Talk:Menopause/Archive 3

ARCHIVE PAGE 3: 2010-2012

Making significant changes?

Some people who edit the article probably do not look at this talk page, but for those who do, please, if you make sweeping changes to the article (which happens fairly often) it would be helpful to the rest of us if you leave a note on this talk page explaining what you did and why you did it. Or at least please indicate what you did and why in your edit summaries! Thanks. I went through the article today and yesterday. I tried to unify the prose style, expand the intro a little and tried to make several overall points clearer. Thanks, Invertzoo (talk) 14:35, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

I have attempted to rearrange the article per WP:MEDMOS. This gives the medical article pertaining to diseases or conditions some consistency. Cheers Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:47, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much! That was helpful. Invertzoo (talk) 23:02, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Someone must have come along since then cause its just a bunch of redundant information, and a lot of it. This article is very long.Selene Scott (talk) 17:57, 24 September 2013 (UTC)"

The article is now much shorter, and almost all the redundant info has been removed. Invertzoo (talk) 22:39, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

A note

"Nanotechnology may allow women to have the minds and bodies of 30-year-old selves (thus preventing menopause) in the first place and allowing the woman to reproduce ad infiniteum if she chose to."????

I just skimmed the article and I am surprised about its low quality. I noticed its negative tone that was already commented, to much drug marketing, repeating "women who still have uterus" as if it were a malformation, but the statement quoted above is absolutely unacceptable. It is pure fiction (luckily) and it should be erased! —Preceding unsigned comment added by Kmyc (talk • contribs) 22:31, 29 May 2010 (UTC)

When you are reading an article, please feel free to remove any peculiar un-encyclopedic insertions you might encounter such as that one, which has since been removed by someone else. In answer to your complaint about the "negative tone" of this article, this is an encyclopedia, not a magazine article or a self-help book, and therefore the tone is supposed to be factual rather than uplifting or inspiring. I think you will find that more or less all the articles on medical topics have a similar tone. Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 23:01, 9 June 2010 (UTC)

Some issues

User:Mwanner pointed out to me today that there are two problems with the article as it currently stands:

1. The page appears to basically start over after the "Background" section. Starting at "Terminology" much that was in the Background section is repeated.

2. A recent edit, this addition, appears to be a copyright violation from a book called "Women's Health Across the Lifespan: A Pharmacotherapeutic Approach". A google search for "Oral micronised estradiol and other oral estrogen preparations may result in up to 10 fold higher levels of circulating estrone sulphate than transdermally administered estradiol at comparable or even higher doses" finds the relevant part of that book.

I may not be able to work on correcting either of these things for quite some time, so anyone who can help fix these issues, please go ahead. Invertzoo (talk) 21:52, 2 August 2010 (UTC)

Despite what I said above, over the last couple of hours I did work on removing some of the duplicated information, and I reorganized the sections into a slightly different sequence, adding in some subheadings for more clarity. Invertzoo (talk) 00:37, 3 August 2010 (UTC)

I did some more work over the last couple of days and moved some text up into the intro. Invertzoo (talk) 17:32, 5 August 2010 (UTC)

A useful resource

I noticed today that significant parts of the book "Menopause: A Biocultural Perspective" by Lynnette Leidy Seivert, 2006, Rutgers University Press, 220 pages is available via Google books [1]. This source has a lot of valuable info that could be worked up and rewritten in order to improve this article. Invertzoo (talk) 00:16, 4 August 2010 (UTC)

And this would provide more references, which are very much needed. Invertzoo (talk) 17:06, 14 January 2012 (UTC)

Age

Are the pictures of a "Girl", "Woman" and "Older Woman" necessary? They don't add anything (whatsoever!) to the article, and I'm almost certain that if someone doesn't know what a "Girl" is, they probably can't operate a keyboard or mouse, and aren't likely to be interested in looking up "Menopause" in an encyclopaedia. I'd delete it myself if I wasn't quite sure someone would revert it. — Precedingunsigned comment added by81.110.127.136 (talk) 00:40, 27 July 2011 (UTC)

An article without any kind of image can be very dry and boring. And no, these images are not strictly "necessary", but they do illustrate the three biological stages of the life cycle in a human female: the stage before reproductive potential becomes active, the stage during which reproductive potential is active, and the stage after reproductive potential becomes inactive. (These stages have been called "maiden, matron and crone", for more info on that concept see Triple Goddess.) Invertzoo (talk) 13:13, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Point taken! --81.110.127.136 (talk) 14:45, 10 September 2011 (UTC)

OK thanks! Invertzoo (talk) 19:14, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

A new note

I took the liberty of removing the non-value added "gallery" of 3 photos of women in different states of life. This is redundant and not at all necessary.

130.49.142.154 (talk) 22:50, 29 November 2011 (UTC)

Thanks for your note. I see that you were a new editor with only three edits when you removed this, and it appears you have made no edits since then. I would suggest that the next time you object to some content on Wikipedia, you might be better off discussing it on a talk page before deleting it. And, as it happens, if you had put your comment at the bottom of the page instead of the top, you would have seen that there was a very similar exchange in the note before this one. In that reply I explain why I think this illustration is worth retaining. Here is the explanation repeated:

An article without any kind of image can be very dry and boring. And no, these images are not strictly "necessary", but they do illustrate the three biological stages of the life cycle in a human female: the stage before reproductive potential becomes active, the stage during which reproductive potential is active, and the stage after reproductive potential becomes inactive. (These stages have been called "maiden, matron and crone", for more info on that concept see Triple Goddess.)

Best wishes, Invertzoo (talk) 22:20, 18 March 2012 (UTC)

You're clearly standing your ground on those photos, but I am now the third person who feels them irrelevant, and quite frankly, insulting to categorize a biological female transition by appearance of outward age. Perhaps a diagram or two of the reproductive system would be more appropriate to alleviate your concern for 'dry and boring' (particularly since there is an unusually frequent mention of surgical removal of the uterus and/or ovaries, which I also find irrelevant to the discussion of menopause-it seems to me this should be a separate category, and not mentioned over and over). Personally, I don't refer to Wikipedia for the photos, nor do I expect them. Wiki isn't an on-line magazine meant to entertain. Regardless, the photos in question do not illustrate the biological stages of life, as you suggest. Biological stages of aging of the reproductive system would be quite difficult to demonstrate. Your photos represent societal opinions of outward aging. Additionally, even suggesting the concept of Triple Goddess further deteriorates this photo-defense on a page that should be biological in nature, and related to human physiology. 99.149.86.29 (talk) 23:42, 11 September 2013 (UTC)BioGal

Well this may be unpleasant news to some people, but age is an extremely relevant factor to both menarche and menopause. Menarche happens at about age 13 on average, and menopause happens at about age 50. Trying to pretend that age has nothing to do with these biological changes is simply throwing biology out of the window. As for removal of the uterus, unfortunately that is a very common surgery, especially (for example) in the southern states of the US, where only a minority of women reach menopause with an intact uterus. As a result it is necessary to talk about menopause for women with a uterus and those without one. Invertzoo (talk) 22:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

These pictures are ridiculous ! The first girl looks at least 3 years past puberty. The middle woman has so much makeup on you can't tell her age. The third woman is of a correct age but the picture denotes poverty or something other than post menopausalsm. --Wikiman728 (talk) 06:45, 24 September 2013 (UTC)

Wow -- I can't imagine why you thought that the image of the older woman "denotes poverty". Did you enlarge any of the images to see them better? Invertzoo (talk) 22:50, 18 February 2014 (UTC)

External Link Question

I wonder if this issue is only temporal or it might be different from my computer, but this Link http://womenshealth.gov/faq/menopause-treatment.cfm is not showing me any content regardless of the browser I use (Firefox - Chrome - Internet Explorer).

According to the Archive.org version of this site [2] looks a lot alike like one of their publications over here http://www.womenshealth.gov/publications/our-publications/fact-sheet/menopause-treatment.cfm

So, I wonder if it would be a good idea to change this URL or leave it like that and wait for it to work on its own

Any response would be great.

Thanks EllenHodges (talk) 23:08, 5 July 2012 (UTC)

I say change to the archive.org URL. It seems to be a copy of the missing page. --Anthonyhcole (talk) 03:32, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

OK, I think that could work but I'm a bit reluctant to link an archive.org link since I don't get to see too many of those around as an external link, but I might be wrong.

In other words if you had to choose between an older version of the site Archive.org or a publication womenshealth.gov while is not the same content seems to be relevant to this topic , which one would most choose.

Once I have that confirmation, I'll change it right away EllenHodges (talk) 13:28, 6 July 2012 (UTC)

I would go ahead and put in the womenshealth.gov link in, the new one, as long as it has basically the same info as the previous one. Invertzoo (talk) 13:03, 2 August 2012 (UTC)

Removing gender-specific terminology

Not all females are women, and not all males are men. The article erases the identities of non-binary, non-cis people in its present state. Some men and others also experience this. The article mentions women not knowing about their own bodily functions--this goes double for females who aren't women. I spent an hour changing all gender-specific instances ("woman", "she", "her") in the article not used as part of a title or similar and was told I had to ask here. ClockworkCalliope (talk) 21:14, 17 August 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for asking, and I apologize that it took so long for someone to see that you had asked this question. Not many editors keep an eye on this article and its talk page on a regular basis, probably because at the present time, 91% of WIkipedia editors are young men. (For what it's worth, and as you may have already noticed, we do also have an article on the so-called male menopause or Andropause.) This current article, Menopause, is about menopause in the most narrow scientific sense of the word. It is intended to be a medical-based article primarily applicable to people who have ovaries, i.e. biological women, also known as natal women. This is because menopause in its narrow medical definition is something that happens to the body as a result of the ovaries ceasing their primary function, or in some cases the ovaries being removed after the person reaches adulthood.

I do understand that someone who has never had ovaries can also experience menopause (hormone withdrawal) if they are on estrogen-type hormone replacement therapy and their dose of estrogen is stopped or greatly lowered at some point in their lives. We have a very short article on hormone replacement therapy (transgender), as well as an article on Hormone replacement therapy (male-to-female) and several other related articles. At least one of those articles needs to include a section on stopping estrogen therapy, and that section could perhaps refer back to this article, which discusses the possible effects of hormone withdrawal at some length, although primarily hormone withdrawal from the ovaries shutting down naturally which is a bit of a different from the effects of ceasing HRT.

I am not sure that combing through this article and changing every noun to be gender neutral is going to be much of a help overall in people's understanding of these subjects. But if you are interested in trying to do that, post one or two paragraphs here on the talk page and we will see how it looks and whether it makes the prose a bit harder to follow, or not. I think honestly it might be better to put your efforts into improving the other articles and also into deciding if perhaps we need some new articles altogether, like for example a full article on estrogen replacement therapy, which could also cover at some length the effects of stopping the therapy. Thanks again for your efforts, Invertzoo (talk) 13:44, 23 October 2012 (UTC)