stanford Health Care have rankings listed in the introduction.

I hope this conversation leads to more discussion on ways to create a set of standards for streamlined further development of all hospital articles on Wikipedia. Thanks, ClevelandClinicES (talk) 15:06, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Information in the lead is supposed to be a summary of information elsewhere in the article, so if it's only in the lead, that's a problem, but a sentence in the lead stating that it's one of the top 10 hospitals would be appropriate. The main problem with those articles is that they are very short and not well organized. I think if they were more fleshed-out, the information would also be contained in a separate section. I might work on that later.
I'm fine with there not being a single standard for whether there's a "reputation" section or an "awards and recognition" section, because it will depend on the hospital, especially with smaller hospitals if we try to standardize it across all hospital articles. Reputation can include positive and negative, and relatively few hospitals will have noteworthy awards.
I hope you don't mind that I've linked the articles in your comment so that they are easy for people to check out. Natureium (talk) 15:13, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Not sure I considered this in the past and even created a Wikipedia article on U.S. News & World Report Best Hospitals Rankings. It is challenging to get hospital rankings. If it is okay for one hospital then I would like to do it for all. I would like to recognize what hospital rankings are reputable then put them into all Wikipedia articles for hospitals. It is not clear to me how to get hospital ratings. Also we need to be updating hospital ratings from a database, and not manually for every rating for every hospital every year, and I am not aware of any hospital rating system that actually shares their grades as exportable data. I know that hospitals like to showcase the US News ratings when they are favorable but I do not know how reliable those ratings are. The academic papers I found all had significant criticism of the quality of the ratings. If these ratings were really significant for judging the entire American medical system then I would have expected some academic consensus on their validity, and I am not sure that exists. We are talking about reviewing an industry with almost a trillion dollars of annual revenue and it seems like there is only occasional one-off, information-scarce research on this rating methodology.
ClevelandClinicES, do you have any inside track to request that US New make its hospital ratings publicly available as a dataset? If you do, then they could stage them in a local database and we could import them to Wikidata. Maybe that would be good for your hospital as well as help us improve all our hospital articles. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:43, 7 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Hello Bluerasberry, while I certainly appreciate the suggestion, I unfortunately can't be much help with that. We do not have any say with publications in what information they share, or how they share it. While we can share our information with a publication, we're not in a position to ask for an open data set from them. Thank you. ClevelandClinicES (talk) 16:05, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@ClevelandClinicES: I understand, thanks for the reply. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:23, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Though it is very much wishful thinking on my part; it's unfortunate there are no world rankings. (There are a handful of "World's top 10 hospitals" press articles.) If there were, it could've been added to {{template:Infobox Hospital}}. I have noticed that some NHS hospitals articles have "performance" sections, which contains within information on awards, ratings, and rankings. I'm not sure if adding this was/is a standard practice of WP:WikiProject National Health Service, if it has occurred organically over time, or if it's just down to coincidence on a very small sample size (14% at best). Little pob (talk) 19:04, 14 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Sorry to be plaintive rather than constructive, because I don't think I am competent to deal with the topic anyway, but as a passing remark, I am very uncomfortable about ranking items on the basis of multiple attributes. It amounts to applying a linear (one dimensional) comparison to a multi-dimensional space. Now, OK, you can argue that the result of combining measurements in multiple dimensions is a vector, and that the length of the vector is linear, but since there is no fundamentally compelling and mutually consistent calibration of scales between the distinct dimensions, that falls apart. Whether this thought is relevant I leave to you, and also how useful the conclusion might be. I cannot argue that it necessarily is meaningless, because I might well have preferences for which hospital to go to if I had to avail myself of their services, but still... Sorry! JonRichfield (talk) 05:50, 15 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Weak oppose (Summoned by bot). It seems to me that it's difficult to apply a standardised ranking system for hospitals on Wikipedia, because there is no one standardised and reliable ranking system to acquire the data from. As a minimum, it's hard to imagine that every country in the world will rank their hospitals in an even remotely comparable way (if at all, in some cases). But, even if we consider only hospitals in the US (as I note that all of the hospitals listed in the request are US hospitals, despite the general wording of the RfC) there doesn't appear to be a single reliable system with data on most of them. By all means mention notable awards and so on if they apply to a specific hospital, but applying a single standard to everywhere, even within just one country, could be seen as implying standardisation where none exists. In some countries, there may be a single, reliable, widely accepted and regularly updated, database ranking or rating all major hospitals, and in those countries, it would be acceptable to use it in a standard format. There does not appear to be such a thing for the US, so far as I can determine. Anaxial (talk) 06:31, 22 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Summoned by bot. I look at rankings the same way I look at awards a company might get. If the award itself is notable, usually evidenced by it having its own article or subsection on Wikipedia, and the awarding of the recognition itself is covered in third party media, then by all means include it in an awards and recognition section. Only the most notable and well-known awards should be considered for the lede, since adding info there might border on being too promotional. Lesser awards or rankings sourced only to a company's press release or other primary sources shouldn't be added, to limit puffery. Once a ranking or award is established as being notable, editors seeking to gain favor within the Wikipedia community could expand their contribution horizons and add the recognition to other articles besides those of companies they have a conflict of interest with. TimTempleton (talk) (cont) 18:23, 29 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Summoned by bot. Is there in the USA a standard for categorizing for hospitals? If a hospital got a notable award (i.e. first hospital performing some kind of surgery, or an award from UNICEF for X or Y action)... it should be added in a related section. Same applies for BLP. Robertgombos (talk) 04:44, 31 May 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Bar all rankings not by government agencies. These are pure marketing shit that hospital reps come to WP to push and push and update and tweak. They are a complete waste of our time. The AHRQ lists the rankings here - it is easy to see which are govenment agencies there. Jytdog (talk) 18:00, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • oppose seems to be promotional...--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:51, 13 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
  • Permit and standardize the ratings but not in the infobox nor the lede paragraphy, which would be overemphasis They're valid objective content, whose reliability depends upon the providor. USNWR appears to be generally accepted as a RS for this in the US. We can't judge quality ouselves, but we can report other sources that do. DGG ( talk ) 22:11, 23 June 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.

I left a message on WBG's talk page a few days ago but there was no reply. Why was this discussion closed when there was no consensus or resolution? Natureium (talk) 15:05, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Natureium: It has been 6 weeks. Having consensus about some parts and no consensus about others is a common outcome. I do not want the conversation to end but with the passage of time an endpoint is useful for taking stock of the conversation and going forward.
How and when did you want this conversation to resolve? I see this outcome as normal. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:35, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I think it would be useful if the closure said anything at all, so it's clear that someone actually considered all that was said and determined that there was no consensus. Before I left the talk page message, all it said was "Closing." Someone had just commented it on the day before, and by closing it they are preventing someone from responding to that comment. What was the purpose of cutting off the discussion at the point?
WP:NAC says "Unlike other discussions on Wikipedia, RfCs do not require a formal closure, and doing so may often be unnecessary or even counterproductive. Editors should assess whether closure is needed at all, or whether the discussion has come to a natural conclusion on its own, and reached a consensus which is self-evident to those involved, rendering a closure moot, and an inaccurate closure unnecessarily problematic." This wasn't even a real RfC, it was just titled RfC, so there was no point to closing it. It hadn't gotten out of control, and no decision was made. Natureium (talk) 15:47, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Natureium: Okay, you are right about RfC closures not requiring a close, and you are right that this discussion seems to not have been registered as an RfC. I thought incorrectly about these things.
I could go either way with this. My view is that this conversation is juggling about 10 similar but different issues and that the way it is framed it is not going to bring consensus for any of them. In that sense I support WBG's closure. I agree that this user should post a closing statement but it does not seem unusual to me for someone to close a conversation, even one in progress, while they write a closure statement.
I recognize the other view that maybe the conversation is productive and is leading somewhere useful. Since you bring this up, I would support you re-opening the conversation and encouraging its development. If others object then I think a fair compromise would be to plan for closure in a few weeks.
I do not want to end the conversation. I only do not see much hope that this branch of the conversation is going to lead to a consensus. My wish would be to narrow the conversation into parts and to try again.
If you want to re-open this then please do. Blue Rasberry (talk) 16:01, 27 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
@Natureium:, Okay, so now WBG closed it. I agree with the closing rationale that there is no consensus.
At this point I do not think it would make sense to reopen this discussion but I would immediately join a new discussion. The new discussion could be exactly the same. Alternatively it could be on any one of the issues raised by this above discussion. Here are some of the difficult issues I see:
  1. To what extent should Wikimedia contributors document ratings?
    1. Are ratings for hospitals like awards in Wikipedia:WikiProject Awards, like movie reviews under Wikipedia:WikiProject Film, or something else?
    2. How do we determine the reliability of ratings versus paid advertising?
  2. How do we address copyright in lists?
    1. Which hospital ratings are proprietary products copyrighted under Wikipedia:Copyright in lists?
    2. When, if ever, is it okay to import some ratings but not others?
    3. I have doubts that we can bring in the US World and News Ratings without a copyright discussion.
  3. Wikidata relationship
    1. In what ways are ratings like and unlike a dataset?
    2. What part fits only on Wikipedia versus in a mix of Wikipedia and Wikidata?
  4. Which ratings should we include?
  5. Which external partners should we seek?
    1. Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for example publishes public domain hospital reviews
    2. We do not know who publishes ratings.
I care about all these issues and want to advance the conversation. If anyone can anticipate the easiest path to progress then I want to discuss more with anyone else who will lead a conversation. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:09, 28 June 2018 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks to everyone for participating in this request for comment. This is obviously a complex discussion, and one that I think could continue based on User:Bluerasberry's comments. I am happy to contribute however is most helpful in continuing to discuss these issues. ClevelandClinicES (talk) 16:15, 3 July 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Cleveland Clinic images are available

I've uploaded 10 historical Cleveland Clinic images to Wikimedia Commons that might be useful for the Cleveland Clinic or History of Cleveland Clinic articles. There is also an image of the Cleveland Plain Dealer's front page the day after the Cleveland Clinic fire of 1929. I hope these are helpful to the project. Thanks, ClevelandClinicES (talk) 19:06, 3 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Improving citations at Mayo Clinic

Hello! I'm Audrey. On behalf of my employer, Mayo Clinic, I offered citations to help correct several sourcing issues at Mayo Clinic. WikiProject Hospital members who are interested in the Mayo Clinic might care to review: Talk:Mayo_Clinic#Improving_citations.

Thanks! Audrey at Mayo Clinic (talk) 19:57, 26 March 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A new newsletter directory is out!

A new Newsletter directory has been created to replace the old, out-of-date one. If your WikiProject and its taskforces have newsletters (even inactive ones), or if you know of a missing newsletter (including from sister projects like WikiSpecies), please include it in the directory! The template can be a bit tricky, so if you need help, just post the newsletter on the template's talk page and someone will add it for you.

– Sent on behalf of Headbomb. 03:11, 11 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Derrick Morris Article for Deletion

One of your most famous patients. 7&6=thirteen (☎) 16:19, 20 April 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Seeking additional feedback for history of Mayo Clinic

Hello! It's Audrey at Mayo Clinic. On behalf of my employer, I am working to update Mayo Clinic. I have worked with two other editors who offered great feedback to develop and improve the History section of the article. WikiProject Hospitals members might care to review my request.

Thanks! Audrey at Mayo Clinic (talk) 13:44, 24 September 2019 (UTC)[reply]

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