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Suffering

WP:SUFFER strikes me as well-intended in terms of affirming permanently disabled people's agency, but it also seems to plainly out of lockstep with how much of the medical establishment describes the literal experience of physical pain. Quite a few sources seem to describe pain as... suffering, including National Institutes of Health, Cleveland Clinic, Johns Hopkins, Disability and Rehabilitation, Children & Society, Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, Treatments, Mechanisms, and Adverse Reactions of Anesthetics and Analgesics, Neuroscience Bulletin, Personality and Individual Differences. I'd like to workshop something along the lines of the following, which preserves the affirmative guidance but also allows for the experience of pain to be written about in a way consistent with how medical sources tend to refer to it:

Current:

Avoid saying that people "suffer" from or are "victims" of a chronic illness or symptom, which may imply helplessness: identifiers like survivor, affected person or individual with are alternate wordings.

Proposed:

It is acceptable to use "suffer" and "suffering" when referring to the experience of pain. In general, however, avoid saying that people "suffer" from or are "victims" of a chronic illness or symptom, which may imply helplessness: identifiers like survivor, affected person or individual with are alternate wordings.

Does anybody have any thoughts? — Ⓜ️hawk10 (talk) 03:16, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

Seems reasonable. Crossroads ^-talk- 17:50, 11 June 2022 (UTC)

I think that's a reasonable tweak. I intentionally skip over anything related to pain.

However, I would recommend including some external guidance that affirms that reasoning, including

• AMA's guidance here https://amastyleinsider.com/2018/07/18/disability-and-language/ as well as

"Use of people-first language and avoidance of emotion-laden terms such as “suffering” and “victim” offer patients autonomy and dignity even as they’re being written about anonymously in a journal publication that thousands of people read every day."

• NHS https://service-manual.nhs.uk/content/a-to-z-of-nhs-health-writing#S

"suffering from

We do not use "suffering from". We talk about people having or living with a disability or condition.

"

Other individuals have extremely strong opinions on this... Smasongarrison (talk) 00:20, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the proposal is a bit topsy-turvy. Leading with the exceptional case puts the wrong emphasis. How about just a minor addition of "(other than pain)":

Avoid saying that people "suffer" from or are "victims" of a chronic illness or symptom (other than pain), which may imply helplessness: identifiers like survivor, affected person or individual with are alternate wordings.

-- Colin°^Talk 08:31, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Even then this might be read to mean one should use suffer/victim in relation to pain. This[1] NICE style guide says their aim is not to use suffer in relation to diseases. Alexbrn (talk) 08:54, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

All the guidelines reject "suffer" for diseases and conditions. The point seems to be that while "suffering" may be inappropriate for many symptoms, it is hard to argue that the term is inappropriate for pain. However, it may still be perfectly possible to write text without that word, so we don't want to give the impression that it must be used. Mhawk10, have you found that editors are in conflict over this issue? If they aren't, then it may be best to leave this undocumented in guideline. The cited guidelines don't make an exception for pain even if you have found that in practice people do. -- Colin°^Talk 09:37, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

To build off Colin's suggestion above, how about something like this?

Avoid saying that people "suffer" from or are "victims" of a chronic illness or condition, which may imply helplessness: identifiers like survivor, affected person or individual with are alternate wordings. For symptoms, consider using language such as "experience pain" or "exhibit tics"; as more neutral alternatives to "suffer from [symptom]"

Little pob (talk) 11:03, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

"Exhibit" might not be as neutral as I first thought either. Perhaps, "report" is better? Little pob (talk) 11:05, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm not sure that report is better. But generally, I do like the direction this is going. I think that including examples for lifelong conditions (both mental and physical) would be helpful. "individuals with cerebral palsy" "people with schizophrenia" etc Mason (talk) 14:14, 27 June 2022 (UTC)

I'd like to see examples of editors needing guidance to be spelled out, otherwise we are worrying about something that doesn't need fixed. There's also the issue that the style-guide advice appears to be ignored for biographical articles (search "suffered from" site:en.wikipedia.org) and MEDMOS doesn't cover those. The core MOS has a poor track record of endorsing social language recommendations but is quite prepared to rule on the length of a dash. -- Colin°^Talk 12:00, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Unfortunately, I have an ongoing example of an editor having an issue with the phrase. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia_talk:Manual_of_Style/Words_to_watch#Wheelchair_bound Smasongarrison (talk) 15:09, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

I'm in two minds about this. On the one hand, in my personal life I would definitely say I suffer from migraines because for me they are debilitating. If I have an attack, I become a useless ball of pain until it passes. On the other, I probably wouldn't use that language in an article. Unless I was directly quoting the person or a source I would most likely say NAME has migraines or NAME experiences migraines. As such I do like Little pob's suggested text. Sideswipe9th (talk) 15:17, 13 June 2022 (UTC)

Would you think it makes sense in an article about migraines to talk about the different symptoms people with migraines might suffer from such as pain, sensitivity to light and or sound, nausea (among the many many possible things that migraines cause)?

I personally don't like the idea my suffering is being ignored and sanitized. It doesn't imply helplessness, but does imply that I am negatively impacted in a harmful way.

And honestly, sometimes you are helpless, sometimes you suffer side effects of medications because the condition unmedicated is worse than the side effects. Or maybe none of the medications work for you personally, or for some conditions there is no known medication that will help.

Seraphya (talk) 07:20, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Since there is a wide range of response to symptoms, I think it would be better to say "People experience symptoms like pain, sensitivity to light, nausea, etc." rather than "People suffer from symptoms like..."

A woman once told me that she is happy when she get nausea during a migraine attack. Apparently, for her, nausea led quickly to vomiting, and vomiting led immediately to the end of the attack. As a result, she didn't experience the nausea as a form of suffering at all.

I think if we say "Some people experience nausea", that would include both her non-suffering experience of nausea as well as the experience of people who really do suffer from nausea. If we say "Some people suffer from nausea", we are excluding the people who get nausea but don't really suffer from it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:20, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

I support this sensible proposal. Cf. also the disucssion below, and in particular nb an apparent signifcant difference between UK and US attitudes.--Smerus (talk) 15:36, 26 June 2022 (UTC)

@Mhawk10, I think it's important to remember that Pain and Suffering are different things. You can suffer from pain, but you can also have pain without suffering, and suffering without (bodily/medical-ish) pain. It is possible to determine that an individual is suffering (or not) from pain, but outside of biographical material, I think it is best if we normally avoid using the word suffering to describe pain. It can be factually wrong, and it is almost always a WP:CLICHE. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:46, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I think there is some quite literal survivorship bias going on in the formulation of those recommendations. People who survive may like calling themselves survivors, and will use that term for the rest of their lives. While those who do not survive never get to have their opinions taken into account, and even when they do, only until they are no longer alive which is much less time than "survivors". Many people with conditions, such as cancer do not like being held responsible for their clinical outcomes in a way that is not scientifically possible. They do not have the ability to save themselves, and are helpless to cure themselves and no amount of positive thinking or "fighting" will do anything about that. In an attempt to give people agency, I think we are actually forcing people into a role that is convenient for people who aren't actually experiencing medical conditions for which they are powerless to do anything about and do experience suffering. We don't want to see them as victims of circumstance who are experiencing anguish and pain so we sanitize it and shift the burden to the person with the medical condition.

I understand how people with disabilities don't want to be stigmatized, and how some (but not all) survivors want to view themselves as people who pulled through and are proud of that. But, many people also don't like having their unlucky random loss of autonomy to avoid physical pain that causes them suffering sanitized.

Seraphya (talk) 07:36, 12 September 2022 (UTC)

Well said Seraphya!

Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 07:43, 15 September 2022 (UTC)

Prior discussion

I think the proposal needs some work before it is ready for a discussion on approving it. I think it would be best to collaborate on suitable new words/advice and then launch the RFC, rather than have a discussion that nobody joining the RFC wants to wade through. I don't know the best location. Could there be a sub-page created? -- Colin°^Talk 10:56, 17 September 2022 (UTC)

I think the suggested new text might (by itself) be longer than WP:RFCBRIEF would recommend, so I've added a single-sentence question to the top. The previous discussions at WT:MED were archived yesterday, and I'm not sure there's that much to discuss that hasn't been. Either editors want to add something, or they don't. My suggested text is certainly not set in stone. If editors say that it should be sufficient to insert the words alcohol abuse in the existing bullet point, then I would certainly go along with that (though I don't think we use the term recreational use much in the context of alcohol use that "carries serious risk of physical harm or addiction". We're more likely to say something like "getting drunk" than "recreational use of alcohol").

Unless you'd like to suggest a different question? I'm certainly open to it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 22 September 2022 (UTC)

Hey, I'm splitting this off to a separate section, because I'm giving up, and it'll just be in the way when people are trying to answer. I've been making the perfect RFC question be the enemy of a probably decent one. Editors are smart enough to tell us what they think without being constrained by the exact question. Feel free to tell me that the only thing that needs to change is to add the words "and alcohol" into the existing text, or whatever else you might like.

This is not the only question that needs to be addressed (e.g., is it a violation of Wikipedia:Neutral point of view#Impartial tone to use judgmental language like "a drug habit"? How do we balance our need for dispassionate, professional, encyclopedic tone with sources that use sensationalist language?), but it is one question, and we can address it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Tone

Wikipedia's voice should be neutral, non-judgmental and avoid stigmatising language. Many authorities have already adopted this approach, such as the DSM replacing "alcohol abuse" with "alcohol use disorder" in 2013. While our sources may sometimes use biased, judgemental and stigmatising language, this does not compel us to repeat their word choices. Reducing a person down to just a single negative word is stigmatising and judgemental (addict, user, junkie, alcoholic, drunk, dirty, clean). Describing an activity in a way that suggests the person is consciously choosing a harmful path is judgemental and not neutral (drug habit, alcohol abuse).
In non-medical contexts, there are often alternatives that avoid problematic terms. For example, instead of "He abused alcohol as a teenager" we can write "He struggled with alcohol as a teenager". For medical contexts, try to use modern terminology if the meaning is retained. If in doubt ask.

Colin wrote the above on 2 November 2022 in another discussion on this page, and I like the concept. I'm not sure whether we need a new section for this, if we can add it to an existing section, or if we should consider developing it as a separate page, à la Wikipedia:Biomedical information or Wikipedia:The difference between policies, guidelines and essays.

In addition to the substance-related examples he gives, I can think of these disfavored terms:

• spontaneous abortion – it makes it sound like the pregnant woman decided to get an abortion whimsically
• patient failed the treatment – it's the other way around
• non-compliant/non-adherent patient – condescending assumption that following doctor's orders is always best
• cheating (e.g., on a diet) – it's not a sporting event
• uncontrolled diabetes/hypertension – usually blames the person for something they don't have the tools, skills, and resources to control
• low-functioning/high-functioning – single term flattens individual strengths and weaknesses, making it seem like one person needs help with everything, and the other person needs help with nothing
• disease names based on places – as if Spaniards were to blame for the 1918 influenza pandemic that was called "Spanish flu", the Russians for the 1977 influenza pandemic that was called "Russian flu", etc.

On the positive side, I think that the formal style of language used in an encyclopedia automatically protects articles from most stigmatizing terms, because playground-level insults about "dumb" or "crazy" people aren't going to appear anyway.

I would be interested in hearing other terms that editors should be careful with, as well ideas for how (including whether) we could usefully document some of our experience for the benefit of other editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:42, 2 December 2022 (UTC)

The existing "Careful language" section is perhaps a little random, some no more than someone's bright idea or pet peeve one day. The current intro suggests watching out for differences between words medics use and what the general public might understand. To that, I'd add anorexia which I recently came across as an apparently common side-effect in a systematic review of the ketogenic diet. Which puzzled me for quite some time (most patients on the diet are way too young). Eventually I realised the writers thought they were being clever by using Greek jargon rather than just saying "appetite loss". But the section has also included advice on language that is more concerned with neutral tone, as the above paragraph describes. Maybe we should split it in two. There's some similarity here with Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch. Are you suggesting perhaps there could be a medical version of that? I think an approach similar to that one is likely to be best accepted, in that we don't claim to be banning certain words of phrases, but indicating that their use is less likely to be appropriate or alternatives are often better. I don't know whether it would be best as a separate page, or developed in this one. If we are worried about MEDMOS length, I'd suggest moving the "Content sections" section to its own page (or the bin, frankly).

Do you have some sources for your "disfavored items". I'm not at all sure about the "uncontrolled diabetes/hypertension". Why should that imply the person is to fault? It seems an entirely neutral admission of failure. I've seen it used (and indeed used it) wrt epilepsy: "hard-to-control (refractory) epilepsy". The word "intractable" means the same has "hard-to-control". Another variant I've see is "drug-resistant epilepsy" which has the potential to mislead into thinking somehow the epilepsy has developed resistance. Maybe epilepsy is different in that the brain is clearly "out of control" and randomly goes wrong, whereas diabetes can certainly be viewed judgementally.

Wrt your high/low functioning, is that a general term that is a problem on Wikipedia? We have High-functioning autism and Low-functioning autism with both containing sections describing the views of critics of that language, and how they aren't used in some official lists/guides of medical terms. I google those words and only autism turns up. The Cambridge dictionary notes it can be offensive an explains why. Perhaps there's a place for documenting medical terms that have fallen out of favour or superseded, whether that's because they weren't accurate or because they are offensive -- Colin°^Talk 18:11, 4 December 2022 (UTC)

"Uncontrolled" diabetes and hypertension imply that you are supposed to be controlling it, and that you are doing nothing. "Hard to control" implies that you have an especially difficult job. "Uncontrolled" implies that you're not even trying to control it. Type 1 diabetes' label for "hard to control" is brittle diabetes or labile diabetes, both of which are terms that imply that it's difficult despite your significant and appropriate efforts.

I wonder if some of ===Careful language=== could be moved to Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Words to watch. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 11 December 2022 (UTC)

RFC on changing MEDLANG

Should we update Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles to provide information about alcohol consumption, similar to what we say about illegal/recreational drug use? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 29 September 2022 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Careful language says:

• The term drug abuse is vague and carries negative connotations. In a medical context, it generally refers to recreational use that carries serious risk of physical harm or addiction. However, others use it to refer to any illegal drug use. The best accepted term for non-medical use is "recreational use".

I suggest that we change this to include the term alcohol abuse as well. One way (not the only way; feel free to propose better ones) to do this is to add a separate bullet point, e.g.,:

• The term alcohol abuse is vague and carries negative connotations. Additionally, alcohol abuse is an outdated diagnostic label from the DSM-IV (1994). In a medical context, prefer the current DSM-V term, alcohol use disorder, which encompasses both the DSM-IV's alcohol abuse and the DSM-IV's alcohol dependence.[2] The term alcohol abuse is also used, especially in non-medical sources, to indicate disapproval of some kinds of alcohol consumption, such as being drunk, drinking more than the average person, high-risk drinking, any alcohol consumed during pregnancy, drinking before driving, underage drinking, binge drinking, heavy alcohol use, etc. Avoid the term alcohol abuse except when the DSM-IV diagnostic label is clearly intended by the source. For non-medical content, prefer non-medicalized descriptions (e.g., "He struggled with alcohol as a teenager" instead of "He struggled with alcohol abuse as a teenager").

What do you think? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:03, 16 September 2022 (UTC)

Yes, I support your thoughtful proposal. In addition to establishing congruence with our "drug abuse" policy, this proposal is consistent with recommendations in the relevant scientific (medical) literature.

"When diagnostic status is unknown or is unclear, I propose that we refer to such persons as individuals with alcohol-related problems or alcohol misuse, rather than 'alcohol abusers' to prevent confusion with diagnosis." [slight edit to enhance clarity]

"... in popular discourse ‘alcohol abuse’ and ‘drug abuse’ remain unstandardized, value-laden and imprecise."

"Results from this study suggest it may matter how we refer to individuals with substance-related conditions and that use of, and exposure to, the “abuser” label may inadvertently elicit and perpetuate stigmatizing attitudes."

"... in popular discourse ‘alcohol abuse’ and ‘drug abuse’ remain unstandardized, value-laden and imprecise."

"In an effort to avoid the confusion that may arise when different authors use the same term to describe different phenomena or experiences, the journal is now requesting that authors use the term substance 'abuse' only in a DSM III, III-R, or IV context in accepted manuscripts. As with dependence, it is also important to state which diagnostic manual is being used. Other non-DSM definitions of the term 'abuse' may be permitted providing that they relate to specific diagnoses listed in other previously published major diagnostic systems (e.g., ICD-9). If authors are using the term 'abuse' other than in connection with the diagnoses specified in the DSM or other published systems, we ask that they change their terminology. For alcohol, alternative terms might include 'alcohol misuse' or 'heavy' or 'problem use' of alcohol.

"... we need to be mindful and deliberate about using and avoiding certain language and to use agreed-upon terms consistently to aid precise clinical and scientific communication."

Note: Yes, the very agency that recommends against "abuse" or "abuser" has "abuse" in its name (National Institute of Drug Abuse). However, there is a significant difference between scientific discourse and the process by which we name federal agencies. Scientific discourse occurs on the pages of peer-reviewed journals and in agency-published advisories, whereas naming an agency—or changing its name—is a political process that often lags well behind scientific developments.

Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 23:29, 1 October 2022 (UTC)

• Popping by due to WAID's post at WT:MED. I'll admit I didn't chime in earlier as I'm having trouble feeling strongly about this either way. I think WAID's draft guidance is fine (though can we shorten the list of disapproved behaviors?). In particular, I'll emphasize that I think we should advise folks to use non-medicalized language when drawing from non-medical source material. My hesitation in drafting guidelines like this is I fear it encourages someone, someday, to search for biographies containing "alcohol abuse" and blindly update to a different phrase without engaging with each individual articles. While I find that urge understandable, I've seen such things spark disputes that ran many thousands of words with little ultimate benefit to the encyclopedia (and indeed, with editors sometimes leaving, greatly to our detriment). I'm not sure what the ideal solution to this is, but if it were up to me I'd advise editors "here's mainstream suggested wording; but if you don't plan to dramatically improve an article, leave well enough alone." Ajpolino (talk) 03:56, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  That particular dispute is what led to these discussions. I am, of course, completely opposed to someone reverting back in the "alcohol abuse" language when that isn't in any cited source, and that's frequently what happened in that dispute. We literally had someone who was reverting "alcohol abuse" back into an article on a fictional film when the cited source didn't mention alcohol at all, and the only source in the article which did (which wasn't in English) said "the drunk Swede" (when translated). I don't think that fixing these problems should require a commitment to fixing up the rest of the article.

  I like your suggestion of using non-medicalized language when drawing from non-medical sources. I'm not sure yet how we could explain the common-sense limits (e.g., the plot of an Illness narrative, an individual's cause of death, a law about medical conditions...), but I think it's doable and I think it's a good idea. (But maybe some will think it's WP:CREEPY to write down what ought to be obvious?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:27, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

  I agree with Ajpolino that going around making lots of language changes that aren't straightforward and widely agreed upon is asking for trouble. And I agree with your feelings that someone who is article-building has earned more of a right to pick or replace words choices than someone who is flying by or someone who has sat watchlisting an article solely in order to prevent some progressive language change (sometimes, it seems, for years!) And the mass revert-back that we saw earlier was a "throw the baby out with the bathwater" or "I'm going to revert all your hard work just to stick it to you" behavioural issue. I'm not sure however that it is MEDMOS's place to advise on behaviour. -- Colin°^Talk 17:42, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

• Since we're having a thoughtful discussion rather than some horrendous RFC vote, I'll offer my thoughts on this, which as usual aren't a single sentence.

I don’t see a good reason to have two bullet points, especially as they repeat the same issue but with a different substance. As I said at WT:MED, I don’t really like the "carries negative connotations" wording. It was added a long time ago. People are going to read that and think "What is wrong about 'negative connotations' about something that harms people?" I think the issue is that it is judgementally negative.

Some possible sources to cite or external links to give are:

• https://nida.nih.gov/research-topics/addiction-science/words-matter-preferred-language-talking-about-addiction
• https://nida.nih.gov/nidamed-medical-health-professionals/health-professions-education/words-matter-terms-to-use-avoid-when-talking-about-addiction

I think the DSM thing is overcooked. While "alcohol abuse" may be an outdated term that they replaced with "alcohol use disorder", the previous term didn't enter the lexicon because DSM thought it up: it is a common form of English when you compare with drug abuse, substance abuse. It is ironic that both the above links come from the "National Institute on Drug Abuse". I think the restriction "Avoid the term alcohol abuse except when the DSM-IV diagnostic label is clearly intended by the source" is impractical as sources do not routinely cite the authority for their terminology. You are left guessing if the source is academic and US-centric enough that they likely were referring to a specific diagnosis. Perhaps some research studies do that, though whether this survives to the secondary source? The problem with "alcohol use disorder" is that it raises alarm bells because it really does sound like a DSM diagnosis and not a casual description.

The section "The term alcohol abuse is also used, especially in non-medical sources, to indicate disapproval of ..." section is overlong. Firstly, we don't know if the source is using judgemental language deliberately or accidentally and thoughtlessly. And secondly, it doesn't explain why it is a problem for Wikipedia's voice to do likewise.

I'd take a different approach to both drug and alcohol abuse bullets. Something more like

Wikipedia's voice should be neutral, non-judgmental and avoid stigmatising language. Many authorities have already adopted this approach, such as the DSM replacing "alcohol abuse" with "alcohol use disorder" in 2013. While our sources may sometimes use biased, judgemental and stigmatising language, this does not compel us to repeat their word choices. Reducing a person down to just a single negative word is stigmatising and judgemental (addict, user, junkie, alcoholic, drunk, dirty, clean). Describing an activity in a way that suggests the person is consciously choosing a harmful path is judgemental and not neutral (drug habit, alcohol abuse).

In non-medical contexts, there are often alternatives that avoid problematic terms. For example, instead of "He abused alcohol as a teenager" we can write "He struggled with alcohol as a teenager". For medical contexts, try to use modern terminology if the meaning is retained. If in doubt ask.

-- Colin°^Talk 17:26, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I particularly like your idea of replacing "negative connotations" with the idea of preferring non-judgmental language.

What I like about such as being drunk, drinking more than the average person, high-risk drinking, any alcohol consumed during pregnancy, drinking before driving, underage drinking, binge drinking, heavy alcohol use, etc. is that it provides editors with ready-made alternatives. I think we all agree that we don't want editors to go through BLPs or articles about social problems and blindly substitute the same word where (e.g.) alcohol abuse currently stands. However, we probably do want them to go through those articles and say "Ah, this one's about underage drinking, this one's about drunk driving, that one's about drinking during pregnancy..." WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:00, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

Would anybody mind if we just switched the existing "The term drug abuse is vague and carries negative connotations" to say "The term drug abuse is vague and is judgmental" instead? I think this is much more relevant for editors, because it signals why it's bad specifically for an encyclopedia, instead of why it might be bad for society in general. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:02, 2 November 2022 (UTC)

I have no problem with that step. What is "vague" about it and why is that always bad? Imprecision isn't necessarily a bad thing. If the alternative "xyz disorder" requires an official diagnosis and meeting at least 3 out of 8 possible criteria, then that precision can make it impossible to use. It could be a person just ticked a box "Have you ever had problems with alcohol". I'm not saying that's a reason to keep the judgemental terminology, but it could well be that our replacement is equally vague.

In terms of BLP (or any bio), we need to remember that the first sentence of this guide is "This is the style guide for editing medical articles". If people touching on medical issues elsewhere on Wikipedia find the advice here useful, then great. But we aren't I believe claiming there is a consensus that all those articles have to follow the advice here. Overreaching could lead to a backlash, as we saw with MEDRS. Most medical articles are about general cases and population groups rather than specific named people, and about ongoing issues rather than historical events. -- Colin°^Talk 10:47, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

I've made that little change.

I suspect that the "vague" language was added because Wikipedia editors tend to dislike imprecision in general. When it's possible, we usually prefer being more specific and more concrete. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:54, 3 November 2022 (UTC)

How does this look, in terms of merging Colin's paragraphs with the original?

When describing alcohol consumption, as with other topics, Wikipedia articles should use neutral, non-judgmental, non-stigmatizing language. Many authorities have already adopted this approach, such as the DSM replacing alcohol abuse with alcohol use disorder in 2013. While our sources may sometimes use biased, judgmental and stigmatizing language, this does not compel us to repeat their word choices. Reducing a person down to a negative label is stigmatising and judgemental (addict, user, junkie, alcoholic, drunk, dirty, clean). Describing an activity in a way that suggests the person is consciously choosing a harmful path is judgemental and not neutral (drug habit, alcohol abuse).

In a medical context, prefer the current DSM-V term, alcohol use disorder, which encompasses both the DSM-IV's alcohol abuse and the DSM-IV's alcohol dependence.[3] In non-medical contexts, seek alternatives that avoid problematic terms, overmedicalization, and vagueness. For example, instead of "He abused alcohol as a teenager", write "He struggled with alcohol as a teenager". Alternatives to terms like alcohol abuse include alcohol intoxication, drinking more than the average person, high-risk drinking, alcohol consumption during pregnancy, drinking before driving, underage drinking, binge drinking, heavy alcohol consumption, etc.

I've just rearranged WP:MEDLANG to sort the hodgepodge into more technical points (e.g., drug approval vs drug indications) and more neutrality-related points (e.g., people-first language). This would belong in the second part. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Alternatively, we could re-write the neutrality-related bits from scratch (See #Tone below.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:47, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

What I wanted to do was handle both the drug and the alcohol issues as I don't see why we would offer this advice for just one of them. And also to offer a more general explanation for how we handle word choices wrt describing people. So the "neutral, non-judgmental, non-stigmatizing language" applies also to how we deal with unwanted pregnancy or sexually transmitted diseases or epilepsy or learning difficulties, etc, etc. The "reducing someone down to a single negative word" applies also to "epileptic" but countless other highly offensive terms. -- Colin°^Talk 11:23, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

References

"Omit information about suicide notes"

Hm? If such a note existed and was covered by reliable sources, surely it should be at least briefly discussed, even if we need not assume it was perfectly accurate as to the motivations of the dead person. CharredShorthand (talk) 14:50, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

I'm inclined to agree. At the very least it seems this guidance is not currently being followed. As a couple of arbitrary examples, see Clara Blandick and Kurt Cobain (Cobain's suicide note is reproduced in full!). Does anyone recall why this guidance was added? The context makes me think it's to recommend against speculation and over-interpreting a single (if final) note. But maybe the rest of the text provides that guidance just fine without an explicit prohibition on mentioning suicide notes? Ajpolino (talk) 15:27, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

This is one of multiple questionable additions under the suicide section of MEDMOS. If it's of encyclopedic value, it should be added. Natureium (talk) 23:42, 8 January 2023 (UTC)

Editors often do not often display good "just because you can doesn't mean you should" judgement. This is particularly true of news events making their way into Wikipedia out of all balance with the subject as a whole encyclopaedic article. Generally a good encyclopaedic biographical article will end up more like an obituary than a sequence of news reports throughout their life and ending with the final report, because it considers the person's life and influence as a whole. Organisations like Samaritans discourage the reporting of suicide notes as it can romanticise suicide and lead readers to identify with the deceased and their motive. It can also be distressing for the relatives and friends. Yes I know you are thinking WP:NOTCENSORED thoughts right now but that is countered by WP:GRATUITOUS and WP:NOTGOSSIP which is very much a "just because you find it all gruesomely fascinating while eating your cornflakes this morning doesn't mean it is actually encyclopaedic". That their death is notable doesn't mean everything about their death is relevant to an encyclopaedic article. All guidelines are just guidelines and I think this is a reasonable default to take and for editors to argue there is a strong encyclopaedic reason to include these details. That could well be argued about Cobain but the paragraph about Blandick's death seems very much "someone found this information on Google books and inserted it with minor rephrasing on Wikipedia" for no good reason at all than morbid curiosity. I mean, she was 85. -- Colin°^Talk 15:57, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I would support something less absolute though still firm, perhaps vaguely like "Avoid undue coverage, gossip, and speculation about suicide notes. Prefer to omit information about them unless it has significant encyclopedic value." (Not at all attached to this wording, just the rough sentiment.)

I realise that at the meta-level we have IAR and whatnot, but that does not mean guidelines should be written too strictly with the expectation that they will be regularly disregarded under definable circumstances. CharredShorthand (talk) 16:18, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

What makes you think they are regularly disregarded? For example, if today's reliable newspaper sources follow the guidelines by Samaritans and similar (which many do) there won't be the details of such notes to cover. I clicked on all 55 articles in Category:2022 suicides and only Vitaliano Trevisan gave some details of a note, sourced to what looks to be local paper. -- Colin°^Talk 17:02, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

If there are no reliable sources describing the note, then a MOS guideline on the matter is moot - it can't be included regardless.

Even so, I said "regularly"; I suppose I should have used less strong phrasing myself. My point is if RSes have significant coverage of a suicide note - as with eg. Suicide of Kurt Cobain - then it probably merits some mention, so in such cases we should routinely expect the guideline to be disregarded. Hence, it might be better for the guideline to be open to such a possibility rather than being phrased in absolutes. CharredShorthand (talk) 17:52, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

Yes but my point is that modern suicides do not include details of any note. That standards were lower in newspapers in the past isn't necessarily a reason why we have to behave like its 1962.

I wouldn't count Cobain as routine and you haven't given any evidence that (a) our biographical articles often include details of a suicide note or (b) that they are often better for for doing so. The Trevisan article I found linked to a newspaper article that was basically all gossip and speculation. It's trash.

For guideline exceptions, at level one, we have at the top of every guideline "though it is best treated with common sense, and occasional exceptions may apply". You've mentioned the most notable suicide in modern pop culture. I'd count that as an occasional exception. The next level of "explaining the obvious of what a guideline means" would be to cavate everything "generally" or "typically", which will get tedious. And the next level again is what you proposed where we have to caveat everything with "unless it has significant encyclopedic value". I don't think we should write guidelines in such a hand-holding way that assumes our editors are unable to function unless everything exception is spelled out.

So I think that to reduce "omit" to "generally omit" we'd really need some better evidence that quite often the project is improved by not omitting this detail. -- Colin°^Talk 18:15, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I'd support that wording @CharredShorthand. I agree the problem isn't mention of notes per se, it's coverage that's undue and gossip-y. Colin, the fact that few of our articles on people who died by suicide in 2022 mention a note hardly seems relevant. Even if your suggestion is correct and news organizations will not be covering suicide notes going forward, we still write and maintain many many biographies of folks who died before 2022.

As a broader point that may be more trouble than it's worth, I think material like this really belongs at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Biography. This page is mostly read/watched by folks who write medical content. Suicide is nearly unique to biographies, which draw a much broader editing base. For what it's worth, MEDMOS begins This is the style guide for editing medical articles, a label you'd be stretching to apply to most biographies MOS:SUICIDE applies to. Ajpolino (talk) 18:53, 9 January 2023 (UTC)

I think MOS:SUICIDE is correct. I'm not sure that the NFCC rationale for the image in Kurt Cobain#Death would hold up under scrutiny; the section mentions its existence and some of its contents, but it doesn't analyze it or explain why its visual appearance is important to understanding Cobain. For that article, it's a relevant image but not a necessary one (e.g., in the way that it would be difficult to understand a painting if you had no idea what the painting looked like).

I would also not recommend the text in that section as a model of encyclopedic writing. It sounds like a magazine or a fansite. For example:

• Does an encyclopedic summary need to mention that he overdosed one day, after drinking "champagne"? (Do we even know that it was champagne? Is there something special or relevant about the type of alcohol? Maybe it's enough to say "overdosed", or "overdosed on alcohol and a drug".)
• Does an encyclopedic summary need to mention that he went outside to smoke a cigarette?
• Does an encyclopedic summary need to mention that he took a taxi to the airport?
• Does an encyclopedic summary need to name the person who discovered his death? See Wikipedia:Biographies of living persons#Presumption in favor of privacy

I suggest also contrasting this with some other high-profile deaths. The sections on John F. Kennedy#Assassination and funeral are half as long as Cobain's. Elizabeth II#Death is a third the length. Robin Williams is a third the length. Anthony Bourdain#Death is a mere 117 words. There's a whole article at Suicide of Kurt Cobain if someone really feels an urge to catalog every single person who might have seen him during the week before his death. These sorts of trivial detail don't need to be in the main article. They probably don't need to be in Wikipedia at all. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:20, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

The Wikipedia community generally does not display much understanding of "Just because you can, doesn't mean you should". An encyclopaedic article probably shouldn't go into this level of detail, for all sorts of reasons, but the information is on the internet and some eejit gave a speech about the sum of all human knowledge and here we are. Nobody gets that we're supposed to summarise the encyclopaedic bits of that. -- Colin°^Talk 09:32, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

I don't see anything wrong with including the detail provided that reliable sources report it. It seems totally harmless to me. For instance, why is it wrong to say champagne instead of the less informative alcohol? How does the project gain by getting rid of the detail? How do readers gain? Are we protecting them from accidentally learning something we think they don't absolutely need to know? Some people enjoy reading Wikipedia to pick up little facts like that in a variety of areas. Small bits of information connect to other things and give us a deeper understanding.

I understand the BLPPRIVACY argument, but the other ones just don't make sense. Do we need to do anything? The question should not be "is it at all possible for us to avoid mentioning this" - we are not in the business of saying as little as we can. CharredShorthand.talk; 13:50, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

The point I suppose is that "little facts" and "small bits of information" (aka trivia) are not what Wikipedia should be dealing in; as an encyclopedia it should be a serious repository of summarized accepted knowledge (the layer above facts and information), not tittle-tattle. Bon courage (talk) 14:14, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

The truth is all knowledge is made of small component bits of information. The idea that it's more serious or less "tittle-tattle" to refuse to mention champagne in favor of providing less detail seems to have little grounding in any useful aim - as long as it's clearly established in a reliable source that it was champagne, and as long as mentioning the information does not entail a long detour that takes away from the article's focus (which here it would not, compared to saying merely that it was "alcohol" instead).

Similarly, mentioning the taxi is one short sentence which makes the sequence of events and spatial arrangement of the various locations clearer to the reader - which aids in overall comprehension. CharredShorthand.talk; 14:52, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Knowledge is a layer on top of facts (analysis, synthesis, etc.) If there is some decent commentary on the alcohol aspect then that could be interesting, but otherwise WP:NOTEVERYTHING applies. Wikipedia is not a miscellany of factoids. Bon courage (talk) 15:37, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

Some examples bring their own unique issues that distract the point. This one is a musician more famous for his death than he would have been had he just grown old. That people are obsessed with it, and that some of those people are on Wikipedia, means we get an article overloaded with detail to an unjustified excess. It is boring to read, frankly, as we've got Kurt Cobain (extended edition) whether you wanted it or not.

Aside from that anomalous example, sudden death causes newspaper reports which are easy low-hanging-fruit sources for information over-focused on that one event, which in the grand scheme of someone's life, may not be that important. -- Colin°^Talk 15:41, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

@CharredShorthand, the point isn't that the reader is hurt by the detail "champagne". The point is that a collection of tiny details is not an encyclopedic summary. I'm not trying to protect the reader. I'm trying to write an encyclopedia article. Encyclopedia articles are not collections of trivia.

For example: Do you need to know that he took a taxi to the airport? Does it matter that it was a taxi instead of a bus or a rented car? Does it matter that he flew from LAX instead of from Long Beach or Burbank? Why say "He took a taxi to Los Angeles Airport and flew back to Seattle" instead of just "He then flew home to Seattle"? Encyclopedia articles get straight to the main points. Fansites and magazine articles are the place for trivial details. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:52, 16 February 2023 (UTC)

If this guidance hasn't been discussed recently: "Best Practices and Recommendations for Reporting on Suicide" Kolya Butternut (talk) 23:43, 15 February 2023 (UTC)

Proscribed language for describing suicide

"There are many other appropriate, common, and encyclopedic ways to describe a suicide" sounds like reasonable and sensible guidance for editors, just as is avoiding euphemisms is for this—and most other topics. However, one editor, User:Ideasmete, seems to have decided that the examples following this guidance are the only acceptable descriptions, and is excising other phrases referring to suicide. In at least four separate Roman history articles, he or she has replaced the phrase "took his own life" with "killed himself", describing the former as a "euphemism", using various bots—and manually reverted all attempts to restore the previous language, despite claiming, on his talk page, that he has "no opinion on this" and that I needed to take it up on the bot's talk page, which I did—and the bot was then restructured to remove the phrase from the list of text to replace, but this morning more edits of the same kind attributed to Ideasmete using the JWB bot are appearing.

Now, "taking one's life" is idiomatic in English, but it is clearly not a euphemism. Our article on the subject explains that:

a euphemism is an innocuous word or expression used in place of one that is deemed offensive or suggests something unpleasant. Some euphemisms are intended to amuse, while others use bland, inoffensive terms for concepts that the user wishes to downplay. Euphemisms may be used to mask profanity or refer to topics some consider taboo such as disability, sex, excretion, or death in a polite way."

The phrase in question does nothing to avoid or disguise what is occurring using metaphorical language or circumlocution. It is clear, straightforward, and of venerable use in scholarly literature—including encyclopedias. There is nothing unencyclopedic about it. In contrast, several of the examples, including "died by suicide", are somewhat euphemistic, since they are used in order to avoid the perceived "stigma" of the word commit—but this doesn't seem to preclude their use.

So the question is, is the list of phrases mentioned intended to exclude all other expressions describing suicide—a comprehensive list of the only allowed language, as Ideasmete advocates on the bot's talk page (after having rebuffed my attempt to discuss it on his own talk page, claiming that he had no opinion about the matter)? I realize that unlike this page, WP:BRD is an essay, and not a policy or guideline, and so I was mistaken in asserting that the burden rests with the editor who wants to make a controversial change—that is, the editor whose change has been reverted—to establish a consensus for making it before re-reverting. However, by the same token it seems inappropriate for him to forbid me to revert his changes unless I first establish consensus for doing so, as he has done in multiple edit summaries.

Ideasmete thinks that his language is clearer and more straightforward, and therefore better. I don't think that there's anything unclear or confusing about "took his own life" or similar phrases. When something can be said in many different ways, is the one that some editor decides is "the best" the only one allowed? Are Wikipedia's guidelines for describing suicide meant to maintain an encyclopedic tone, or to impose linguistic orthodoxy? I assume the former—and apologize if this comes across like a screed, rather than a question—but is "took his own life" really so confusing and ridiculous that it must be replaced by "killed himself" wherever and whenever it occurs? P Aculeius (talk) 14:16, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

A bit of background, Smasongarrison added this to the list of typos that AWB fixes automatically in June 2022. The whole subsection of "euphemisms" that AWB corrects are suicide-related and added by Smasongarrison in that edit. Best I can tell this was a bold addition, obviously done with the best of intentions. P Aculeis raised the issue at the AWB/Typos talk page, and was told to take it up here. The AWB suicide rules are suspended in the meantime.

I don't have a strong opinion on the merits of "taking one's own life" as a phrase for suicide. But I do think the AWB euphemism section is inappropriate and goes well beyond the guidance at MOS:SUICIDE. "X took his own life" is hardly a common misspelling and grammatical error, which is what AWB/typos is meant to target. Rather it's an editorial choice that the community has not taken a firm position on (the locus of past disputes – and I suspect future disputes – centers on the use of the word "committed" which could be taken to imply a criminal act). In my years here I've seen several editors decide to right great linguistical wrongs and fly through the encyclopedia replacing a "wrong" wording with a "right" one. Every time it generates unhelpful conflict. Every time it ends poorly. My suggestion would be to refrain from this kind of editing – manually or with AWB. If you (Smasongarrison or others) wish to change language used, take it up through normal processes on individual talk pages. If you think a larger swap is merited, propose that exact swap on a widely viewed page for folks to comment on and approve. In the meantime, I'd support reverting all AWB swaps of this nature since June 2022, though certainly I have no idea how we'd find them. Ajpolino (talk) 15:38, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the tag. So the suicide euphemism tags were not based entirely on the med specific rule, but on the tone tag/euphemism. However, I don't think reverting all of the awb changes is necessary because well, as you noted we quickly suspended the rule because it was an overzealous application on my part to the awb typo team. Mason (talk) 15:57, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

Clarification: I was thinking of an earlier overzealous application, related to this rule (not the current disabling). Regardless, I think that a mass reversion isn't a good use of time. Mason (talk) 03:31, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for the careful and thoughtful reply. And again, sorry if I came across overly-aggrieved. I'm not angry at the editors trying to make bots that relieve people's workload. I just think that I write reasonably well and clearly, and I especially dislike being told "you can't use this perfectly clear and ordinary word or phrase", much less that I'm forbidden to restore the original wording unless I obtain permission from a consensus of editors on this page, which is where I found myself this morning, after the JWB bot was substituted for the AWB bot on the same principle... P Aculeius (talk) 17:33, 21 February 2023 (UTC)

It seems that this is based primarily upon a question of fact, namely: Is "took his own life" a euphemism? If it is, then we would like to avoid it; if it isn't, then we would like to stop the JWB/AWB replacement. Fair?

The first entry at https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+his+own+life says that it is a euphemism. I think that is some evidence that it is a euphemism. I found the entry at https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/take+one's+life to be more interesting. Consider two of their examples: Do you feel any remorse for taking their lives all those years ago? and It's the executioner's job to take people's lives. Do those feel like euphemisms? Would you be happy to see that language in an encyclopedia article? If not, why not? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:27, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

I suppose I'll just chime in to say that regardless of whether it's a euphemism, I don't think it's appropriate for AWB to be automatically typo-replacing it. I'd only support using the AWB typos list for things that are unambiguously wrong, and have an unambiguous replacement (e.g. typos). Looking at the typos list, I suspect my position on this is the norm – though certainly this could be discussed. Even for obvious euphemisms, I'd be more comfortable seeing an explicit discussion take place on whether a global replacement is desirable, followed by a bot run if approved. So I completely agree that further clarification of our suicide-related guidance would be helpful. But at least for me this does not turn primarily on whether to "take one's life" is a euphemism. Ajpolino (talk) 05:08, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, this usage is a basic definition of the word "take", specifically sense 58b, taking a life, in use since at least the fifteenth century. The specific phrase "took his own life", which is the one repeatedly replaced with "killed himself" by Ideasmete, appears in formal and scholarly contexts, as well as everyday English; a Google ngram for the phrase revealed considerable use in legal briefs and the opinions of various courts. The fact that "The Free Dictionary by FARLEX" labels it a euphemism rather than merely idiomatic doesn't really clarify anything: the phrase does nothing to conceal what occurred, or substitute an innocuous expression for a more forceful one; it is not metaphorical and nobody is misled by it; it is not a recent coinage, nor is there any particular objection to its use—something that sets it apart from both "committed suicide" and "died by suicide" (which is certainly a euphemism for the former, but nonetheless expressly allowed). Perhaps also worth considering, the phrase occurred in historical contexts, where "committed suicide" feels jarringly modern, and "died by suicide" even more so. It occurs in the sources cited and the scholarly literature on the subject. There really is no good reason to ban such a common, straightforward, and unambiguous phrase. P Aculeius (talk) 13:31, 22 February 2023 (UTC)

In the context of suicide, I find the phrase hard to evaluate. In other contexts, such as It's the executioner's job to take people's lives, I find myself feeling like it might be a euphemism. Why would we talk about "taking people's lives" instead of saying that he kills people? Killing people is what an executioner does, in plain language. "Taking lives" sounds like a way to make it sound more palatable.

It can be sometimes be difficult to decide when something is a euphemism, as that status changes over time. Consider Toilet#Etymology: it was a euphemism, and no longer is. However, as far as I can tell, "died by suicide" and "died of suicide" aren't euphemisms. They sometimes represent a viewpoint that sees suicide as a life-threatening medical condition (rather than an action).

In looking for information about this, I found https://www.health.govt.nz/system/files/documents/publications/hp7766_-_suicide_reporting_guidelines_media_guidelines_for_reporting_on_suicide.pdf which is the media code in New Zealand. It apparently has criminal laws restricting publication of information about (individual) suicide deaths. Even family members aren't allowed to share information. Until a couple of years ago, it was illegal to even say that a death was being investigated as a suspected suicide. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:39, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

I tried searching for the phrase and also turned up thefreedictionary.com but little else dictionary-wise. So instead I searched for "suicide" with onelook.com.

• Dictionary.com "the intentional taking of one's own life" / "a person who intentionally takes their own life."
• Merriam-Webster "the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally"
• Collins "a person who intentionally takes his or her own life" (Collins give many definition options and this is just one)

I find it odd that these major dictionaries would use a euphemism in order to define the actual word "suicide". Perhaps then, they aren't. It seems more likely that the use these words as they accurately define what a suicide is. This certainly doesn't reach the level of euphemism that we could agree is certainly non-encyclopaedic, because if it is good enough for these three reference works... -- Colin°^Talk 10:34, 23 February 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps it isn't. I found only the one dictionary that labeled it that way. It is some evidence; it may not be convincing evidence.

I find myself leaning towards the recommedation by @Ajpolino: even if you were irrevocably opposed to that phrase, mindless, bot-like replacement is probably not the best approach. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:41, 26 February 2023 (UTC)

Request: add "took his own life" to list of alternative formulations for "committed suicide"

As established in the discussion above, "taking one's own life" seems to be the, or at least a dictionary definition of suicide, and so ought to be listed among the recommended alternatives for those who wish to avoid the phrase "commit(ted) suicide". I understand that the list is not intended to be comprehensive, but there is an unfortunate tendency among editors to treat it as such, for which reason I think that something as ubiquitous and literal as this dictionary definition ought to be specifically listed to avoid such confusion. Since I was the editor who started the above discussion, I hesitate to modify the list in accordance with my own interpretation. P Aculeius (talk) 14:37, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

Given that your report at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard/Incidents#Disruptive editing: mass replacement of "committed suicide" is still being discussed (87 comments so far), now is probably not the time for you to propose any changes to MOS:SUICIDE at all. Or maybe even this year. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:01, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

So, I'm being told to keep out of here for the rest of the year because you don't welcome my opinion regarding whether replacing "committed suicide" in 250 articles is disruptive editing. I guess we know who owns this page. P Aculeius (talk) 03:27, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

On the recommendation of another editor, I'm going to assume that the preceding remarks were made without any threatening intent, and that I have misconstrued them. But I will state that my suggestion here should have nothing to do with the discussion at ANI, which is about an editor replacing instances of "committed suicide", not about what alternatives should be expressly listed in the guideline. And I think that adding it, and not regarding it as a euphemism, is supported by the fact that it is the first definition provided not just by the dictionaries mentioned above, but also by the Oxford English Dictionary and Webster's Third New International Dictionary, among several others that I consulted earlier tonight. P Aculeius (talk) 05:30, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

There's no threat here. When you have a prominent discussion underway at the WP:DRAMABOARD over a particular sentence in a guideline, and the folks aren't lining up to vehemently agree with you, then you're not likely to be successful at getting that sentence changed any time soon. I suppose if you pushed, someone would eventually whinge about Wikipedia:Gaming the system, but the bigger problem is that the drama will make people less likely to respond to your proposal on its merits. Their irritation will cloud some editors' reactions, and the result will be a lower chance of your proposal being accepted. I'm not sure that this change needs to be made, but I am sure that your ANI discussion reduced its chances of happening in the coming weeks and months. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:46, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I think WAID's suggestion was likely wise, and giving the level of hostility at ANI, maybe a reasonable discussion at this point in time is unlikely. But let's try and put the ANI dispute to the side and concentrate on the words. I'll repost the dictionary list that was posted at ANI by P Aculeius and add some I found in the discussion above:

• Oxford English Dictionary: Suicide: the or an act of taking one's own life...
• Webster's Third New International Dictionary: suicide: 1 a. the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally...
• Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary: suicide: 1a. the act or an instance of taking one's own life voluntarily and intentionally...
• The American College Dictionary: suicide: 1. the intentional taking of one's own life.
• Funk & Wagnalls Standard College Dictionary: suicide: 1. The intentional taking of one's own life.
• The New Grolier Webster International Dictionary: suicide, One who intentionally takes his own life; the intentional taking of one's own life...
• The Random House Dictionary of the English Language, College Edition: suicide: 1. the intentional taking of one's own life.
• Black's Law Dictionary: suicide: 1. The act of taking one's own life.
• American Heritage Dictionary and Webster's New World Dictionary used different language.
• Collins "a person who intentionally takes his or her own life" (Collins give many definition options and this is just one)
• Dictionary.com "the intentional taking of one's own life" / "a person who intentionally takes their own life."

Wrt tone and word choices, a dictionary is likely to be similar to an encyclopaedia, probably more terse due to the historical paper-based publication format. At the ANI discussion several editors volunteered their extreme distaste for "died by suicide", which is currently in the list of alternatives, along with the similar "died as a result of suicide" and "died from suicide". One editor, EEng, mockingly noting the similarity with the parody title "murder by death". That these three phrases involve a degree of redundancy makes them weak but English isn't perfect and redundant phrases are still common (e.g., "work colleague").

I wasn't mocking anything, merely adding a humorous touch. My point was serious. EEng 12:42, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

It's a truly poor analogy, with the appropriate comparison being to 'death by murder', which is neither euphemistic or redundant. CFCF (talk) 20:52, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

This comment, originally by InedibleHulk in 2014, and quoted again in 2019, stuck with me, and might make the point better than I can: "Died by suicide" sounds awkwardly passive to me. Suicide is killing yourself, not being killed by yourself. That said, while I'm definitely not a fan of the phrase, I think that it's too common, and too widely-recommended, to discourage by guideline. But I appreciate the humour, EEng! I can always use a laugh, which is probably why InedibleHulk's quote impressed me. P Aculeius (talk) 01:38, 25 May 2023 (UTC)

If this list is just a list of "appropriate, common, and encyclopedic ways to describe a suicide" then at the very least we should include the dictionary definition phrasing of "took their (or his or her) own life". Are there any reliable sources commenting on the awkward redundancy in "death by suicide" or is it just something that annoys some Wikipedians :-) Should the guideline note that some editors find that phrasing awkward and some are not so keen on "took their life"? Should we highlight "killed himself" as the least offensive/awkward/problematic option, or do some think that is too blunt? Should we indeed mention the pro/con of each of the choices? -- Colin°^Talk 09:22, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I have to attend a funeral for most of the day, so don't have adequate time for this, but throwing out an idea that Colin, WhatamIdoing and EEng might be able to work with (maybe considering the long history of contention in the suicide area, you can even get Tony1 involved). See the writing exercises at User:Tony1. What if you completely ditch the list of alternative word choices construct, and instead, found examples of how to circumvent the whole word choice matter (ala Robin Williams contrasted with dementia with Lewy bodies and Lewy body dementias, where we avoided any of these choices), and instead presented -- in the format Tony1 used -- ideas for how to more optimally recast sentences to avoid the contentious phrases ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:11, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I won't be able to take the lead on this, but I'll be happy to participate if someone else gets the ball rolling. EEng 14:49, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

At the Robin Williams talk page several editors proposed variants where Wikipedia simply said Williams died on such and such a date and then referred to it as a "suicide" in a later sentence when mentioning the diagnosis of dementia with Lewy bodies. In the disease article, we simply say "his suicide". The biographical article ended up with "died by suicide" because that was what was in the sources, and one editor insisted we could not use our own words.

Perhaps the problem is that biographies tend towards a style where we note someone died on such and such a date, and editors want to give the "of what" at the very same time. But they don't have to. So we could make a note that one alternative is noting someone's death (with dates and location perhaps) and the cause of death separately. Perhaps with an example such as "Smith died on August 11, 2014, age 63. His suicide was ..". Or the shortest possible solution: "Smith's suicide, age 63, ...."

I'm a little reluctant to throw away possible alternatives and simply leave it to editors to go do a good faith writing exercise together in generating excellent prose, because whenever this conflict arises it seems editors are not minded at all to collaborate in good faith. One may insist we can only use terminology found in the sources and another may refuse to accept any change whatsoever. Both are inclined to setup a strawman option of the worse possible phrasing alternative. When there are an abundance of viable alternatives, one does have to wonder why it is so hard. So really, I think we should demonstrate there are an abundance of viable alternatives. -- Colin°^Talk 14:59, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

How about a blended approach, demonstrating that we aren't forced to choose one of the alternates, with samples? If one moves away from "died because of", the path becomes clearer. That is, Williams really died because of the effects of Lewy bodies, that led to his suicide, and thinking that way gets the focus off of "died by suicide" word choices. We can demonstrate alternate constructs in the format Tony1 used, to get writers to engage brains. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:34, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

At the risk of being unpersuasive due to the ANI discussion—I'm really quite agreeable when I'm not on the defensive—I think this would work, if we can think of a way to guide people toward constructing their own alternatives, in addition to a list of examples (such as the one there is now). Something along the lines of "this list does not include all acceptable wordings, nor could it" or "feel free to use your own words, but please be patient when other editors attempt to improve upon them". But definitely keep the list—not everyone wants to be creative when it comes to something that's difficult to word. P Aculeius (talk) 19:37, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

+1 — OwenBlacker (he/him; Talk; please {{ping}} me in replies) 20:42, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

I think that information on constructing alternatives might need to be split into a separate page. There are simple cases that could be explained in more detail than we (probably) want to spend space on here ("If you want committed suicide and they want died by suicide, the simple compromise is killed himself"). However, I think the real value in a separate page would be in writing advice for more complicated cases (how to describe suicides as a result of psychosis, suicides that were documented in unusual detail, medical aid in dying, etc). WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:57, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I am reminded of the introductory advisory paragraphs in the "Content sections" of this guideline, and Sandy will be all too aware that they got forcefully ignored. Is "remember to play nicely with the other children" advice worth writing?. Perhaps that's really the job of our editing behaviour guidelines rather than a content guideline like this. Why should the section on the language around suicide and self-harm need to remind editors to behave themselves and try to get along? *sigh*. We already say "Language choices sometimes carry connotations that are not obvious to every editor. A term or phrase that sounds normal to you might sound stigmatising, offensive, or biased to someone else. Here are some common tips, but if someone suggests a change, try to learn about their viewpoint and see if a better approach can be found." I'm conscious that the more we write, the less likely someone is to read it all and the more text there is for someone to wikilawyer or complain about.

I still think that while good writers can come up with any number of excellent ways to talk about a person's suicide, if other editors aren't motivated or gifted enough to do that, we need a simple way to say you are the one making too much fuss over something that should be simple, let's pick one of these, or something similar, and move on. -- Colin°^Talk 06:43, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps, but when a specific issue is particularly contentious, it may help to be able to point to language in the relevant guideline encouraging patience and creativity, within reason. And few topics seem to evoke stronger feelings than this one. Both times I've gotten involved with the topic are because some editors were convinced that what other editors had written was unacceptable. Not merely that it could have been worded better, but that specific, common phrases should never be allowed. If there's a way to improve editor interactions through relatively simple changes to the wording of the guideline, or by approving small additions to it, it's probably a good idea to do so. P Aculeius (talk) 14:31, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

And few topics seem to evoke stronger feelings than this one. Maybe not surprisingly, many topics evoke feelings as strong as this one, and many of them involve MOS matters. To wit, the "she/it" pronoun debate over ships, the date delinking arbcase, and the infobox arbcase. So probably Colin is wise in suggesting we move on for now, and maybe revisit it at some remove from the ANI. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:03, 26 May 2023 (UTC)

I see a contrast between these two bits above:

• some editors were convinced that what other editors had written was unacceptable.
• A term or phrase that sounds normal to you might sound stigmatising, offensive, or biased to someone else.

When an editor changes something because it sounds stigmatising, offensive, or biased to them, I would like us to respond to that with more curiosity (or some well-timed WP:Apathy) than to start wars to keep the old wording just because it sounds normal to me. If someone says it's stigmatising, offensive, or biased to them, and they're not substituting something silly, then why should we waste time and energy fighting to preserve the old wording? WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 28 May 2023 (UTC)

I don't think anybody here was suggesting that the wording "committed suicide" is always the best, needs to be preserved wherever it occurs, or that nobody is offended by it merely because other people aren't. This conversation isn't a rehash of what happened over at ANI; it was a suggestion to include another alternative to "committed suicide", as an example of language that people might employ without fear of it being automatically changed or reverted. My goal is to avoid editors becoming "language police", but as long as nobody's advocating that, we ought to be able to find common ground, and work on approaches that seem reasonable to everyone. P Aculeius (talk) 04:37, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Yes but what WAID is picking at is that you see an edit change from X to Y (in the ANI case, many many times) and conclude that the old form is regarded as "unacceptable". Maybe it isn't as extreme as that. Just "not good". The attributes "stigmatising, offensive, or biased" are negative and if there are alternatives without those negatives, changing it seems a win.

Consider "while" vs "whilst". I can read "whilst" and it causes me no issues whatsoever. I might even use it sometimes myself. But according to our article, Americans in particular find it "pretentious or archaic". Some Brits do as well. I learned about this attitude towards "whilst", whilst [:-)] editing on Wikipedia so imagine for a moment I didn't know this. I write an excellent article that I'm proud of and then someone comes along and replaces my "whilst" with "while" and an edit summary "replacing pretentious archaic language". I might be offended that the other editor thought I was being "pretentious" and that my vocabulary was "archaic" in much the same way as some editors might be offended at being told their use of "committed suicide" was offensive, stimatising and archaic. Both of us might well think there was absolutely nothing wrong with the previous word, which countless high quality publications use, and gear up for a revert battle and MOS fight.

But if both of us had the curiosity that WAID suggests, we might learn something about other people's feelings and thoughts and beliefs. I can't get my head around why Americans think "whilst" is pretentious and archaic, particularly when they themselves haven't moved on from using the archaic "gotten". But I have to accept such people exist in large numbers, and respect their view as a valid one. I would be daft to think I could fix what Americans think about this word by telling them loudly and clearly that they are not just wrong but very stupid, just as editors at MOS are daft to think they can lecture the Internet that "committed" doesn't have criminal connotations.

In both cases, accepting the word change is extraordinarily the better thing to do, and we move on in our lives knowing a tiny bit more about how varied and weird humans are. -- Colin°^Talk 15:24, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

This is such a brilliant analogy, Colin (analogies are your superpower). Whilst, amongst and the like are fingernails on a chalkboard to me! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:38, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

My personal peeves are amidst and against. EEng 18:06, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Whomst'd've predicted that one? I enjoy verbal variety—in moderation—betwixt pages of store-boughten vocabulary! P Aculeius (talk) 22:35, 29 May 2023 (UTC)

Statement about reading level grade in section "Technical terminology"

@Colin: I had removed the sentence ”Adults know more words and understand more concepts than a child who scores the same reading level grade” from the section “Technical terminology”. (With edit summary: “removing sentence that seems like random trivia and has nothing to do with the page or paragraph”) You then changed it to read "Writing for a particular reading level grade may help avoid unnecessary and discouraging complexity. But don't assume the reader is a child: adults know more words and understand more concepts than a child who scores the same reading level grade.” (With edit summary: “restore comment that was removed, and try to explain why this is relevant. we had some medical articles using baby words and invented prrh”)

I know exactly what you are talking about with many medical articles containing “baby language” and I share the same concern. Just take a look at the first section in my user page titled "Concerns about Medical articles" which is all about my thoughts regarding this precise problem.

I’m sure most readers of these medical articles are adults, but there is no age limit to access Wikipedia and certainly some readers actually are children. Saying “don’t assume your audience is a child” is really no different than saying “don’t assume your audience is an adult,” since the reader could be either an adult or a child. And besides, there are certainly very intelligent children and unintelligent adults out there.

I don’t think the reason for the problem of dumbed-down medical articles is that people are writing with the idea that children are their target audience. I think the people writing that way are doing so with the idea that patients are their target audience, and they have the patronizing view that if someone is a patient then they must be dumb and incapable of understanding advanced or even low-intermediate/high-basic level medical information.

I fear that the addition of the sentence “Writing for a particular reading level grade may help avoid unnecessary and discouraging complexity.” Could result in more "dumbing down" (as I call it) or "baby language" (as you called it) instead of less, as people may take that too literally and actually attempt to write for a target audience at some arbitrary reading grade level. Consider also that the section "common pitfalls" lists “You use a writing style appropriate for 12-year-olds, because the sixth grade reading level is recommended for patient information leaflets.” as something to avoid, so the addition you made suggesting writing for a certain grade level contradicts that "common pitfall" to avoid.

I completely agree with the spirit of what is trying to be communicated with your edit, but I don’t think it’s the right way of saying it, especially if interpreted too literally. Do you think we could work together to find a compromise/solution? Vontheri (talk) 11:57, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe that you both have the same goals.

@Vontheri, do you know much about readability scores? Some of the stupider more simplistic ones declare words like tuberculosis to be inherently harder to read than, say, axial, just because it's a longer word. In practice, tuberculosis is the easier word to read, because more people know the name for that common bacterial infection vs. the anatomical term. A simplistic tool might say that all 12-letter words are college-level and all five-letter words are primary-level, but in practice it's the other way around: An adult who can read at a basic level will read, pronounce, and understand tuberculosis but not axial. WhatamIdoing (talk) 12:28, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

I believe we have the same goals as well, which is why I hope we can work together to find a way of communicating it in this article that we both find productive. (as well as that any other interested editors find productive)

Readability scores is not a topic I have much familiarity with at all, unfortunately. Thanks for the information. Vontheri (talk) 12:36, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

(btw, my edit summary got cut off when I pressed return rather than delete to fix my typo.) The additional bit "Writing for a particular reading level grade may help avoid unnecessary and discouraging complexity" was me trying to be neutral in the battle between those who think readability scores are helpful and those who think they are dangerous pseudoscience (my thoughts the latter of course, along with the issue that anyone intelligent and experienced-at-writing enough to realise their limitations probably doesn't need their "advice"). Word length isn't the only thing that readability scores use. For example Dale–Chall readability formula "used a list of 763 words that 80% of fourth-grade students were familiar with" (i.e. 9-year-olds). And all of the scores are expressed in so-called "reading age" based on US school grades. But reading age is a flawed concept in an encyclopaedia aimed at the "general reader" rather than one with a ladybird on it aimed at primary school children. One of the concerns often raised is people reading the English Wikipedia who don't have English as a first language. Those readers have difficulties utterly different to those of a 9-year-old, and when they are reading about the risk of miscarriage in amniocentesis, we can assume they know how babies are made and will find it insulting and tedious if we write as though they don't. The article I link to as a source here gives a good example about "Security Deposit" being changed to an invented term "Promise Money" as though the latter was easier to understand. These readers ability to understand our text cannot be expressed as a reading age (tbh, if they are really struggling, then they are probably putting the page through Google Translate and then we are at the mercy of how clever AI has become).

I think some advice on this issue is useful in MEDMOS because medical articles have a particular concern about dealing with complex subjects with jargon and technical words while at the same time needing to be accessible to just about any reader. The same I don't think can be said for some aspects of quantum physics, whereas anyone might get or know someone with Alzheimer's disease. And one could write countless biographies without the need for difficult words at all. And as a teaching resource (vs a patient information leaflet, which just has to explain what is vital to the patient taking a medicine) sometimes we need to teach the technical terms for things and use the "correct" "grown-up" words.

But yes, I think all of us here know that and have the same aim. I was attempting to mention readability scores while commenting on one limitation of them. They get used. We can't stop (Americans it seems) using them. -- Colin°^Talk 13:12, 6 July 2023 (UTC)

Use of "committed suicide" at Marie Sophie Hingst

Hi folks, I'd like to invite watchers of this guideline to participate in an ongoing discussion at Talk:Marie Sophie Hingst#Describing suicide. Thank you. Ed ^{[talk] [majestic titan]} 16:47, 21 July 2023 (UTC)

Phrasing of the section alternatives to commited suicide implies a consensus

Despite the style guides being external, that section has been invoked in numerous discussions a fact of wikipedia. As the RFC failed with a minority wanting it banned, a majority supporting it not being banned, and the style guides being external (not wikipedia), I question whether or not that section even needs to be there in a MOS page and frankly think it should be deleted. This seems like a last ditch attempt by someone who didn't get their way to plant a seed to "soft enforce" it in something like this. DarmaniLink (talk) 07:36, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I went ahead and deleted it with my justification in the edit summary. This is soft activism on wikipedia anyone can see the implications by juxtaposing it with the verbiage before the alternatives. External style guides are irrelevant to wikipedia, especially when there's a failed proposal intra-wikipedia on the same subject. DarmaniLink (talk) 07:49, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this change. Bold changes are fine; however, given that DarmaniLink has made it clear her's aware of long-standing contention regarding this issue, I think obtaining consensus first in this instance would have been a better course of action.

There was recently an ANI regarding the fact I made mass changes to the terminology: See here. At the time I was not aware there was an extensive RFC on the matter, and obviously I stopped this behaviour once it was contested. I am also not currently interested in reopening the debate of whether the term "committed" should be banned or not. I will, however, note that while there was a strong consensus not to ban the term at the RFC, there was also no consensus to continue preserving the term. In the words of WhatamIdoing at the ANI, "This means: It's okay to remove the committed language."

However, whether or not this is indeed OK isn't clear enough at MOS:SUICIDE. At the ANI, several users, myself included, voiced exactly what DarmaniLink is concerned about here, albeit for opposite reasons. We believed that the current wording of MOS:SUICIDE seemed to very much encourage replacing the term. People at the ANI who disagreed with replacing the term "committed", however, considered the wording to explicitly endorse keeping the term "committed" by simple omission of saying otherwise. I don't know who wrote the current wording, though one way or the other, it needs to be clearer. Rather than throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I simply think the section needs to explicitly clarify whether or not changing the term is acceptable on a case by case basis. Or it should explicitly clarify that the decision should only be made on a case by case basis on the respective articles talk pages.

I must stress, I'm not campaigning for it to say the change is acceptable, I'm simply asking for it to make it clear whether individual changes are acceptable or not. And while we're at it, I think the section needs to explicitly say that mass changing the terms one way or the other is not OK. I'm wondering if we need to start a new RFC, not on whether the term should be banned, but rather, simply regarding this wording. Damien Linnane (talk) 09:53, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I have no long standing contention of this issue, and I didn't even know this was an issue until today because of you. This issue is ludicrous, and the misuse of that section by you to imply consensus when it was a small but vocal minority against is why it needs to be removed. If we change it to say "well we should handle it on a case by case basis", then there's no point to it being in the MOS because case by case is the standard. Decide what verbiage you should use on wikipedia on a case by case basis? That's the default. IF this is an "every rule exists because someone needed it" case, we could follow the RFC and say "don't change the phrasing tendentiously" without the blatantly manipulative wording that implies their way is correct and you should not be using that phrase. Whoever wrote that knew exactly what they were doing. DarmaniLink (talk) 10:18, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

This thread is gibberish.

Never mind; I misread. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:59, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

DarmaniLink posts at 07:36 DarmaniLink responds at 07:49 that they had gone ahead and made a change DarmaniLink responds to self at 09:53 saying the strongly oppose this change. (Presumably, the change they just made that they are threading their response under? Gibberish). DarmaniLink responds to self again at 09:53 aimed at some vague "because of you". You meaning, the self they are responding to ?

PLEASE ... what is a new reader to the topic to make of this mess. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:42, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

It took me a moment to figure it out, but two editors with similar names are in this discussion: Damien Linnane and DarmaniLink. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:53, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Ah ha ... strike that :). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:59, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I do not think this is an improvement, and I believe that offering people some ideas of alternatives is important.

But I'm very concerned about the phrasing "any tendentious removals of the phrase should be avoided", as I fully expect it to be misinterpreted as saying that all removals of this phrase are Wikipedia:Tendentious editing.

Also, @DarmaniLink, given that you're presently involved in a dispute over exactly this subject at Talk:Marie Sophie Hingst#Describing suicide, let me suggest that you self-revert. Wikipedia:Policies and guidelines says "Editing a policy to support your own argument in an active discussion may be seen as gaming the system", and none of us will benefit from having this discussion complicated by accusations of self-serving editing. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Starting over. [4]. DarmaniLink, please gain consensus before making contentious edits. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:44, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Okay, there is a severe problem with the current verbiage as people (see, the user in question) are using it to attempt to override an overwhelming consensus in the RFC by implying that NOT using it was the consensus, and this is worded in a very manipulative way to imply exactly that.

This needs to be clarified. DarmaniLink (talk) 22:20, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

I was changing it to better reflect the RFC. Saying "Well its not banned but there are other acceptable ways to do it" implies you should use the "acceptable" ways over what the RFC overwhelmingly was in favor of. This belongs in an opinion essay, not on a MOS page. DarmaniLink (talk) 22:24, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Use the talk page. Propose the wording you suggest, wait at least a week, more like two in a case like this, for others to provide feedback. Don't just plow in to a guideline that has been widely discussed and is contentious. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:01, 22 July 2023 (UTC)

Darmani has taken this to Wikipedia:Village pump (policy)#RFC: Change wording in MOS:SUICIDE to better reflect the supermajority consensus in the RFC that added it. (Please remember that this is a newer editor, whose first edits to the project namespace were just seven months ago, and whose first-ever edit to a Village pump was starting this discussion. I think that those of us who've made tens of thousands of edits over 15+ years can centralize the discussions later, if we need to.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:56, 23 July 2023 (UTC)

AFAIK there is no consensus that the proposed alternatives are unacceptable or even undesirable. Similarly we could say that sfn or harv referencing are acceptable alternatives to putting the full citation in <ref> tags. It's when someone went around changing the citation style on a variety of articles that there would be a dispute. (t · c) buidhe 15:57, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

For the record, to be clear about which article this started at: The dispute first started at Talk:Otoya Yamaguchi. The Talk:Marie Sophie Hingst discussion was secondary to that, and involved initially different editors than DarmaniLink. AFAICS, the argument by Damien Linnane at Otoya Yamaguchi, citing this guideline, was reasonable (i.e. not misinterpreting the guideline). The response Damien got was rather hostile imo. Altogether, I'm not seeing that dispute as evidence the guideline is misleading or easily misinterpreted. In contrast, I think the comments at Marie Sophie Hingst misinterpret the guideline's position. But I really don't think the guideline could be clearer. We have two facts which there's no getting away from. The phrase is not banned on English Wikipedia and many external style guides (not to mention, organisations involved in suicide prevention and support for families) discourage it. And furthermore, there are alternative ways of describing the topic. That editors continue to butt heads over this matter is a behavioural concern, not the responsibility of MOS. -- Colin°^Talk 17:24, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

Yes. Both of these facts are simultaneously true. It is true that no option is banned at the English Wikipedia, and it is also, equally, true that non-Wikipedia reliable sources really do discourage the one option. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:21, 24 July 2023 (UTC)

How to describe a suicide

Hi there, I know this is contentious, but I still think it’s important to bring it up. In the page now we have:

“There are many other appropriate, common, and encyclopedic ways to describe a suicide, including:

• died as a result of suicide
• died by suicide
• died from suicide
• killed himself
• The cause of death was suicide.”

However, IMHO “died as a result of suicide”, “died by suicide”, “died from suicide” and “The cause of death was suicide” are NOT the same as “committed suicide”. Someone who died after his/her suicide does not necessarily has suicide as the cause of death. Making conclusion on the cause of death of a person sometimes need much investigation or even an autopsy. If an editor just pick a phrase from the list to avoid the use of “committed suicide” there can be problems.

So, may I suggest the list be changed to something like:

• attempted suicide
• died following a suicide attempt
• died following a suicide
• tried to take his/her own life
• killed himself/herself

I haven’t followed the previous discussion of this contentious subject, thus if I’ve missed anything important please feel free to point it out. :) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:16, 7 August 2023 (UTC)--Dustfreeworld (talk) 15:09, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

@Dustfreeworld, I don't think I understand your concern. You seem to have suggested that we change a list of five ways to describe someone who died into three ways to describe someone who died and two ways to describe someone who did not die ("attempted" and "tried to"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:27, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I didn’t notice that “attempted" and "tried to" implied that the act was unsuccessful. Thanks for pointing it out. Maybe that two shouldn’t be in the list then.

My concern about the phrases “died as a result of suicide”, “died by suicide”, “died from suicide” and “The cause of death was suicide” is that they seem to be making a conclusion on the cause of death of the person, which may exclude other possibilities and may imply no further investigation is necessary, which is usually not the case. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:55, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I don't think I'd call surviving "unsuccessful".  :-/

Are you suggesting that we should say "killed himself" but not "died from suicide", because otherwise the police won't investigate whether it's a murder that was staged to look like a suicide? WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:38, 7 August 2023 (UTC)

I checked the dictionary for “attempted” and the word “unsuccessful” was written there and I used it. . . I’m not writing a Wikipedia article here anyway. . . Sigh  :-/

Perhaps I’d better leave the topic to others. . .

And yep “killed himself” seems to have the same problem too, just a bit better. And it’s not only about whether they investigate or not (and perhaps not just murder, there can be many other causes). It just doesn’t seem ok to present such a conclusion to our readers, which may sound not very neutral. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 00:14, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Generally, especially when the death isn't recent, we're working with sources that say things like "The inquest found that he died by suicide" or "The coroner ruled the death a suicide" or "The police said it was a suicide", which doesn't leave a lot of room for doubt. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:45, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

What you’ve said is exactly what I’m concerned. The prerequisites of using those phrases would probably be - when the death isn't recent, and we're working with sources that say things like "The inquest found that he died by suicide" or "The coroner ruled the death a suicide". --Dustfreeworld (talk) 09:42, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

I've been uncertain that I understand your concern throughout this discussion, and I appreciate your efforts to try to explain it to me. So, in the interests of clarity, am I correctly understanding that if:

• the death happened a year ago, and
• we have a legal ruling stating that the death was a suicide,

then you want us:

• to cast doubt on it actually being suicide?

That doesn't sound entirely reasonable, so I'm pretty sure that I'm not understanding what you want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:32, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Em. . . I’m afraid it’s the opposite. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:41, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Let me try explaining it again.

What I mean is, I agree with what you said that,

• when the death isn't recent, we're working with sources that say things like "The inquest found that he died by suicide" or "The coroner ruled the death a suicide" . . . which doesn't leave a lot of room for doubt

But what if the death is recent? And there’s no inquest yet and the coroner hasn’t ruled? When a famous person died our editors will edit his page very soon and they won’t wait until there’s an inquest conclusion. If they just pick a phrase from the existing list to describe the death (to avoid using “committed suicide”), it’s likely that they’re presenting a conclusion that doesn’t sound neutral. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:44, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

Unless I misunderstand, other Wikipedia guidelines address your concerns. For example, "the police said it appeared to be a suicide" is acceptable two days after the person's body was discovered, provided the quote comes from a reliable source. (Although most police departments these days avoid making such pronouncements - I'm just using it as an example.) We (Wikipedia) are not saying "the person died by suicide", we are including relevant information from reliable sources. If three weeks later, a coroner holds a press conference stating, "the cause of death is not clear at this time", we would edit the article accordingly. Mark D Worthen PsyD (talk) [he/him] 21:34, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

@Dustfreeworld, thanks for helping me understand. I'm thinking about two separate things now:

1. When the cause of death is "unofficial" or otherwise uncertain, what should we say?
2. Does "He committed suicide" sound less like the person definitely killed himself than some of the other alternatives?

For the first question, I think that a neutral article will fairly represent the information in the sources, without going beyond them. This might mean not saying anything beyond the fact of the death ("He died on the 32nd of Octember"). It might also mean clearly stating that the situation is uncertain to some degree ("Police are still investigating his death" or "The cause of death is unknown" or perhaps "Suicide is suspected"). The best choice in uncertain situations would depend upon what the sources say. This would normally be a temporary placeholder, as one can usually expect further information to be available in a week or two.

<tangent> Here I want to add that there are cultural and sometimes legal differences about what media say in the early days.

• I understand that in the UK, suicide is generally not mentioned in the news media at all, unless and until there is a legal verdict from the inquest. It seems that the newspapers can get in trouble for saying "It was suicide" on their own – even when it's absolutely certain to everyone involved, even if they have officials and family members telling them that it's definitely suicide – but they can't get in trouble for saying "This judicial process said it was suicide", because what the judicial process says is a government action, and government actions are always considered a legitimate subject of public interest. So the news reports first say "He died. Police do not suspect foul play", and then when the inquest is over, they say "The inquest ruled that the death was a suicide". If everyone reads "Police do not suspect foul play" and thinks "must be a suicide" to themselves, well, the press code doesn't prevent readers from thinking.
• In the US, there seems to be a pattern of silence about the cause of death for a few days, followed by an announcement that it was a suicide. Like the UK approach, it's not necessarily fooling any of the readers, especially because when it isn't a suicide, there is either an immediate announcement about the cause of death or a statement that suicide is not suspected.
• In Japan, even as recently as last year, celebrity suicides were reported in sensationalistic ways (think: television cameras outside the family's house, providing specific details about methods, interviewing the neighbors). The government has reminded several broadcasters about the World Health Organization's guidelines, but the interest in following these rules has sometimes been outweighed by the fact that people will watch these shows.

I don't know which culture is more familiar to you, but it's easy to imagine that if yours is reticent to mention suicide, then having Wikipedia casually say "Yup, it's suicide" might feel weird, and if yours blares it from the doorstep, having Wikipedia pretend that we don't know might feel weird, too. </end tangent>

On the second question, I think that all of the options mentioned in the guideline, whether "commit" or "died by" or anything else, have approximately the same amount of certainty behind them. I could imagine someone thinking that the "commit" language (because it is more formal and judgmental – people commit crimes, sins, adultery, suicide) is heavier than the others, but on the question of whether an apparent suicide should be reported as such, I think that "He committed suicide" and "He died by suicide" and "He killed himself" are all the same, and that if you want to introduce any uncertainty, you need to change the other words: "He seems to have committed suicide" or "He apparently died by suicide" or "Police suspect that he killed himself". WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:19, 8 August 2023 (UTC)

UK practice is not entirely that - "suspected overdose" is used very early on when that applies, as with Amy Whitehouse, leaving intentionality open. But I was surprised to hear the very experienced journalist Kevin Maguire (journalist) on a tv papers review speculating (certainly not reporting) that Sinéad O'Connor took her own life less than 24 hours after the news broke - that did seem to break a convention. Johnbod (talk) 02:22, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Yes, I've seen UK news saying that a death happened, and sometimes a cause of death (like overdose or drowning), but they almost never mention the word suicide. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:00, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

Right. For both police statements and media, the cause of death is generally "suspected", "probable" etc until confirmed by the inquest. Johnbod (talk) 22:01, 9 August 2023 (UTC)

I think there is greater care among high quality sources wrt any unexpected death, not just suicide. For example, with the Killing of Brianna Ghey, sources may say "was found stabbed to death" or "the fatal stabbing of". They may then mention a murder charge but determining that it was murder and not some alternative crime, is for the court. I think that is similar to the final decision of whether something was suicide or an accident or even murder. The Death of Nicola Bulley was handled appallingly by much of the press/news, by the police themselves, and by social media, with an avalanche of speculation and unnecessary disclosure of sensitive personal information. -- Colin°^Talk 16:33, 14 August 2023 (UTC)

Just shoot me

Actually, don't. It's metaphoric idiom used to indicate, in a hyperbolic manner, that a current, proposed, or feared situation or event would be most disagreeable. OK?

The current situation is that the current state of MOS:SUICIDE is most disagreeable to me. Well, just one bullet point is anyway. Most of the rest is fine and thank you all for the worc

Executive summary: the bullet point

The phrase committed suicide is not banned on the English Wikipedia. However, many external style guides discourage it as being potentially stigmatising and offensive to some people. There are many other appropriate, common, and encyclopedic ways to describe a suicide, including: [bullet points] died as a result of suicide,died by suicide, died from suicide, killed themself, took their own life, The cause of death was suicide.

should be changed. Here's one example of a possible change I'm putting out:

The Wikipedia not have a rule or suggestion of what terminology to use to describe suicide. "Committed suicide" is much the most common generally, but editors are free to use any other reasonable term, such as "killed himself/herself/themself", "died by [or: from] suicide", "The cause of death was suicide", and so forth. Editors are discouraged from changing existing terminology in an article, unless there is good cause.

My biggest problem with the bullet point is that little of it is true, and in addition it is a lot counter to the actual preferences of the editor corps (pretty). I'm sure it was written in good faith, but I can't figure out what sources the writers were drawing from, and I really think a change is in order.

Being me, a wrote a detailed argument below, read it if you wish,.

Lot of words

OK, the "The phrase committed suicide is not banned on the English Wikipedia. However, many external style guides discourage it as being potentially stigmatising and offensive to some people..."

"not banned" strongly implies that its only tolerated, and given for that is This 2021 RfC. The proposal there was 53 to allow, 6 to disallow, 8 use the term the source uses.

Mind you, the Allow votes were not all in the nature of "Allow, I guess, reluctantly". Some were like that, but some were vehemently in favor of allowing (and there was one "Require"). And in my view the arguments were banning the phrase were awfully weak tea. At the most, a disinterested observer would not consider them stronger than the opposing side, I'd warrant.

Based on all that, I'd change the passage to "The phrase committed suicide is not required on the English Wikipedia..."

OK, on to "offensive". I want to see some numbers for "stigmatising and offensive to some people". My guess is these numbers are very few. I haven't seen anyone who was genuinely offended by this common idiom. (I have seen people offended by, for instance, explicit porn content here. Shouldn't we be worrying about those people first?)

It's hard to know, because (I think) many of the "some people" are not actually offended but think that others might be, or say (or even think) that they are offended when they're not, or don't actually care but want to... well, you figure it out. Some people might be annoyed, but there's often something in an article that annoys me, like poor writing or whatever, and that's life. Some readers might be annoyed because are insufficiently sensitive and culturally progressive if we use "committed suicide", might roll their eyes. That also is life.

If a reader is offended -- that is, truly actually sad and upset and angered -- by seeing the very common idiom "committed suicide", then:

• That person has got to be one in a million. C'mon. There's a limit to how much we can cater to extremely small fringe subsets of our readership.

• There's probably hella other stuff here that will offend them, so they probably won't be reading our encyclopedia anyway.

• Do we even really want readers like that? They're likely to be offended because we use "actress", or say "died" instead of "passed", or don't bowdlerize to say that some people called General Pershing "n***** Jack" and so on. Which fine, but if they complain, it's a waste of our time.

• And even if we do, for the person's own good, wouldn't they be better off confining their reading to a material that doesn't upset them? I mean it's their life and not our business, but I hate to see anybody go around sad and angry.

On to "many style guides". We don't follow or pay attention much to style guides per se. We do pay attention to the styles of worthwhile books and newspapers and notable web sites which are often based on popular style guides, so kind of the same thing. But not entirely. Some style guides aren't used much, and some publications (like us) have their own style guides. Anyway, we uses sources for facts but not style or terminology. If a source says "On December 7th" we don't use the ordinal number even so. (Granted, source terminology shouldn't be ignored either. It's a data point.) And anyway the ever-busy and expert User:SMcCandlish surveyed style guides at the RfC and maintains that most of them don't take a position either way.)

Nobody had done an Ngram, so it's not really fair to bring it up now, but FWIW this Google Ngram indicates that of books that use "committed suicide" or a different term such as "died by suicide", about twice as many use "committed suicide" as all the others phrases combined. ("Killed him/herself" is the only one that's close; the others are within a rounding error of 0%.). This has been steadily true since the mid 19th century and continues in books published today.)

(I didn't get to "stigmatized", but probably basically similar to "offensive")

Don't forget to drink your eight glasses of milk today. Herostratus (talk) 01:27, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I'm not too impressed with the current wording, but that suggested rewording has some clarity issues of its own, and is probably trying to change too much all at once. I think it would probably be more productive to start with your small proposal (embedded in the collapsed material) to change "not banned" to "not required" to better suit the actual outcome of that RfC.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  02:31, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

@Herostratus, I assume this is about Talk:Somerton Man#Committed suicide.

The main points here are:

• If an editor believes that the 'commit' language is wrong/bad/inappropriate, and has assumed (incorrectly) that this is "obviously" going to be banned, we need to tell them that it's not banned. Therefore: "is not banned". This line exists so that you have a chance to argue in discussions such as the one linked above that it's not mandatory to remove it.
• If an editor believes that 'commit' language is best/most formal/encyclopedic, or has assumed (like you) that no true reader could genuinely be upset about that, we need to warn them that it is. Therefore: "many external style guides discourage it as being potentially stigmatising and offensive to some people". We don't ban it, and we don't claim that it's bad [here; for all I know, we might say something like this in the mainspace], but others do. This line exists so that editors who choose that language can do so with the knowledge that this wording has the potential to be controversial.
• What follows these two points is an effort to help people figure out what they can do that isn't as likely to draw complaints. (That is, the key point is to give editors some hints about what they can choose that isn't either 'commit' or 'died by', if they end up in a dispute over the phrasings that are usually described as offensive or ugly, respectively.)

I think you are overstating the support for the 'commit' language in the RFC. The RFC closing you mention says about the 'commit' language that if some other equal or better formulation exists and a change is made, we should not tendentiously revert it. That means that RFC closing accepts its removal (whenever editors agree that the new formulation is at least equal). The RFC also discourages mass removal, and – perhaps most importantly – does not encourage retention or expansion of the 'commit' language.

As for whether those external style guides actually exist and actually make this claim about people being offended: I suggest that you visit your favorite web search engine and find out for yourself. There's nothing quite so convincing as looking it up yourself, after all. Then you'll know that nobody's hiding anything from you. I will add that if you do manage to find a source that explicitly prefers the 'commit' language, you'll be the first editor to find one. I'll give you the first one for free: Since about 2000, style manuals have come to avoid commit suicide, which is now considered insensitive because of its whiff of criminality. The trend is to prefer die by suicide, kill onself, or take one's own life. That's from the most recent edition of Garner's Modern English Usage. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:10, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

That seems like a pretty good summary to me (and I started out in the "there is no issue here" camp originally), but I'm not sure it tells us how to improve the section's wording (if it needs any improvement). I think it's worded rather weirdly myself, but I've had my head thoroughly mired in a bunch of very unrelated stuff for weeks (Middle Irish place-naming, etc.), so I'm not immediately having alternative wording spring to mind.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  03:26, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

I have considered mirroring the "neither encouraged nor discouraged" language from other parts of the MOS, but I think that it is weaker phrasing and will therefore be less helpful. The editors who believe it is obviously wrong need to see the stronger "is not banned" language, and I think that any editors who might complain about 'woke ideology' will benefit from being reminded (or told for the first time, in some cases) that Wikipedia's internal rules are not the only ones in the world. Sometimes editors do care about things that aren't Wikipedia's rules, and would like some warning that certain word choices have the potential to look like a big target painted on the article.

Looking at this in the longer term, I have wondered whether the eventual result will be "discouraged but not banned". No style guides prefer it any longer, and almost all of those that address it directly discourage it. (I believe there is still one that accepts it as one among multiple options.) Also, it looks like the total number of articles using the 'commit' language is used has gone down in the almost two years since the 2021 RFC. This has happened not through any organized effort, but just through the normal, everyday copyediting. Editors, like the sources we cite (especially outside the US), seem to be moving away from that language. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:14, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Yep. I recently made pretty much the same kind of observation about use of she in reference to ships, in one of the perennial re-discussions of that. It's still in use, but the usage is declining, and various external sources (more all the time) advise against it. That doesn't (on either of these issues) put WP in a position to force a change, but the change will gradually work its way in until it's a clear enough consensus to codify it some day, if it still seems to need codification.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  08:16, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Keeping with the theme of the section title, my dad used to say that if we had a law where people who can't be bothered to indicate at roundabouts were shot, that would quickly sharpen up people's driving habits. (Of course, he wasn't serious, and used this as an example of how one could propose a ridiculously extreme solution to a problem that was both effective and bad). The cited RFC is a bit like that. Some such RFCs are explicit in their request to entirely ban a word or phrase. This one was more neutral but everyone knows what the vote was on: should "commit suicide" be banned in the MOS. And such a ban would rapidly encourage editors to mass edit the words to extinction. So interpreting the reaction as anything more than a response to that extreme scenario is wrongheaded. Add to this is the problem that people simply don't do their homework before replying. Which is odd since you'd think we'd all be instinctive about finding sources to back up what we write. So most reactions are gut ones based on vague recollections of what language your English teacher in the 1980s thought was acceptable. Add in a "I am not a bad person, yet I casually use this phrase/word myself" conflict and then top it with a society where around half the population of our countries are aligned with politics that is currently pursuing an "anti-woke" agenda...

I think WAID's response is correct. The current wording states several indisputable facts. The proposed wording actually is disputable in many regards. I think ngrams and other googles for words should be banned imo, as they are mostly wrongly used. How about this ngram to decide what word Wikipedia should use to describe what comes out your backside? Such methods, along with Google searches, can't find the absence of a phrase or term. How many news reports or articles simply omit this detail of the death entirely? They just say "Robin Williams died in August 2014, aged 63" or even "Following Williams death, in 2014, ...." and other variants. If one is writing an article about the actor's many performances, this isn't relevant, just as such an article might not mention his wife or children or parents. It simply isn't wise to use such crude statistics to work out how to write. And the concluding sentence about what editors are encouraged or not to do is also firmly anti-wiki. Yes we discourage mass edits on any contentious matter, but that guidance belongs and exists elsewhere. Individual edits... well this is the encyclopaedia where anyone is encouraged to edit and if they think they can improve it they should. That's core stuff. -- Colin°^Talk 08:44, 17 October 2023 (UTC)

"Notable cases" wording

Some poor "some editors" wording in this:

Articles on medical conditions sometimes include lists of notable cases of the disease. For the person to be included in such a list there must be significant coverage of them having the condition, not simply a mention in passing or them self-disclosing on social media. One restriction that some editors favor is to include only those individuals who have lastingly affected the popular perception of a condition, such as through public awareness campaigns that have received enduring media coverage.

is attracting unconstructive edits to harp on "some editors" and make it out to be just some random and disputed opinion to ignore at will, which is not the intent here. I think this should be revised to the following:

Articles on medical conditions sometimes include lists of notable cases of the disease. For the person to be included in such a list there must be significant coverage of them having the condition, not simply a mention in passing or them self-disclosing on social media. At such an article, a consensus may be reached on a criterion to include only those individuals who have lastingly affected the popular perception of a condition, such as through public awareness campaigns that have received enduring media coverage.

This is what we really mean: this is an article-by-article determination. It is not a WP:BATTLEGROUND between WP:FACTIONs.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  22:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

At the time Colin wrote that (17.5 years ago), it was unclear whether that criterion was generally supported. You can read the relevant discussions here and a few scattered comments lower on that page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:29, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

@ SMcCandlish. If an edit can be so thought-provoking that an editor bothers to start a discussion to address to it’s concern, I don’t think it’s really *that unconstructive*. Sometimes I *do* find some reverts unconstructive though.

To clarify … I didn’t “harp on” anything. I made two edits because my edits were repeatedly reverted; and like you, I find the current wording has room for improvement. Perhaps I should have “harped on” words like “restriction” as well.

I’m not sure why you are citing WP:BATTLEGROUND and WP:FACTIONs. I hope I don’t have to cite WP:AGF again.

That said, I do appreciate your efforts in trying to improve the wording. Thanks and regards, --Dustfreeworld (talk) 06:41, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Sure, text can always be improved. But wrt style I would favour MOS being more descriptive of helpful solutions editors might pick and less "here is the behaviour we expect editors in dispute to follow". We shouldn't have MOS reminding editors to get consensus when describing each and any matter of editorial choice. Those things belong on other P&G pages. If we are to revise this area, then it might be good to look at some relevant articles and see what pattern arises. For example, I suspect for something rare where there are only a few cases documented in easily accessible literature online, then possibly editors are fine with a low threshold for inclusion.

Btw, from your link "criterion", I think you are thinking about the wrong thing. Here we are talking about "articles on medical conditions" and the "Society and culture" content section of such articles. Not about list articles like List of polio survivors. Such lists were often seen as a solution: get this big list of names out of my article on X disease, and have only the briefest few sentences here. -- Colin°^Talk 11:08, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Well, we can address this with some other wording/link; the point is that this "some editors" wording is basically an anti-guideline, a "we throw up our hands and refuse to advise anything" line item, which with this wording enshrines dispute (which may be generally illusory outside of this specific case), encourages the manufacture of more dispute where there generally hasn't been much, and even subtly favors one side in the dispute by suggesting that the other is just "some editors" whose opinion can be ignored. MoS should never have things like that in it (it always leads to problems and needs to be either removed entirely, or clarified to advise something one way or another, or explicitly stated to be a matter for editorial discretion on a per-article basis – not phrased as "this group of editors versus that one").  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:57, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think it's an anti-guideline. You probably remember the fights (long ago) over what the ==References== section should be called; the solution at Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout#Notes and references was to say what was popular, rather than what we recommended. It solved the problem, and between that and the Article Wizard using the most popular form, we have ended up with largely predictable section headings.

Here, we are indicating that a group of editors – perhaps it is a minority, but, if so, it is a mention-worthy minority – recommend a particular approach. We are indicating the level of consensus and popularity, without demanding that everyone do the same thing in all articles.

It might be valuable to figure out whether/how much sentiment has changed since then, but I don't think it is a problem to provide information about one or more options when editors are unwilling to impose a clear rule on all (relevant) articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:14, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I see the word "dispute" three times in SMcCandlish's post but they also note "there generally hasn't been much". I also point out the text is 17.5 years old, as WAID noted further up, so perhaps it is helping avoid dispute. Your suggested change alters the text from a "here's an idea that works for some people" to "Even though the text on this article is stable for decades, MOS now insists you argue about it and gain explicit evidence of consensus, while at the same time MOS only offers one option for you to pick". I don't know. It seems you are looking for problems. -- Colin°^Talk 11:06, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Not really wanting to be dead

This seems to be of more general interest than I originally expected, so let me add a brief note here:

The medical literature indicates that approximately nobody actually wants to be dead. As in, if you could give people a convincing choice between: you could continue like you are now, or you could be completely happy and healthy, or you could be dead, there are basically no people who would actively prefer being dead. Death isn't an end goal, even for suicidal people. Death is perceived (rightly or wrongly) as a means towards the actual goal, which is to avoid whatever current or feared suffering the person associates with being alive. Someone might prefer death over facing a stressful situation, or might prefer death now to lifelong pain, or might prefer death through one means (e.g., suicide) over death another means (e.g., dying naturally of cancer), but basically nobody actually wants to be dead for its own sake.

Therefore it is misleading to say that we shouldn't imply that all suicidal people wanted to be dead, because that indicates that a non-trivial fraction of people actually do want to be dead (for its own sake), and in practice, we shouldn't imply that any suicidal people actually want to be dead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:47, 16 December 2023 (UTC)

I think it depends how you interpret "want to be dead". Apparently the owners of sports facilities know that when someone goes for a swim they may be both hungry afterwards and minded to reward themselves and purchase an unhealthy snack from a vending machine. Nobody said "Tonight I want to burn 225 calories with a 30 minute swim then consume 225 empty calories eating a Mars bar afterwards." And nobody wrote in their diary "Today was a great day for the diet and I achieved all I wanted. I cancelled out all the benefit of my swim by consuming a sugary snack that's bad for my teeth and made me feel a bit sick for a while". But at the time, they did want the Mars bar.

And then there's the whole controversial assisted suicide matter, which is based on the wishes that the person does really want to be dead now. Arguing that really, underneath, all of us want to live happy healthy lives forever, doesn't seem to meet hard reality and acceptance that you can't always get what you (really) want. Or put another way, this would never be anyone's first choice, but being someone's second choice isn't quite the same thing as saying they didn't want it.

I'm not arguing the text should be changed, but just pointing out that it really depends on how someone views "want" whether they will interpret it how you intended or interpret it differently and thus view the sentence as wrong. I wonder if there is another way of saying what you want to say without saying "wanted to". -- Colin°^Talk 08:48, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Choosing the lesser of two evils isn't really the same as wanting either.

I don't know of a way to have the same effect without talking about what the person wants. "Don't screw up articles by pretending the person was really looking forward to the whole 'being dead'/Heaven/Nirvana/reincarnation/non-existence part"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:28, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I think a choice is "want". It doesn't have to be a nice "want" and people can disagree if that "want" is desirable or optimal or rationale. Someone with the genes for breast cancer might want to have a double mastectomy and even long for the operation to go ahead so they can stop worrying about getting cancer. Doesn't mean they'd rather not have been born with those genes and get to keep their breasts. -- Colin°^Talk 16:07, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

• "Most People Who Are Suicidal Don't Want To Die, They Just Don't Want To Be Alive: There's a huge difference."
• "People who commit suicide don’t want to die, but to end their pain."
• "Most people who are suicidal do not want to die."
• '“People who are suicidal don’t want to die. That’s not the goal,” she says.'
• [Psychiatrist who interviewed 10 survivors of near-fatal suicide attempts] "“What was immediately apparent,” Rosen recounted, “was that none of them had truly wanted to die.”"
• "People Who Are Suicidal Don't Want to Die, They Just Want the Pain to Stop"

WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:23, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Dionysus offered Midas his choice of whatever reward he wanted. Midas said he wanted everything he touched to turn to gold. The untold version of this tale has Dionysus saying, no Midas, you don't really truly want that. That's a stupid idea. What you want is huge wealth gained with trivial ease. What I'll give you is this instead.... But the known version has Midas given exactly what he wanted, which ends badly.

One of your links says "I can tell you from my experience, suicidal people do not truly want to die, but see it as the only option to end the pain they are in." (my emphasis). Simply saying "want" isn't specific enough. Further I don't think any of your links cover assisted suicide in terminal illness (you are going to die, and you want some control over how and when) or terrorist suicide bombing or self-immolation.

I think we can cover the point you want to make but I don't think it is encyclopaedic to play rhetorical games with language the way these article titles do. The point with those titles is to surprise the reader, and that's not our game. -- Colin°^Talk 19:14, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Concur with Colin. And the premise is dubious. If someone dreadfully resented being alive, they would probably suicide ("successfully" seems like the wrong word to use here), and they could not be asked how they felt about it after the fact or how certain they were leading up to it. That is, the available data on the question has a built-in and severe bias of only being able to poll those who were semi-serious about it and made a try that they lived through (i.e. were not so absolutely determined in their demise to arrange its near-absolute certainty), along with the much larger pool of those who went through some suicidal-leaning motions but were really seeking help. The vast majority of everyone in both of the survivor groups would be "didn't really want to be dead" respondents, and there might not be any people among the respondents who were "determined but incompetent at suicide" who really did feel they wanted to be dead (or too few of them to make any statistical dent). So, I'm having a hard time seeing a way to address the question encyclopedically, since it seems like it will require either OR or endorsing dubious claims simply because they've been made. Maybe the most we could do is say that so-and-so has claimed that no people really want to be dead, but we'd not have a reason do that unless there is sufficient independent RS coverage of the claim being made that it would actually be WP:DUE to include it.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:08, 8 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the data bears that out. I'm thinking of a particular suicide pattern in my region that is known for its high death rate. Survivors end up with serious, immediately life-threatening injuries and never fully recover from the physical damage. I remember that they tracked down about 20 of survivors (which is most of them), and all but one was glad they had not died during the suicide attempt. One of them said that the very instant that he realized it was too late to reverse the attempt, and that he really was going to die, he realized that he had made a horrible mistake and that he wanted to live.

In larger studies, less than 10% of survivors end up dying by suicide. If they really wanted to be dead, why would 90% of them die years later from other causes?

I think the mental difficulty here is a directional thing. A person who is running between two points could be described as running "to" the destination or "from" the source. So imagine someone who is really running: a teenager is in a really appalling, abusive home situation, and decides to run away from home. The teenager ends up homeless. Do we say that the teenager:

• wanted to get away from the abuse, or
• wanted to become homeless?

The same logic applies with suicide: People who attempt suicide want to get away from something they believe is intolerable. We should not describe them as trying to get towards death when they are really trying to get away from the thing they fear. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:18, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, I suspect those who work in this field have thought through the statistical groupings and we aren't really debating the seriousness of intent. My argument really is that even the briefest and most unthinking intent is still a "want". People want to do all sorts of things, in the moment. I get an itch and I want to scratch it. There's not much conscious thought going on in that "want". That word stretches all the way from one end of the scale to the other, so isn't helpful if someone's argument is based on "want" being at the "solve world hunger" or "live healthily forever" end of the utopian dream.

WAID, I don't think your comparison with homelessness is fair. Correct me if I'm wrong but someone who harms themself but didn't actually intend to die is an accidental death, not a suicide. It is the very definition of the word and our suicide article leads with "Suicide is the act of intentionally causing one's own death". If you didn't "want" to die, in that moment, then it was an accidental death.

Perhaps the issue is the other advice about commenting on motive or indicating this is a solution. That the word "want" can end up being a sign you are doing that, and so best avoided. -- Colin°^Talk 10:53, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

That's a good point and I think I agree with it, but it doesn't invalidate my own; they are not at cross purposes. Those who work in this field very often have an advocacy viewpoint. (It's advocacy that is doing a good thing in the world, but it is nevertheless advocacy of a position and can't be reported as bare fact about the suicidal.) The numbers above support my point: "all but one was glad they had not died during the suicide attempt" necessarily means one was not glad and did/does want to die (or is at least self-convinced of this, and I'm not sure there is an objectively meaningful distinction). "less than 10% of [suicide-attempt] survivors end up dying by [later re-attempted] suicide" is a bit less dispositive (someone might attempt suicide more than once despite not really "wanting" to die), but it certainly cannot be used as evidence they don't really want to die when it points strongly in the other direction. I'm now even more firmly of the view that this idea is an advoacy catchphrase, not a scientific fact that we can claim about those who attempt or contemplate suicide (though a moderated claim, like "very few" instead "nobody" or "approximately nobody" might be supportable as a factual claim). There's also the side issue that there is increasing scientific doubt that we have anywhere near as much free will as we think we do, at least when it comes to important decisions; for an organism whose most overriding instinct is self-preservation, which is strongly determinative of a lack of true desire to be dead among the vast majority suicide attempters, this suggests that a self-declared and long-considered determination to be dead among a small number of individuals is something quite potent. I would think this primarily pertains to terminally ill persons with very high levels of constant pain; I am palpably reminded of my step-grandfather who in the final month or so of his cirrhosis repeatedly begged his hospice nurse to off him; if he'd been capable by that point of getting up on his own, I'm certain he would have brought his condition to a rapid end. I doubt this "really want to be dead" category much ever pertains to people in emotional turmoil, having difficulty coping with life struggles, etc. I'm not a subject matter expert, but have personally witnessed someone who badly wanted to be dead, and the entire voluntary euthanasia debate would not exist if there were not plenty more such cases.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  11:38, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

I think possibly we can agree that readers (which includes us) have different interpretations of "want to be dead" which is complicating the point we might want to make. Which comes back to my earlier request that maybe there is another way of expressing the point WAID is trying to make. The MOS guidance isn't a headline designed to puzzle the reader into reading an article on suicide regret. But there is value in guiding editors away from lazy tropes and terrible word choices that may encourage a reader when all we really want to do is accurately report someone's death in the same neutral way we might report them dying in a road accident. -- Colin°^Talk 18:54, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps we should go back to the wording: Editors should not assume that people who attempt suicide actually want to be dead. This statement is consistent with all of the available evidence. Even if you know for certain that a particular individual is sorry she didn't die during an attempt, you should still not assume that she want(ed) to be dead. You might well be talking to a person who is now so disabled as a result of the suicide attempt that she thinks that dying would have spared her a lot of trouble, but that's not the same as wanting to achieve the state of death.

Can you see the difference between "wanting to be dead" and "wanting to die" (or "wanting to stop living")? An elderly nun with a deep longing for Heaven might actually "want to be dead". An pious Hindu who desires to be reincarnated as soon as possible might actually "want to be dead". A person who says this all sucks and I'm done with it is not someone who actually wants to be dead. That's a person who "wants to stop living" (under these circumstances, at least), not a person who is reveling in the opportunity to be dead. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:14, 9 January 2024 (UTC)

Returning to the "should not assume" wording would help, as would the changing "actually want to be dead" to "really wanted to die" tweak suggested below. (That's very different from WP stating as fact that zero or near-zero suicides and attempters really wanted to be dead, which is ultimately OR even if some sources assert this on bases that can't really be proven.) But I don't agree with the hair-splitting you're going for just above; the nun and the Hindu clearly don't want to "be dead" at all, under any definition; they want to enter their eternal life with God in the former case, and enter their next life in the latter, both of which are instances of wanting "to die" in the short term (wanting the current life to end) for the prospect of more and presumably better life afterward, not wanting at all "to be dead", which is being in a state of non-life; so it seems to me that you have their cases backwards. A terminally ill atheist (who is also irreligious in any other way that might not literally involve god[s] but might involve afterlife or rebirth) who is in a lot of constant pain may very well "want to be dead" since for them "wants to stop living" resolves to exactly the same thing, and they've had a long time to mull that over. (I say that as an atheist who has thought on this matter, though fortunately I am not one in such a condition.) That's not to say no distinction can be drawn between "wants to stop living" and "wants to be dead" in other circumstances ("my spouse left me and I'm miserable", "I can't give up this addiction", "all my children died in a car wreck", and other sources of profound depression or despair in which someone might feel life is no longer worth living).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  21:24, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

The text says that it's a common error to assume that people want to be dead. I think that's both an accurate statement and information editors can use. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:49, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Thank you WAID, this is an interesting topic that I know very little about. Your one-word removal seems justified based on what you've said and the sources you pasted just above. This is not really a major change to the guideline; I'm not sure it merits more discussion here. At a quick glance, this distinction isn't really covered at Suicide. Perhaps those interested in the topic could have a more in-depth discussion of how to cover this distinction at that article's talk page. Ajpolino (talk) 19:17, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

Just to clarify, WAID didn't really remove that word from the guidance. It was more that it got recently added by another editor, so WAID was restoring the original text (which WAID wrote). I wonder if changing "actually want to be dead" to "really wanted to die" would help, but I think the point WAID is trying to make is more complex than the words here allow and only really touches on the "suicidal behaviour" issue and not other aspects of suicide like assisted suicide in terminal illness or political/terror suicide. The problem really for a guideline is that you need to get your point across in order for our editors to put it into practice, and at the moment the text I think fails in that and just ends up surprising anyone who reads it, which is fine for a clickbait headline. -- Colin°^Talk 10:23, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Even in the case of medical aid in dying and suicide bombers, being dead isn't the goal. It's the method to achieve a different goal: I want to avoid incontinence*, and since nobody's offering me ways to live a happy and healthy life, I choose dying now to avoid embarrassment later. Or, for the political bomber, I want to hurt them, and the only way I can think of to do that will kill me in the process (except that the suicide bomber isn't usually the one who plans this; they're often a vulnerable person who is manipulated or forced into it by others). When Boko Haram tells a kidnapped girl that she has a choice between having sex with their soldiers or blowing herself up,[5] she doesn't want to be dead. She's not thinking "How lovely, I get to go to Heaven today – I really can't wait to slough off this mortal coil and proceed to the afterlife".

[*] Not a joke. Fecal incontinence is a feared condition among adults,[6] and the fear of future incontinence is one of the most common reasons given in US applications for medical aid in dying – significantly more common than fear of future intolerable pain.[7] WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:25, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Perhaps talking about a "goal" would help then. Steps one consciously takes to achieve a goal, whether sensible or foolish, willing or reluctant, are still "want to" steps. Want can be a fleeting, in the moment, feeling. It's the wrong word if you are actually carefully discussing goals or long term aims, etc. The writers of these pieces are playing rhetorical games because "want" is ambiguous and they want to surprise the reader, who only considered the immediate step, with thinking about the long term goal, which may not align. I don't think that should be how a guideline is written. Anyway, I'm now in danger of repeating myself so.. -- Colin°^Talk 08:26, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Language like "goal" and "steps one consciously takes" imply some level of considered thought, which is not always the case. However, a non-trivial fraction of suicide attempts, particularly among teenagers and young adults, happen less than five minutes after the first thought of suicide. This is why even slight increases in the effort needed to access a method (e.g., a chest-high barrier on a bridge instead of a waist-high one) or a brief interruption (I just read a story about a woman who is alive now because a stranger asked her to take their picture) permanently prevent most suicide deaths.

If at any point you have ideas about how else to indicate that suicide attempts are not really aimed at achieving the afterlife (or oblivion, for the worldwide minority that does not subscribe to any religion), I'd love to hear them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:05, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

Possessives in condition names

There seems to be at least a vague consensus both on- and off-site to avoid possessives in names of conditions, i.e. that Down's syndrome and Asperger's syndrome are now an obsolete style. I know I have encountered advice to this effect in multiple offsite style guides, and it's weird to me that MOS:MED doesn't cover it. I'm also occasionally running into article titles like Milroy's disease which seem like they should move, but there's not an entirely clear basis on which to RM them.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  20:46, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Previous discussions have suggested that this may be an WP:ENGVAR issue, with British English preferring the non-possessive and American English using the possessive.

Also, @Asto77 may be interested in this, based on the suggestion in Talk:Sjögren syndrome#Article name needs to change surely? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:04, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

As someone from the UK, I've never heard of any British preference. For example I think you'll have trouble finding any UK site mentioning Alzheimer's disease without the 's. I've always maintained this is a pronunciation thing where the difficulty of clearly distinguishing the 's in a term where the second word begins with an 's' (Like "Down's syndrome") means it gets dropped in speech. Some people then rationalise this with invented ideas like Down never had his syndrome so how can he own it. Well, I think, if you are so upset with Down's "ownership" then call it trisomy 21 and do away with the owner. Dropping the 's doesn't change the fact that it is some guy's name.

As the linked discussion notes, when people drop the second word and say that someone has Asperger's or has Down's or has Alzheimer's then magically the possessive is universal. Try finding someone who says they "have Asperger" or were "diagnosed with Asperger". Doesn't work. (Of course Asperger's is a legacy diagnosis anyway, in a small way due to not wanting to be associated with this person).

I think this is a good example of a dispute where editors should agree there are more important things for them to do and argue about and leave it to some international committee to decide. I think the current text for our article titles is good advice. If multiple forms of a name are in use without a very clear direction of travel, then find an authority and agree to follow that. -- Colin°^Talk 11:29, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

Agreed. One advantage of "finder" names is that they are far more memorable, at least for the general public, than the usually rather longer proper scientific name. Johnbod (talk) 14:45, 23 January 2024 (UTC)

I don't think the post was about whether to use an eponym or a technical name, but just whether we include the 's in the eponymous name. Technical names aren't always a direct substitute for eponyms, as sometimes they find that the eponymous name has more than one cause, and the disease gets split, or that several eponyms are the same disease. But again I think this sort of argument is best left to committees, making it "somebody else's problem".

There is some commentary on this issue at List of eponymous diseases. As with many things in science, often the person who gets all the credit wasn't always the first. -- Colin°^Talk 09:09, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

We arguably touch on it where the MOS mentions the ICD as one source of reconciling title disputes for med articles. Whilst I've updated the MOS to refer to ICD-11; WHO began dropping the 's from some code descriptions as far back as the 2010 version of ICD-10. Little pob (talk) 15:42, 24 January 2024 (UTC)

So far, I'm finding a) no evidence this is an ENGVAR matter, and various US publishers and medical organizations advising against the possessive (plus considerable RS evidence that to the extent there's a national/continental lean on the matter, it is exactly the opposite of that claimed above); and b) general opposition to the possessive in international and national (including US) professional bodies in the field, which is by no means recent but dating back at least as far as the 1970s. The US National Insititutes of Health (inluding the National Library of Medicine) has opposed possessive usage since 1974, the Canadian National Institutes of Health since 1975, the World Health Organization in since 2004 (including in its International Classification of Diseases), and the American Medical Association since 2007 (including in their AMA Manual of Style at § 3.2.22). Scientific Style and Format, one of the style guides our MoS is actually based on, is against the possessive. Various publishers are making to no-possessive rule part of their style guides, e.g. Journal of Medical Internet Research[8], Applied Radiology [9], etc., including many Springer Nature journals apparently (according to editing service AJE.com [10]; I haven't gone digging in all the individual journal style sheets and submission guidelines). Also Dorland's Illustrated Medical Dictionary since 2011, and Stedman's Medical Dictionary are against the possessive use. See also medical information projects essentially aligned with WP's goals, like the radiology-focused Radiopaedia [11], and Eponymictionary [12] which consistently avoid the possessive form (though WhoNamedIt veers back and forth between styles [13] like WP presently does, including cases like "Münchhausen's syndrome" that do not comport with actual usage [14]). Encyclopaedia Britannica has gone non-possessive [15], including with terms that WP is still putting a -'s on unnecessarily. Also anti-possessive are the American College of Clinical Pharmacy [16] and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [17]. The shift appears to have started over 70 years ago with the founding of the the National Down Syndrome Society without the "Down's" that then dominated in common practice, and it was no accident. Statistical analysis of modern papers in PubMed show the -'s forms to be rapidly disappearing from professional literature [18] (in American ones faster than in European).

Editorials against the possessive are pretty common, e.g. the one already cited above and [19][20][21][22] (though two [23][24] I have not yet found full-text access to, including via WP:TWL). There are also some polemical counter-essays that rely on traditionalism notions or appeals to what non-medical writers prefer, e.g. this one which only cares what general-audience dictionaries like, and this one with right-wing dogwhistling like "a really silly example of political correctness run amok" (despite this not being a political question); another here includes some rationale why Pascal's principle and similar terms for eponymous laws, procedures, devices, and so on, should still be possessive (though it tries to over-apply this to non-parallel cases like diseases, syndromes, and other conditions), but also concludes with a similar rant against gender-neutrality and in favor of traditionalism and against the natural process of language change. Some essay and other material on this subject is simply neutrally observational that both styles exist but that their conflict/inconsistency is problematic in various ways: [25][26][27][28][29][30][31]. Most dictionaries are very slow to produce new editions or otherwise update their material (though most of those updated within the last generation or so include both possessive and non-possessive forms for the conditions with names commonly encountered in everyday English), and some general-audience style guides are as also slow to update. But the Associated Press Stylebook (dominant guide for American news writing) has made the no-possessive switch. I've not yet checked Mosby's Medical Dictionary or Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary yet, nor gone over various other mainstream style guides on this question, like Chicago and New Hart's/Oxford current edition; Chicago 16th preferred no possessive, but also said that the possessive form "may be preferred in a general context" (§ 8.143).

So, regarding actual medical usage, "leave it to some international committee to decide .... best left to committees, making it 'somebody else's problem'" essentially has already happened for almost exactly 50 years, with a now generally dominant no-'s result (though some terms seem more resistant to it) that has become our problem. The fact that it was discussed before, some time ago, on WP doesn't mean it should never be discussed again nor emerge with a clear resolution to say something about it in MOS:MED. A literal "some international committee" is basically a red herring: "there is no central body regulating the use of [medical] eponyms. Any changes in designation or use thus must reflect a naturally occurring, emerging, and broadly based consensus ... in effect a reflection of a decision by a [medical] 'court' of opinion." [32]. While not every journal and other medical publisher is in exact agreement on this (and actually British ones that retain the possessive are more common that American ones; so much for the "possessive is an Americanism" ENGVAR claim, also refuted here and here, citing multiple sources), and the decline rate in possessive form of one syndrome versus another is not constant [33], it's clear that the possessive usage has greatly declined since the 1970s. At what point is all of this evidence of a shift, at least within literature competent on the subject, "enough"? I'm often critical of attempts to impose specialist-source writing conventions on Wikipedia, but those concerns do not apply when the best-practice usage in such source material does not actually conflict with a non-specialist writing norm (e.g., we have no problem at all adopting the italics and capitalized-genus format for Homo sapiens and E. coli, nor the space-between-unit-figures-and-symbols standard, and standardized symbols, for 3 mm and 560 cu ft). Here, there is no particular norm but completely random usage in non-specialist sources; the avoidance of the possessive form will not be an "astonishment" for readers, and there is no compelling reason not to standardize (while there are good reasons to do so).

Using the shorter form on WP would not only better agree with the modern source material it would also align better with WP:CONCISE policy. There's also a WP:CONSISTENT argument to make: not only does using a possessive in a few "hold-out" cases like Milroy's disease and Parkinson's disease conflict with most such other articles, various terms of this sort (especially those named after multiple parties such as Tay–Sachs disease and Chédiak–Higashi syndrome) are virtually unattested in possessive form, so normalizing in the opposite direction would not actually be possible. Also, it's worth noting that the Austrlian Government Style Manual [34] draws a distinction we might find useful here, and which seems to encapsulate where the actual usage is going anyway: "If it is a disease named after people who had the disease, use the possessive case. Lou Gehrig's disease, Legionnaire's disease. If it is a disease or anatomical part named after the person who discovered, studied or described it, don't use the possessive case. Alzheimer disease, Down syndrome, Henle loop." And all the material in all the works agree that ones named after places (Ebola virus disease, St. Louis encephalitis, and Lyme disease) never take a possessive. Same with ones named metaphorically after historical, literary, or mythological figures (Marie Antoinette syndrome, Pickwick syndrome, Oedipus complex). PS: Some bodies and works (including Mendelian Inheritance in Man) go further, and suggest replacing all medical eponyms entirely (and there are published debates on the idea [35]), but this seems a bridge too far, especially for WP, which is bound to a pretty strong extent by WP:COMMONNAME. However, that is not a style policy, and whether to possessivize something would seem to be a style question (plus a redirect should always exist from the -'s form and from the curly -’s form as well).  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  23:44, 26 January 2024 (UTC)

I think this is a good analysis, but I don't think it strikes at the core of the issue, which is that people (including editors) feel strongly about the Right™ Way, and if we pass a law on high that says all right-thinking editors will obviously want to do it our way, they won't. Sjögren syndrome has already been moved to the non-possessive twice, and there are complaints on the talk page about it using the "wrong" form. Down syndrome has been argued over since the second-ever comment on the talk page in 2004 (not to mention 1, 2, 3, 4 [the RM], 5, 6, and probably more), and despite having what you'd call the "right" answer, it does not appear to make people happy. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:46, 27 January 2024 (UTC)

There are always "complaints ... about ... using the 'wrong' form", when it comes to every style issue and every style guide and every publication, and it never actually comes down to "right-thinking", which is just subjective preference. It is never a reason for a publication's style guide to fail to settle a glaring consistency problem one way or another, even arbitrarily, though in this case it's not arbitrary, as professional usage is strongly moving away from the possessive (for half a century now), and it's more concise anyway. If they only down side is "someone somewhere might not like it", that's always true of every such decision and never prevents us making the decision.  — SMcCandlish ☏ ¢ 😼  04:46, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

You say "professional usage is strongly moving away from the possessive". Do you have any evidence for that, outside of "--- syndrome" disorders like Down's. The stats below show that really isn't true for the two "--- disease" conditions I looked at. Pretty much every article on the topic cites the National Down Syndrome Society's request to drop the possessive because "the syndrome does not actually belong to anyone". And any study of trends tends to pick Down's. There's never any other compelling reason given compared to all the other arguments we get about medical language being dehumanising or offensive or archaic or jargon.

It's a pretty weak argument. Consider if we are all at the beach and decide to skim stones. We look around and each pick one. WAID says "Colin's stone looks the best for skimming". We all skim the stones. I say "But WAID's stone did the most hops and went furthest". None of us owned the stones, and all of us lost the stones forever. They never belonged to us either, we just held them for mere seconds. We also might talk about Colin's employer or WAID's terrible journey to work on Monday. Those don't belong to us either.

I don't know why the Society isn't more concerned to use a proper name for the condition, rather than naming it after someone who thought "the Mongolian type of idiot" and "Mongolian defectives" was ok. Or get upset that so many conditions or parts of bodies are named after European white men. An 's doesn't change that. -- Colin°^Talk 12:24, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

About never prevents us making the decision:

First, yes, it does; see Wikipedia:Main Page design for many examples of "someone somewhere might not like it" stopping the Wikipedia community from making a decision.

Second, the Wikipedia community did make a decision, namely to follow the most popular choice in the sources rather than imposing standardization on a non-standardized reality. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:02, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Reading more on this I find this post which refers to Webster's dictionary for explanation of how some grammarians have "fooled" themselves over so-called possessive form. The dictionary gives examples of 's being used in situations where possession/ownership/belonging is not the purpose. For these diseases, the so-called possessive form is being used to indicate "named after", not ownership. They no more own their disease than "a week's pay" is owned by the week or the "land's end" belongs to the land. I really do think the argument that Down didn't own the disease is someone getting upset over exactly this misunderstanding, that 's only ever indicates possession.

I agree that there is pressure from WP:CONSISTENT to have a consistent grammatical form for eponymous diseases. Some style guides and publishers have decided that consistency is important, so it isn't a daft idea. But other publications are happy for articles and papers to be inconsistent in this regard so that isn't a daft idea either. On the other hand there is pressure from WP:COMMONNAME to pick the name most commonly used in our English-language reliable sources, per article. I don't think WP:CONCISE is seriously relevant at all, which is about whether to eliminate words, not punctuation, and no style guide is advocating for this on the grounds that it saves a letter and an apostrophe.

There's a practical issue for some articles. At our Parkinson's disease article, the word "Parkinson's" (without "disease") appears 43 times. At Alzheimer's disease, the word "Alzheimer's" (without "disease") appears 71 times. So it is extremely common for the text to use the shortened form, which simply does not work without a possessive.

Other examples of well known diseases (exact text in title/abstract in last 5 years):

• Ménière's disease 1064 vs Ménière's disease 165
• Huntington's disease 3946 vs Huntington disease 794
• I tried Graves' disease but PubMed seems to eliminate punctuation even in double-quotes so both results are the same. Expanding to show 10 pages of results and searching in my browser has "Graves' disease" at 177 and "Graves disease" at 15.

I see that the earlier linked Whose name is it anyway? Varying patterns of possessive usage in eponymous neurodegenerative diseases largely confirms my stats observations below, though their analysis ends in 2013. -- Colin°^Talk 18:56, 15 February 2024 (UTC)

Stats

A PubMed search for article title + abstract text for exact string match. For example: "down's syndrome" in 1983.

Table of stats

Non-possessive vs Possessive Year Parkinson Parkinson's ratio Alzheimer Alzheimer's ratio Down Downs ratio 1983 14 181 12.9 24 156 6.5 62 157 2.5 1984 21 277 13.2 16 200 12.5 62 143 2.3 1985 17 270 15.9 20 316 15.8 94 145 1.5 1986 27 342 12.7 35 462 13.2 93 187 2.0 1987 33 491 14.9 36 499 13.9 125 176 1.4 1988 33 429 13.0 67 606 9.0 131 210 1.6 1989 53 538 10.2 77 870 11.3 151 211 1.4 1990 52 606 11.7 99 825 8.3 243 208 0.9 1991 41 673 16.4 102 955 9.4 170 228 1.3 1992 53 707 13.3 115 1,041 9.1 195 213 1.1 1993 61 764 12.5 145 1,128 7.8 212 252 1.2 1994 61 768 12.6 170 1,419 8.3 183 218 1.2 1995 61 931 15.3 191 1,460 7.6 247 229 0.9 1996 47 963 20.5 234 1,771 7.6 249 255 1.0 1997 93 1,181 12.7 308 1,856 6.0 246 199 0.8 1998 87 1,216 14.0 313 2,043 6.5 274 198 0.7 1999 123 1,344 10.9 309 2,016 6.5 321 207 0.6 2000 115 1,518 13.2 310 2,306 7.4 285 174 0.6 2001 123 1,484 12.1 323 2,355 7.3 391 182 0.5 2002 174 1,734 10.0 367 2,540 6.9 336 188 0.6 2003 209 2,023 9.7 395 2,629 6.7 364 156 0.4 2004 291 2,100 7.2 543 3,122 5.7 378 137 0.4 2005 347 2,146 6.2 590 3,323 5.6 460 130 0.3 2006 431 2,618 6.1 766 3,637 4.7 517 167 0.3 2007 456 2,845 6.2 687 3,772 5.5 533 139 0.3 2008 479 3,082 6.4 751 4,079 5.4 538 149 0.3 2009 578 3,306 5.7 832 4,450 5.3 524 132 0.3 2010 633 3,766 5.9 933 5,233 5.6 606 127 0.2 2011 631 4,135 6.6 882 5,611 6.4 668 119 0.2 2012 688 4,500 6.5 1,025 6,334 6.2 729 126 0.2 2013 786 4,869 6.2 1,081 6,875 6.4 792 144 0.2 2014 791 5,054 6.4 1,017 7,474 7.3 840 130 0.2 2015 890 5,534 6.2 1,022 7,918 7.7 789 105 0.1 2016 975 5,918 6.1 1,079 8,310 7.7 777 96 0.1 2017 993 6,234 6.3 1,172 8,930 7.6 822 81 0.1 2018 979 6,413 6.6 1,092 9,388 8.6 814 69 0.1 2019 953 6,807 7.1 1,166 10,103 8.7 828 78 0.1 2020 1,083 7,982 7.4 1,242 11,667 9.4 948 73 0.1 2021 1,035 8,805 8.5 1,186 13,055 11.0 1,064 95 0.1 2022 893 8,743 9.8 1,182 13,444 11.4 1,048 82 0.1 2023 873 8,575 9.8 1,112 14,177 12.7 980 78 0.1

Ratio of possessive vs non-possessive

These show that for PubMed article titles and abstracts:

• The possessive form of "Parkinson's disease" averaged around 13x more popular than "Parkinson disease" in the 80s an 90s then declined to 6x more popular in the 00s but has crept up again to be nearly 10x more popular in 2023.
• The possessive form of "Alzheimer's disease" had a peak of 16x more popular than "Alzheimer disease" in the mid 80s then declined to 4.7x more popular in the mid 00s but has crept up again to be nearly 13x more popular in 2023. (Not sure what was going on with the 1983 figure, which seems to be an anomaly).
• The possessive form of "Down's syndrome" in 1983 was about 2.5x more common than "Down syndrome" but declined to reach parity around 1996 and is currently about 12.5x less common.

Here are also the Ngram stats:

• Parkinson's
• Alzheimer's
• Down's

The ngram results show the possessive is way ahead of the non-possessive for all three conditions and the only chart showing some meaningful variation is the one for Down's syndrome where the possessive is becoming steadily less popular but still a long way to go.

Personally, I dislike searches like these as it is so easy to make mistakes or misinterpret the results. Please let me know if they are misinterpreted or incorrect. I remain unmoved from my position that the differences are almost entirely to do with pronunciation and uncertainty about how to form a possessive rather than invented reasons like whether the person had it or the doctor had it. Other examples mentioned above are Tay–Sachs, where the the second guy is called Sachs and very few people on planet Earth are sure how to make that possessive or enjoy saying it. And similarly, Chédiak–Higashi syndrome is a disease named after two people, and even fewer people on planet Earth are confident to make that possessive, and many might even assume it is a place name. The general trend with diseases is to avoid and sometimes replace those named after people or places. For example, Ebola would not get that name in 2023. Worrying about whether there's an apostrophe in a name that still clearly refers to the doctor/patient generates a remarkable amount of publications. Don't doctors have more important things to do, like treating patients?

SMcCandlish research contains a lot of useful links but there are two dozen sources cited, which disagree, most of which acknowledge this is an ongoing area of dispute. Consistency of article titles might be an argument for picking one style over another. It would be more persuasive if the usage patterns for possessive vs non-possessive, particularly for ...disease, were similar, or that there was a consistent trend away from the possessive for ...disease forms. But currently there's really no love for Parkinson disease or Alzheimer disease on either side of the Atlantic, and if anything, it is getting rarer. I wonder if this is a result of SEO practices when writing papers, that there's a strong pressure to pick the more popular search term. Also note that I only searched for the full name of these diseases/syndromes. Searching for the abbreviated form (e.g., "Parkinson" without "--- disease") is left to the reader (I had a go and it didn't surprise me at all that the possessive form was very popular and non-possessive rare, but there are contaminants from other uses of that name). -- Colin°^Talk 16:48, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

Thank you for this, Colin. This is a very good illustration. My conclusion is that while there may be a consistent pattern for some diseases, sources do not have a consistent pattern across all diseases. We therefore should be willing to have both "Down" and "Alzheimer's", without trying to force either of them to conform to the pattern preferred for the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:14, 13 February 2024 (UTC)