User talk:Doc James/Archive 134

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NIH sourcing

Continued from User_talk:Doc_James#Grant
"Are you saying you plan to push for not allowing the use of the NIH/CDC as a source?"

First, thanks for asking. No, I am not suggesting that at all.

An explanation of my concern starts with what I believe to one of the fundamental strengths of Wikipedia. Setting aside the medical realm for a moment, one of the joys of my days as FAC delegate was the privilege to read some articles that were exquisitely written and researched, and comprehensive beyond anything available anywhere online-- clearly pathsetting in their fields (along with some other truly awful articles I was obliged to promote because consensus was there and that was my job). I had the joy of promoting some FAs that put information on the internet that was previously unavailable to people unless they had access to a university library.

In the medical realm, this had great potential. At the time I came to Wikipedia, there was nothing comprehensive anywhere online about Tourette syndrome. The readers' options were textbooks (that were above the reading level of some), laybooks (typically dreadfully biased self-help type), brief NIH fact sheets (and for years the NIH would not correct their TS errors), advocacy group websites (that were not so good in the case of TS, because to make money, they needed to promote a somewhat pessimistic prognosis), and a few free full-text journal articles. The ability to pull from the highest quality information available and gel it down to what readers needed to know, in hopefully accessible language (I recognize that we don't always attain that, but we sure try) and give readers more than they could find on an NIH factsheet was motivating, powerful, and inspirational for me. It is a core strength of Wikipedia-- getting info to general readers they might not otherwise have access to. By driving our leads to contain only that which is already available in NIH sources, we lose a core strength. We give our readers nothing they couldn't already get online. They are a reliable source that I often use and that has a place in our sourcing scheme. But by using them almost exclusively in leads, we sacrifice a core strength, and a motivating factor for people who want to produce top content.

I am hoping you will understand that some of us are highly motivated to create a unique resource for internet readers. This is what I hope to do at dementia with Lewy bodies (right now, it's a mess-- I tend to chunk in factoids, and go back and smooth prose later). I don't want to only duplicate what readers can already find at the Lewy Body Dementia Association or the NIH.

I suspect this matter is at the core of the instances when you and I disagree, which is why I hope you will try to understand, as I try to understand that you are motivated by different factors. This is why the drive to (what I believe) downgrade leads to basically what is already available at NIH sources is so difficult for those of us who hope to provide unique internet resources. We have the ability to offer more than what is already available online, and should use that. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:29, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

As an example, I'll give dementia with Lewy bodies. The sources from NIH highlight depression (neuropsychiatric) and urinary incontinence (autonomic), while the sources I'm reading highlight apathy and constipation. We shouldn't be constrained by what the NIH chooses to highlight; we can offer more. If the top researchers in the field are seeing more concern with apathy v depression or constipation v urinary incontinence, we can offer something of interest to our readers relative to what they can already find. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:41, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
Glad to hear that you are not pushing to disallow the NIH and CDC. I have no problems with other high quality sources being used in the leads or anywhere else in the article, and apologies if I gave that impression. Additionally I use way more than the CDC and NIH as sources. They are however useful in many respects as they provide an easy to access overview. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:10, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
I know you use other/more sources, but when aiming to have leads use only easily understood sources (as opposed to language), we may be missing out on valuable information. And by appearing to force leads to be citable to these easily accessible sources, we lose nuance, other information, and other value added by having the lead be a true summary of the article-- not just what is in a few sources that are highlighted in the lead. According to WP:V and WP:LEAD, I can say "urinary incontinence or consipation", "apathy or depression", without having to chunk up the lead with citations-- any citation at all. I can combine thoughts that are summarized in the article. That is much more useful to our readers, and more readable than being forced to stick on another citation of something that is summarized in the body, just because the NIH doesn't use it. Leads are also supposed to entice readers to read the article-- not just to click out to the NIH. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:20, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
My request was just to add citations to support the details you add to the lead. If you wish not to, yes that is permissible by policy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:23, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
I am happy to hear that, thanks. I would hope to encourage editors to work on article content, and summarize last to the lead-- it's just better editing. Generally, citations in the lead are evaluated case by case, but that we ended up with this eyesore I suspect is because the fellow truly thought he had to do that, per you. Why FAC passed it is a whole 'nother problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:42, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
IMO nothing in the lead should be so controversial as to require more than one or two sources. With respect to the article you mention I will leave it to User:Seppi333 to answer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:54, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

No, that "eyesore" is all based upon my own preferences Sandy. The notion that a lead shouldn't be cited is utter bullshit. It's article content. Seppi333 (Insert 2¢) 22:05, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

It is odd that someone who does not seem to have digested Wikipedia's policy and guideline pages would respond with "bullshit"; maybe you are spending too much time absorbing the WP:MED ethos. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:33, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
Or maybe you are taking the recent incident too personally, now seemingly wanting to dismantle everything in WP:MED as a way to get back at us for disagreeing with you. This type of behaviour is despicable and ruinous to Wikipedia. Carl Fredrik talk 23:27, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
@CFCF: which recent incident are you referencing? There have been too many issues for me to know which ones you mean. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:32, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
I sure hope that you each can recognize that there is a middle ground between "despicable" and reducing all the active editors at MED to having a single "ethos". --Tryptofish (talk) 23:48, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
The characteristics, culture and beliefs of a community allow for exceptions-- never intended to imply everyone. There is a fundamental change at the medicine project which has taken it from an internal focus (on content in here, things like weekly collaborations, producing top content) to an external focus (partnerships with groups outside of Wikipedia, eg videos) that has not been focused on improving content. It's too bad that CFCF wants to overpersonalize something like that, at a time when WP:MED could be/should be seeking direction and how to avoid a repeat of the video situation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:56, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
I guess not... --Tryptofish (talk) 23:59, 2 April 2018 (UTC)
I have taken your point, and struck the generalization, Trypto. I hope that the silent majority conforms to a different ethos than the generality I experience. (I still don't know what CFCF is referring to.) And I am relieved that Doc James is not pushing for citation overkill in leads. I thought we were off to such a good start in this section, aiming for understanding, and then we hit "bullshit" again :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:48, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks, Sandy. I appreciate that. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:04, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Lead issues

Doc, following on the discussion above with Tryptofish and Seppi331, here is the page that is driving the LEAD issues that concern me (per discussion above):

  • Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task force highlights (at the bottom of the page) you and CFCF (and another editor I am not familiar with). I have never seen a Wikipedia WikiProject page that highlights individual editors like that; are you aware of others?
  • WP:V and WP:LEAD are clear on when leads need inline citations, along with other practice about LEADs.
    • Yet, Wikipedia:Good lede#Translation Task Force appears to be calling for citations in the lead. But that is not all it is doing-- I find there the two other troubling factors, that IMO are driving down article quality:
    • "Content is ordered within the lead, the same as the recommended section ordering in the manual of style for medical articles." (Which in cases I am familiar with, disrupt the flow of the lead.)
    • "The lead needs to be written in English that is as simple as possible while the content remains medically correct."

None of that is based on Wikipedia guideline. This is why I continue to say the efforts of the Translation task force (which appears to be CFCF and you and one other editor Lucas) are not in all cases leading to improvements on en.Wikipedia, and in several cases that I am aware of, are driving content down.

Can you see here the same problems/mentality as led to the video situation? A very small group of editors, imposing things on articles that are not based in Wikipedia policy, process, or guideline.) Could I ask that you stop inserting the preferences of a few editors into the leads of every article (particularly FAs), and instead gain consensus on talk before rewriting leads to meet the needs of one Project, since the guidelines that Project is using are not in alignment with Wikipedia-wide guidelines? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:43, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Sandy you would do well to go back and read the last 5 years of the talk page of WT:MED to see what you missed.
Putting references in the leads of medical articles and using easier to understand language has been discussed. In fact it is in WP:MEDMOS as "Adding sources to the lead is a reasonable practice but not required as long as the text in question is supported in the body of the article." and "The lead of an article, if not the entire article, should be written as simply as possible without introducing errors or ambiguity."
We have already discussed that Wikipedia is to be written for a general audience. In fact MEDMOS says "Write for the average reader and a general audience—not professionals or patients." We have already discussed the reading level of the general audience.
Yes I know we disagree on this aswell. And no I will not request permission from you before making any edit to any article.
Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:03, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
<Deep breaths>. Doc, I think/hope/believe I understand what you are saying, but I don't think you understand what I am saying. Let's keep trying, ok?
The problem that occurred with the videos was partly based in the Medicine Project operating in a vacuum, outside of normal policy, procedures and guidelines.
The problem with you pointing out multiple discussions at the Medicine Project about leads is the same problem as the videos. One WikiProject does not get to trump Wikipedia-wide policy or guideline. That is what is happening, no matter how many discussions WP:MED has about it.
And in the cases I mostly follow, this prescription of content for the translation project has damaged FAs.
You do not need my permission to edit, but strangely, I need your permission to edit. Even though my editing is per policy, guideline, etc. while the translation project prescriptions are not. It would be wonderful to put the video thing behind us, but this is another example of the thinking that led to the video problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:08, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Can I highlight what WP:MEDSECTIONS says

The following lists of suggested sections are intended to help structure new article or when an existing article requires a substantial rewrite. Changing an established article simply to fit these guidelines might not be welcomed by other editors. The given order of sections is also encouraged but may be varied, particularly if that helps your article progressively develop concepts and avoid repetition. Do not discourage potential readers by placing a highly technical section near the start of your article.
...
the spectrum of medical conditions is huge, including infectious and genetic diseases, chronic and acute illness, the life-threatening and the inconvenient. Some sections will necessarily be absent or may be better merged.

The first important fact is that these are "suggestions" and no more than "encouraged" for "new articles" or "existing article requires a substantial rewrite". The guidelines highlights many reasons why writers may want to deviate from the suggestions, such as for the flow developing an idea, because some topics are too small for a sub-section and need merged, because history may be better up at the top, because a concept needs introducing early on so that readers understand the later sections, etc, etc.

The second important fact is that the MEDMOS sections were listed by me, much to my regret now, after examining about half a dozen featured articles on medical topics. My findings allow me to use that great derogatory term beloved of writers of systematic reviews: "heterogeneous". There was no consistency whatsoever. The result is that the sections and their order are really rather arbitrary, a whim if you like, and seemed like a good idea at the time.

My regret is that some editors at WP:MED don't read the guideline carefully and go around reordering sections (and apparently lead sentences) based on this, which is explicitly forbidden by the guideline. Unless you are writing a new article, or are thoroughly overhauling the article and are currently knee deep in the literature on the topic, or have asked very nicely on the talk page and gained consensus for your change, do not apply MEDSECTIONS to an article. This guidelines expressly forbids you to be BOLD on this matter wrt existing articles. There are far more important things about article structure to worry about, and article structure is really something best left to editors who are seriously working on the topic and have made an investment in developing it. -- Colin°Talk 15:16, 3 April 2018 (UTC) (Thought this discussion was on WP:MED for some reason. It should be.) -- Colin°Talk 15:27, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

WT:MED is unmanageable right now (as is the RFC). The RFC was put on talk instead of its own page, so the talk page of the RFC could never be used, which is where everything shoulda been. Now we have a video proposal at WT:MED which would be better placed at the talk page of NOTYOUTUBE ... I wanted to come directly to Doc, because I am trying to achieve some long-needed understanding. I understand Doc's objectives, and they are well-intentioned. He doesn't understand that he has made editing, for me, miserable and impossible. I should not need his permission to write an article in such a way that it could become an FA, but that is what I hit when I turned to dementia with Lewy bodies. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:00, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
And now I have understood by what mechanism I am impeded from improving the lead at dementia with Lewy bodies. Category:RTT is where the Translation Task Force tracks articles that have leads that are "ready" (according to their standards, not Wikipedia's) for translation. To work on those hundreds and hundreds of articles, I have to get through the OWNership of a small WikiProject, whose standards are not in sync with Wikipedia-wide guidelines.
A bigger concern is that, I can now see that a factor driving the problems (that surfaced in relation to the videos) at Epilepsy might be that it is in Category:RTT(full)-- full articles intended to be ready for translation by this one (exceedingly small) project's standards. This project has essentially frozen hundreds of articles, and makes improvement difficult. Here I thought it was just my imagination :( :(
And even worse still, there are multiple FAs assigned to the RTT(full) category. It is, literally, the exact walled garden problem we saw in the videos.
So, is there any medical article that I can work on according to community-wide standards? This is worse than OWNership of articles; this is OWNership of the most substantial portion of Wikipedia's medical content. I would like to be able to edit medical content, according to WIAFA standards, without interference from a three-person Project whose standards are not in sync with Wikipedia guidelines. I left the prostate suite to work on another article where I could make real improvement, and hit this wall. How can we solve this problem? Specifically, can we please solve this problem without being another example of the stonewalling that we saw with the videos? Leads do not need to be cited, leads do not need to be dumbed down to the NIH level, leads do not need to flow in an order assigned by one teensy tiny WikiProject, etc. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:39, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
  • I see nothing wrong with having citations in leads. Cited leads are permitted; uncited leads are permitted. Generally, it's a good idea to cite anything that's non-obvious. But demanding that citations be removed strikes me as just as "walled garden"-ish as is demanding that pages be kept "ready" for translation. I think translation is a good thing to do, very much in the spirit of the Wikimedia project. But there can always be one version that is kept in the edit history for translation purposes. I see no good reason to keep pages "translation-ready" into perpetuity. There, the en-Wiki editing process, with community standards, should take precedence over translation. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Of course there is some text in leads that begs for a citation. And it's possible to cite a lead without citation overkill. But on the article I want to work on, we're already past that. When you start with a lead that already has citations on trivia that doesn't require citations, it's kind of hard to add/change text from there without adding citations, lest it appear that the citation left on one part is intended to cover the rest of a sentence. In other words, if I want to bring dementia with Lewy bodies to FA standard, I have to stick with the established citation overkill, or remove them altogether where they are not necessary (not challenged or likely to be challenged, which is most of what is in that lead now). Doing anything in between won't work. If I add or change text without adding a citation now, it is left misleading, as if the existing citations cover new text. So, an article I would like to bring FA, and I can't rewrite the lead as it exists now. And it would really pain me to bring an article to FA that cites the NIH all over the place, when they are outdated and we have so much better. So ... what to do? I really just need to leave, since I can't do what I do here, and what I do is what is in guideline and policy :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:23, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
  • Thanks for the explanation. I suggest treating these things as a regular content dispute. First, bring it up at the article talk page, explaining which inline cites you would like to remove. Listen to whatever replies come, and try not to focus on who said it. Then, assuming that doesn't work, start an RfC. And – always be on the lookout for a "third way". Perhaps if you add something to the lead that is not covered by existing cites, you can provide a cite of your own, and in the course of re-citing, you can remove some of the other cites that seem unnecessary. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:31, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

@Doc James: (Hey, this is your talk page, isn't it? ) Could you please say here that you agree that pages that are being translated can still be edited normally when they are not being translated (setting aside, for the moment, the question of citations in the lead), assuming that you do agree with that? If you are able to say that yourself, maybe it will put to sleep some of the disputes here. Thanks. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:55, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Yes of course pages that are up for translation can be edited the same as any other page. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:03, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks (and I know you also said this briefly below). @Sandy: Would you be willing to discuss lead citations on the talk page of one of these pages, and if you are dissatisfied with the way that the discussion goes, would you be willing to call an RfC about it? --Tryptofish (talk) 22:20, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: I'd be interested in hearing what you think about this. Thanks! --Tryptofish (talk) 17:04, 7 April 2018 (UTC)
[1]. Just noting that for closure here. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:05, 9 April 2018 (UTC)

Proposed solution

Thanks Trypto. Ok, enough whining; Trypto inspired me to a solution that may work for me, and may work to avoid having the TTF fall into the same issues as the videos (not enough community engagement, no talk page notification, things like that).

  1. TTF designs a talk page template that announces when articles are in the RTT Category, and
  2. has a bot install it on article talk pages in the category, but
  3. the template also tells other editors where to go for feedback, etc regarding the translation project, and
  4. allows editors to request, for example, a delay because major updates are in progress.

It makes no sense for any of us to be constrained by translation issues at dementia with Lewy bodies, when two weeks ago, it was a grossly outdated article-- we shouldn't have been translating it anyway when a major change was made with the new diagnostic consensus. It makes sense for all of us and our readers to have it removed from the translation category, finish updating the article in peace, and then deal with whatever needs there are for the lead when done. Then re-add it for translation. This just seems to make more sense for everyone. And involves more of the community. And provides talk page advertising for the TFF. and leaves TFF maybe even with a full article, not just a lead. And gives editors a motivation to "finish" (I know, Wikipedia articles are never finished) works in progress. Would that work? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:32, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

👍 Like --Tryptofish (talk) 23:40, 3 April 2018 (UTC)
The template should have an optional parameter for permalinking to the version of the article deemed to meet the requirements of the category. This would take any pressure (real or perceived) off of future editors to have their edits comply with TTF requirements. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 00:42, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Two things I don't understand, Sandy
  1. You seem to be saying that James is insisting on NIH refs, but up above he said others (e.g I reckon exactly the kind of recent reviews/clinical guidelines you found for DLB) are very fine and what he uses very often, and that he that he just finds NIH/CDC refs useful in many respects as they provide an easy to access overview. My sense is that if you replaced all the NIH/CDC refs in the lead with recent reviews or guidelines you would get little to no pushback. (perhaps the recent NIH ref also added, so there is one there).
  2. here, you said that TTF has essentially frozen hundreds of articles, and makes improvement difficult. and also To work on those hundreds and hundreds of articles, I have to get through the OWNership of a small WikiProject..... So where you are you getting these notions of "Freezing" and "OWN" come from? I don't see anything like that at this talk page or at Talk:Dementia with Lewy bodies.
I walked through the history of the DLP page starting about 300 diffs back, dif by dif, and saw what happened there. I also read the talk page carefully. I saw the two of you having a fairly normal head bumping with respect to content but with some overheatedness. And I do not understand all this stuff about "freezing" and OWNing. But can you explain where 1 and 2 are exactly coming from?
Solutions are good but not if they don't address the actual problem, which I believe is a long-standing style difference between you and Doc James.
Also as has been mentioned above, since references in the lead are now discussed at MEDMOS, I would be surprised if folks at FA would really ding for that, if they were pointed to MEDMOS and the widespread practice in medical articles, and now we have beta-Hydroxy beta-methylbutyric acid as an FA to point to as well...
SandyGeorgia you have improved that article a lot and I hope you continue. I will be putting some time into it as well. Jytdog (talk) 02:12, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
On point 1, the citations are already there, so deleting them would look pointy. But they aren't needed. Makes it a difficult situation, if one wants to write an article that doesn't have its lead unnecessarily glooped up. On point 2, coming from the history at several other articles (Featured and others), over many years, when Doc James wanted to install personal preferences (ordering of sections, ordering of the text in the lead) that changed carefully crafted flow and text. From there, comes the reluctance/sense of futility to take on editing any article that has fallen under one of his projects. (You are aware we lost an epilepsy doc?) I can't really agree that it is a style difference between us, or long-standing, when a) we edited just fine together for gobs of years, until these external projects took over, and b) there is no policy or guideline that backs Doc James personal preferences. I could never understand what was behind the personal choices, but seeing TTF, his preferences make more sense now. His choices seem to be aimed at making articles easier to translate. To the extent that FAC is even still a thing any more (it isn't really), that messy article with citations in the lead will be a case of WP:OTHERSTUFFEXISTS and pointing at it means nothing to the delegates-- one project doesn't get to decide to override project-wide guideline or policy. And you won't catch me ever citing a lead like that :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:30, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Thanks for your reply. My sense (fwiw) is that it is all of a piece. His editing has always been aimed at making content maximally accessible to everyone, while not losing ~too much~ nuance. There is data somewhere that lots of people, especially on mobile (who are now most of our readers) don't venture much past the lead. If I recall rightly his emphasis on leads started with that fact. I think the translation project and it method of translating just leads, grew out of that, with the continued goal of getting as much of our content into the hands of as many people who really need it, as possible.
When I take on article, I deal with the lead as the very last thing I do; sometimes (rarely) I push new content that is important up there as I go (with the new ref there) but most often just waiting til the body is done. Writing leads is usually easy with the body done, especially if one is rigorously summarizing the body, section by section...
I do get it that you don't like citations in leads. You have made that super clear :) Jytdog (talk) 02:30, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
It is frustrating to try to deal with an article that needs to be completely rebuilt, as DLB does, and be discussing a lead, which seems set in stone because of a translation project. A distraction and time sink. That's why my proposal to solve this impasse is to remove any article that is undergoing a major rewrite from the translation category until work is has progressed enough to re-add it. Then perhaps Doc James won't be so tied to the lead, and it will be easier to work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:36, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I hear the frustration! I hear it.
The underlying thorn does seem to be this stylistic difference over citations-or-not in the lead.
If it isn't clear, I have no aesthetic objection to refs in the lead, and if given an RfC with someone saying "it is ugly" or "they are not needed" on the one hand, and "it helps get well-sourced health information to many people who have few resources further the mission of the movement and of en-WP, as well as making well sourced health information more available to our many mobile readers" I know what I would pick, in a heartbeat, and I reckon (but cannot of course know) that most community members would choose the same. If there is some stronger argument for not including refs in the lead I am all ears....Jytdog (talk) 02:43, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
But forcing every clause/factoid in a lead to have an inline citation (which WP:LEAD and WP:V do not) prevents one from writing precisely what an FA is supposed to have-- a compelling lead, with "brilliant" prose, that summarizes the article and entices the reader in, leading them to want more (that's what the best FAs do). I have said many times that I understand Doc's motivations, but he isn't hearing mine, or acknowledging that different editors have different motivations. I do not believe we can ever achieve a level of accuracy in here that we should be even trying to spread our (mis)information to other languages. I am motivated to write a unique article on a topic such that it provides information to our readers that exists nowhere else on the internet. RE: Accuracy, because of this conversation, and finding the Category, I noticed that the ADHD article is listed as fully ready for translation. But Ballena and I just removed an error there that stood for five years. I suspect Doc thought I had seen it, since it is Tourette text that snuck in on the heels of my editing in Nov 2013, but I didn't return for several weeks, and missed the text that had snuck in, and never saw it again until today. It's been there for five years. We cannot pretend to achieve accuracy in here across hundreds of articles, or that we can maintain them to a state of accuracy to have them constantly ready for immediate translation. But in trying to do that, we have quite successfully de-motivated every previous medical FA writer from taking an entire article and bringing it to the best possible state. I have no interest in trying to make hundreds of articles accessible. I am interested in making one article shine. One person cannot maintain the entire Wikipedia. By de-motivating editors who coulda/woulda been helping all of these years at WP:MED, as I once did, more articles suffer. I wasn't here watching ADHD, and the error stood. Message-- don't de-motivate editors with inflexible requirements driven by a translation project; everyone has different interests. I do understand and respect what Doc wants to do. I don't think he understands how much his not "hearing" de-motivated Graham, or Colin, or me, after spending years bringing articles to a place where readers can get more info on that topic from Wikipedia than they can anywhere else on the internet. I still have the idea if I keep at this, Doc and I will understand each other. Or, I give up and go away again ... but on a volunteer project, people write what they enjoy writing, and I have no interest in repeating an NIH fact sheet on a disease or condition. I want to produce something unique. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:56, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes I am in strong support of references in the lead. This is not just because of translation work, this is also because it 1) makes justifying and discussing the lead easier 2) makes updating the lead easier 3) our readers will often tag statements in the lead if they are not referenced.
I have no problem with sources other than the NIH being used, but you appear to want to be able to remove all the references from the lead correct? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:06, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
No, it is premature to say that. I don't want to be constrained by citations that pre-exist in the lead, if it comes time to write a more compelling lead than what our readers can find via the NIH. I can't say how a lead should be or needs to be cited until writing the lead. Some facts in the lead do need to be cited; I don't want writing to be forced to be choppy in the lead so that each clause or factoid matches one-to-one to a citation. I don't see the point in writing articles or leads to repeat info that readers can already find in an NIH factsheet-- I have no motivation to regurgitate what the NIH, or NIA, etc have already done.
Something else just occurred to me ... I might have understood all of this earlier if the category were more descriptive. A category named RTT isn't something I noticed until just today, when I tried to find the translation project :) Might it not be renamed to something editors will recognize? Or perhaps not necessary if the Project develops a template. That there is no talkpage template doesn't help either. For years, when spoken wikipedia and wikipedia CD were honing in on Tourette syndrome, I got to participate and be heard (as in wait, not ready yet, I am doing a major upgrade). A talk template would help solve a lot of this ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:18, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Talk template exists within Template:WPMED Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:20, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
As in my points above, I am suggesting that the Translation Project should have a talk page template and it should be installed on every article in the category. Just as Wikipedia CD did, and as Spoken Wikipedia did. Did you see my 4-point proposal above? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:24, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
It is not helped that there is a WikiProject tag, that goes to a page that doesn't look like a WikiProject, and doesn't give information about what the tag means. I honestly took a long time to understand that page was a Wikipedia Project page, and thought I was at Meta or something, and what is really needed is a feedback link. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Sure I have no problem with that. It is a different question from whether or not the leads should have references though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Did you see this request? Would you be amenable to taking articles out of the RTT category when editors are doing major updates, as that might relax the need to finalize the lead before the article is ready? That is, let a writer work-- when you are ready to revisit the lead, then talk about whether every clause and sentence requires a citation. For example, I always cite data and quotations ... but other than that and a few more things, there is nothing in the lead of dementia with Lewy bodies that is likely to be challenged. Ever. Why must every sentence, even when they are basic definitions that are covered in the article, be cited in such a way that the writing is forced to choppiness? DLB is one of two LBDs, eg, is a basic factoid that is covered in the article that doesn't need citation. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:35, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
You were challenging many of the sentences in the lead such that I went and added quotes from the source behind each reference. There is no need to remove the category. It does not make any difference with respect to updating and is tangential to the question of having references that you are raising here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:11, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

Time to call it

"You were challenging many of the sentences in the lead such that I went and added quotes from the source behind each reference."

Doc, it's time to call this what it is: DISHONESTY. If you can't start being honest with yourself, at least try not to be dishonest with everyone else reading this conversation. I have tried my hardest NOT to point out your dishonest statements, in the hope that you truly are good intentioned, but that's not working. So now, let's get real about what you really did there. I'm sorry that Jytdog chose not to highlight the facts in his "analysis" here. I was willing to let that go, but enough already. Here is the dishonesty you are not admitting to:

  1. In 2017, a new consensus on DLB emerged.
    Our discussions on talk reveal that it is most likely that you were not aware, and it took me a lot of wasted editing time to get you to even recognize this, or understand the significance of RBD being 90 to 95% predictive of progression to a synucleinopathy. That is pretty powerful and exciting stuff, and understanding what RBD is (not sleepwalking, sleeptalking) is rather basic to editing that article.
    If you don't have a grasp on the basics, why are you imposing anything at the article? Why are you even editing the article?
  2. When I came to the article, mid-February, it was grossly outdated, and horrible. You care about leads, so the lead was cited. To grossly outdated sources. I started working.
  3. When I removed the outdated sources from the infobox and from the lead, and attempted to rewrite to newer, updated sources, you not only restored outdated info,
    ... but, to justify your edits, you (quite dishonestly, compared to what you are claiming here) reinstated the old, archived versions of a source which has since been updated to reflect the new consensus. The updated NIH pages did not say what you wanted in the lead, so you used old, archived versions, even after I had corrected them once. That is, you showed ownership of outdated information of text in the lead, when there is an abundance of new MEDRS information available. A few samples only of the whole long mess I had to deal with there, just to get the new sources in the lead. [2] [3] Yes, as you say, you added quotes. After you KNOWINGLY cited and re-added archived versions of NIH pages that have now been updated, while I was using a superior, newer source.

Either you are being dishonest here, or obtuse, or as I have long said, you simply edit too fast and lose track. In which case, it would be nice if you would let others edit in peace.

In the same vein (honesty) while we are having a discussion here about the issue of citations in the lead, you argued at epilepsy (when you wanted to keep the videos)

[4] "If you read WP:LEAD, the lead just needs to be supported by the body of the text, it does not need inline references itself." Doc James, March 28

Once again, it is clear that this is much more than a "difference in style".

It gets better. With this kind of editing going on, while almost every top contributor to medical content is not agreeing with your views on the videos, and trying to get you to see the damage done to medical content, Jytdog opens an ANI on Colin and me, where this other person (who spends the bulk of his Wikipedia time at User talk, and has 50 edits to a Start class article after 11 years of editing) says this utterly ridiculous thing.

Yes, James, we have some difference in style. When I see something that is wrong Wrong WRONG, I address it, no matter which "side of the aisle" it's coming from. That's a matter of character. That you are silent as people deify you, rather than speaking up to affirm when other editors are correct, with or without an MD, casts you in an interesting light. You have been unknowledgeable about the topic, and wrong on every medical article where we have met lately. And I believe that happens because, rather than exploring any topic in depth, you try to do too much, too fast. I can recognize your good intent until you start being dishonest about the basics that are happening here, which are:

  • Look at these top medical editors, and contemplate what pattern you see in terms of who has supported your ventures. User:SandyGeorgia/sandbox#Top medical content contributors
  • Consider what it means to medical content on Wikipedia to lose these people over a focus on leads.
  • Do you really want to have fans like the fellow with 50 edits to his best start class article, or do you want to work with the people for example like I list above (I will soon likely have to apologize for leaving out someone)?
  • I/we have cancer. (We because prostate cancer changes married life, d'oh.) I have months ahead of three-hour days, every day all week, for radiation therapy. All I friggin' wanted to do was work on an article where there was a recent fun and exciting development (the understanding of prodomal RBD in DLB) as a distraction over the next months. You have made it impossible for me to edit here. You dishonestly, again, referenced above needing my permission, but it is clear I need your permission to edit. This conversation is bordering on the absurd. I have YEARS of overseeing the production of and producing top content, but I need your agreement to be able to update a grossly outdated article. That editors of the caliber I showed you in the link to my sandbox, like myself, can no longer edit or no longer want to edit medical content, or have spoken in opposition to your "tenure" at WP:MED should concern you, and all of us. (Recognizing that does not apply to all of those on that list, eg Johnbod who has stayed mostly out of this, but you certainly did not have the support of most of those editors on the video debacle, and we sure aren't seeing any more top content generated in medical articles. No, we have leads now, which obscure the serious problems in the rest of the article).

Just stop it, James. You have made Wikipedia impossible for a number of us. If you can't see that, then expect me to start calling you on it when you are dishonest. Whatever fun and distraction I could have had by bringing dementia with Lewy bodies to FA while I sit through radiation therapy has already been destroyed by you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:21, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

+1000. The thorough ignorance of the subject; the dishonesty; the needing your permission to edit, but not vice versa; the "consensus" only applying to other folk, and meaning really "agreeing with James"; the terrible terrible quality of writing; dumbing down to remove carefully chosen words and make it meaningless and less educational; the reorganising paragraphs and sections against the express instructions of our medical style guide; writing articles that are just an accumulation of factoids; editing the lead out-of-sync with the body; edit warring with his peers who he should respect; edit warring with real actual subject experts; edit warring with lay editors who know damn well how to write high quality medical articles and source them; edit warring to protect a $2million investment by his off-wiki partners; not understanding the basics of Wikipedia:About; violating WP:V when edit warring to restore totally unsourced material; ....
Since you bullied me off of Wikipedia in 2014, I look now and find that in the years since, WP:MED does not appear to have nurtured anyone with the drive and talent and collaborative spirit to develop featured quality articles. Your ego is so huge that the world's biggest encyclopaedia is still too small for you to let one of our finest editors, Sandy, work in peace without constant reverts and warring and having to teach you some basics on the subject. Now they are giving up too, it appears. Well done James. Well done. Wikipedia is a collaborative editing project above all else. One cannot develop an article to featured standard (and keep it there) if one is faced with repeated reverts by editors who know and care nothing about the subject. Is it too much for you to take a few articles off your watchlist and let others drive for a change? -- Colin°Talk 14:44, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • It's time to "call it", as in to flat-out stop it, with personalization of these disputes. Editors should focus on page content, and stop picking at the scab about personal dislikes of one another. If it keeps on like this, I will seek broader attention to this problem. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:35, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • It doesn't really matter what you seek, does it, since the result is the same either way. I can't edit medical topics, and I'm not exactly going to hang around here to edit flowers. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:09, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • It's obviously up to you what you do or do not edit. But you can edit medical topics if you want. You just cannot require that other editors agree with you as a condition of your editing. If you choose to edit medical pages, you can, but you have to deal with it as it is. If you choose not to edit there, then you really shouldn't go around complaining about it either. --Tryptofish (talk) 17:13, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • The problem is that Trypofish is still stuck thinking this is a content dispute, with the videos, or the problems at prostrate or dementia or epilepsy. I see he wrote on his talk page "I will oppose any efforts to treat the WT:MED editors as wrong or bad." These things that are being discussed are symptoms of an underlying illness with WP:MED which at its core lies Doc James, with a chorus of worshippers: his beliefs about what Wikipedia is, how to interact with others when editing, his level of competency and understanding. This has driven away all the good medical content editors from the project, so James has had the bright idea of outsourcing it from a private firm. Sometimes, editors are wrong and bad. To flat out oppose that, is just to deny reality, become an apologist for them, and then be part of the problem. To trivialise this as a "scab" or a "personal dislike" is insulting. Tryptofish, do you realise your comments "If you choose to edit medical pages, you can, but you have to deal with it as it is" sound exactly like an apologist for sexual abuse in the workplace: "The guys here are a bit crude at times, might feel your bum in the lift, peer down your top, but you know, they don't mean harm by it, and if you want the job, well you have to deal with it as it is". Wrong and bad. -- Colin°Talk 17:29, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
  • If that's what you think, then duly noted. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:07, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

WP:LEAD

I don't understand the culture of people who work on FA, but if we are "calling it", what I call this whole thing is a dispute over style preferences. Style preferences notoriously generate conflagrations in WP. It is the same dynamic as the infobox wars, where people who work to bring an article to FA (or otherwise invest heavily in the writing quality and aesthetics per se) generally find "their work" to be marred by an infobox, and people who want infoboxes cannot understand resistance to the utilitarian value of the infobox. Hm. Artistes vs worker bees.
fwiw i generally find the overheated drama of the artiste folks to be unseemly at best.
You do love words, SandyGeorgia, and you have been pouring layer on layer of a form of rhetoric - namely speech intended to persuade without regard for truth - into your comments around this, even as you describe others as "dishonest". This is beyond unseemly. So if you are going to start playing "dishonesty" cards please be aware that you would be doing so with dirty hands.
You have a very utilitarian goal here - namely to be "free to create" and have leads free of citations and shaped in whatever way pleases you within the limits allowed by LEAD; Doc James has a utilitarian goal to make leads useful for multiple user bases, so wants them in plain English, standardly structured, and sourced, which is also within the limits allowed by LEAD.
As I said before, if you put that style issue to an RfC it is pretty clear to me what the community will choose.
That is really what should happen, rather than continuing this here. Jytdog (talk) 15:04, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Your words mean little here, since you were incapable of an impartial analysis of the edits and talk page at DLB. And my words were "poured" on only because of and after James' dishonest portrayal. Why don't you poke your nose out of this and let us settle it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:13, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I have my own reading of what happened at the DLB that is all my own, independent of you or Doc James, and quite rigorous in its own right. You have added a lot of value to that article.
I think an RfC around this style difference would be the best way to resolve this; I do not see it being resolved through discussion, since both you and Doc James have very firm stances. Your proposal above about removing the translation tag doesn't resolve it, since the style difference predates the translation project.
fwiw I would propose Denk to frame it; in my view Denk is wise on these matters. I just linked and didn't ping since I don't want to bother them if that is unacceptable to you or Doc James... Jytdog (talk) 15:57, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Talk about deflect, detract and enable when I'm trying to deal with a problem WITH Doc James (not you). Just stop it (ignoring James' dishonesty, and attaching spurious claims to my diffable facts). And stop calling this a "style difference". WP:LEAD is thataway--> RFC all you want. If you can get the community to agree to your proposed changes at lead, great, then we all comply. In the meantime, you are most obviously derailing and interfering with me trying to resolve a dispute with James. (Comments from helpful observors welcome above, you are not.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
Both what you want to do, and what Doc James want to do, are allowable under LEAD. It is a style thing.
This is unfortunately a continuation of the same dispute that was actually driving the intensity around video thing (there were legit issues there as most everyone has agreed) - both you and Colin brought up these other matters consistently in the course of that, as I showed with diffs at the ANI, and here are both of you repeating those same points again.
I am taking the same line as User:Tryptofish above in this diff. Tryptofish and I differ in that the proposal about the translation project and its templates is not really the issue, as the conflict predates that project. I am not sure that Tryptofish knew that.
That's what i have to say for now. I have seconded the notion that this is going to take an RfC, and warned you to be careful with the rhetoric. You are indeed your own person to do as you will. Jytdog (talk) 16:34, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
By coincidence, I got that ping while I was writing the comment that I just made in the talk section above. Yes, I'm aware that the conflict goes back longer than that. About what may or may not be "style differences" everyone here should work that out at the article talk page, or a content RfC if local discussion does not get a consensus. Personalizing the issue is very bad. Forget who was responsible for what, and focus instead on the content issues. And again, this isn't that difficult: translation is good, but there is no reason to keep pages in a translation-ready state in perpetuity. I don't care whether there is a template, and I don't care whether there is a bot. Have one version in the page edit history that is translation-ready, and use that one for translation. Then leave the page open to normal editing, and resolve any content disputes as content disputes. --Tryptofish (talk) 16:42, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
fwiw Trypto as far as I can the translation thing is a red herring. I looked carefully and I didn't see any place where Doc James mentioned that as a reason to keep the lead updated or to keep refs in the lead. Refs in the lead is rather a style choice he made a long time ago as far as I can tell. "Freezing for the translation project" is a rhetorical device that Sandy is putting on things that, as far as I can see, has no correspondence with reality. (this is what i mean about "speech intended to persuade without regard for truth") Jytdog (talk) 17:28, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
It's like this talk sub-thread and the sub-thread immediately above are two parallel universes. I don't care who might be using "rhetorical devices", because all that anyone has to do is to edit about content without personalizing it. If there are no objections to revising a page when it is not being translated, then that's good, and go ahead and edit it in the normal way. If someone disagrees with those edits on content grounds, as a matter of choice of writing style, then resolve it in the normal ways of working through a content dispute. If someone instead objects to the edits based on any requirements for the translation project, then they need to stop doing that. --Tryptofish (talk) 18:14, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
I was responding to the last two sentences of your post above in which you picked up and used the rhetorical device; this is how this kind of thing works; i know you have seen this sort of thing many times, and seen it applied to yourself as well. In any case I agree with the rest, and what you wrote just above. Jytdog (talk) 18:35, 4 April 2018 (UTC)
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