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July 4

Is the wikipedia reference desk an suitable place for me to ask mental health questions?

Questions about the ref desk itself belong at the ref desk talk page, I have moved this there, please continue there if you have further questions or comments. μηδείς (talk) 03:34, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

See I have aspergers and borderline personality disorder. Is asking for mental health advice appropriate here? Venustar84 (talk) 02:21, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

No, you can't ask questions about your specific case, but you can ask Q's about those disorders, in general, like when those conditions were first recognized. StuRat (talk) 02:29, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

(edit conflict)If a question is directly about those conditions, it's not appropriate to ask for advice as it would fall under medical advice.

However, it should be appropriate to ask for WP:MEDRSs about the subject. It would also probably be fine to indirectly get answers by asking questions about related topics, such as social interaction, especially if it focuses on other people. It should also be fine to ask for WP:RSs by or about people who have Aspergers and/or borderline personality disorder.

For example, "how could someone with borderline personality disorder deal with their concerns about abandonment?" would be an inappropriate question. But "are their any autobiographies by authors who dealt with concerns about abandonment, especially authors with borderline personality disorder?" would be appropriate, as would "are there any case studies about the effectiveness of different therapeutic techniques to deal with concerns about abandonment?" Ian.thomson (talk) 02:37, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Moved to talk, pleas continue there. μηδείς (talk) 03:34, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Do cats...

...actually eat mice? $KägeTorä - (影虎) (もしもし！)$ 13:15, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Yes. You may find this of interest. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 13:41, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

They do on occasion, but house cats typically consider mice playthings rather than sources of food (assuming the house cat is adequately fed). I've read that farm cats which are fed catfood are actually better mousers than ones that have been left to fend for themselves for food; when killing mice is serious business, cats work just as economically as a wild animal would - they don't want to exert energy if they're not hungry enough to eat. However, well-fed cats gleefully destroy all the small animals in their path, using the body parts as toys as they see fit. Matt Deres (talk) 15:55, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Our cat kills mice (and voles and other small mammals) and sometimes eats them (often leaving some of the innards) and sometimes brings them in as presents. Sometimes his presents are still alive, which is more of a problem.--Phil Holmes (talk) 16:08, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

There's also times where a cat will hunt the small animal with the intention of eating it, bring it home, and only then remember their delicious and easier to chew food bowl. It's kind of like grabbing a sack of dollar burgers only to come home and discover that your family has already grilled some prime rib. Ian.thomson (talk) 17:46, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. I am asking this as there is a BBC article about cats having a special chemical - felinine - in their urine, which controls the mice, either by having the adult pregnant female mice actually abort their babies, or by making young baby mice less fearful of cats. The final line says that it suits their need for mice. As Phil says, I always thought they were just bringing them in as presents. $KägeTorä - (影虎) (もしもし！)$ 17:32, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This may not be related to your question but I just thought I'd mention this article. Bus stop (talk) 17:55, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Linking to felinine seems appropriate. I'm not a biochemist, but I doubt there's something intrinsic to mice that the cat would need to create this substance, so even cats who never ate a mouse would still excrete it. Matt Deres (talk) 18:53, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I wonder if the BBC meant rats infected Toxoplasma gondii (third paragraph). CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 01:08, 5 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Is there a link to this BBC article? Rodents abort or eat their young when under enough stress that postponing the effort of raising a litter makes economic sense. If a cat is peeing that close to the nest, finding a new nest is a better Idea. As for the fearlessness indeed caused by T. gondii, that's a separate issue not related to felinine. μηδείς (talk) 23:41, 5 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Maybe it's this article. Bus stop (talk) 12:28, 6 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, what's going on with the young mice exposed to felinine not showing a fear reaction is called habituation, so the T. gondii case is intersting, but no relevant here. μηδείς (talk) 04:11, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

By what mechanism would felinine cause pregnant mice to abort? Bus stop (talk) 05:29, 7 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Censorship, RAT-Access

I looked up "informants" and noticed that the article cannot be edited. There is evidence that someone has had remotely accessed my PC with a Remote Access Tojan (RAT), therefore I do report whenever there is a suspicion of censorship, for instance, by someone's removing of the "edit" option. I think that censorship of a law-abiding adult without any accusations or convictions of Internet crimes or Internet abuse is a huge deal. Regarding the definition of "informant," I have been wondering whether one should call citizens who witness a crime and inform law enforcement "informers" to set them apart from (paid) "informants," who wander in the world of law and in the worlds of crime and terrorism. Cornelia T. Bradford — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2602:306:3299:C080:9D38:774B:1236:4D51 (talk) 20:19, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The article Informant is permanently semi-protected, presumably due to persistent vandalism. If you had a registered account, you could edit it. And as regards "law-abiding citizens" or whatever, there is no constitutional right to edit Wikipedia, nor is Wikipedia censored for content as you're implying. Also, this is not really the right page to file this complaint, but someone else can figure out where it should be directed instead. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:29, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

I don't think she's complaining about the article's semi-protection constituting censorship, I think she was referring to her (incorrect) concern that the absence of the edit tab might be due to her being somehow censored by a computer virus. -Elmer Clark (talk) 10:09, 5 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Was there a vaguely similar complaint a few weeks ago? ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:50, 5 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

You could start by asking the admin who protected it. He was active on Wikipedia as recently as 2 days ago. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:33, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

If you'd like to request an edit, you can request an edit. Do it on the article's talk page. Those are virtually never locked. InedibleHulk (talk) 22:46, 4 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]