Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 126

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Please add my fact!!!!

I posted to Talk:Autism.

--Rinadavitash (talk) 19:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Welcome to the English Wikipedia, Rinadavitash. It looks like someone has asked for more specific information at Talk:Autism#Request in a timely manner!!!. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

serious format issue on this page

I am reading this page in mobile view on a smartphone (Samsung S-6 Android). The second half of the introduction, starting from the line

"...about something? Make sure to look at our style and source"

extends beyond the margins of the highlight box and out past the edges of the screen. The above quote is all I can see of that line. I can scroll right to see the end of the line (struck through above), but not left to the beginning. The archive list has the same problem. The archive list may also have vertical format problems; I'm not sure what the layout is supposed to be.

Please {{Ping}} me to discuss. --Thnidu (talk) 15:07, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks User:Thnidu the problem appears to be in how mobile handles Template:MedTalkheader Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:31, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Okay tried to fix. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:03, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
THANKS, Doc James! It's working just fine now. :-D --Thnidu (talk) 20:11, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Neutrality and original research issues in articles related to Medicaid estate recovery

Recently, I noted that some of the content about Medicaid estate recovery that was added to the following articles introduced neutrality and original research issues into these articles:

I brought this to the neutral point of view noticeboard at WP:NPOVN § Medicaid estate recovery and User:NormSpier, and the editor who added the content (NormSpier) agreed to have it examined for policy compliance.

If you are interested in the topic of Medicaid estate recovery, or in United States healthcare laws in general, please help us review the newly added content at the noticeboard discussion or on the talk pages of these articles. Thanks. — Newslinger talk 20:20, 31 August 2019 (UTC)

Yeah, actually following discussion on the noticeboard, on the last 4 articles, all of the contents I added was deleted by me this afternoon. (User:Newslinger) suggested I put them on my Sandbox so they could be resubmitted by me, but they looked out of compliance to me by Wikipedia standards, now that I know a little about them so I didn't bother. Further, the articles are of minor importance.)
However, I did not change the other two, and it sounds like its best to let the professional editors deal with them, as I'm really not able to assess the Wikipedia standards at this point.
If you have any questions on details of what I wrote, just ask.
NormSpier:: (talk) 20:34, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Welcome, NormSpier. I compared what's on the page at Medicaid estate recovery now with what was there before you started (which was three sentences and a single non-independent source), and my overall reaction is " Thank you". Sure, it's not WP:PERFECT yet, but you really have made a big improvement, and I appreciate that. I hope that you'll keep working on it over time, as you think of ways to improve it even further. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:50, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the thanks.
Note that the status of the page is probably I have nothing to add, and have no ways to improve it on my own. About two weeks ago, an editor commented that it had an essay-like character, etc., so I tried to fix it. (Both here and on a small section of my ACA article But apparently the same problem persists, from (User:Newslinger).) So, as above, I don't apparently, at this point, recognize Wikipedia style requirements, so I'm really waiting for others to make very specific comments before I change anything. Otherwise, the editor(s) may do the changes or deletions without me, which is fine.
An aspect of Medicaid estate recovery that could be added to is how the second option that states have, to extend beyond probate estates, affects people, and whether there are issues of better off people taking advantage. (My additions discuss mainly the state's first option, to recover beyond long-term-care expenses, and in particular how it interacts with the ACA.) However, this addable aspect is way outside of my own expertise, and you really need an estate lawyer, or perhaps a set of estate lawyers from all 50 states to do that. NormSpier (talk) 23:15, 31 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks Newslinger for trying to get help on the issues (now confined to Medicaid estate recovery and Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act .) I see we are on a "Medical" page. Some medical people may have an interest and the skills, but just as a note, generally, for articles related to the ACA, and particularly for the sections of the 2 articles in question, where there are questions really of economic mechanisms and how to work things through economically, probably the expertise and interest is to be found among the economics crowd. That is, there are questions of "what is insurance?", "what is the purpose of insurance, and how does that purpose relate to the diminishing utility of increased money?", "what is risk pooling and why do we do it?", "what is adverse selection?", "what mechanism results in the need for a mandate to carry coverage?", "what is a loan?", "what is an insurance pool death spiral and why does it happen?" "what are the consequences to people if you estate recover a benefit with no asset test?" "and do the same as a result of coverage that is being represented as making insurance coverage available to all?"
Thus, I've seen some or read some economists, like Paul Krugman and Jonathan Gruber on the mechanisms around the ACA, as well as some conservative economists, and they are lucid on the matter. (Physicians, sometimes when they have involvement in the policy are decent as well, but far less uniformly.) This is not a request for you to seeking additional help from the econmics crowd on the two remaining articles or sections in question, but just a point around future editorship of these kinds of articles. As I see it, the economic mechanisms are critical to any kind of acceptable presentation where economic mechanisms are involved. (The politics, perhaps is relevant to some sections, and occasionally medical people may have specific observations based on observing patients and certain practices that have arisen from the ACA. But most of the core of the matter is in economics: skills found in economics generalists, welfare economists, and sometimes health economists.)NormSpier (talk) 13:42, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi NormSpier, I've also reached out to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject United States Government, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Finance & Investment, and Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Law. Please feel free to suggest any other relevant projects from the list of WikiProjects. I've also created article sandboxes (e.g. Talk:Massachusetts health care reform/sandbox) for the content that you've proactively removed (which I appreciate). I'm not done yet, and I'll have an update for you later (most likely at the noticeboard discussion). Thanks for your patience and cooperation while everything is being worked out, and echoing WhatamIdoing, thanks again for your efforts to expand Wikipedia's coverage of Medicaid estate recovery. — Newslinger talk 13:50, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, Newslinger. I did look through your list, and I caught this one: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Economics that sounds like it might be the best. They have some health-care related stuff in their list, like "Single-payer health care" and "Universal health care". (I'm not sure what all the stuff in the table (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Directory/History_and_society#Business_and_economics) means, but it's on the line labelled "Economics" in the column "assessment" that I clicked on to get to the link. You may want to try to figure if it's actually equivalent one you did send to already before sending.)
Also, recall we're down to the two main articles, Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act and Medicaid estate recovery. (On the other four, my insertions were, I guess technically original ideas, as I understand them from your reporting of the meaning of "original research". (The insertions were that the insured number reported in US statistics could be considered overstated by about 4% in the case of states that do non-LTCR estate recovery, since 4% of the people counted as insured could be considered to not really have insurance, but rather have a loan. The idea there was obvious and trivial, and seemed to be a necessary thing for an interpreter of statistics to know to best understand what those statistics mean. However, as I understand your explanation about the prohibition of "original research", even obvious assertions to help the reader, if not published elsewhere, are "original research". So far, I haven't seen the idea brought up elsewhere, however. If I see it brought up elsewhere in reasonable sources, I may revisit the 4 articles.)
NormSpier (talk) 19:31, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks, NormSpier, I've also sent a notification to Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Economics. To keep things organized, let's continue our conversation on the overall review process at the NPOV noticeboard discussion. — Newslinger talk 13:53, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Proposed move - change title of "Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States"

It has been proposed that Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States be renamed and moved to Veterans benefits for posttraumatic stress disorder in the United States. Please see my rationale for changing the title (removing the hyphen in "post-traumatic" is the only change proposed) at Talk:Veterans benefits for post-traumatic stress disorder in the United States#Requested move 27 August 2019. Please discuss on that Talk page too. Thanks!   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 17:52, 27 August 2019 (UTC)

My fellow Wikipedians (including Ozzie10aaaa) persuaded me to close (withdraw) the proposal for many good reasons, one of which is that there are several articles that use "posttraumatic" and a roughly equal number that use "post-traumatic". We should tackle them together, not piecemeal.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 05:15, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
This is an American Psychiatric Association thing. Post-traumatic Stress Disorder appeared in DSM III and was changed to Posttraumatic Stress Disorder in DSM III R as part of the wholesale removal of hyphens in the new edition. DSM IV and DSM 5 remain hyphen-free. However the hyphen remains in ICD 10, which is used in the rest of the world. There is also an American version, ICD 9 CM (clinical modification) which despite the name is used for administrative purposes: as it is copyright I don't know which version it uses. Note that the National Institutes of Health (in the US) announced some years ago that they were no longer going to use DSM definitions of disease for research that they commissioned. NRPanikker (talk) 21:18, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Write up in Slate about our video efforts

Congrats to all involved. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:39, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Testing out expanding the videos reach via Youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVxSrCYS6KQ&feature=youtu.be Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:16, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
The article confuses Wikimedia with Wikipedia. There is no doubt that Wikimedia Foundation should be interested in video as a content and in ways to encourage community participation in the creation of it. It isn't at all clear that this should be a focus for Wikipedia (other than short video clips) and the only reason given in the article was basically that Wikipedia had a trusted brand. There is really no reason why WikiTube could not be created by WMF and operated by a community.
The illiterate security guard, Venky, in the video is given as a reason to create article-topics as videos. However, Venky has an attention span and appreciation of engaging content just like anyone else. The "Siri giving a [long and boring] PowerPoint presentation" model offered by VideoWiki is unlikely to compete with a professionally created video offering actual recorded-video and narrated by an engaging presenter. Educational Youtube videos don't just become popular because of the bare facts they contain, but because they are great to watch.
The Cisco stat about x% of internet traffic being video is not in any way a measure of how popular video is as an educational medium vs text. It is just basic physics: a video file consumes a lot more data than audio which in turn consumes a lot more data than plain text. An example:
The book "I Contain Multitudes" is 368 pages in paperback and 16,556KB in ebook. My kindle tells me it will take me 6 hours to read. The audiobook is 10 hours long. HD video is about 1.5GB per hour (4K is 7.2GB per hour). If we imagine the book turned into a 6-episode hour-long series (which would necessarily contain much much less information than the book) then that would require 9GB for HD and 43GB for 4K. That is comparable with the size of storing all of Wikipedia text. One can easily see why Cisco is excited that the Internet has moved from ASCII bulletin boards to streaming 4K Netflix.
Listening to information being read out aloud (the audiobook example above is 10 hours) is by some way the slowest way to deliver information, which is what VideoWiki does. It is by its nature rigidly linear -- you can't jump around like one can with hypertext or even jump from paragraph to paragraph. It is at a huge disadvantage, as a way of delivering educational media content.
VideoWiki still hasn't, despite its name, solved the problem of encouraging recorded-video content onto Wikipedia (or Commons or any project). Such content is what most people consider "video". While the Osmosis training videos had computer-generated video content, their presentation was classroom-style and contained a lot of text overlaid onscreen. The narration on those videos was still recorded, and none of it was community editable. So this VideoWiki project is still nowhere close to providing content that can match quality educational videos on other websites or on Youtube. I think it could be possible to create a collaborative platform for generating the classroom-style scribble-on-a-whiteboard style videos, though of course they fail to solve the example given of an illiterate person because so much information is still textual.
Wikipedia succeeded in the early days of the internet because the alternative general-information websites were no more visually appealing: text plus some photos. The UI has failed to move on, whereas many other sites have a richer UI that combines a much smaller amount of text with a larger amount of explanatory diagrams, animations and video clips. For many subjects, Wikipedia is not the primary go-to resource. I think this "boring Siri slide show" concept is a distraction and a dead-end. We already have Siri, Alexa, et al, and there is a reason why they only read only a tiny bit of the lead of an article.
In the UK, the NHS website is a reliable trusted source of medical information. If the Indian security guard wants to learn how to treat Dengue in India, he'd likely be far better of watching a video created by an Indian government agency, than a general purpose video-article written by Americans and Europeans. At least it would outline the treatment options that would be available in his area, and wouldn't be distracted by talk of expensive vaccines that aren't available in his country. He wouldn't have to patiently listen to all the sections on definition, onset of illness, blanching of rash, recovery, dengue shock syndrome, causes and prevention, before getting to the treatment section. Here is is told that treatment is "supportive" (jargon: you need to buy a firmer mattress) and involves "giving fluid by mouth" (jargon: drinking water). Venky is clearly not the target audience of this VideoWiki video, which has apparently all of 3 contributors, so not exactly a community on fire. -- Colin°Talk 10:18, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Wikipe-tan, the Wikipedia AI who patrols, takes notes, and mass generates content
  • Great news! I have been pitching VideoWiki as a new Wikimedia project in the context of meta:Wikispore discussions to set up new incubators for new kinds of content. WikiProject Medicine is recently the foundation of several proposals for new projects - WikiJournal, WikiCite, and VideoWiki. I am expecting with Wikimedia Sweden's meta:Wikispeech text to voice system and with ongoing Wikidata development to produce more content in the Reasonator model that we will have ongoing development to produce more video with AI support. This VideoWiki project has proven to be more effective and less costly than the most developed other ideas that I heard for this, which were the 2016 and 2017 Video and the Commons Projects. I spend more and more of my time working with Wikipedia:Wikipe-tan whom I imagine as my AI assistant in Wikipedia, and although as Colin says she cannot compete in every way with Siri and Alexa she is more than the sum of the tools which Wikipedians have made for her. With the Wikimedia Foundation taking money and huge computational access from Google to do another round of the Tiger Project I expect Google + Wikipedia + the community in India to appreciate and use these VideoWiki demos. I think all of this is great news. As to Colin's criticism - I hope it gets logged somehow as individual tickets and addressed over time. This project seems like the march of time and progress though and I am unable to see any reason to slow down or hesitate. Blue Rasberry (talk) 11:07, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
    • Thanks Lane. Within the player itself you can jump directly to any section you want.[1]
    • There is much more we can do to make videowiki better. We want to eventually have templates such as one that takes a location parameter and than auto generate a zooming into that location. Would be good for illustrating the article about an outbreak. Etc Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:15, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
James, you have linked to the VideoWiki editor page, which lets you jump about sections that are linked on the left-hand-side. The actual video that plays from the Dengue fever article, has no such feature. You can click on various bits of the slider along the bottom, but your chance of randomly hitting the "Treatment" section is low. I've just watched the presentation at Wikimania. It explains that many people lack educational content in their local language, vs English, without justifying that that isn't really anything to do with VideoWiki but just about generating content in local languages. Also it is clear that the presenters still know nothing about Commons. The (tiny) audience was asked to go onto Commons and ask the community there to generate recorded video for this. The folk taking pictures and uploading them on Commons are Wikipedians too. The folk that are solely Commoners are really there just to curate/upload material that other people have created. There isn't really a community of videographers who are waiting to be asked to provide content. We've always been able to create short video clips for Wikipedia and insert them into articles (see my video clip at Full circle ringing), yet we don't have much of that material. This project isn't going to solve that missing-content problem (or encourage a fix for it).
What I find interesting is the great efforts made to justify this project as a solution to world problems. Previously we had the pseudo-science nonsense myth of the "visual learner" as a reason to add article-as-video. Now it is the developing world. The VideoWiki article on dengue offer's Venky, the illiterate security guard, no more information about treating Dengue than to drink plenty water and take a paracetamol. The whole video, which is being offered as an example of its class, is 166 words, which is similar in length to the first two paragraphs of the Wiki article, and could be read out by Alexa. If I ask Bixby on my phone "how to treat dengue fever" then it gives me an excellent readable paragraph on that specific issue (from webmd)) and tells me to take paracetamol, avoid aspirin-like medicines which may worsen bleeding, rest, take plenty of fluids and see my doctor. Bixby will read that to me, or I can read it myself. The VideoWiki article-summary not only distracts me with lots of other information first, uses medical jargon, but actually does not advise me to see my doctor which is what I believe started this whole thing. There isn't really anything about "how to treat dengue fever" that needs video at all. I don't know how well Siri, Bixby, Alexa, Cortana and Google are doing wrt local Indian languages, but if there's a population then I'm sure they'll target it. This is not the solution. -- Colin°Talk 12:11, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Thanks to those that like the idea, and for the critiques from those who don't. Yes, Videowiki is still evolving, and maybe it's a dead-end but I believe it's a worthwhile pursuit. Wikimania's focus on the UNSDG's was important (imo) because it allowed us, as a community, to see that we're each contributing in one small one way or another to the developing world. I listened to dozens of presentations over the weekend, each adding their small piece to bettering our developing world. I do not believe that Videowiki will solve the access-to-information problem for the 750 million illiterate or "as a solution to world problems", but it will be one (additional) small piece of the puzzle, and a contribution I enjoy adding. User:Colin if you would like to collaborate on a Videowiki with a more dynamic script structure and better video integration for the ketogenic diet article I would be happy to participate. Maybe it will reach illiterate people in need of it? Wrt to the specific questions; we wanted to use the player on articles but it would require programming to allow an iframe like feature and the project is too early for that. Google pagerank is a problem that might be something we can partially address as a community thru our MEDMOS headings - our heading selection likely predated pagerank - as pointed out below I don't think we put a lot of thought into SEO. I'd like to point out the Doc James had no editorial control of our presentation or the article. We focus on the developing world because that is our world-view (Pratik lives in India, and one of my areas of interest is with war wounded). Thanks again for the discussion. Ian Furst (talk) 00:10, 2 September 2019 (UTC)

Random access to the world's information

Wikipedia like all encyclopaedias has articles that cover article subjects with a certain degree of comprehensiveness. When a reader has a question, they are likely to be offered an article on the general subject, rather than specifically dealing with the question itself. In an attempt to provide a video that doesn't strain people's attention span for text-to-speech narration, the VideoWiki version of Dengue fever has been condensed to 166 words and doesn't actually properly answer the question about treatment.

And this comes to how people seek information today. In the past, you put an article topic into Google and hoped for a list of web pages with information. Wikipedia was a good choice to click. But now we have natural language interfaces with Google and can talk normal sentences to our phones and other smart devices. We don't say "Alexa, I've got half an hour to kill, tell me all about dengue fever". We ask specific questions, and often get the reply spoken back to us. Consider a few such questions:

  • What causes dengue fever?
  • How do I treat dengue fever?
  • How do I prevent dengue fever?
  • How common is dengue fever?

Ask your smart device. Ask Google. In my experiments, the results did not use Wikipedia. I got text from mayoclinic, webmd, pasporthealthusa, and webmd respectively. Each time I got a good quality, short but informative and totally on-topic answer to my question. Dengue fever is a featured article, one of our best, and yet the world's smart devices did not choose to use it. I know they do use Wikipedia lead sentences at times, but not for these questions. Why is Wikipedia not the first choice to answer these questions? Is there something about our article structure that prevents them being broken into chunks that answer questions? A 2-3 minute video trying to condense a whole article topic into 166 words is so condensed that it doesn't satisfactorily answer any specific question.

In 2019 people are asking their phones questions and don't want entire encyclopaedia articles as "answers". They don't want video summaries of those encyclopaedia articles as "answers" either. Venky, the security guard, just wants his phone to directly tell him how to treat dengue fever. If Venky speaks Hindi, then it is likely Google Assistant can already do this. -- Colin°Talk 12:58, 30 August 2019 (UTC)

Indeed. Presumably the reason WP doesn't get picked up for these questions is that we don't do even rudimentary SEO - many of these sites have a different page with each question as title, & I'm sure all have embedded the questions (and many variant phrasings) as keywords or whatever the term is, whereas we don't even allow the questions in text. Johnbod (talk) 13:40, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Part SEO, part that other sites are paying for placement, part that search engines are building their own closed, proprietary knowledge graphs that build on WP and WD but also reprioritize and update them. Unfortunately, that closed framework can also involve paid placement and has no mechanism for public correction or commentary. We need a public knowledge graph to complement WD, including things such as redirects from [natural language question] to [appropriate section on article], and transcluding data such as dose and treatment guidelines from sources we consider reliable -- even if we are not willing to make these editable the way other WP claims are.
Federating wikidata in a fashion that allows each reliable source (such as those we trust that *do* maintain dose and treatment guidelines) to publish that data in a WD-compatible fashion, so that at least DuckDuckGo and Firefox could filter up that data by asking WD where to look, would be an excellent start. – SJ + 16:28, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Colin - That's so damn well-written. Interestingly, have you noticed (in your part of the world) that our medical articles are rapidly plunging in search-engine-rankings, even when searched for that very key-word? For an example, searching for 'Cirrhosis'/'Liver Cirrhosis' over google.co.in from India relegates the Wikipedia article to the bottom tier of the third page. The first three links are from Mayo, WebMD and Healthline whilst the info-panel on the right side retrieves extremely concise trivia-nuggets (in layman notation) from one of their regional-health-info-partners (Apollo). ∯WBGconverse 14:47, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
Winged Blades of Godric, your Google link about "medical information on Google" is interesting and would appear to doom Wikipedia as a source of medical information on smart devices. It is understandable that Google will be legally reluctant to offer medical advice from such an untrustworthy source -- we don't trust ourselves as a source so why should Google! But these partners don't seem to be the only source of medical answers. Sometimes I get featured snippets that just come from search results. Interestingly, if I search for "who invented the ketogenic diet" I get
"Russell Morse Wilder: Dr. Russell Morse Wilder, at the Mayo Clinic, built on this research and coined the term "ketogenic diet" to describe a diet that produced a high level of ketone bodies in the blood (ketonemia) through an excess of fat and lack of carbohydrate." -- source Wikipedia.
So we haven't been entirely blacklisted :-). -- Colin°Talk 15:14, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
If the question is "How do I treat dengue fever?", then it's no surprise that Google et al. avoid us as MEDMOS proscribes dosing information. And if Wikipedia can't answer such a basic medical question, perhaps search engines and smart devices simply avoid us for all medical questions. Adrian J. Hunter(talk•contribs) 13:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Dosing information isn't relevant. If you watch the Wikimania presentation, the supposed reason that VideoWiki was started was a discussion about dengue fever between the creator of VideoWiki and his security guard. The security guard recommended non-Western treatment but the creator of VideoWiki recommended going to the doctor. The security guard was illiterate so could not read Wikipedia to get this essential information to see a doctor. The thing is: neither the Wikipedia article nor VideoWiki article-summary-video give that information. This is basic stuff. The story about VideoWiki meeting a health need for illiterate security guards.... is just a story. -- Colin°Talk 07:28, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Venky's contention was that standing water did not need to be removed because he could treat Dengue. The summary video addresses well (imo) that (a) there is no cure for Dengue (only prevention and symptomatic treatment; it then explained the potential life-threatening consequences), (b) that removing standing water can prevent contracting it. The point of the information is not to give dosing information but to share knowledge about the disease in the hopes that people will take it seriously, prevent it, and seek professional care for serious outcomes. At this point in the project, I don't measure success by number of edits but by number of views (which the Phabricator lab is working on). If others already see it as a failure, so be it, I choose not to. Venky isn't just a story, he's a real person who's world view is emblematic of 100's of millions in the developing world. Ian Furst (talk) 14:26, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
The Wikimania video is not clear that he disagreed about preventing Dengue, only that Venky was confident he could treat it. The presenter said "What? You go to a doctor if you get dengue". Which, still, neither the video or the article advise. I'm not sure why you think it is relevant "there is no cure for Dengue" -- the same is true of most viral illnesses including colds and flu. And it wasn't me who mentioned dosing information, that's a red herring. The article claims over 95% of people get better in about a week. Perhaps Venky's youtube video also advised drinking plenty fluid and looking out for warning signs that you need to go to hospital. Wikipedia isn't a Public Information Service and I'm sure the Indian government is quite capable of creating local language videos on health topics. The problem that alternative medicine rises to the top of internet searches isn't unique to India or YouTube and isn't going to get solved with robot-narrated slide shows. Wikipedia is constrained by being a general encyclopaedia maintained by a largely western group of writers. If you read the article, "The diagnosis should be considered in anyone who develops a fever within two weeks of being in the tropics or subtropics" that tells you all you need to know about who is writing this stuff (western medics), who their audience is (western medics) and where they live (in the temperate west).
Wrt "number of edits" I'm sad you think this isn't relevant. Wikipedia dies without editors. Wikipedia is "the encyclopaedia anyone can edit", so if nobody is editing these videos then they don't fit Wikipedia. It is as simple as that This isn't a "free to view encyclopaedia/YouTube channel written and strictly maintained by western health professionals" much as some folk on WP:MED might wish it was. Wrt number of views, I'd be most interested in viewers who stick with the video for most/all of its duration, vs people who click out of curiosity and then give up shortly after. Your youtube dengue video has 30 hits and one thumbs-up. Let me know when you reach the "half a million hits" that Venky's YouTube video got. -- Colin°Talk 22:19, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
(a) The first paragraph of management shares the accepted guidance on when to seek professional care. As does the video. (b) I said, "At this point in the project, I don't measure success by number of edits but by number of views" not that I don't think number of edits is irrelevant. Regardless, thank you again for your perspective. Ian Furst (talk) 14:10, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Ian Furst, with respect, it really doesn't share the accepted guidance on when to seek professional care. To begin with the section is called "management" which reflects a healthcare professional point of view: how to manage your dengue patients. I can see this term reflected in the WHO reference. This isn't a "person who might have dengue"-focused article nor is it a general reader curious about dengue-focused article, but doctors writing to other doctors. The WHO reference assumes the person is a patient -- someone who is already visiting a health centre or hospital for advice/care. Because of this assumption, the writers of our article have neglected to mention that a person who suspects they have dengue should see a doctor. The article says "can be managed at home with daily follow-up and oral rehydration therapy". Both "managed" and "follow-up" are medical jargon. If I have a bad cold, I don't say I "manage it" by taking some paracetamol. The article doesn't say who does the "follow-up". Is it your mum, friend, GP, local nurse, neurologist? We know the term and it implies a return meeting with healthcare, in other words, that there has been an initial meeting. So you and I can sort of work out what it is saying, because we know the jargon and know the writer is a doctor who can't express themselves for the general reader. It needs rewritten for the general reader and the jargon avoided where possible. This is basic MEDMOS stuff. If you think you have dengue, should you see a doctor? Yes.

Same goes for the video which also uses jargon: "Treatment of mild or moderate dengue is supportive, and includes giving fluid either by mouth, or through an intravenous line." This is group A in the WHO document: people who should see a doctor but can go home if they are visited daily by a healthcare professional. Earlier the video it says severe dengue shock is an emergency requiring urgent hospitalisation -- this is group C in the WHO document. The video makes no mention of what group B, with severe dengue who are not (yet) critically ill, should do: they require hospitalisation for more specialist care. It doesn't say group A should see a healthcare professional and require daily monitoring. The conclusion from watching the video might be to stay at home, drink "fluid", and hope you can still phone for an ambulance if your critical organs start failing.

What is lacking from both these documents is any passion and care to educate the general reader. It is like random facts are sprinkled on the page in a perfunctory manner. Writing encyclopaedic articles for the general reader is Wikipedia's core mission, yet it seems WP:MED is focused elsewhere. -- Colin°Talk 19:46, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Is anyone actually editing these videos?

I had a look to see if anyone is actually editing these videos. Looking at What links to Template:Videowiki I find 37 videos, nearly all of which were created by a few editors closely involved in the project, mostly in the spring when the project was first mentioned at WT:MED. The project was also presented at Wikimania in August 2019. New videos include:

Which were created by 3 editors. The total number of people people registered at Wikipedia:WikiProject Videowiki is 10, which pretty much lists everyone who has ever made any edit to such a video. The videos have been included in our articles for some months now and, outside of this core of 10 members, not a single Wikipedian has been inspired to edit them. This is despite the "script" for each video being linked-to on the article. Given that the videos could be charitably described as having "room for improvement", nobody has improved them. The claim that these videos are "easily editable" seem to be out of alignment with the facts that nobody is editing them. Videowiki is meant to be a collaborative editing project like Wikipedia is for text-based articles, but for video-articles. It is fair to say that nobody is collaboratively editing these videos. Videowiki is a failure. -- Colin°Talk 08:03, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Call for portal maintainers

Are there any editors from this WikiProject willing to maintain Portal:Medicine? The Portals guideline requires that portals be maintained, and as a result numerous portals have been recently been deleted via MfD largely because of lack of maintenance. Let me know either way, and thanks, UnitedStatesian (talk) 17:30, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Less than 4,000 pageviews this last month. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:45, 6 September 2019 (UTC)

Vitamin E Acetate

Tocopheryl acetate

Vitamin E acetate has come up in the news quite a bit recent in regards to the FDA study on Vaping, can someone add that to the article?Naraht (talk) 07:20, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Two articles on "Safety" and "Adverse effects" on electronic cigarettes

I've started a discussion on whether two articles on Safety of electronic cigarettes and Adverse effects of electronic cigarettes (created in Feb) are needed. See Talk:Safety of electronic cigarettes#Why two articles?. Fences&Windows 11:50, 8 September 2019 (UTC)


Lipid laden macrophages

Have recently been implicated in deaths related to vaping. Are these the same as foam cells? Ian Furst (talk) 15:59, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Foam cells are associated with arteriosclerosis; these lipid-laden macrophages seem like they are elsewhere. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk, contributions) 16:42, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
User:SpicyMilkBoy, any insight? Ian Furst (talk) 17:32, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Ian Furst, I was typing out my reply when you posted that :) The article seems to be be referring to lipid-filled macrophages in bronchoalveolar lavage specimens. I'm not really familiar with these, but a quick search suggests that they are associated with various respiratory diseases and are not necessarily caused by the same mechanisms as foam cells in atherosclerosis:

Respiratory Medicine (2014) [2]:

"Alveolar macrophages (AMs) that become laden with lipid (predominantly cholesterol) are termed pulmonary foam cells or lipid-laden alveolar macrophages (LLAMs). These macrophages are more likely to undergo the process of programmed cell death and exhibit impaired phagocytosis [5], which may play an important pathogenic role in asthma. Furthermore, markers of lipid peroxidation measured in plasma are increased in asthma subjects [6] whilst erythrocytes and platelets exhibit alterations in membrane fatty acid composition [7].

A high fat content diet and the administration of a lipid emulsion in rats has been associated with the formation of LLAMs, leading to the view that the lungs may be a potential route of lipid excretion. However, it remains unclear whether such cells are derived from AMs ingesting lipids in the alveoli or from lipid-laden blood monocytes that migrate to the alveoli [8].

Lipid accumulation in alveolar macrophages appears to occur primarily through the phagocytosis of external lipoproteins. This process may be secondary to endogenous sources, such as lipoid pneumonia; where the presence of bronchial obstruction, chronic lung infection or a lipid storage disorder results in the accumulation of LLAMs; or an exogenous source, for example following aspiration or inhalation of lipid."

Annals of the American Thoracic Society (2017) [3]:

"The lung has a unique relationship to cholesterol that is shaped by its singular physiology. On the one hand, the lungs receive the full cardiac output and have a predominant dependence on plasma lipoprotein uptake for their cholesterol supply. On the other hand, surfactant lipids, including cholesterol, are continually susceptible to oxidation owing to direct environmental exposure and must be cleared or recycled because of the very narrow biophysical mandates placed upon surfactant lipid composition. Interestingly, increased lipid-laden macrophage “foam cells” have been noted in a wide range of human lung pathologies. This suggests that lipid dysregulation may be a unifying and perhaps contributory event in chronic lung disease pathogenesis."

SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 17:51, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks. Maybe an article to think about if someone has the time. I thought it might just be an easy redirect. Ian Furst (talk) 01:23, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I made a quick stub at Lipid-laden alveolar macrophage. Feel free to expand on it. The Annals of the American Thoracic Society article seems like it should be useful here, but it's a bit over my head. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 05:13, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

Request for comment on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act article

There is a request for comment on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act article. If you are interested, please participate at Talk:Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act § RfC: Recent additions. — Newslinger talk 06:02, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

continuation of [4]?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 21:55, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

MEDRS-sourced

I do not understand these reverts. 2 of the 3 sources are reviews (according to PubMed); 1 source is presented jointly with a review (according to WP:MEDRS). --Saidmann (talk) 18:06, 9 September 2019 (UTC)

PMID 26304832 is a case report (whatever PUBMED says). Also, this exact content was added to two articles. Is it possible to make it pithier and pick one place where it might go? Alexbrn (talk) 18:16, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
PMID 26304832 can be replaced by review PMID 27588937. As the "one place" I would suggest Vitamin D and then only add a link in Hypervitaminosis D. What that do the job? --Saidmann (talk) 18:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
I think so! Alexbrn (talk) 18:40, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. --Saidmann (talk) 18:42, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Alex, the statement is about a rare disease – rare, as in something on the order of just fifteen (15) babies per year in the entire UK with this. The "case study and review" is a perfectly normal model for papers about such rare diseases. The authors present the case that they have experience with, and then they review everything that everyone has ever said before you. The sections of the paper that aren't specific to the individual case are still considered "a review" for MEDRS purposes. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
On review, I think that's right. Alexbrn (talk) 01:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Medicine-related articles with problematic wording or links

As threatened, I'm back with another batch of articles which need expert attention. I am pleased to be able to report that these are all that remain of well over 100 articles I had bookmarked (though more still keep arriving). If you solve one of these puzzles, remove the maintenance tag and post {{done}} here.

These contain links to DAB pages. Search for 'disam' in read mode, and for '{{d' in edit mode:

This one has a {{clarify}} tag on what might be a circular definition:

This one contains several unsourced, possibly WP:WEASEL, phrases marked {{citation needed}}:

Thanks in advance, Narky Blert (talk) 21:31, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Narky, we're a fair way to putting you out of business here. Just six hours later, and three editors have solved the main list, except India National PolioPlus, which has a link to IEC. I'm wondering whether it might be the abbreviation for "information, education and communication" (UNICEF supplies 'IEC' materials, although I'm not sure that cold boxes and aprons fall into that category), but we might need a person familiar with India. User:Winged Blades of Godric, do you happen to know this initialism, or could you recommend an editor to ask? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:07, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Putting me out of business? Nah, there's still the best part of 6,000 DABlinks to fix, and new ones arrive at 700-800 a day. However, it's very satisfying to see a topic area cleaned up this efficiently. Narky Blert (talk) 05:22, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, you have got it correct:-) And, obviously IEC does not include aprons! ∯WBGconverse 16:12, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks. I've re-written the sentence to avoid that jargon. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 9 September 2019 (UTC)
There's also a disambiguation problem here:
I don't know enough about medical school in India to guess what's meant. We may not even have an article on the correct subject. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
 Done (the page to which I linked it gave me some confidence). — soupvector (talk) 05:08, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

WP:MED/App and Internet-in-a-Box

We have a number of offline medical apps which have seen a few hundred thousand downloads from mostly the Global South. We used to have an English version that included videos. However as most medical videos on English Wikipedia were deleted more than a year ago that version is out of date and has been removed from the Kiwix library.

We were looking at using this template {{OnlyOffline}} to have certain videos only appear within these specific ZIMs for offline use. Wondering what peoples thoughts are on this? Of course there are more complicated options that do not involve this template, but I do not have the technical skills to carry them out. Since there are efforts to delete the template will need consensus for such use. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 11:09, 1 September 2019 (UTC)

It seems unusual to have content offline-only, but I can credibly claim ignorance. Generally, what is the motivation for using that template, and what is its history? I know that the video content has been contentious - I thoroughly recall the Osmosis video dustup etc - just wondering what other precedents (or policies) guide use of the OnlyOffline template? My guess would be that it's for content we'd normally make available via an external link, which would not be available when offline, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. — soupvector (talk) 18:57, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
The videos are avaliable on Commons, so we do make them avaliable by an link. This makes them avaliable within the app. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
AFAICT:
  • The template was created in April 2019. However, I don't think that it worked until the results of this July 2019 discussion were implemented (site-wide).
  • Doc James added it to a bunch of articles a couple of days ago. Colin removed it from a bunch of articles about a day later.
  • You can see how it was added in diffs like this one. Technically, I understand that the thumbnail is downloaded and then hidden with CSS, so you won't see it in the article unless something's slow (in which case, you'll get a Flash of unstyled content) or if you turn off CSS (in Firefox, try View > Page style > No style). But the offline app ignores the CSS to hide the content, so it shows in the article (wherever the template was placed) when you're reading the Wikipedia article in the offline app. It should look there like any other video (or photo) that we put in an article.
  • The sole purpose of the template appears to be delivering the contentious Osmosis videos to offline users without showing it to online users (including editors). That said, it is possible to use it in ways that don't involve any video (Osmosis or otherwise). The tool itself is neutral in that sense.
  • The template has not been sent to WP:TFD or otherwise nominated for deletion.
WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Some corrections:
  • An offline app (in the first tests Kiwix) does not "ignore" css. It couldn't function if it did. The mechanism is actually that the third-party applies the styling set in MediaWiki:Offline.css, which then overrides the TemplateStyles css by redefining the classes to display the content (and possibly style it in whatever way we choose by simply adding more classes in both places). That makes our chosen styling available to third-party re-users in a general way, rather than tying us to one specific app.
  • The purpose of the template is to make any extra content available offline, without displaying it on articles delivered online. Period. I don't design software for a narrow applicability when I can make it generalised. I've been in the game for too many years to make those sort of mistakes.
  • The template has now been nominated for deletion. See below. The nomination is based upon the antipathy to Osmosis videos, despite the template not being used to deliver any Osmosis videos.
--RexxS (talk) 15:00, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Your template has a 10-20KB cost of an unnecessary thumbnail download for every one of our millions of viewers of Wikipedia articles. This is metadata for your team's personal app, and has no business on Wikipedia. This is a fundamental design mistake to insert it here. All you have designed is a hack, and a bad one. -- Colin°Talk 07:10, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
When content is styled as display:none, it is rendered by the browser by removing it from the document. Whatever the content is, it cannot then request downloads of other content, such as a full media file. The MediaWiki software will supply a thumbnail, as you say, but an article like Dengue fever is over 1,300kB, around a hundred times greater than the size of any small thumbnail. Nobody apart from you is going to worry about such a tiny amount. You might as well complain about the extra 16 bytes of text that the template requires when used. There is no team that I'm a part of, and as far as I know, Kiwix and the medical app are each collaborations between Wikipedia editors, not "personal" projects. What are you going to find to whine about next? WikiProject Medicine?
As for your disparaging comments about my contributions, you don't understand the difference between a solution and a hack, much less the ability to decide what is good or bad. When you start providing some solutions to problems like readership retention, instead of endlessly complaining about those who are trying, you'll be in a better position to comment. --RexxS (talk) 15:34, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
RexxS, you have never explained why this article->video mapping cannot be done off-wiki. As for the difference between a solution and a hack, well a hack is a suboptimal solution. One that has all sorts of negatives that could have been avoided with better design or more careful implementation. This is a dumb hack, your pride notwithstanding. -- Colin°Talk 19:11, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:OnlyOffline

Template:OnlyOffline has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. -- Colin°Talk 13:39, 2 September 2019 (UTC)


give opinion(gave mine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:02, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

Joining the crew

Hi - I am teaching an upper-level course in endocrinology this fall with the help of the Wikipedia Education and learning alongside my students. I edited a single page years ago when I noticed an error, but I lacked the confidence to really dive in and learn about how to best interact with the community. Many of the students will work on topics related to medicine, but we will be continuing our training and peer-reviewing materials in our sandboxes before anything goes live. I have found myself wandering around different parts of Wikipedia almost every day this week, and I'm hoping it continues to be a regular part of my academic contribution even after the course is over this fall. UWM.AP.Endo (talk) 21:03, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

Welcome UWM.AP.Endo! So nice of you to introduce yourself. :0) ... WikiProject Medicine is one of the most active, well-organized, and collegial groups in the Wikiverse. I have learned a ton here—mostly reading, but also a question now and then. ... It's great to have you and I look forward to your (and your students') contributions.   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 21:21, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
UWM.AP.Endo, I also hope that we'll get to see you regularly. I have a folder of bookmarks that I start my day with. The history for this page has been my first stop almost every morning for years now. Other people start with their watchlists. There may be as many patterns as there are people here, but once you make the habit of going to a page that works for you, I think you'll find that it's pretty easy to maintain it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:19, 13 September 2019 (UTC)

A medicine related RfC

About gun laws based on medical sources.

Talk:Overview_of_gun_laws_by_nation#RfC_for_last_sentence_in_lead

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 12:34, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 08:35, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

New article: Ayurvastra

Does this count as a blatant hoax and/or promotion? If not, how are articles like this best handled? Thanks! Usedtobecool TALK ✨ 06:30, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

its not an article, but a draft Draft:Ayurvastra, done by this editot [5]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:46, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Moved to draft, deleted, the create protected. Didn't get to learn the procedure, but good outcome. Closed without closing, Cheers! Usedtobecool TALK ✨ 17:50, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Talk:Dexbrompheniramine/pseudoephedrine

Thoughts here? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:40, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

They have added this for the 4th or 5th time[6] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:48, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
not anymore[7], Ill watch article--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:12, 14 September 2019 (UTC)
Blocked for edit-warring and advertising. I've done my best to reduce the advert to a neutral statement. --RexxS (talk) 22:55, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Constitution type

The unsourced introduction to this dab page makes implicit clinical claims, presented in an authoritative, encyclopedic tone (concern/s raised at Talk:Constitution type - I wish to avoid edit warring). 86.190.128.52 (talk) 11:30, 14 September 2019 (UTC)

Done, I think. Thanks, 86.190.128.52 (talk) 00:12, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Machiavellianism scale

Is this article cromulent? It was created from whole cloth by a WP:SPA who has been adding idiosyncratic views to articles related to Machiavelli for some time. Guy (help!) 21:38, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

It seems broadly ok to me - it certainly seems to be a thing. It has actually been around since 2005, then called just "Machiavellianism", and since that page had developed political/philosophical stuff as well, a split was more or less agreed in discussions since June that you can see at the old talk page - Talk:Machiavellianism_(politics)#Should_we_make_a_separate_article_on_the_psychological_concept?_(recovered_from_archives!). The argy-bargy yesterday some may have noticed (Afd, ANI...) was all about the remaining part of the article, now called Machiavellianism (politics) & largely rewritten. Johnbod (talk) 21:57, 15 September 2019 (UTC)

Reproductive Medicine Honours students at the University of Edinburgh - 18 and 25 September

Hi all, just wanted to flag that we are going to again be running a Wikipedia in the Curriculum assignment with the Reproductive Medicine BSc course programme this month. Undergraduate students on the course will be shown how to research an article by our Academic Support Librarian colleagues and how to format a Wikipedia page before then working in groups to complete the research which can then be published on Wikipedia on 25 September 2019 all being well. The following topic areas are proposed for their group work:

Will be looking into these and ascertaining how well they are/aren't covered currently and appropriateness but would appreciate those with more medical-related knowledge of these to flag areas of concern, or any other issues for that matter. All best, Stinglehammer (talk) 14:32, 10 September 2019 (UTC)

Some of these topics can be quite contentious, areas with conflicting commercial and scientific perspectives, etc; for example, there are cottage industries for diagnostics and interventions around uNK cells, with substantial doubt about utility/benefit. Well-balanced coverage might be quite useful, but also challenging (especially for new editors). — soupvector (talk) 14:40, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
@Stinglehammer: Great to have you supporting this program!
The standard advice that we give is to throw out topics as a project introduction. Instead, delay presenting article topics until after identifying reliable sources, then see what kinds of Wikipedia articles you can make from that.
If you have a list of article ideas but no sources, there is no assurance of success and risk for the entire project.
If you start with a list of in interesting WP:MEDRS sources and tell a cohort to summarize them, then typical people perform better in Wikipedia than people with advanced credentials. There is no hope of success without good sources so whatever you can do to bring sources into the discussion sooner promotes success. If you give topics, then the program design creates pressure for students to use the best sources they find, even if they only find sources which are inappropriate for Wikipedia. Blue Rasberry (talk) 14:47, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
Three thoughts:
  • The TESE article already exists. NIPT is currently handled in Prenatal testing (which does not mean that we can't have a separate article on the sub-topic).
  • Bluerasberry, as a practical matter, I'm not sure how you can identify reliable sources if you don't have a subject in mind. PMID 29452361 is a good "MEDRS-compliant" review from a top-tier journal, but it's also utterly useless if you're not writing about the subject of that paper.
  • Stinglehammer, you are aware that "write a new article" is one of the most complicated things to do on wiki, right? Have you thought about starting them off with something much simpler, like "re-write one sentence to use plain English" or "add one citation to an existing sentence"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:44, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
    • @Ewan: I'm available to support you remotely at any time. Please feel free to ping me or drop a note on my talk page if any problems arise, or if any of your students are uncertain about something, and I'll do my best to help. --RexxS (talk) 23:23, 10 September 2019 (UTC)
@RexxS: Many thanks! Definitely take you up on that. Morning of 25th September is when they do their Wiki writing so publishing around lunchtime. Cheers, Stinglehammer (talk) 11:42, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
    • Bluerasberry, presumably they have an excellent choice of sources in a uni library, or online. I agree that starting a new article is harder than improving an existing one. Often Wikipedia articles on larger or basic topics get forgotten and neglected, despite getting high views. I notice Reproductive medicine seems rather basic, with references that are less than ideal. Maybe start there and fan out across the linked articles. Stretches of Artificial insemination lack references, and it veers between humans & animals in a way that might be questioned. Our surgery artixcles are often weak, & Reproductive surgery is a "stub", with Reproductive endocrinology and infertility notably failing to explain what is actually done under that heading. Johnbod (talk) 01:41, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

Some of the topic could maybe have better names like:

We have DAZ1 are there more?

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:01, 11 September 2019 (UTC)

@Doc James: I’ve forwarded on to the relevant tutors in case they wish to reconsider their approach. In answer to the question about DAZ1, there are indeed more related proteins (DAZL, BOULE/BOLL) forming the so-called DAZ family. DAZ1 and DAZL have short pages that could be linked to. Stinglehammer (talk) 13:06, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
There are several more family members including DAZ2, DAZ3, and DAZ4. I have created a DAZ protein family stub. Boghog (talk) 19:35, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Many thanks all, have fed back the responses to the course leaders. The model we have been working with is students working in groups of five or six with a tutor supporting them. Normally they divide up the task into The different MEDSECTIONS and do a paragraph or so of text each to create new articles.

One further suggestion they have for an article is on Ovum quality as they feel it is an interesting topic that doesn’t look like it has been covered before and would complement the Semen quality page. Stinglehammer (talk) 11:42, 12 September 2019 (UTC)

I would generally suggest they work on writing a couple of paragraph overview in the main articles first. And only if that is getting too large splitting some of it out into a separate article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:49, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Ovum quality is a reasonable idea. To avoid creating Wikipedia:Orphan pages (i.e., to increase the likelihood that people will read their new pages!), it's really helpful to write an overview or add a sentence to a connecting article. For example, for this new article idea, they might go to a couple of the fertility-related articles (like Egg donation) and say something like "Ovum quality affects IVF outcomes.[1]" or "Ovum quality is measured this way.[1]" and so forth. This doesn't have to be fancy, but it's really helpful to Wikipedia:Build the web (it can even reduce the odds of someone trying to delete their new pages). WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 12 September 2019 (UTC)
Final suggestion from course leaders ahead of Wednesday's workshop. They've found a page that needs expanding in their view: Alternative_mating_strategy. The section about male alternative tactics is very weak and could do with some more interesting examples and more strategies. It’ll let the students just dive into odd animal behaviours and the tutor could support them in this as it was part of their PhD (but obviously drawing on published review articles rather than any thesis work). Let me know if you see problems with this topic area as suggestions above have all been warmly received. Stinglehammer (talk) 13:21, 16 September 2019 (UTC)

Returning to Wikipedia with the best of intentions

Hello all,

I'm Steve Joordens, a Professor from the University of Toronto. Yes I am THAT Steve Joordens. In a recent chat I had with one of your editors I was told I was the source of the single biggest challenge that has touched Wikipedia since its inception when I had my extremely large class edit Wikipedia articles as part of their educational experience in 2011. Apparently I am quite well known, and not so much loved, by many of you as a result. I am not proud of any of that and it was never my intent.

At that time I did not understand the negative impact my actions would have. I didn't understand how sensitive Wikipedia was to the scale of editing, I actually thought it was a good thing. I thought I was providing a powerful learning experience for my students while also being of assistance to Wikipedia in the sense of increasing the quantity of psychology-related articles and potentially introducing new editors to Wikipedia. The firestorm my actions set off resulted in some negative and frankly hurtful comments on both sides of the fray and I think that part of things was totally unfortunate. I wish I had just presented my perspective and my motivations and refrained from anything else. But that was then, things were said, and on Wikipedia those things cannot be unsaid. I understand that.

I'm writing this now because I'd like to try again, 8 years further down the road. I've been through the introductory module and have created a course page for the History of Psychology course I am mounting this fall. The plan is to have 25 groups of 4 students each work on one article related to a major historical figure in Psychology. These are third year students, and their articles will be well vetted before they go live. Given my own history with Wikipedia, before I was allowed to go further I was asked to chat with Doug and Lane so they could get a clearer sense of my intentions. After a great chat they have given their OK for me to proceed with both of them in the shadows, there to help me and my students and, to some extent I'm sure, to make sure I stay well without the bounds of acceptable conduct. Again, so be it ... quite honestly after what happened last time I very much appreciate having them there ... thanks again guys!

It was further suggested that before going further, and for the sake of total transparency, that I should post this note here ... to let you all know that I am back with a new class. I hope, like Doug and Lane, you will all allow the past to be past as I really do see great value for all with respect to using Wikipedia in an educational context. In fact, for what it's worth, my research expertise is on the effective use of technology in education, and I love how Wikipedia editing gives students practice thinking critically and creatively, and communicating in thoughtful ways. It is something I would like to continue to do on occasion. I fully realize that some of you may view this skeptically. My only way of changing that is to show you that my classes and I can be an asset and that, now that so many things have improved with respect to the on-boarding of professors and students, that we can be model Wikipedia citizens. I ask you to allow me and my class the opportunity of providing you with such a demonstration this fall term.

I am happy to answer any questions you may have, and I assure you that I will remain nothing short of respectful in all subsequent interactions on this platform. I am in fact a big fan of Wikipedia and other forms of open knowledge dissemination, always have been. As one example I offer an Introduction to Psychology course on Coursera.org that over 200,000 students have experienced and seemingly enjoyed. Anyway, there it is ... I hope you will allow me the chance to be part of this great site.

Have a great end of week and weekend all, Steve

SteveJoordens (talk) 21:05, 29 August 2019 (UTC)

You mention the 2011 fiasco, but you've unaccountably forgotten to mention that in 2013—after you'd had two years to appreciate how disruptive you were and learn from the damage you caused first time around—you came back and did exactly the same thing on an even larger scale, but this time refused to provide us with the list of students meaning we had no way to monitor the mass plagiarism. Why and how is this going to be any different this time? ‑ Iridescent 22:04, 29 August 2019 (UTC)
Support Here is why things are different this time:
  1. Time has passed and we have more infrastructure, including better training, monitoring, and communication systems. Problems of the past are much easier to prevent.
  2. I talked with the professor by video chat. He indicated to me that he went through the training and expressed in other ways that he would run this wiki program in the conventional way, including by registering it in the meta:Programs and Events Dashboard. Conventional behavior should produce the conventional useful results.
  3. The Wikipedia:Education program has a high success rate and low failure rate in general, so we can take for granted now that any class running the program should be beneficial.
  4. Besides just being an education program in the wiki model, this class is registered with the Wiki Education Foundation, and as such, will get the routine class support that this organization offers for free to anyone who registers. This takes some pressure off the wiki community and increases likelihood of success.
  5. This time the program is smaller, where I understand the focus will be about 25 articles which might all be biographies of researchers. In the past there were 100s of articles. Chaos at scale should not even be possible here.
  6. The apology above is thorough enough for me. We forgive by default with apologies and this apology seems good to me.
  7. We know this person is a professor at a nice school, they use their name, we know their department, and they are putting reputation on the line from many perspectives. I see a sincere apology and effort to do better and also some vulnerability here. Rarely do we get apologies, and after apologies, and never have we gotten anyone coming back to try again with so much transparency.
  8. We do not even need to expect great content. All we want out of this is (1) the typical result which hundreds of other classes routinely produce (2) no crazy sink on wiki community labor (3) student contributions which are not horrible. They do not have to be good, they should just not be bad. This is a low bar.
  9. Everyone involved in this is aware that the Wikipedia community holds a large amount of published but largely unexamined kompromat and that the wiki side has much greater ability relative to a few years ago to attract journalists at will. If there is any colossal error this time then the Wikipedia community still benefits because the existing documentation makes wiki editors ready to jump into a media narrative favoring the wiki community. Conversely, if this program does go well as should be routine, then we still get to resurface all that text and energy put into documenting the previous problems except now the narrative gets a happy ending and to be a rehabilitation story of success for both the class program and the development of the wiki community process.
I am unable to address the issue Iridescent raises. That might be the one biggest outstanding issue, or maybe there are other issues which we could potential request to be sorted. I generally am in favor of forgiveness, and given the high profile of this case, I think the situation is even safer because surely this will proceed in the normal way this time without causing weird problems at scale.
Context - past iterations of this program consumed 1000+ hours of Wikipedia community volunteer time to address. The past program was unambiguously the worst thing to ever come from the education program (except for what happened in India). It was a shared experience for about ~300 people who commented in the explosing and fallout and maybe 10 people each committed 100+ hours into this. I was not among those who put great time into this, and I do not speak for those responders. We should not forget the volunteers to cleaned the past mess.
For my own self, and as someone who mostly felt the problem as s spectator, I am ready to forgive and make progress from any source where it seems probable. If this person wants to come back then I say let's do it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 02:09, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
A few things:
Can we get a list of the 25 articles that are being proposed? Are these already existing articles or ones were there is no content?
User:SteveJoordens you have received grants such as from Gates for this sort of work. Have you or will you receive any grants for this proposed project, even if tangential?
Agree with Lane that we now have better tools to address this. Copypatrol came into existence because of the last round of issues in 2011/2013. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:18, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
We need to get a list of the articles and observe them. I think we also need to see what the students are actually told in how to edit. Cas Liber (talk · contribs) 03:39, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
@Doc James and Casliber: I have answers to these except for the grants question.
The ~25 articles will appear in the dashboard as typical. There are a pool of biographies and I understand the students will select from that pool, and I have not seen that list. Here is the draft version and link to the course page, but because of the WikiEdu interface, this link could change before the class starts. After the class starts there would be a stable link.
Biographies should not contain medical claims but just the same, we went over this in our talk.
Here is the timeline for engagement. It comes from the Wiki Education default timeline with some personalization made, like for example, the medical training. Note also that this is a multi-week, multi-step plan, unlike previous content drops without follow up. timeline (again, this link might change)
The students get the training in the dashboard. Since the training is online, the interface tracks which individual students complete it. I cannot immediately find how to show these training completion reports, but in the past they have been publicly accessible and get completed for each student following the activities in the above linked timeline.
If I missed something or there are more questions then ask again, and Steve can respond to the next round. Blue Rasberry (talk) 10:27, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
I edit-conflicted with Lane, but I'll add that I mentioned adding MEDRS to the considerations in Week 3, although Steve is going to focus on the biographies of less well-known psychologists, but I wanted the students to be aware of our restrictions if they make any biomedical claims. I'll be doing my best to keep an eye on the editing and I've offered to give advice and help to the students as they work though the course. --RexxS (talk) 10:38, 30 August 2019 (UTC)
+1, this seems reasonable. – SJ + 16:20, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Crud, I created a video and put it on YouTube but apparently I cannot link to YouTube ... visiting my Mom who is deep in Alzheimer's but will try to check in. And yes I will share the articles being editted as soon as they are identified but apparently you can see them directly. No I will not recieve any grant of other form of funding for this ... its just a course I am teaching. 16:53, 30 August 2019 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by SteveJoordens (talk • contribs)
Steve, one thing I'd love to understand is why (correct me if I'm wrong), you've done almost no article-writing on Wikipedia. How about improving a few articles before you start this endeavour, and watchlisting them to be part of the community conversation over time? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 06:37, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
That's fair enough. I have a LOT on my plate right now (term begins Tuesday and I'm visiting with my Mom with Alzheimer's today and tomorrow). But I will edit a few around mid week next week and you can all have a look. Cool? 99.192.56.64 (talk) 11:51, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
Excellent! Thanks in advance. One more question: After you tell us what the usernames of your students are, and/or the articles they will be editing, their contributions are going to be scrutinized by the Wikipedia community. Their edits will get more attention than the average editor. The reality of QA at Wikipedia is that we examine some edits much more closely than others; we triage based on what we already know about the contributor. Are you going to be OK with this? Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 17:41, 1 September 2019 (UTC)
I am OK with that ... all I ask is that they be treated respectfully. If anything they do really annoys any of you (and I sincerely hope that it won't) please direct that annoyance at me. With respect to providing them with some confidentiality (beyond what they do here on Wikipedia I mean). So, good for me to assume a green light? I have to create my syllabus tomorrow. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.118.198.219 (talk) 15:57, 2 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, of course we should treat everyone respectfully. And in terms of contributor privacy, which I assume is what you mean by confidentiality, we have a strong culture here of not asking people to reveal their real name or other identifying information. All we really care about is whether a given user is doing one of your assignments or not, and what edits that user has made. We do ask that people who have accounts always log in before they edit, and it's pretty important that you personally start doing that immediately. Logging in makes it much easier for everyone to communicate. I'll let others answer your question about assuming a green light, as I have no idea - sorry I can't be more helpful there! Cheers, Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 05:52, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
BTW to be clear, the handful of people in this discussion can't control what other editors say to your students, beyond our normal user conduct guidelines. Clayoquot (talk | contribs) 18:40, 4 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks everyone who's contributed here. I would like to make sure that people are comfortable, not just willing not oppose. In particular, I noticed that Iridescent's question seems to have slipped through the cracks. For me, this is a critical question, and I think we need to be sure that they are satisfied with the answer they received.

I also haven't heard anything from the people who were most involved in the past iterations, and I really want to make sure that they have a chance to weigh in. I don't want to add to anyone's stress by bringing up bad past experiences, but I want to include recently-active editors who were involved in the 2011 and 2013 iterations. @Colin, Tryptofish, The Interior, Jbmurray, Mike Christie, Looie496, Fluffernutter, WereSpielChequers, OhanaUnited, Biosthmors, Sj, and WhatamIdoing: I want to make sure you're aware of this, and make sure that you have a chance to be heard. Guettarda/Ian (Wiki Ed) (talk) 21:50, 3 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for the ping. Due to real world stuff I don't anticipate being able to get involved in this myself for the next few weeks, but my thoughts on this are best expressed above by Blue Raspberry and Rexxs. Oh and welcome back Steve. ϢereSpielChequers 22:04, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
Thanks for the ping from me, too. The way I see it: WP:ROPE. I'm fine with giving this a try, but it's kind of a last chance. --Tryptofish (talk) 22:15, 3 September 2019 (UTC)
I'm going to sit out this decision process due to perceived conflict of interest (Steve Joordens was the chair in my final PhD defense in January). If "boots on the ground" are needed to help the students, I'm all for it. OhanaUnitedTalk page 02:21, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
I think it is worth reading my essay that Iridescent linked above: User:Colin/A large scale student assignment – what could possibly go wrong?. I see these are third-year students rather than first, which should help: the previous students were frankly clueless about what they were writing. Also the topic of biographies is better: they don't have to explain complicated psychology concepts that they haven't grasped for themselves, but more basic things like where the person grew up and what they did that was notable. There is perhaps a danger they get bogged down in explaining "what they did that was notable" and end up repeating our articles on those things. So it would be good to explain to them the hyperlink nature of Wikipedia and show some examples of how articles cover something briefly and link to a more deep coverage elsewhere.
The second mistake was to assume Wikipedia had plenty resources (volunteers) who were willing to effectively mark the homework and repair any mistakes. How is this exercise going to be different? No, I'm not volunteering to do the investigations we did last time.
The third mistake was that Joordens and the helpers were not Wikipedians and didn't have experience or understand our culture. I'm afraid I still have this concern. If Joordens had himself substantially improved a few psychology biographies then he may have a better idea of the challenges facing his students. Joordens asks that we let him show "we can be model Wikipedia citizens". But really, in the 8 years, what's been stopping you personally being a great Wikipedian?
From the discussion above, about how Joordens is really busy right now, I'm worried that he seems more willing to press ahead than to listen to caution. I don't believe such an assignment can be run successfully unless the leader is themselves a Wikipedian with experience of writing to a high quality, sourcing and being neutral to meet our policies, and interacting with other Wikipedians to ask for help or respond to criticism about what they wrote, and then maintaining their articles against bad edits and vandals. I don't think this concern will be addressed by Joordens making a few minor changes to a few articles and asking us what we think.
So I think Joordens needs to become an experienced Wikipedian before he runs another class on wiki. -- Colin°Talk 11:15, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
That might be a reasonable requirement, but what would you consider would qualify him as an "experienced Wikipedian"? I would tend to hold out for "competent Wikipedian", also not yet defined and one can be competent in may ways without being competent in others, and we have had some "experienced" editors who eventually have to be banned. Taking an article to GA is a fair indication of competence as a content creator, but I think that bar may be a little high. · · · Peter Southwood (talk): 18:22, 4 September 2019 (UTC)
Yes, perhaps "experienced" is the wrong adjective. Plenty folk here who are experienced but who edit war, who only use revert as a solution to disagreement, who don't seek or accept community consensus, who think "editing" is adding random factoids to articles, and who can't actually string together a coherent paragraph of sentences or construct an article that is engaging enough to read from beginning to end. It is rather sad if "has written a GA" is too high a bar, but you are probably right. -- Colin°Talk 11:30, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

If I may, I'd like to return to the issue of "what is different this time" and why did this happen twice ... as I think perhaps the two most important differences for understanding all the happened and why I think you can trust (but verify) me this time are (1) my now less naive understanding of Wikipedia and (2) my much better understanding of the you all, your perception of Wikipedia and "entrance level requirements" ... and your passion for Wikipedia. Let me try to unpack these.

First, I was one of the first educators to enter the world of Wikipedia, yes as an outsider to your world and culture. I had a very naive view of it. Specifically, I had repeatedly heard Wikipedia being help up as the "proof of concept" of an almost magical process called Crowd Sourcing. As I understood it at the time (and please know I don't think this way now) people wrote articles, and those initial articles could be thought of as part signal (the part that is accurate and presented appropriately) and part noise (inaccuracies, incompleteness, stylistic issues, etc). By simply writing the articles they attracted the attention of other Wikipedians, who then would see the article and make improvements ... perhaps adding more information, or correct inaccuracies, or fixing stylistic issues. So almost magically the signal to noise ratio would slowly become stronger and stronger all without any single individual needing to do a whole lot. Instead the "crowd" worked as a super powerful signal enhancer.

With this naive view in my mind, and not having it challenged as I waded further into your world, I sincerely felt that by having my students add a little more information to existing articles they would be part of the crowd ... they would be adding a little more signal. Yes there was also the possibility, and with the benefit of hindsight the likelihood, of them also adding noise. I did try to reduce that. I did have them go through training, I did introduce them to the desired qualities of good articles ... but given my naive view I also didn't feel that adding a little noise was a big deal. I thought the "crowd" would indeed clean the noise over time, and the article would be improved. I also thought some of my students might love the experience and thus might begin editing and reducing noise to other articles. So yes, I thought I was giving students a great learning experience AND helping Wikipedia at the same time. I truly and honestly did.

My naive view was wrong, but it took me a while to understand that and, in the process, understand the reaction from all of you. Honestly, when people here started to mention "you did this twice" ... I was like "huh? There was one major blow up that I recall" ... but the blow up I recall was 2013. In 2011, when the students posted, and when a number of editors expressed their ire, I honestly had no understanding of who these people were and why they were so upset. Let me return to this after another visit to my naive view. I had never interacted with the "other side" of Wikipedia or anything remotely like it. Another part of my naive view was the following. Wikipedia was powered by normal people. All of them, I assumed, sometimes wrote articles and sometimes improved articles written by others. I imagined literally millions of people all doing little things in little spaces of time and through this magic of crowd sourcing Wikipedia emerged. So when a seemingly small proportion of these people (to me) were expressing anger and saying things that I just did not understand, I reacted to them badly. They seemed a little like those proverbial "internet trolls", people that maybe just hate on things. Your anonymity (while my reputation was being directly hit) was part of that by the way, it made me angry. Because I did not understand where your emotion was coming from I misattributed it and did not respond correctly to it.

OK, now one other word about me and my life only for context (not an excuse, just an explanation). I am a BIG fan of using educational technologies (I use 7 in my current class). Each time a new technology is introduced we always run into some sort of unanticipated issues. We learn from them, tweak our approach to try to address the issue, then try again ... eventually this results in powerful learning experiences. This is my default way of evolving my use of technology, it often works well, and at the time I did not fully understand that Wikipedia was a different beast. I'll get to that ...

Right, so with this approach then, it seems I did indeed try again in 2013. I learned one thing from the 2011 experience, but I missed another important point. Specifically, what I took from it was "OK, apparently the signal:noise ratio of any edit needs to be higher ... that is we need to do a better job training students how to edit appropriately before asking them to edit articles. So I created an online training module intended to do just that, and all students were required to go through it. I hoped this would address the issue ... yes I assumed there would still be some noise, but again, crowdsourcing would correct that ... as long as it was much less noise it should be OK. I know, I'll return to that. But critically, what I had failed to appreciate was the relevance of the number of edits .. I was thinking about the quality ... I did not grasp why more edits (of now better quality) would be an issue.

Now you know why I wanted to do this all in a video! Well, both because its a long story and because I wish you guys were seeing and hearing my non-verbals as I explain all this because the non-verbals are where the deep communication ... things like honesty ... resonate. Anyway, onward ...

Obviously things REALLY blew up in 2013 ... and honestly it STILL took me a long time to understand the issue and, in so doing, to properly understand all of you. Let me first tell you the blow up from my side ... and this is the part that really stuck with me. I think the edits were due prior to a class. Sometime during that class a very high ranking university official literally called the phone in the classroom (it never rings, it's for calling out). When I answered it she said "I don't know what you're doing with Wikipedia Joordens, but we have been told that you must cease and desist immediately or there will be legal action against the university, and there may be anyway". I was stunned, a complete disconnect between my world and yours, I couldn't comprehend. But because it was now considered a potential legal issue I was also asked to brief people at the university and listen to their consultations.

So what has changed since then? I now think I have a better understanding. Not a total one I'm sure, but let me lay this out there and see if I'm much closer. It seems that the "crowd", especially that part of the crowd that improves articles, is MUCH smaller than I ever imagined. It is all of you ... you are the ones that make Wikipedia work, and there really are not that many of you. You devote your time to a relatively thankless and time consuming work because you believe deeply in Wikipedia ... you are very proud of it and your contribution to it (as you should be) and all of this comes with a slight sense of ownership and with that a desire to protect it. Also, because it is all of you who must fix inaccuracies, you have understandably come to a position where you would like even the very first article that anyone touches to edited with a pretty deep level of skill and understanding ... you want every edit to be very high in signal and very low in noise ... that's the only way you feel you can keep the articles high quality, and the quality of the articles are the source of the quality of Wikipedia. I sincerely hope I have that all right.

I will add as a sidepoint, this need for even initial articles to be very high quality, while completely understandable, does represent a fairly significant challenge when introducing new potential editors to the platform. It's hard to do things really well right out of the gate. Its clear my training module was not sufficient ... and I am truly impressed by all WikiEdu has done to up the game in that regard. As I mentioned, in this years class, groups of 4 or 5 students, all of whom have gone through all the training, will create a single article. Then each group's draft (sandboxed) article will be peer-reviewed by 4 other groups of 4 or 5 students each to try to reduce any noise further. We also have two TAs and a librarian that will watch all sandboxes ... they will also go through the training and they will be charged specifically with making sure the articles are high quality.

Overall then I want you to understand that I now understand Wikipedia better ... it is a "space" where immigrants need to know the culture extremely well before setting foot ... they must do so with high respect for the norms and with the proper intentions. Also, they need to tread lightly until they prove themselves, not trying to do too much too soon. I completely understand all of this and conveyed essentially all of the above to my students yesterday. They are excited by the project (I hope it can go forward) and we are all laser focused on producing fantastic articles.

Two final points I need to address. First, why did I not give all the usernames in 2013? As highlighted above, after the 2013 blow up there was a threat of legal action that was taken very seriously. Of course student privacy (and the privacy of their information) is something all universities take very seriously. Yes some of my students had "anonymous" usernames, but many did not ... and even for those who did some people weren't sure that their identities could not be discovered by savy internet users like yourselves. I had been told to cease and desist and the provision of usernames was considered part of that ... and yes I know that made the mess on your side worse yet. Second, some of you want me to prove myself as a Wikipedia editor before I use the platform in my class. I ask, can I prove myself as a Wikipedia educator instead ... that is, will you judge me by the quality of the edits my students make this term? That is the proper test, right? Can I shepherd a group of students through a process that ultimate results in quality articles and maybe some informed new editors. Once again, I humbly ask you to allow me (and my new great class) to prove ourselves to you this term.

Apologies for the novel! It just seemed some of this needed saying. I hope this allows us to move forward. What has changed? All of the previous things listed have changed ... my students will be much better trained, there will be much more oversight, the number of articles touched is much lower ... but perhaps more important that all of these things ... I have changed, my understanding of Wikipedia has changed, and my understanding and appreciation for what you all do as changed. I do not want to bring grief into your lives ... in fact I would like to be part of what makes Wikipedia better.

50.101.88.232 (talk) 13:47, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

Man, I realize now that I was not logged in when I wrote the novel above. Apologies! Yes that was me, Steve

I also want to respond to two points I think I missed above. First, why did I not give all the usernames in 2013? By then things has strong potential legal overtones, and universities must protect student information under our Privacy Protection Act. Some usernames had identifying information and no-one was sure if the identity of the others could be sussed out in some way. So I simply could not share those ... and yes I understand that made a bad situation even worse, which sucks. I'm sorry.

Second, several of you have suggested I prove myself as a Wikipedia editor as a first step. I ask instead that I be allowed to prove myself as a Wikipedia Instructor. Yes I will edit some articles ... I will try to do so by the end of next week. I won't complain to you about how busy my life is, but time is very tight and isn't the real question whether I can shepherd a class of students through a process that results in a set of great articles? I ask you allow me to prove myself that way, this term, with this great class.

SteveJoordens (talk) 14:01, 5 September 2019 (UTC)

  • This isn't reassuring, honestly. Is this about improving the encyclopedia or accomplishing something professionally for yourself, through efforts of others? The latter is the tone that comes through as I read this. — soupvector (talk) 14:57, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Its about accomplishing something for my students (enhancing their "success skills" through authentic practice) while also improving Wikipedia. I'm not sure what you mean otherwise by "accomplishing something professionally" ... teaching is my profession, so yes, I guess that's fair. Through the work of others? The students learn by doing, and the articles the produce are theirs, not mine. Perhaps I'm missing something in your query though. SteveJoordens (talk) 17:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi Steve, welcome back. Wiki experiments are welcome - newcomers aren't normally expected to know how to edit. But external motives that incentivize making one edit and never returning are not very 'wiki'. Editors should spend time checking and correcting other material as well as adding new material. And incentivizing hundreds of editors to all contribute with the same sort of bias or mistakes does not help either the contributors or those who fix their work. Finally, groups of contributors should ideally have a shared goal -- to which end they should interact with, comment on, and review one another.
Wow, its refreshing to hear you say "welcome back" ... you are the first, thank you. Understood, and I agree and see your point clearly now. In the new course context this all will be the case. In the peer-assessment step they will definitely be helping to correct their classmates work in addition to producing their own. I think they will get a full Wiki experience. SteveJoordens (talk) 17:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
In the past, your students had wide-spread problems with plagiarism. My recommendation: group your students into groups of 7, have 1 student in each group tasked w/ reviewing their classmates for plagiarism, rather than making new edits. And have 1 student in 50 who reviews the work of the reviewers + provides overall summaries of the class progress on the Project page for the class. That community of (30?) meta-reviewers should spend more time engaging w/ other wikipedians, and can serve as marshalls for the class for those w/ questions, as well.
Probably more like 22 groups of 5 at this point ... and yes I think group members should have established roles. I was thinking a little differently from you, but I'd like your reaction. I was imagining that each member would be expected to contribute to the article they are all co-creating but, in addition, I was thinking that each member would be assigned an additional meta role. Yes one would be plagiarism and proper citing more generally. Another would be the "neutrality" person, checking to make sure all is presented in a neutral voice. Another might be responsible for images and the like, ensuring correct copyright status, etc. So in a sense, each would be a 1/5th contributor, and also an editor who is focused on a very specific aspect of article quality. SteveJoordens (talk) 17:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
Sounds reasonable. I would still consider ~5 students who compare how 5 entire groups are doing -- a second layer of meta-moderation can really help things gel. I know this would make for a different assessment scheme for you and a bit more work, but also I suspect a satisfying result. – SJ + 05:55, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
Regarding "we have been told that you must cease and desist immediately or there will be legal action against the university", this sounds like a telephone-game sort of misunderstanding. Wikipedians would never file legal action (nor have grounds to do so). But if students plagiarise from books, that might be a copyright violation that the original [book] authors could pursue. – SJ + 16:13, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
What you say is possible. Things may have become exaggerated, but even so, there is no doubt that everything we under greater scrutiny and releasing information that might violate student privacy was, and really never should be, an issue. This time around I will be careful to council my students not to include identifying information in their usernames or profiles and thus will be able to share their usernames with all of you. SteveJoordens (talk) 17:42, 5 September 2019 (UTC)
After much deliberation, Wiki Education will be supporting Steve Joorden's Fall 2019 course under the following provisions:
  1. All work will remain in sandboxes. Work will only be moved to the article main space if someone on the Wiki Education team or another Wikipedian gives the ok.
  2. His course will be working on no more than 25 articles total.
  3. Though the work is to be done in sandboxes, the students will adhere to all Wikipedia policies and will be aware that even work in the sandbox is public facing.
  4. If the above guardrails are not observed -- if any student edits Wikipedia outside of their sandbox without prior approval from us or another Wikipedian for the edit -- SteveJoordens will ask his students to cease editing right away.

Thank you to everyone for your comments here Truly hoping this will be a productive and successful venture. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2019 (UTC).

Hi Helaine, the 4th point seems a tad strong. Anyone can edit WP on their own time, including students; indeed hopefully that will spur their interest to do so. They should not be punished somehow for this. Perhaps to get at your intent, editing as classwork might be strictly limited to their sandboxes, and editing done outside of those disqualified for any class credit. – SJ + 05:55, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
I agree with SJ, Helaine. The regulars on this page have spent too much time complaining that students never edit anything except their class assignment, and now you're proposing they be punished if they fix a typo in an article. I'd actually rather that they were introduced to Wikipedia editing by encouraging them to find a typo and fix it right in the mainspace, or to do a little RecentChanges patrolling. Tell them to have a look at these filtered edits, pick one, and figure out if it's any good. If it's good, then 'thank' the person. If it's bad, then 'undo' it. And if they can't decide, then let them pick another and try again. You could show them a lot about Wikipedia's "back end" in that small exercise, and there's nothing like reverting obvious vandalism to help people figure out that lots of people edit Wikipedia for a lot of different reasons. Even just talking about it, without actually editing, could be useful. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:10, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
In virtually every other course we support, the point of the assignment is for students to ultimately make edits to the main space. Because of the history of this particular case, we want to be more circumspect. We certainly welcome any student so interested to take up editing beyond the course project. Helaine (Wiki Ed) (talk) 23:40, 6 September 2019 (UTC)
On that last issue, I suggest that the students be prohibited from making mainspace edits that, in whole or in part, put what should have been in the sandbox instead into mainspace. I'd also prohibit making any large-scale changes to any existing pages. I think that's the essential point, because doing so would undermine the intention of this discussion. But if a student editor were to correct a typo in some other article than the ones the class is working on, I see nothing wrong with treating that the same as an edit by anyone else. --Tryptofish (talk) 23:15, 7 September 2019 (UTC)
agree "also prohibit making any large-scale changes to any existing page" w/ Tryptofish--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 10:57, 17 September 2019 (UTC)
I share WhatamIdoing's concern about discouraging the students from editing Wikipedia. Surely from Wikipedia's point of view, the whole point of this is to gain Wikipedians. Because if the point is simply to write a few paragraphs of text on WP, which is then marked by their teacher, then it frankly is not worth the grief. Be aware that sandboxes will be discoverable by readers when they get included in categories or someone follows a what-links-here. There should be some investigation by those selecting the 25 bios to see if they have existing articles, and if so, how to go about expanding what is there rather than overwriting it all (unless what's there is really not worth keeping). If this is a new article, then the students should also try to add wikilinks from other articles back to theirs, only once it goes into mainspace.
As for biographies not containing medical claims.... surely these people are famous for some medical discovery or theory or clinically relevant diagnosis or treatment. We don't want the students to just list where the person grew up and who their parents where... we'd like to know briefly what they did that is notable, how it was different to what was before, how it was received at the time, and whether it is still accepted/used. With appropriate wikilinks.
I suggest that if the student does work that is too bad to be incorporated into mainspace, that those running the program consider what to do to fix that. Fixing up the citations, improving the prose, removing the confused nonsense and replacing it with readable educational material... hmm that would be some good practice for Joordens to become a Wikipedian. Given the past problems, and our remaining concerns about future problems, I would like some assurance that the end result of this will be 25 reasonable short biographies on Wikipedia, and that Joordens will personally ensure that happens. -- Colin°Talk 10:07, 8 September 2019 (UTC)
Hi Colin and all. I am very appreciative that you all are giving me a chance again here. I understand the goal of hopefully birthing a few committed editors from my class and I sincerely hope that will be the case. Also, despite the interpretation my previous comments might have suggested, I fully expect that as I become more comfortable in this space I will also contribute to the encyclopedia myself in useful and meaningful ways. That said, both I and my students understand we need to prove ourselves, and I understand that the pressure on them is my doing. I believe we have set up a process that will indeed ensure the creation of approximately 22 - 25 articles you will all be pleased with. Efficient neutral biographies free of plagiarism and copyright issues, each based on 4 to 8 reliable sources. And yes, should any of these articles not measure up at the time we hope to move them from sandbox to mainspace (around Weeks 9 or 10) then I will personally accept the responsibility of doing the edits needed to bring them to the appropriate level. Until we prove ourselves I am comfortable asking my students to refrain from making other edits ... thereafter though, assuming all is going well, I am happy to encourage them to edit more widely and consider spending time doing this for intrinsic reasons as you all do. My time is incredibly tight this term, but I also hope to do some article editing myself independent of the course to show my commitment to improving Wikipedia. As I do so, any comments and feedback from you all would be appreciated. Have a great weekend all. SteveJoordens (talk) 17:49, 8 September 2019 (UTC)

Easier to understand language

X-ray of a severe case of legionellosis

Peoples thoughts Talk:Legionnaires'_disease#We_generally_write here? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:16, 16 September 2019 (UTC)


Me too. I looked at a handful of other articles about infectious diseases when forming my opinion and the language wasn't consistent at all. I am new here and curious about policies or templates for articles about human diseases. I know there are specific guides for appropriate source types, but what other medicine-related guides are available? UWM.AP.Endo (talk) 18:43, 17 September 2019 (UTC)

UWM.AP.Endo, if you'd like to see the theory, then WP:MEDMOS should be your first stop. In practice, you might feel like we talk a lot about writing in plain, clear English (at least for the beginning, and the first lines of any technical section), but then we turn around and cram the articles full of as much jargon as we can. Please try "do as we say, and not as we (usually) do". WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:46, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Ovarian follicle dominance - University of Edinburgh Wikipedia assignment

Hi, We are looking to research and write a new article on Ovarian follicle dominance as the current one just redirects the Ovarian follicle. We have identified a number of section headings and want to check these will work:

  • lede section on what it is;
  • underlying biology (linking to the pages on the ovary, menstrual cycle, follicular phase, ovulation);
  • disorders (linking to PCOS);
  • applications (assisted reproductive techniques)

So four sections really, and any assistance in the naming & content of these would be appreciated. Many thanks, Stinglehammer (talk) 11:33, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

Ovarian follicle is only 11k in size (see WP:SIZERULE), so would make more sense to have a separate Follicle dominance (or similar) section on that page, with Ovarian follicle dominance redirecting to Ovarian follicle#Follicle dominance. If you need subsections within that, that would be fine, but it I can't see that there is currently enough (planned) content to warrant that. Klbrain (talk) 12:45, 18 September 2019 (UTC)
Agree with User:Klbrain Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:35, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

New editor question

I am a new editor. I made a revision proposal. Would someone review it and publish - PLEASE./Thanks/Swozingram --Swozingram (talk) 23:06, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Sure and done User:Swozingram. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:18, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

New page proposal Draft:Opioid tapering

Hi I am a new editor. I have an article draft for opioid tapering. Can someone please review and publish it. thanks so much!--Wikieditor995995 (talk) 00:08, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

User:Wikieditor995995 can you replace the primary sources with high quality secondary ones? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:21, 20 September 2019 (UTC)
The advice has been changing this year. I doubt that we can get gold-plated "ideal" sources that aren't wildly out of date. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:57, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

There are some

Etc Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:24, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

New disease classification - vaping injury

Resolved

Should there be an article for vaping-associated pulmonary injury (VAPI)?[8] QuackGuru (talk) 00:38, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Vaping-associated lung disease?--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 11:02, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
New article launched. QuackGuru (talk) 15:29, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I have sent you a note about a page you started

@QuackGuru: Thanks for creating Vaping-associated pulmonary injury.

User:Willbb234 while examining this page as a part of our page curation process had the following comments:

Try to implement information from other sources, other than simply number 1 with a bit of number 2 & 3.

To reply, leave a comment here and prepend it with {{Re|Willbb234}}. And, don't forget to sign your reply with ~~~~ .

Message delivered via the Page Curation tool, on behalf of the reviewer. (pinging @Ozzie10aaaa:) Willbb234Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 15:39, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

@Bluerasberry: please add your thoughts. Willbb234Talk (please {{ping}} me in replies) 16:10, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

I replied on that article's talk page. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:07, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
I've been busy creating 6 new e-cig articles. E-cigarette marketing + lack of regulations = 9 deaths in the US. QuackGuru (talk) 21:53, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

Informal 3rd opinions sought

Would a few of you review the recent edits on Vaping-associated pulmonary injury and give me (and anyone else as you deem appropriate) feedback or suggestions on how to proceed. A response from the other editor (QuackGuru) took me aback and I'm not sure how to respond. I undid an edit he made that had removed an edit I'd made a few minutes earlier. I created a section on the article's Talk page, Lead paragraph, to discuss our different perspectives. In my edit note I wrote, "Let's discuss on Talk page. Thank you - Mark". QuackGuru's response, in their edit note, was "Let's not. CDC is a better source." Please see the (Talk page discussion) for more. I am open to learning if I don't understand a policy, tradition, or better way to do things. Otherwise, I will let it go and take the article off my Watchlist. Thank you   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 01:34, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

I've commented at the talk page, but in brief, Mark, I don't think there is sufficient difference between your preferred version and QG's to be worth having an argument over. E-cigs are under discretionary sanctions, so it's best to walk away from conflict in that area. For what it's worth, your understanding of policy is fine as far as I can see. --RexxS (talk) 14:27, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
I wrote the following on the article's Talk page: Thank you very much RexxS. The sentences have been edited since I posted here and on the WP:MED Talk page. I actually think the current version is better than what I had written, so it's all good. :0)   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 15:09, 25 September 2019 (UTC)
RESOLVED √   - Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) (I am a man. The traditional male pronouns are fine.) 15:09, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Wiki listing on Resveratrol is misleading

The resveratrol page is dated and does not include the most up-to-date information. IMHO, most of the authors reflect a bias not valid criticism based on the current NIH studies and results. The cited Medline reviews are singular, again, not reflective of current scientific knowledge. I am not a programmer or have enough experience to correctly post a response to this. But I have followed resveratrol studies for years. I am also alive due to taking resveratrol as are many others. My doctors were doubters but now believers. This page needs to be examined by a third party and correctly display to the public the scientific evidence. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Pranier (talk • contribs) 18:58, 24 September 2019 (UTC)

see Wikipedia:Identifying_reliable_sources_(medicine)--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 20:08, 24 September 2019 (UTC)
Pranier, you recommended https://lpi.oregonstate.edu/mic/dietary-factors/phytochemicals/resveratrol as a source. I'm looking at it. The top (summary) of your source says that there's no evidence that it works for cancer in humans; the Wikipedia article says that there's no evidence that it works for cancer in humans. The top of your source says that there's no evidence that it extends lifespan in humans; the Wikipedia article says that there's no evidence that it extends lifespan in humans. It pretty much seems to match throughout, except that they're rather more dismissive of red wine than the Wikipedia article, and slightly more supportive of short-term benefits for diabetes. Is there something in particular that you think should be changed in the Wikipedia article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

Content campaigns

If you're interested in content campaigns (like Wiki Loves Earth, to encourage photo uploads), then you might want to watch the project described in https://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/glam/2019-September/001647.html They're working on a sort of guidebook for people who want to start new campaigns to encourage content creation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:10, 25 September 2019 (UTC)

thank you WAID--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:43, 26 September 2019 (UTC)

Medicine related RfC

Centrilobular emphysema

Talk:Chronic_obstructive_pulmonary_disease#RfC:_Redirects_of_"chronic_bronchitis"_and_"emphysema"

Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:41, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

commented--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:38, 27 September 2019 (UTC)

potential major edits to the Argon plasma coagulation article

Hi!

Very rare editor here, but am working on a presentation about electrosurgical coagulation devices, which includes Argon Beam (or Argon Plasma) Coagulation. The article here on Wikipedia is ... missing some important things, because it implies that the technology is only used for endoscopic procedures. It's used for open surgical procedures, and laparoscopic surgical procedures, as well as the endoscopic procedures (and afaik, endoscopic came last of those three -- on my list to verify).

I'm happy to write it (after I finish the presentation next month), but wanted to get some feedback about what you experts think is appropriate.

Here's the link to the current article: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argon_plasma_coagulation

Thanks all! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GillisVanDenBerge (talk • contribs) 03:53, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Hi GillisVanDenBerge, welcome to WikiProject Medicine! We are always in need of knowledgeable contributors on any medical topic, and it's good of you to volunteer your time to help improve the encyclopedia. The only caveat is that we have to have published sources for every non-trivial statement that is made in our articles. That means we rely completely on finding the best published sources for our content, but we know that the experts on a topic will know what the best sources are on their topic. One thing that may be unintuitive is that we strongly prefer secondary sources, such as systematic reviews, over primary studies or research. If you're unsure, we have a page Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) that goes into detail, but it's not compulsory to wade through all of that before editing.
To answer you question, you almost certainly know what is appropriate better than us, and also what the best sources are on the use of argon plasma coagulation in open and laparoscopic surgical procedures. Please feel free to add as much information as you can comfortably support from your sources, and don't worry too much about adding citations in any particular format – it's easy for other editors to convert anything recognisable into one of our standard formats. Happy editing! --RexxS (talk) 13:35, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Should the earwax article have a picture of earwax on a cotton swab?

Foam earplugs
Things not to stick in your ears, because they're "smaller than my elbow"

There are two separate threads on the talk page that mention this, but there doesn't seem to be much discussion or established consesus beyond that. Should a picture of cotton swab be included in the article? Clovermoss (talk) 02:07, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

I've replied at Talk:Earwax#cotton swab pictures. The current state of the (society-wide) conversation is frustrating. The health groups announce that cotton swabs are too dangerous to stick in ears, but they never say that there is any acceptable method for removing earwax, water, etc. "Just put up with it, because I'm sure that having water stuck in your ear doesn't hurt anyone *that* much – it never bothers me that much, anyway – so never stick anything smaller than my elbow in your ear!" seems to be the amount of thought that they've put into this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 28 September 2019 (UTC)

Article: Go 6976

In the article I've linked ′protein kinase C alpha′ to Protein Kinase C Alpha. It may be associated with Protein kinase c-alpha. Requesting folks who know exactly know what it is, to modify it accordingly. --Gpkp [u • t • c] 16:15, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

I've had a look at the text and the relevant reference; have edited, with a couple of alternative links and a small change in meaning (related to its action on cell junctions). Klbrain (talk) 21:34, 29 September 2019 (UTC)

Citation needed

mw:Wikimedia Research/Showcase#September 2019 talks about the possibility of identifying some sentences in Wikipedia articles that are currently unsourced, and would normally be sourced. It might be possible to produce a subject-specific report, to identify statements in articles that are currently not tagged with {{citation needed}}. (The current list of WPMED-tagged articles using that template is in the main cleanup listing.)

BTW, medicine-related articles are called out as being among the most thoroughly sourced articles on the English Wikipedia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:02, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

thank you for posting WAID--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 09:34, 21 September 2019 (UTC)
Thank you for sharing this. I think it is a very important task! JenOttawa (talk) 15:48, 27 September 2019 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, is there a similar project page for "needs updating" tags (non-Cochrane citations)? Thank you again! JenOttawa (talk) 13:05, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
JenOttawa, I think that https://bambots.brucemyers.com/cwb/bycat/Medicine.html#Update%20needed (very long page) has the list that you want. There are currently 478 entries. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Peanut allergy and asthma?

In the lede of Peanut allergy, this is written: Physical symptoms of allergic reaction can include itchiness, hives, swelling, eczema, sneezing, asthma, abdominal pain, drop in blood pressure, diarrhea, and cardiac arrest.

Asthma stands out to me, because asthma is a long-term inflammatory disease, at least according to the current article. So... do peanut allergy symptoms actually cause asthma? I think it's more likely that difficulty breathing may be a symptom, but that wouldn't be the same thing as asthma. If peanut allergies do cause asthma, shouldn't there be more than one source to back that up? Clovermoss (talk) 21:21, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Ref says "Symptoms include asphyxia with swelling of the upper larynx, epiglottis and tongue, urticaria, angioedema, asthma, rhinitis, eczema, mouth ulcers, nausea, pruritus, diarrhoea, cerebral involvement, and collapse including cardiac arrest and death"
User:Clovermoss have adjusted [9] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:05, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
Doc James Thanks! It sounded kind of off to me the way it was previously written, but your changes to the article make much more sense. Clovermoss (talk) 22:11, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

The PIETY Study - What to do about this?

This is a study that was published in Research & Reviews: Journal of Social Sciences from the predatory publisher Research & Reviews, which has some connections to OMICS Publishing Group. I'd nominate for deletion, but the study has gained coverage in press, so I'm not sure how to proceed. Headbomb {t · c · p · b} 17:23, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

delete it anyway(your original intention) "from the predatory publisher Research & Reviews"..IMO--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 19:58, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
We also have The PINE Study and XinQi Dong..
Looks like COI editing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 22:13, 30 September 2019 (UTC)
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