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This ticket is "a high-level overview of the whole sorry situation, written in the hope that it can influence resourcing choices at the WMF". "It's probably wise to assume that at best a small amount of movement resources can be spent on this."
User:MER-C we do have some movement resources working on the Captchas issue (from what I understand).
With respect to the community tech team, I have previously stated that they should be expanded (ie maybe we need two teams?). I however do not determine this...
I continue to be involved in discussions regarding what to do about undisclosed paid promotional issues. Likely the best we can hope for is tools to improve our ability to deal with the situation. And it needs more resources dedicated to it. Whether enough people also see it as a concern, and if so whether we can come to some agreement on steps to address it, that I do not know. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:51, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
> we do have some movement resources working on the Captchas issue
The question is - will those resources be enough to cause significant impact or will it be just the usual sticking plaster solution, just like the recent NPP improvements were? That work by the Community Tech team was nowhere near sufficient - probably about 0.1% of what is required. Likewise, the CU work under way is ~1% of requirements. I want to see CAPTCHA related code that is reasonably futureproof, including the ability to swap CAPTCHA implementations as the spammers crack them and a commitment to do so. It needs to be made absolutely clear to whoever holds the purse strings that the anti-abuse effort requires an ongoing commitment of at least 10 FTE. Forget about the wishlist or Community Tech. This is something we shouldn't need to ask for!
In the time it's taken the WMF to realise there's a problem and take a couple of steps in the right direction, the spammers have built a spaceship, launched, have gone past Pluto and are still accelerating. In addition to dealing with spam, I am the only admin who closes CFDs and listings at Wikipedia:Copyright problems (union, not intersection) and am feeling quite stretched and completely unsupported. The WMF needs to stop treating us admins, NPPers, stewards and checkusers as second class citizens, compared to newbies and readers. The ultimate solution is for the WMF to stop thinking like a Silly Con Valley startup that pursues growth at the expense of long term sustainability. MER-C13:07, 13 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
User:MER-C agree we need a team to work on improving our "quality assurance" processes. To support and develop tool for everyone working to prevent false information from getting into Wikipedia.
We need lots of stuff, like when changes are made to Wikidata to a piece of content used within WP it should be possible to see just that change in ones watchlist (not all WD changes). Watchlists could use a significant amount of improvements.
I have not heard that anyone is working on CAPTCHAs. If you know of anyone doing that, I'd be interested in talking to them.
I understand that there is an open question among the devs about whether CAPTCHAs should be "fixed" or "replaced". I'm hearing that there are some non-CAPTCHA alternatives that may be more effective at stopping spam. Either approach would require a substantial, multi-year commitment of resources, and this has not happened. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 04:28, 17 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I don't see anything in his team's goals that indicates any plan to fix or replace CAPTCHAs. It's not something that can be done by having one product manager think about it in his spare time. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 19:34, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thinking about what is possible, what has been considered, what options are avaliable, and how much work may be required to get to a solution are all things one person can begin with. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:00, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I believe it was User:Guy Macon who told you last summer that the "one person thinking it over" bits are already done and documented. The next step is the part about "get a full engineering team assigned for multiple years". Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 23:22, 20 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
My comments are here:[2]. I don't know whether anyone has finished "thinking about it" and I really don't care. My position was and is in the following subsection. --Guy Macon (talk) 02:05, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Two weeks to go before we reach the "14 years of discriminating against the blind" milestone
This appears to be a direct violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 and leaves Wikipedia open to the possibility of a discrimination lawsuit.
In particular, National Federation of the Blind v. Target Corp. was a case where a major retailer, Target Corp., was sued because their web designers failed to design its website to enable persons with low or no vision to use it.
So why, after 13 years of inaction, do we not have a set of software requirements (including a testable definition of "done") and a schedule for solving this?
And no, I will not accept any proposed "solution" that lacks the name of an WMF employee who has been given the assignment of fixing this, a budget that says how much the WMF expects to spend on solving this, a deadline that says how long the WMF expects it to take to solve this, and a way for an independent third party to look at the results and verify whether the requirements were met.
I am left with these known facts:
For 13 years the WMF has failed to assign an employee or contractor the task of fixing this problem.
For 13 years the WMF has failed to budget a single dollar towards fixing this.
For 13 years the WMF has failed to provide an estimate of how long it is expected to take to fix this.
For 13 years the WMF has failed to write any requirements for fixing this. ("Requirements" is geek talk for "please define what 'done' is and tell us exactly how how we will recognize that whoever is working on this is done").
For 13 years the WMF has failed to make a plan for an independent third party (which in this case means "someone with a visual impairment accessing Wikipedia with a screen reader") to look at the results and verify whether the requirements were met.
If nothing happens by 03 February 2020 (that's 5 months from [when this was first posted on 2 September 2019]) you can expect to see messages by me posted to a lot of places with the title "14 years of discriminating against the blind.".
Again, for me to consider this to be something that the WMF takes seriously, the solution needs to include:
The name of an WMF employee who has been given the assignment of fixing this.
A budget that says how much the WMF expects to spend on solving this.
A deadline that says how long the WMF expects it to take to solve this.
A plan for an independent third party to look at the results and verify whether this has actually been solved.
Mostly because of my efforts at increasing WMF financial transparency, I have a number of WMF employees who are willing to communicate with me privately on the condition that I do not reveal their identity. (Which of course means that anyone reading this is free to assume that I am making all of this up this up...) Of the emails I have received regarding this, one said
"No budget, no staff, no schedule, no plan, no assignment (not even for someone to "explore" it again), no official agreement about which team or department ought to own it. It was proposed again for the annual plan last round, and rejected again. (Evan, whom you should be nice to, was just hired a few months back, after that decision.)"
I also received two other emails emphasizing what a good job Even is doing and expressing concern that the usual trolls might criticize him over decisions that he has no control over.
I completely understand if you are unable to answer the following, but are you able to confirm or deny the "No budget, no staff, no schedule, no plan, no assignment" and "It was proposed again for the annual plan last round, and rejected again" claims?
In particular, when you say "we have someone from the WMF looking at this" is there an actual WMF employee or contractor (I don't need to know who) who has been told by his/her boss to look into this as a preliminary step on the road to assigning it to someone and giving them a deadline? --Guy Macon (talk) 02:22, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! Feel free to encourage whoever is working on this to contact me via email. Nothing gets passed on without explicit permission, and all mails are stored in an encrypted container. I have tentative plans to ask a lot of questions On 03 February (14 years with no action) and would love to be able to say nice things about the WMF. --Guy Macon (talk) 13:52, 22 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
This is a question related to ulcers... I ate one orange however decided to swallow one of the segments whole (for no reason in particular). I did this on an empty stomach... Can oranges cause ulcers? I assume that this is also bad for digestion but I only did it for one segment of an orange. Also related question, are the intestines able to handle the acidity of an orange? I read that oranges are mild acids.--Hipposcrashed (talk) 16:50, 21 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Wikipedia contains articles on many medical topics; however, no warranty is made that any of the articles are accurate. There is absolutely no assurance that any statement contained or cited in an article touching on medical matters is true, correct, precise, or up-to-date. The overwhelming majority of such articles are written, in part or in whole, by nonprofessionals. Even if a statement made about medicine is accurate, it may not apply to you or your symptoms.
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Only 100 or so words. It should be fun and serious at the same time.
Doc, I can't believe I forgot about you on this. The article is getting too big and taking up too much of the time I don't have! I'll have to close it off fairly soon to contributions. It's explained further on the page and there are lots (and lots) of examples.
Hi Doc James. Hope you are well, we have not been in touch for quite a while. I was looking at gua sha and this photo does not look quite like post gua sha treatment. It looks nothing like someone who has undergone treatment and the setting looks like a bed that has been slept in with tousled sheets, mushed pillows etc. Could you let me know what you think? Appreciated, thanks. Rui ''Gabriel'' Correia (talk) 00:59, 25 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
As a medical student, I constantly look up medications. Having the class of medication in the opening sentence is hugely useful in being able to figure out what the medication is and what it does. Having to read through 10 sentences to figure out it's a calcium channel blocker is not helpful. Please allow the opening sentence to contain the class. Thank you.
thank you for your message. Have added references to our groups edits. Please let me know if there's anything obvious that needs changing, very happy to fix asap, our med school students group is new to the wikipedia medicine project. Reversing our edits in the middle of group work makes it a bit tricky for us to continue making edits so if you could please message us first and give us a chance to fix first that would wonderful.
Hey there... This is only tangentially related to Wikipedia, so I apologize if it's kind of out of left-field. There's a group on Facebook that advocates a protocol to help cure a medical condition. I've spent a significant amount of time evaluating their claims, and from what I can tell many of them are wrong or potentially harmful. I wanted to produce something like a rebuttal document, but I'm finding in many cases I can't produce specific articles to correct/refute a claim because it's more medically complicated than that. I'm wondering if (a) you would be willing to answer a few questions related to the claims made by that group, or (b) you know people who would or (c) if there's a good free or affordable venue to ask non-personal medical questions that would be appropriate here? - Scarpy (talk) 22:47, 28 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
We have an article on Megavitamin-B6 syndrome which appears to mirror much of what this "Healing B6 Toxicity w/Western Research" group is saying about their "RDA B6 diet".
@Guy Macon:I'm very familiar with the Megavitamin-B6 syndrome article. The FB group's views & recommendations aren't lacking credibility until you get to around line 100 where it starts to get in to cargo cult science territory with the imagined hypothesis (stated as fact) that dehydration plays a large causal role in the syndrome because very large amounts of b6 that are stored in tissues and dehydration causes those to leave tissue. Most, but not all, of the bad recommendations start with that "axiom." Will try posting some questions Wikipedia:Reference desk/Science as I have them. Thanks. - Scarpy (talk) 01:13, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Ah. Definitely something that should be discussed at the fringe theories noticeboard as well. We might want to have an article specific to this group. Have any other sources made mention of it, which would help establish notability, or is it just a small group of people on facebook that nobody pays attention to? --Guy Macon (talk) 01:22, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The key with science is one should require evidence before they believe something. In this case their is no evidence for that protocol and thus for those who are scientifically minded it should simple not be believed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:55, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
@Doc James: for sure. I suppose I'm writing this for people who would find this group on Facebook, but who are not always scientifically-minded or thinking critically, or may have their critical facilities temporarily compromised from the stress related to the syndrome and diagnosis. So I want to have something out there... I've often observed conversations in that group, people will experience (what seems like) flare-ups of symptoms several months after discontinuing b6 supplementation, and the advice given is to go back on the protocol (drink 4 liters of water, don't exceed the b6 rda), but I've seen in a few cases this can be dangerous. For example some members had multiple causes of neuropathy (e.g. megavitamin-b6 syndrome and pernicious anemia). I think a much ore responsible thing to do in that case would be to say, check with your PCP to rule out other potential causes. Also, I'm not a nutritionist, but I'm also somewhat concerned about the wisdom of limiting one's diet to only the RDA of b6, as I wonder if ta hardlimit on b6 in that way would cause people to miss other nutrients in their diet. There's also some evidence that the 1.3-1.7mg range is bit low and should maybe be closer to 3.0-4.9mg, and a b6 deficiency developed over months of following the protocol (as is common in that group) could also cause neuropathy symptoms... So I can imagine a lot of ways that this would go wrong. But, again, I'm just reading peer-reviewed literature and speculating--I'm lacking a broader medical context. If I were to write the rebuttal, and send you a draft, would you maybe have a look and tell me if there's anything horribly wrong? I'd be happy to credit or not credit you as preferred. - Scarpy (talk) 19:44, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
If other sites link to it/talk about it, then it likely passes WP:GNG and should be a seperate Wikipedia article about the group with a "See Also" in the Megavitamin-B6 syndrome article. I nominate Scarpy as being well-qualified to create that article, but would be glad to look it over and check it for accuracy. If other sites don't link to it/talk about it, then the chances of anyone who isn't already a member "finding this group on Facebook" are so small that we can simply ignore the issue. --Guy Macon (talk) 20:24, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Instrumentational electrotherapy is a method for physiheraphy students. I am a PhD PT and my studies are non profit. Dr Alex Ward died 2 years ago. There are very limited number of scientist who work on this topic.
The studies are for non profit purpose, links were given for lecturers to how to build their own patient simulators. Most of the books cited in google play are free or non profit.
To give you an idea of what I'm thinking, the video on cholera has 16 images. I took a swing at starting a video on Indian Peace Commission as seen here. I'm not even through the first section, and I'm at 29 images. So I'm looking at probably 150-200 images for the full article. To my mind, that's the kindof thing that takes full advantage of the format, but it's completely impossible to manually manage attribution for 150 images. GMGtalk15:30, 29 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
At any rate, what is the outlook for at least starting with the low-hanging fruit, and updating the license to 4.0 instead of 3.0? GMGtalk13:47, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks for clarifying that I need to add the page number cited, I have corrected this. Abdominal pain is indeed listed in my reference as being a common side effect of Omeprazole, with incidence frequency exceeding 10%; other known side effects listed as less common include nausea, vomiting, acid regurgitation, diarrhea, and constipation. The preface of the book explains the meaning of underscored, bolded, or capitalized terms; the underline indicates side effect incidence over 10%, non-underlined side effects are less common. UltravioletAlien (talk) 01:06, 30 January 2020 (UTC)UltravioletAlien[reply]
Want to rewrite an article -- would like your advice
So I've been editing Wikipedia here and there for a few months now, and I got assigned to write/rewrite an article for class (the whole Wiki EDU thing). I can take on a random stub if I like, but the article I really want to get my hands on is Anosmia. There's only five senses, and it seems like the article for the lack of this one being C-class is sorta silly.
Anyway. I know a bit more than my classmates going into this, ie the basic rules of Wikipedia and all, how to use it properly, but I have some questions...
Is this a good idea? It gets a couple edits every week or so, so if I pasted in a rewrite of the article (when I finish it) I'd technically be reverting those edits. Might just have to watch carefully for what's going on there.
I've found the page for 'Editing Wikipedia articles on Medicine', but do you have any advice/tips that I should follow specifically?
User:ForksForks I recommend you edit the article directly as you go along. Rather than move it to your sandbox, make a bunch of edits, and than try to paste them into place at the end. This will get you more feedback from the wider community. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:49, 30 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Trigenics until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.
Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. The Anome (talk) 13:50, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Thank you for sending me the article on Phencyclidine. Have you had an opportunity to look at it yourself? Between my basic German and some help from Word and Chrome, I have much of it translated, but the technical jargon remains a minor issue. It would seem much of the approximate structures are limited to a shorter section at the end of publication, and I'm not sure PCP was created. The User:Cosmotroniks may be correct. I'm trying to get him into a discussion with us. MartinezMD (talk) 15:38, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
A content issues made important by recent Wuhan CV reporting
The new Talk section regarding the CFR epidemiology article is something you might look in on, since you have been on contact with this editor about their medical editing before. This is time-sensitive because the NYT's extensive graphics coverage of the Wuhan infection includes a repeatedly cited plot of CFR vs transmissability (and the CFR article is one mucked up wuth unsourced content). I do not expect that this editor, who seems inactive, will remove his own inaccurate and unsourced material. Since I no longer log here, I cannot do large deletions (and this would require blanking of a section). Look in if you have the time and inclination.
At the same time, I think the whole Transmission risks and rates article could be taken down for similar reasons—both articles could be replaced with two sentences from any current epidemiology text, by an esteemed editor such as yourself, and with that begin to move the articles quickly toward being encyclopedic. No one has time to fix huge tracts of unsourced, and often significantly (if not entirely) inaccurate material. Cheers, a Prof. 2601:246:C700:19D:6DB8:E3D9:8FD6:A7B0 (talk) 21:39, 31 January 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Why would you replace all the links for numbers with a worldmeter link
The replacement of individual country links with worldmeter site has reduced the information. Earlier, those links were in many cases directing readers to official sources of information. How do we know for sure worldmeter is itself reliable. Moreover, those links were giving additional information as to who these patients were, from where they are. I request you to kindly reverse the change. You change is aesthetically pleasing but as far as information is concerned, I believe it has dented the same. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 183.83.174.250 (talk) 05:13, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
No some of them were old newspaper articles that simple gave old numbers and did not actually support the current content in question. I left the government sources.
The numbers are changing every day. People are just changing them without providing sources that actually support the change. Hopefully with page protection we can get content actually supported by the reference listed. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:18, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
I agreed some of the links were old, that ought to be deleted. But latest media articles are helpful. These media articles were giving important information in addition to numbers. In case of almost all countries, these links were informing the interested readers about the geographical location within the country where infections were confirmed, in some cases travel history of the infected among others. I feel that those links were helpful to that extent.Now with only worldmeter links, that information is not there in the article.
If there was important information in addition to the numbers than that content should be provided in the body of the article with the reference in question. This is only about the numbers. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:30, 1 February 2020 (UTC)[reply]
Dear Doctor James, in this table, the information was easily available to the reader. Unfortunately you simply deleted without ensuring that information is placed somewhere else, which I think is a loss for readers. Another thing is how sure you are about the reliability of worldmeter numbers. They are also relying on media reports mostly. So how people doing it on this page any different from there approach. I request you sincerely to kindly put back the latest official/media links for the individual countries please.
