Talk:Endocrine system

This article is or was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Rmahoney4 (article contribs). Peer reviewers: Tombuckley23.

Peer Review of Draft

This article is already very extensive and contains a plethora of information about the endocrine system. My suggestions are that you add more to the diseases section and at least list the myriad of potential problems that can be caused by improper functioning of the endocrine system as a whole and the specific glands and organs that play major roles in it. The way that the article is broken up is very good and helps keep things very organized, but I think there could maybe be room for a section about how certain glands or organs are linked via in the endocrine system this could add something new to the article that allows readers to grasp the total concept of the system as a whole much better. Tombuckley23 (talk) 02:48, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Peer Review

This article already has a lot of information but there is still room for a lot of improvements. Each subsection has a lot of tables that supply good information but as a reader it might be easier to read if there were short descriptions of what the tables either summarize or add additional information. Some subsections are not as detailed as the others and this also might be an area for improvement. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mfigueroa12 (talk • contribs) 14:04, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Lead flagged for length

Someone recently flagged the lead as possible too long.

If anything is presently in excess, it's a few contextual sentences:

contrast with other glands

In contrast, exocrine glands, such as salivary glands, sweat glands, and glands within the gastrointestinal tract, tend to be much less vascular and have ducts or a hollow lumen.

contrast with other organs

For example, the kidney secretes endocrine hormones such as erythropoietin and renin.

contrast with other signalling systems

As opposed to endocrine factors that travel considerably longer distances via the circulatory system, other signaling molecules, such as paracrine factors involved in paracrine signalling diffuse over a relatively short distance.

These are all valuable contrasts to differentiate the subject from what it's not. But perhaps these could be bundled up into a sub-section near the top of the article with a spirit of compare & contrast. — MaxEnt 05:51, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@MaxEnt thanks for pointing this out, I've trimmed a few sections. I agree these contrasting statements are not very useful in the lead.--Tom (LT) (talk) 22:49, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

In internal medicine

I circumscribed the lead "In internal medicine," because that is 90% of the perspective of this article as it presently stands.

A different article could be written circumscribed as "In mammalian biology" but this article is not that article.

It's potentially such a big topic, one might consider a main article "Endocrine system" taking the biological view, and a sub-article "Endocrine system (internal medicine)" taking this article's view.

• Lizard Endocrine System

So it's bigger than mammalian, too.

Note that I'm commenting here as a generalist, not a specialist. — MaxEnt 05:59, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@MaxEnt such hedging statements may create a self-fulfilling prophecy, so I have removed it. I will see what I can do to tidy up this article. Please feel free to help me out (I invoke here the venerated WP:LIGHTBULB). --Tom (LT) (talk) 22:51, 17 November 2017 (UTC)

@Tom (LT) Yes, you're right. But the lack of hedge has two possible results of its own: a persistent initial confusion on the part of the reader trying to figure out what the article actually covers, and a text that is clearly shaped around an unspoken, partial orientation which fails to receive editorial attention for a long time. In systems theory, the vivid/explicit almost always gets the grease, so I'm rarely fond of leaving defects unspoken. Plus, I've observed many times how articles concerned about leaving their defects unspoken sometimes cause me intense initial confusion that persists for five or ten minutes. Lassitude is not free in the economy of the dear reader. Editorial standards best serve editors. A spirit of forthright disclosure better serves our clients.

In systems theory, inherent conflict between the overlapping, yet distinct interests of various stakeholders that's allowed to slide into the shadows can persist indefinitely. I'm so thoroughly on the systems theory side of the fence that every second movie made in the 1950s causes me intense psychic trauma. I only recently figured this out recently after watching The Reader (2008 film). In Germany, the war was never a safe subject if you hadn't already figured out the answer before you asked the question. In North America, maybe 10% of returning veterans has a deep, dark trigger warning attached to the whole of the 1940s. This had a dramatic impact on the culture of the 1950s, where it became convention to suffer in silence (to an unhealthy degree) and of course movies are often made that address the dysfunctions of present society. Many in the military report that military service, especially during the war, was a great adventure, although it did sometimes involved being sent to places you didn't want to go. The automobile culture of the 1950s leveraged this: the young family man could recover that lost spirit of adventure, while being his own boss (only go where you want to go). It would have taken a terrible fly in the ointment (e.g. Ralph Nader) to piss on this glorious respite by pointing out how many young men were killing their own (and other) families in gruesome car accidents through alcoholic, self-medicated PTSD. I'll take explicit dysfunction over implicit dysfunction any day.

I'm not meaning to harangue you with this short essay. I'm thrilled with your proactive response (many times my peculiar bias toward the explicit has been reverted with a gruff WTF?). Should I leave my attitude toward the unspoken unspoken? (I have yet to come to a final conclusion.) As I expressed, I don't have any specialists knowledge on this topic, but I will check back and offer my impressions. May the forceps be with you :-) — MaxEnt 17:18, 18 November 2017 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Endocrine gland into Endocrine system

Same subject. I think it should be in the same article. Willy1018 (talk) 06:19, 22 June 2020 (UTC)