Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 37

This is an archive of past discussions about Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Archive 30

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Archive 35

Rehabilitation center

The article Rehabilitation center is currently devoid of content - it used to be a re-direct to the disambiguation page Rehabilitation. Can someone help start this article? Thanks in advance, XOttawahitech (talk) 21:29, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Why not leave it as a redirect? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 21:31, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Because the current (very long) list at the disambig Rehabilitation page does not include any page that can be used by pages such as assisted living which refer to Rehabilitation center. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:26, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Would we not just wind up with another dab page called Rehabilitation centre with links to pages for centres of each of the many kinds of rehab listed at Rehabilitation (disambiguation)? Better, in my view, to simply add the centres to the respective rehab articles.LeadSongDog come howl! 15:33, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi LeadSongDog, what I am trying to say (but doing a poor job) is that wikipedia needs an article explaining the term rehabilitation in the following context:

…those undergoing rehabilitation after a hospital stay

…allowed to remain in the residence or to return from a rehabilitation center, skilled nursing facility or hospital XOttawahitech (talk) 03:25, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Right, but that is only one of the many kinds of rehabilitation. If the article name does not make it clear which kind of rehab is meant, it will only cause confusion. From the above, even I still don't know which type you intended. LeadSongDog come howl! 07:13, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Assisted Living

The WikiProject Medicine banner was added to the talkpage of assisted living a long time ago. In 2007 it was assessed as start-class mid-importance by this project and retains the same rating in 2013. I was just trying to draw some attention to it, since it seems to be the choice solution for alzheimer’s patients in the USA today. But I will leave this for now since there seems to be no interest in this topic here. XOttawahitech (talk) 14:30, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Electronic cigarette

This article is getting a lot of readers and a lot of editors lately. It is our 8th most viewed article. Have recently updated the health effects to secondary sources. Most of which says "it has been poorly studied" and there fore we do not know what benefits / harms they might have. People keep trying to add primary sources or use primary sources to refute the secondary ones. Help appreciated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:10, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Could use more eyes there, still. -- Scray (talk) 18:56, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Foliate papillitis redirect

I am unsure if this is an appropriate redirect, to Optic papillitis. My understanding of "foliate papillitis" is inflammation of the foliate papillae, not to do with this. 2 out of the three hits for "foliate papillitis" is about the tongue, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/?term=%22Foliate+papillitis%22 and the last is not clear from the abstract, but it is clear it is a primary source.

P.S. Also looks like I found another potential stub candidate for merging to its parent article. Lesion (talk) 23:20, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

May have been accidental development involving a bot fixing a double redirect http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Foliate_papillitis&diff=412879472&oldid=355393743

Dr. Otto Placik at the Labiaplasty, Breast augmentation and Free flap breast reconstruction articles

With regard to the Labiaplasty article, the Placik matter was brought up before; see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 31#Labiaplasty. As a result of that discussion, most of Placik's edits were removed from the article (though even before then, as noted in that discussion, there had been slow WP:Edit warring that involved removing and restoring some of his edits). Basically, there is concern that his edits are often problematic. A little earlier today, an IP showed up to restore the Placik material. And considering that this person (the IP), using the same IP range, has consistently restored Placik's material, and has shown up today not long after Placik showed up to edit today (with Pacik editing the Breast augmentation and Free flap breast reconstruction articles, as seen and here and here, after a hiatus that he returned from on August 5th), I'm convinced that the IP is Pacik. The IP has also finally taken the editing matter concerning the Labiaplasty article to Talk:Labiaplasty. I know a lot about female anatomy, but I do not, as of yet, know a lot about labiaplasty, breast augmentation and free flap breast reconstruction. And so I've brought this matter to you all. Placik should not be making any "corrections" that are not supported by sources in any of these articles. And whether this bit ("rectum" where "perineum" should be) that was corrected was added by Placik or not, it is clearly wrong (unless speaking of some inner tissue)...but is now back in the Labiaplasty article (along with whatever other anatomy inaccuracies that I have not assessed with regard to that article). Flyer22 (talk) 23:51, 8 August 2013 (UTC)

I haven't looked at the edits in question, but taking it at face value, i would paste most of this into a filing at WP:SPI (which it appears you've not used in the last few thousand edits). Don't ask for checkuser, they won't do one for an IP editor, but if the edits are as close to the other editor's as you say they won't need to use it anyway. I've gone through that process a number of times myself, so if you have questions please feel free to ping me either here or on my talk page. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ] # _ 04:03, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, UseTheCommandLine. Yes, I'm aware of the WP:CheckUser policy with regard to connecting an IP to a registered account. Flyer22 (talk) 04:10, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

This users efforts are sort of self promotional. The images he is trying to add are excessive. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:20, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Update: He has replied about these matters. Flyer22 (talk) 17:34, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Skimming over his talk page, where other concerns with regard to his editing have been expressed (including by Jmh649/Doc James), I see sockpuppet investigations have been started against him before. As seen at the Labiaplasty talk page, he has offered an explanation for the IP matter and states that a sockpuppet investigation is not necessary; for now, I will hold off on any suspicions of sockpuppetry on his part and will instead point him to WP:MEDRS. Flyer22 (talk) 17:52, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

He is uploading high quality images. The amount of self referencing has decreased. He is no longer adding the same number of similar images. Thus looking at things now I am much happier with his image contributions. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:25, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Moving images at acquired brain injury and elsewhere

Is it just me or do moving images, such as the one at acquired brain injury, make it hard for readers to focus on the prose? And how is a lay reader going to get any meaning on acquired brain injury from this image? I remember seeing one article that had an option to activate a moving image, with the default set for it to be frozen. Any ideas on how to apply that here? I tend to think moving images such as this should be generally deactivated until a reader clicks on them to turn them on. Biosthmors (talk) 12:08, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Completely agreed, I find them very distracting. I don't think you can freeze it unless you upload a frame of the image as a separate file (there is syntax for choosing a frame from a video, but not for animated gifs).--WS (talk) 12:35, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

(as a quick and dirty workaround: in firefox and internet explorer, pressing esc will stop the animation) --WS (talk) 12:43, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. I removed this one. Biosthmors

Agree am not a fan of moving images as they are distracting. We have one on the Parkinson's disease article that IMO needs to be froze or should be clicked on to activate. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:13, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I posted in a section below about the video at Tourette syndrome#Characteristics (it is frozen be default, user clicks to play). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes it depends on what kind of file format it is. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Attention needed ...

... at neurodiversity, to multiple issues mentioned on talk, and also to Aspie Quiz, per the earlier discussion here of problems with some open access sources. A "walled garden" of POV autism articles was cleaned up waaaaay back in 2007 ... it seems to be cropping up again, and I will be quite busy through August. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I think WT:WikiProject Disability would be a better venue for this matter - as it isn't really a medical topic per se. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 16:21, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

Asperger syndrome and autism are medical topics, and regardless, medical statements are covered by MEDRS. Perhaps if you investigated further you would understand the concern, which I have avoided detailing here so as not to canvass. Specifically, among several other issues, is the relationship to our discussions here last month of open access journals. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:34, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Electronic cigarettes

We have a number of users removing secondary sources and replacing them with primary sources and the popular press at this article. Further comments welcome. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:59, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

We now have two users who have removed the 2013 conclusions of the World Health Organization on the topic in question and those of a 2012 review article. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:14, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Additionally removing the FDA with claims that it is self published [1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:22, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Medial: A disambiguation page

Wikipedia's article titled Medial is a disambiguation page listing a lot of articles about mathematics and linguistics.

But most of the links to that article are about anatomy. They should link to lateral and medial.

(And usually nothing should link to a disambiguation page except redirects and hatnotes. (And maybe occasionally another disambiguation page with broader coverage?))

Could people help fix all these links? Michael Hardy (talk) 16:22, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I wikilink anatomical terms of location to the main page, e.g.:

[[Anatomical terms of location#Superior and inferior|superior]] [[Anatomical terms of location#Superior and inferior|inferior]] [[Anatomical terms of location#Anterior and posterior 2|anterior]] [[Anatomical terms of location#Anterior and posterior 2|posterior]] [[Anatomical terms of location#Left and right (lateral), and medial2|medial]] [[Anatomical terms of location#Left and right (lateral), and medial2|lateral]]

Arguably the lateral and medial article is more specific to those terms, but I only found out about this page when you posted it here. Lesion (talk) 18:04, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Post-Finasteride Syndrome DRV

A deletion review for Post-Finasteride Syndrome has been opened here. It could use more input from people who are familiar with MEDRS and fringe guidelines. The ability to view deleted content is a plus. Mark Arsten (talk) 17:42, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Template:Reliable sources for medical articles

Template:Reliable sources for medical articles generates this -

Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about WikiProject Medicine/Archive 37.

PubMed provides review articles from the past five years (limit to free review articles)
The TRIP database provides clinical publications about evidence-based medicine.
Other potential sources include: Centre for Reviews and Dissemination and CDC

A robot has put this template on the talk pages of many health articles. The goal behind this was to give users who visit the talk pages of health articles a recommended search which would assist them in finding appropriate scholarly articles which they could use to develop the Wikipedia article. The template does a search in a United States government health database, and the search is for the article's name.

Previous discussion of this template happened in the following places:

Here on the WikiProject Medicine Board - Archive 34 - A link from the talk page to evidence
At Wikipedia's Village Pump Archive 103 - Proposal to add a template to medical article talk page

Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:18, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Um, actually a bot put a different template on talk pages, and the template given above (as well as the discussion added to the introduction) contains the adjustments made after the discussion below. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Considering the Trip database

why is this happening? This Trip database identifies primary sources ... why are we encouraging new editors to source incorrectly? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:44, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Can someone explain a) where it came from, b) why we are encouraging the use of primary soures, and c) how I can get that bot to not visit TS talk? [2] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:52, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It does seem a little self defeating to have a banner advising MEDRS which gives one of the suggested links for sources to a repository that lists both primary and secondary sources. I followed the link from another page [3], and Cochrane Reviews do seem to be displayed first, but lower down in the results there are primary sources. There is a side menu on the right with options to narrow the search results to systematic reviews etc. Maybe the link could point to one of these narrowed search results, as the links in template giving PubMed search results do above. Nice template btw not sure who made it, but thanks for going to the effort. Now we just have to hope that people will read the talk page before adding their primary source ... =D well might dissuade some people anyway. Lesion (talk) 17:04, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

The discussion happened on this talk page in May. I think it's an awesome idea and a great template. Thank you all concerned. But I also agree with Sandy that we should be pointing to reviews, meta-analyses, etc. and not primary sources. Is it possible to tweak the TRIP link as Lesion suggests? --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:21, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Not sure what others are seeing, but for me the Trip results are pre-sorted in decreasing order of evidence quality. That seems to be exactly what we want: to find the best available evidence that relates to the topic. We might narrow it to publications in the past five years as with this. A few cautionary words in the Trip discussion might be worthwhile, but I don't see a fundamental problem.LeadSongDog come howl! 18:24, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

The first 50 results on my test search were all secondary. Fifty-one onwards RCTs start popping up. It's still awesome. Really thank you. But if it were possible to eliminate primary sources altogether, that would be super awesome. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Does this look better? The categoryid list seems to enumerate the article types to include. Some experimentation will clarify what each of those values means. LeadSongDog come howl! 20:14, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep. I looked at the first 120 and they were all secondary from 2012 & 2013. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:26, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I think the template is great, and it is probably one of the best ways of encouraging wise editing. I have nevertheless noticed that in the case of Huntington's disease it makes a strange thing saying potentially useful sources of information about Huntington%26%2339%3Bs+disease . I suppose it will not be the only case. Can it be fixed?--Garrondo (talk) 20:23, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with SandyGeorgia that this system has problems and will give primary sources sometimes but the intent is to standardize a process which will usually send people to good sources. Anyone who is willing to start at Trip and do research is someone that I would assist guiding if they had trouble understanding MEDRS. I would love to hear more criticism if others have any. I like this template but would like all problems with it documented. I am posting a link to this so that the problems Sandy and Garrondo found will be recorded. Here is the template's talk page - Template talk:Reliable sources for medical articles. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:30, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Why is this thing being installed by bot, and does anyone know how to make the bot STOP ??? I don't have time to sort it ... but this seems to be another chapter in the Build An Encyclopedia Via Bot While Making Editorial Decisions By People With Brains Harder and Harder. I do not want this misleading info on talk pages of articles I edit; if someone wants to deal with primary sources on another article, or if the list for a particular article is sound, they can install it on talk-- why is it being done with automated tools? The links for the articles I primarily edit are not generally articles we should be encouraging new editors to use, and it is not hard to see that this blanket referral of articles will lead to problems with new editors who use sources inappropriately. Again, those who want to deal with that can and should by adding the link, but will someone PLEASE stop the bot (preferably the person who started it)-- this should not be an automated task. Editorial discretion should be used. The template is labeling frequent primary sources (simply because free full text is available) as sources we should be using ... I can't wait to deal with new editors on that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:25, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

If it's just the Trip link that is causing concern, would it be sensible to remove that link from the template rather than stop the bot doing this task. The PubMed links seem OK to me, and suspect with some tweaking the Trip link could work the same. Lesion (talk) 22:34, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It's not the only one causing concern-- the PubMed links are going to anything that is free full text even when not reviews, and in every case I have checked is returning sources that shouldn't be used, or returning nothing. The concern is that a bot should not be adding this to talk pages ... it should be a matter of editorial discretion. We should not impose bad sources on talk pages in an automated fashion-- it will cause problems with new editors who push a POV, or don't understand DUE weight, or don't know how to correctly weigh sources. This Is A Bad Idea. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:37, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

There's no absolute reason we should discourage new editors from editing say, a FA or a GA ... any given user has as much a right to approach such an article as a neglected stub. A banner of advice about sourcing policy could be argued to be more needed on pages that are likely to attract edits based on primary sources ...

Having said that, (whoever made this template) are the links functioning as intended on all pages, and if not, could this be fixed at all ? Lesion (talk) 22:40, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Where did I say my concerns were limited or restricted to FAs or GAs? I am seeing this on every article I edit. The advice is wrong; it is listing sources are useful only because they are free full text available ... which has nothing to do with ... anything. The question is, why is this being installed by bot? If some editors determine the links are appropriate for some articles, they can add them. They are not appropriate for the articles I edit, and since they are being installed based on a transclusion of an infobox, my next recommendation will be to remove the blooming infoboxes which force us to link to inaccurate information anyway. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:46, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

It seems to me that the chances of anybody actually using those templates are pretty low. When I try to visualize the sort of person who would click on that link and then systematically start reading things in order to improve our article, I come up empty. So it seems to me that all of this is kind of moot -- we're really just cluttering the talk page with more stuff that nobody will look at. Looie496 (talk) 22:51, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

Okay so I started this template. Consensus for it was developed on this page as linked above. TRIP database shows secondary sources first (they are in green and they label these as secondary sources). I am sure we can get rid of the primary source if people wish. Pubmed does a good job of linking to secondary sources. If you are seeing stuff that is not secondary sources in these pubmed links please let me know. Discussion for improvement can occur here as well Template_talk:Reliable_sources_for_medical_articles

Yes there is not going to be free content for every search. But not everyone has access to full no free sources and thus why it was added. Sorry about the strange text in the name. I have fixed it by changing PAGENAMEU to PAGENAME.

With respect to building an encyclopedia by bot these edits are not being made to the main space of any article and they of course never will be. This is simply to help editors find sources. All content edits still require humans.

What we link to can be adjusted. Is it a bad idea to try to direct people to high quality searches for evidence? I fo not think so. This is better than a google search which would otherwise be the default. Nowhere in the evidence box does it say that an editor can through away their brain and just use whatever is provided blindly. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:00, 15 July 2013 (UTC)

By the way template does not properly handle apostrophe's in article titles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The out-of-place apostrophe in your comment is amusing. :) -- Scray (talk) 01:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes and I do not use them properly either :-) We have the ability to just show secondary source at TRIP. I have update the template so that it ONLY lists secondary sources here [4]. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:08, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I disagree with SandyGeorgia and Looie this time: the template even if not 100% perfect in the sources it points out, can be a good start point for interested users. Moreover, it has the advantage that it gives a link to MEDRS at every medical talk page, and also says how to find potentially useful (bolded mine, but maybe there is a way to remark that they are only potential). I would say that damage the template can bring is minimal, whereas benefit still has to be seen (although as Looie says it will probably not be huge).--Garrondo (talk) 06:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Have bolded "possibly useful" to decrease potential confusion. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 06:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

This seems to be a case of throwing out the baby with the bath water. While imperfect, I think the advantages of this template outweigh the disadvantages. It is important to note that the template also includes a link to relevant review articles listed in PubMed before the Trip link. As already mentioned several times above, ideally the Trip link should also be filtered to return only review articles. Boghog (talk) 08:15, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Has already been changed to ONLY show secondary sources as per the request here. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:22, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Opps, sorry. I obviously didn't read the entire thread. The major shortcoming of the template now appears to be fixed. Thanks for taking care of this. Boghog (talk) 08:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for, at least, the correction to remove the primary sources from the list (which was a surprising oversight that leads to concern about how many experienced eyes are following WT:MED these days). Using a bot to recommend sourcing is still sub-optimal for a multitude of reasons I don't have time to outline today, but which I am certain editors will experience once the university term starts. This discussion was split to my talk page: [5] At minimum, I do not want automation taking over on talk pages where real brains, real eyes, and real editor discussion is needed, and anyone who thinks POV pushers and unknowledgeable students won't use these lists to advantage has perhaps not spent enough time editing articles where same dominate. Please stop the bot addition to talk pages and allow those editors who can ascertain that the list is useful to manually install the template on talk pages of articles they watch. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

If students and POV pushers started using secondary sources exclusively it would allow more productive conversations to begin a lot earlier. Doubt it will solve the issues with students by any means as they have mostly revolved around plagiarism and misrepresentation of sources. WP:MEDRS already recommend source types and the links we are providing is to sources that potentially meet MEDRS requirements. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

More to the point, where were the knowledgeable eyes on WP:MED issues when a template was designed and installed via automation that was recommending primary sources on talk pages? I am glad that part is fixed, and hope my point is made-- this has taken unnecessary time and is something that I am quite surprised to see no one picked up on earlier. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:45, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

IMO it is precisely for articles where students and other people without prior knowledge on wiki policies where it is specially interesting: as I have already said, it both provides them with a link to MEDRS and a link to some sources which in average are of far higher quality than those they usually use when they end up here. I would say however that it will be specially useful in the less developed (and less watched) articles, since it is in them in which it is harder to check refs but I neither find any convincing argument to think it will be harmful.--Garrondo (talk) 11:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The secondary sources all came before the non secondary sources. And each were marked clearly by what type of source they were. The reference box gave no guarantee that the sources linked to could be used without the application of proper editorial judgement and it still dose not. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Have the primary sources been removed now, or not? The template language still indicates they are there:

For a list of review articles from the last 5 years at PubMed, click here (limit to free articles or to systematic reviews)

Part of the problem was that the inclusion of "free articles" resulted in primary sources. If that has been addressed, the template text is wrong. If it hasn't been addressed, we still have a problem. The language (and the "or") is confusing ... is it reviews only? Is it reviews "or" free full text (which was the problem before that yielded primary sources). Please clarify the text. Also, since the template was not subst'd, will the corrected text show on articles, or does the bot need to fix them all? <groan> ... In addition to the problem of "who is minding the store" these days, since no one apparently noticed during the bot test that we were recommending primary sources on article talk pages. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

From what I understand it has been fixed and language is correct: now you can choose to see all kind of reviews, only free reviews (systematic or not), or only systematic reviews (free or not). --Garrondo (talk) 12:10, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

if that is the case, then perhaps someone will correct the template wording: I attempted a fix, but the text is now redundant. If we have removed free articles that were not reviews, the wording needs to reflect that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:13, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Per "Part of the problem was that the inclusion of "free articles" resulted in primary sources" I do not see any "none review articles" when I click on this. These are free articles that are reviews articles and are from the last 5 years. It has always been like this. This click has NEVER yielded primary sources.

Per "since the template was not subst'd, will the corrected text show on articles". Um this is a template. It does not need substitution. Any change we make in the main template automatically flows everywhere it exists. This means we can change the wording in one spot and it is changed on all pages. I am happy to adjust the wording to clarify it. Just wanting to keep the template from getting to long. Suggestions appreciated.

Per "we were recommending primary sources on article talk pages" We were never recommending primary sources. All the secondary sources were clearly marked and the template specifically links to WP:MEDRS which emphasis that we should use secondary sources. The TRIP link has been FIXED to reduce this small amount of room for error. And this correction has rolled out automatically to every talk page on which this exists being that it is a template. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:20, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree with SandyGeorgia that this tool is bad and has lots of problems but it is also the best that the entire world and the entirety of all work done by all of humanity has to offer. Some people at the National Institutes of Health - an organization which is not involved in this and which has no official relationship to this - volunteered their time away from work to develop this project as an experiment to check the public's interest in accessing available medical resources, so I feel that there is some good will and respectable guidance in this project from beyond this board. This is not supposed to be the solution to fix the problem of access to information, but it is supposed to be a step towards identifying the best way to help users find sources for this project's 20,000 articles. I am not convinced that this tool providing easier access to scholarly articles is going to result in an increase in the ratio of bad contributions to good contributions, even if many times the articles shared through these links are inappropriate for Wikipedia. However - SandyGeorgia's argument is valid and we do not have the ability to predict what could happen, and this could result in a surge of bad content being added. My opinion that this is worth an experimental run, and that we would notice if people starting saying things like, "I followed the link, so anything I found is appropriate to add to the article." I would like to see the day come when all governments and all research organizations feel an obligation to provide the public and taxpayers with the medical information which all people have a right to access, but that day is not here and I am willing to make compromises to get a little problematic access when the alternative is restricting access more than we must. I really, really, appreciate SandyGeorgia's criticism and I would like anyone else with concerns to state them as best they can. Ideas for what kinds of links might be appropriate to share - or saying that none at all are appropriate - would be most welcome feedback. Blue Rasberry (talk) 12:28, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I already deal with "I found it on pubmed and it is peer review therefore you must let me use it" when they are talking about a "12 petri dish study" they are trying to use to support that X cures cancer. If people started with a review article from the last 5 years at least we could than begin discussing how to best paraphrase the content in question and balance it with other high quality sources. Maybe we could develop some more excellent editors to make up for the many who have faded away over the years. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:39, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Judging the impact of this proposal

Additionally we will be looking at the number of the TRIP link generates so we can determine if anyone uses them. If the answer is "no one" than of course we can pull them. I however sort of like having a link to WP:MEDRS on every article talk page. I know I post it on enough IPs talk pages. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Disagree with the view that this kind of thing clutters the talk page. I like the templates on the talk page, and the more the better. It sets the tone for behavior on the talk page not being a forum, and give a professional feel to each page. The support by the wikiprojects, the assessments, and now links to potential sources for their research... It all has the potential to encourage new users to see what wikipedia is all about and how they can get involved. Visit a page with minimal talk page headers etc and you will often see the discussion in a poor state. For me, the first thing I do when looking for new sources is go to pubmed, enter the search term and then filter for reviews, so I will probably be using these links regularly considering they do exactly that. The restriction on sources from the last 5 years also removes temptations for people with MEDDATE issues. Lesion (talk) 12:36, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm glad things are advancing here (tip of the hat to Blue Rasberry's reasoned post above), but anyone who thinks "last five years" works in many/most cases perhaps hasn't had the pleasure of dealing with student editors on obscure stubs like klazomania. As rasberry points out, we'll need to see the consequences of this template in practice, and we will likely see it once the next university term starts On the articles I edit, the links are not helpful. As another example of the drive for automation (where our infobox forces us to link to articles with known inaccuracies), I hope editor knowledge and discretion and discussion are not replaced by automation and bots. Editors knowledgeable in given topics know the best sources: if we see issues as a result of these lists, I hope we will adjust (although in my experience, once something automated like an infobox is installed, it is difficult to gain consensus to remove them no matter the issues and inaccuracies). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:49, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I think this template is useful (sorry Sandy!) as it does what MEDRS advises wrt a PubMed search for recent reviews on the subject. If the students I've run across had used this, they'd have got off to a better start. The Trip results for Asperger returns a case study as the first result so something's not quite right there. Although the template might be lost within the other talk page template clutter, it is something we could point newbies at to help them with their first sourcing queries. I don't see the bot addition of this template as nearly as bad as the bot-automated edits of article text. The problem doesn't seem to be in the queries the links execute (which are the sort of queries we recommend). Human brain is required to review the query results. Sandy, if you were advising someone to read the literature for TS, isn't the suggested PubMed search a good place to begin? -- Colin°^Talk 13:09, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

To Sandy: for me, MEDDATE is probably the most flexibly interpreted aspect of MEDRS. Agree last five years is sometimes difficult, but rarely impossible, related to the nature of the subject and how much research interest there has been in it. I will not remove a secondary source that is not too far outside 5 yrs old if it is doing a good job and I can't be bothered/can't find a more modern source. I would move that MEDDATE becomes more of an ideal target rather than an absolute inflexible rule, and maybe increase to 10 years to help on the topics with fewer reliable sources ... but I've seen how hard it is to get any changes to MEDRS. When you mention inaccuracies in infoboxes, do you mean links like emedicine? As I understand it, not all fields in the infobox have to be populated... can just remove a particular link and leave an explanation on the talk page as to your reasoning. "Editors knowledgeable in given topics know the best sources" whilst sounds perfectly logical, to me has hints of article ownership. Highlighting sourcing policy on the talk page for anyone who visits that page is a good thing... as pointed out above, better a well meaning editor uses these links than google.

To Colin: PubMed marks "a case report and review of the literature" as a review. Also occasionally it will not mark a review paper as a review. This is more issues with PubMed, or how journals supply metadata about their publications I think. Lesion (talk) 13:21, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, but that doesn't seem to be the case here. The link Case study of man with Asperger syndrome highlights impact of late diagnosis and lack of intervention on risk of offending doesn't seem to work but this seem to be the same thing. Which is a blog post regarding this paper: Asperger syndrome and arson: a case study. So a blog about a case study. No review in sight. Colin°^Talk 13:54, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Weird... hopefully things like that won't be too common... Lesion (talk) 14:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The site in question also states "In addition to the case study, the authors also briefly summarise the literature in relation to ASD and offending. From this review and the reflection on the case study, they conclude that late diagnosis and consequent lack of intervention can increase the risk of offending" But would still say not a great source. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:23, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

@Colin: No need for apologies-- the editors I befriend are typically those who aren't afraid of disagreement :) :) Yes, when I viewed the first links, there were many inaccuracies, errors, primary sources-- unaware if all have been corrected yet. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

@Lesion: By inaccuracies in infoboxes, I am referring mostly to Medline, although there are others. When infoboxes are forced upon articles, at least we should retain the editorial discretion to remove parameters that contain known inaccuracies in individual instances (in line with our WP:EL guideline-- why should that guideline not apply to infoboxes?), but that is often hard to do. I could give a list of everything wrong here. The concern is that automation and automatic editing is replacing knowledge, discussion, and discretion, and that has been a factor in infoboxes, use of automated tools, numerous other concerns across Wikipedia.

On the five years, in the topic area I edit, it is often necessary to go much older than that to find a review.

On the issue you raise of "own", we routinely weigh the quality of sources (impact factor of the journal, known biases and criticism of authors or obscure journals, and many other factors). We shouldn't replace discussion, discretion and knowledge with automation. We will see how this works in practice once the new university term starts. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

When I click on the TRIP link for autism I get NICE followed by 14 Cochrane reviews all from the last 3 years, AHRQ, DARE and than more Cochrane reviews. Yes there is an error in the Asperger's search. Nothing is perfect. The rest of the sources provided look fairly decent though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:32, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

We could have a year parameter within the template so that people can stipulate how many years they wish it to go back. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:48, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

You need a longer signature, James, with "* Doc James is not responsible for erroneous query results on external websites" :-) -- Colin°^Talk 13:57, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

=D Lesion (talk) 14:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The usefulness of these links will depend upon the topic. Pick a big issue and you will get lots of good stuff, but pick something obscure and you might not get anything at all due to the filters. Continuing the example above, the first pubmed link yields only 4 hits. Re. the 5 yr limit, might be good include a link with no date restriction, agree, but would be good to link "in the last 5 years" to MEDDATE maybe? Or too many wikilinks already ... To further address the concerns, maybe tweak the wording "Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about" to "Here are some automatically generated links to sources that may be useful" or something. Lesion (talk) 14:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to adjust yes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:24, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Another thought, instead of having the link to search results with free full text, is to link to the resource requests page, if people are paywalled out of the best sources this is a good link for them to know about. Wikipedia:WikiProject Resource Exchange/Resource Request. Lesion (talk) 15:26, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

In the last 10 days there have been 82 referrals from these links to TRIP. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:21, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Back to basics - discussion of simple infoboxes

(tangent from above discussion) Nothing wrong, imo, with a minimalist infobox like this: angular cheilitis. ICD-10 and 9 codes only. Of course, in this example there are no other fields included simply because no-one has included then rather than there being any identified inaccuracy in the links. Lesion (talk) 15:29, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

There's loads wrong with that infobox. And I've raised this before at WPMED. 99.99999% of our readers couldn't give a **** about ICD or MESH codes and will not benefit from following the links to them or to eMedicine, etc, which nearly all fail our EL policy. And all this irrelevant crap is at the top of the page as important as the lead sentence and lead image. I'd be happy with a lead captioned image and move everything else to somewhere collapsed at the bottom of the page. Colin°^Talk 14:30, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

(after ec) Ditto-- there are mountains of problems in the infobox links forced upon us, they usually fail EL guidelines, but when I've attempted to get them removed in the past, some editors have argued they are useful in spite of the inaccurate info. (Frustration over this kind of brainless automation that impacts article quality has boiled over for me to this issue of Sources by Bot over Brains, which is also a current issue in an ArbCom case-- that technically minded editors are prevailing over those who actually know sources and build content is likely to be the last straw for me in here ... I take great care with accuracy and nuance in articles, only to find my work undermined by technical issues like faulty infoboxes and now an automated search which may return dubious results depending on the article and would be better employed by real editors rather than bot.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:55, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Being encyclopedic is not [always/necessarily] the same as writing what readers want? As to the placement, I think infoboxes tend to go in the lead on most wikipedia pages. Perhaps you are describing an encyclopedia wide issue more than something confined to this wikiproject? E.g. pages on chemicals are particularly bad for this kind of thing, Potassium chloride. The links to emedicine etc could be moved to the EL section where arguably they belong, and where ELNO would apply to them as well (and therefore lead to their not being listed at all) ... I've not thought of this before and it seems wrong, but that is probably just because I'm used to seeing that stuff in the infobox. Infobox doesn't really bother me, it's pretty iconic of most wikipedia pages and gives a professional look again imo... Lesion (talk) 14:51, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Perhaps ??? LOL ... for sure ... please see WP:RFAR-- infoboxes have been the source of dissension and editors being chased out of here for years, and have finally boiled over to an arb case-- where curiously, classical music editors are being targeted, while some haven't even noticed that many of us medical editors hate them as well for even more serious reasons. Sorry we have gotten off on an infobox tangent here, but it is the same issue-- are we editing by brain or by bot in here? The technical-minded editors (who don't typically build content) have been successful in forcing their views upon those who do build content, do know sources, and do recognize problems that occur because of automated and automatic editing, via things like automatic links in infoboxes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:00, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

That insanely long infobox on Potassium chloride gave me the idea that we could make the ICD codes into a collapsible section in the infobox? Lesion (talk) 14:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

please don't-- that just masks the problem. Some editors (@Eric Corbett:) have tried to compromise with intransigent technical-minded editors by allowing collapsible sections in infoboxes, but collapsible text is contraindicated by WP:MOS for accessibility and mirror reasons. It's not a good practice to hide something that is not useful-- it's better to eliminate it. The compromise of collapsing infobox info was forced upon some articles as a compromise, but it just masks the problems-- another problem being that infobox info is often uncited, often WP:UNDUE, and often inaccurate. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:04, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Just throwing ideas around. It didn't occur to me before that infoboxes were a source of problems. Sure I noticed emedicine gave some weird info on one occasion. So, I sense that some people would want the infobox reduced to an image and a caption, with no following ICD codes etc or ELs. Since the title of the infobox is mostly the same as the title of the page, may as well scrap that too... then you are left with just an image and a caption ... so basically there would be reason to have an infobox at all, and instead just have an image embedded in the lead.

I agree that in some cases the ELs in the infobox might be inappropriate and fail ELNO... and maybe they should be in the EL section if they are included at all.

I disagree that ICD codes should go entirely. This is an attempt at an international standard and we should give this info to be encyclopedic. Potentially they could be moved somewhere else in the page, but I think a collapsible section in the infobox is a valid option. Don't see why mirror sites should discourage this (I thought we didn't like mirrors anyway?). Lesion (talk) 15:26, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I would imagine an infobox to contain information in the line of that listed on Template:Infobox medical condition, i.e. short bits of information about the subject of the article. External links should indeed go under external links (personally I found those links to be very useful when most wikipedia articles were little more than stubs, nowadays it is rare for them to provide much more information than wikipedia itself, especially in the case of medlineplus). --WS (talk) 15:33, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I am generally in favor of the infobox we have for diseases even though most were created before I arrived. Emedicine is sometimes useful and easily accessible even though it has issues. Pubmed is not always right but is easy to read. ICD codes help structure content as does MeSH. It is not like we have huges amount of content in these boxes. I do not think attempting to summarize the article in a infobox is either a good idea or possible. Most conditions have many causes, treatments and preventions. These are all nuanced discussions that are not properly summarized in a couple of words. Numbers and links fit well in boxes prose does not. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:42, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

The MeSH and ICD codes often verify the names of the condition in question.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:47, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) :FWIW, I'm another of the small minority of users who likes to be able to consult ICD and MeSH from a standardized place in the article. I'd argue that: we make articles for the widest possible range of users; the information is genuinely encyclopedic; it doesn't take up much space. Quite where in the page it should appear is another matter. Personally, I share many of the concerns expressed above about compulsory infobox entries based on unnecessary [6] metadata priorities over content and presentation. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 15:53, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

A few quick thoughts:

WP:External links does apply to links in infoboxes.
Emedicine (and Medline) links were moved to the infobox a few years ago on the grounds that they were wanted in most articles, and that this was an efficient place to stick them. The location is especially helpful if it means that the article need not contain a spam-bait section labeled ==External links== at all. If they aren't wanted in particular articles, the correct solution is complete removal, not moving to the ==External links== section. I would expect that they aren't wanted now for most well-developed articles, and that they are wanted for most stub- and start-class articles.
Some of our readers are specifically looking for ICD codes. I've seen them requested on talk pages when they weren't present. Also, it's handy for some of our translation efforts.
Collapsing two lines in an infobox (the ICD-9 and ICD-10 codes) isn't going to save you much space, but it is going to create WP:ACCESS problems for readers with disabilities. The "compromise" of collapsing infoboxes is IMO a bad and discriminatory compromise. Either have one or don't, but don't have one that only some users are able to view. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
- I mostly agree with WhatamI, and point out that the MedlinePlus article on TS is *awful* [7] and made worse by the fact that many letters have been written to the NIH (or NIMH? I frequently mix them up) advising of the inaccuracies which have stood for ... I dunno ... maybe ten years ? I think most of our infobox issues could be solved by allowing editor discretion in infobox links and avoiding automation. If links in an infobox aren't adding content beyond what is already in the article, or breach ELNO, or have known inaccuracies, editors should be able to come to consensus to delete those links. In the past, consensus overruled whenever we attempted this. The problem with infoboxes isn't the box per se, but when editor discretion, discussion and consensus is disallowed in the interest of standardization and automation. I don't mind the ICD codes, but I sure do mind linking to articles with known and easily demonstrable inaccuracies after I've carefully and with nuance added correct text to an article (no, tics are not uncontrollable, no credible TS researcher would use that terminology; no GTS did not first describe Tourette's; the "gene has not been found?", no credible researcher doubts that TS will be found to be polygenic, and on and on ... how dumbed down does the writing have to be? It is dumbed down to the point of inaccuracy.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 16 July 2013 (UTC)
  - I don't recall seeing any bots adding Medline or Emedicine links. Have you got a diff handy? If so, we might want to have A Talk with a bot operator. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:16, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I think what was suggested was that simply because there are fields in the template then editors may feel obliged to fill them regardless of the qualities of the EL. Not so much automation but "automatic" editing by living editors. I've never seen a bot fill out an infobox either, but I could be wrong. Lesion (talk) 21:52, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Pretty sure that there are bots populating {{Infobox City}} and its kin from online gazetteers. Conversely, Wikidata is systematically harvesting data from infobox parameters. If there is bad data likely to go in, it may be better to populate it with a hidden comment such as  in order to discourage bots and humans from thoughtlessly filling in a problematic value.LeadSongDog come howl! 22:25, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

All, I'm not (yet) an active member of this community, but I feel compelled to chime in for a couple of reasons. First, I lead a small team that maintains User:ProteinBoxBot, a bot for maintaining infoboxes on gene and protein pages ({{GNF_Protein_box}}), and second, I recently proposed starting a similar initiative for disease infoboxes. I'm very much in favor of clearly indicating corresponding identifiers (ICD, MeSH, etc.) because it unambiguously establishes what topic the article refers to. (To take an extreme example from our gene/protein work, 9 different genes have at one time or another been referred to as "PAP", including MRPS30, PAPOLA, and PDAP1, so noting the exact gene and protein identifiers is important.) However, our bot definitely respects {{nobots}}, and I would expect that any other bots working on disease infoboxes should as well? Is this a solution that has been tried for cases where humans want to override the general rule? Cheers, Andrew Su (talk) 22:56, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not sure that you'd want a general nobots as the solution, since the anti-vandalism bots might respect it inappropriately. But the more relevant point is, the links that are problematic don't seem like the links that any bot would ever be adding. ICD or MeSH codes work in all languages and provide basic data about the subject. An eMedicine article is just an online article from a more or less decent English-language website. Adding that by bot would be akin to using a bot to add external links from some charity's website. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:07, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

Got it, on that point you'll get no disagreement from me. Of the ones currently listed as parameters for {{Infobox disease}}, I would not object to dropping eMedicine, DiseasesDB, and GeneReviews. I'd be open to being convinced otherwise, but those are links that I don't recognize as being authoritative sources... Cheers, Andrew Su (talk) 00:13, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Add medlineplus to that list as well; emedicine and genereviews could be appropriate for the external links sections in many cases, diseasesdb and medlineplus I think could go away completely (Would be nice to have a bot migrating all the id's from the infoboxes to wikidata, so all hard work on adding these links is not lost, whether it is decided to keep them or not). --WS (talk) 07:19, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I think we need to be careful to not allow these differences of opinions regarding infoboxes to over-shadow the much larger issue facing WP:MED. Here we are more than 12 years out and less than 1% of all medical articles have passed peer review (196 out of 26,350). The number of new GAs/FAs in the last 6 months is 4 or 5 with a couple of them only tangentially related to medicine. A number of previous GAs/FAs, while they retain the title, have fallen out of date and additionally would no longer pass current criteria due to extensive primary sourcing. While readership is amazing and growing I would not call the quality of our content a rousing success. The number of people actively editing medical content remains small and efforts to recruit have as of yet had limited positive impact (with certain efforts having a negative one). Anyway chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is poor quality so back to work... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:43, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

We just have to hope that Wikidata will take away a lot of maintenance work from the editors thereby freeing up their time for actual article work. A lot of things like categories and templates could be managed globally and are actually pretty time consuming to keep consistent and up to date. The VisualEditor will hopefully also attract more editors. I actually think that not having to look for interlanguage-links has freed up about 15 minutes of my time I spend on Wikipedia per week. --Tobias1984 (talk) 07:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I guess the overriding question is what do we want these boxes to contain: 1) a summary of key features of the disease in point form 2) information pertaining to classification and a couple of links to sources. We could also have both but that would be too much IMO. I support choice number two. Would be happy to see a RfC created on issue if other wish. Our fellow French Wikipedians are having the same discussion here [8] Attempting to get consistecy acress languages is not something I am going to attempth though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:03, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I think WAID's point is important: "The location is especially helpful if it means that the article need not contain a spam-bait section labeled ==External links== at all." However, it could be argued that an article is incomplete if it does not have an EL section? What about a new template which lists DiseaseDB, emedicine, etc links inside the EL section? If they are wanted and don't fail ELNO that is...

Per James' point above I would think choice (1) would be more ideal, but a more minimalist choice than suggested by Wouterstomp. I think an infobox could consist of: A title, an image, a caption, ICD code, and a descriptive surgical sieve term (although I can see a few arguments developing, so may need more than one term). -- Lesion

See Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Archive 24#Helpfulness of data in infobox where we discussed this at length. Also last week's Signpost Infoboxes: time for a fresh look?. I've noted in the earlier discussion that the classifications by ICD are often completely useless to a normal reader and the codes are of course just random numbers. If the lead paragraph hasn't informed the reader about the article subject, then it isn't doing its job. That some editors find these codes useful tells you everything about why they are there. We are forgetting our readers. I'm not convinced there is anything about a disease that (a) is general enough to be in an info box and (b) not better handled by the lead paragraphs if it is that important for the reader. I suggest the codes go in a box in the "Classification" section of the article, or at the end if there isn't one. The external links to eMedicine/etc nearly all fail WP:EL and can be deleted. I agree with James that sometimes they provide a plain English and reasonable accurate resource for readers: but Google finds them too and nobody but nobody is going to follow links called "neuro/386 derm/438 ped/2796 radio/723". It is not our job to link to these sites and we do a bad job of it. I do agree there are more important things to spend hours debating. Let's just delete them all and move on :-). -- Colin°^Talk 09:48, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

How about if we add DMOZ to the infobox than we can get rid of the EL section all together per "we are not a collection of ELs". We could also get rid of emedicine and ADAM at the same time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Why do people recommend DMOZ ever? It is just another user-generate list of external links with all the issues that entails. It is pretty dead too. We should focus on providing content ourselves. The professional medical organisations provide links and can control their quality much better than we can or DMOZ does. -- Colin°^Talk 12:01, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

DMOZ gives us someplace to send people who want to do external links. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:12, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

If we're not having a problem with excessive links in an article, them we don't use DMOZ. There are often better options, like adding one or two good links ourselves.

Colin, I think you're too focused on the well-developed articles that you frequent. If our article is a stub or even start-class, then an Emedicine link is not only fully compliant with the EL guideline, but usually a welcome addition. We have 20,000 articles in that assessment status. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:15, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

WP:EL is a long policy but I can't find any text that says our view on what is a good link is dependent on how well-developed the article is. Indeed, it makes it quite clear that our judgement is based on "what the article would contain if it became a featured article". The problem with the infobox link vs an explicit external link is that judgement and commonsense are not applied -- they are added simply because the template has a parameter -- and also that the link text is meaningless codes rather than something the reader would understand they want to click on. -- Colin°^Talk 11:58, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Deleting them after Wikidata has gathered the codes would be an option (Wikidata is all about authority control). But I agree with Andrew that identifiers are important also in Wikipedia, but in my opinion they could also go to the bottom of the page similar to the VIAF and other codes (e.g. bottom of Anders Celsius). Are there any studies about what average people look for in a medicine-related infobox? It would be good if a decision could be made based on data rather than argument. --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:04, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I would not have an issue with creating a box to put them in, in the section on classification which IMO should occur under diagnosis generally. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:01, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Catching up, multiple ... yes, delete all mentioned from infobox, but that includes Medline, which is awful.

~~Could someone please give me a clue stick-- what is "Wikidata" referring to in these discussions?~~ Found, Wikidata, another WMF venture, hopefully better planned than the new notifications system or the new Visual editor, but not likely ... probably behind all the current problems driving poor editor behavior on issues like infoboxes. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:12, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

However, it could be argued that an article is incomplete if it does not have an EL section? What about a new template which lists DiseaseDB, emedicine, etc links inside the EL section? If they are wanted and don't fail ELNO that is... — Preceding unsigned comment added by Lesion (talk • contribs)

It can NOT be argued that an article is incomplete if it does not have an EL section-- quite the opposite. The absence of an EL section in a Featured or Good article is desirable, as it indicates the article is comprehensive and there is nothing left for an EL to say about it. Stubs may have ELs, but we gradually hope to migrate articles away from them. Please do NOT create templates of ELs-- they are notorious for causing problems, and the presence of absence of ELs is a function of how well developed the article is.

On DMOZ, I am one of the editors who has long advocated inclusion because it gives us a place to send the insistent and persistent who want to create link farms-- we can tell them DMOZ already contains all of that claptrap. Eliminating DMOZ results in increased editing for those of us ... who do all the work in here ... because we have to deal with more editors wanting to add useless links. If consensus is to eliminate DMOZ, I won't strongly object, but it has served a purpose in my editing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:35, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

@Tobias1984: No idea how you would define an "average reader" or whether the concept would be helpful. We do write for a broad range of general readers, some of whom we know to be health professionals. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 13:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

@SandyGeorgia: Wikidata has been running for quite some time now. The fact that you just discovered it means that it is doing something right. It stays in the background and currently only manages the interwiki-links (which were a disaster in the pre-Wikidata times, but still have some issues left). I don't think that Wikidata is driving any kind of editor behavior. Quite to the contrary it has given all the people focused on data a place to add information outside of the Wikipedia infoboxes. If this project decides to get rid of e.g. the MESH-codes then nobody will be unhappy because their favorite bit of information is stored on Wikidata with a ton of information that will never appear in any Wikipedia. Not having to deal with that data tsunami will free up time from other editors to write better articles. So the whole project is actually to the benefit of those two types of editors. --Tobias1984 (talk) 16:21, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

MeSH terms change... Would Wikidata be able to update appropriately? 86.161.251.139 (talk) 09:24, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi 86.161.251.139! Updating wouldn't be a problem. We can also store different versions if that is something people want. We store for example ICD-9 and ICD-10 separately, but only the most recent revision. We could even go so far and store revisions separately if somebody could make a strong case that that data is relevant. --Tobias1984 (talk) 09:46, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Hi Tobias1984, thanks for the reply. If Wikidata really could update MeSH terms regularly, as changes are introduced [9], that would be great IMO. (Regarding MeSH term histories, I don't have an opinion on this: the MeSH browser lists previous indexing and the NLM has started to provide detailed information for recent years [10].)

IMO, up-to-date MeSH links are genuinely useful on Wikipedia pages. In reality, we're not writing just for a profilable "average" user, but for a wide range of general users, many of whom who come to Wikipedia as an orientative first port of call. These include, school and university students, doctors with their patients, and a wide variety of professional people, ranging from biochemists to economists, and from translators to statisticians, etc etc... For some of these people, ready access to the term in the MeSH browser straight from a Wikipedia page may feel natural and convenient. And the MeSH (and ICD) terms also provide independent information about how the topic of the page is classified. [@Colin:] In my view, that's genuinely useful encyclopedic information. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 11:12, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not advocating banning ICD and MESH codes, but they simply can't be justified as of "lead section" importance. As I commented in the previous discussion, the ICD classification of some diseases (like Tuberous sclerosis) is negative information: the reader is worse-off from reading "Phakomatoses, not elsewhere classified" than if they'd just read our article text. Reality is complex and very few things lend themselves well to a hierarchical classification system. -- Colin°^Talk 12:07, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

A compromise would be to make sections of the infobox collapsible. A section called "Identifiers" or "External Links" could be hidden by default and looking at the codes would just require one mouse click. I also think that the way they are presented now is not really benficial. Most other infoboxes have a couple of pieces of information apart from external identifiers. The diseases infobox is a real exception to that rule. --Tobias1984 (talk) 12:25, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

As others have observed, this is all part of a wider ongoing debate about infoboxes (eg [11]). IMO, it would be far better for WP metadata to be independently harvestable, so that infoboxes can be there for readers rather than bots. (And I agree with Colin that MeSH/ICD info should be readily accessible options rather than the main course.) 86.161.251.139 (talk) 13:12, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

@Tobias1984: And, as already pointed out several times on this page, collapsible text breaches MOS and accessibility. It was tried in some cases simply and only because no other compromise with intransigent technical-minded editors was possible (the subject of an active arb case); we should not have to stoop to the level of hiding text in infoboxes that shouldn't be there to begin with. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:14, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Re. EL, I disagree. I take the long view. Eventually there will be a category of media on commons to link to, learning materials on wikiversity, etc. I point out we have templates to link to these in the EL section already. Just because some EL are bad, doesn't mean they are all undesirable...

Re. ICD, I also disagree that we should loose these just because most people will not know what they are let alone find them useful. There is so little international standardization in medicine, I think we should support efforts like this, even thought they have some problems. Editors are also readers, and even if a minority of readers use ICD links or want them in there, I think this is reason enough to keep them. Lesion (talk) 13:48, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

On EL, if you disagree, that would have to be taken up at WP:EL or WP:LAYOUT. Here on WP:MED, we should conform to existing guidelines. Wikiversity is an external link (of dubious reliability) and it is not necessarily included on well-developed articles, nor should it be, nor will it be in every case. Again, please do not create more problems with automated/automatic editing by creating useless templates, that are almost always used incorrectly or abusively. (Actually, I do like ICD codes as well ... ) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:54, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

I understand what you are saying, and what is reflected in the policy about EL, that there is no reason to have EL which provides what the article is already providing, and therefore well developed articles are likely to need less EL, but I think it does not reflect consensus to suggest that the perfect article would not have any EL at all. A FA is great, but there are things it doesn't cover, by virtue of being a wikipedia article and FA status, such as extended media related to the topic or "how to" learning materials. I would add to this desirable list of potential ELs something that is directed specifically at patients rather than readers of encyclopedias. Lesion (talk) 14:04, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Aside for the record: WP:EL is not a policy. I hope everyone participating in these discussions is aware of the distinctions. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:16, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

re layout, last time I checked (fairly recently), the 2 example templates I pasted here are supposed to go in an EL section... they are auto right aligned to allow them to sit comfortably around a bulleted EL list on the left. Lesion (talk) 14:06, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Please see WP:NOT, specifically WP:NOTHOW. (I am not aware of any FA off the top of my head that has no ELs, but most certainly minimization of useless Els DOES reflect current practice.) WP:LAYOUT says where to put ELs; WP:EL covers what to include. When sister links are included, they go in ELs. That doesn't mean they should always or necessarily be included on every article. To say that they are "supposed to go in an EL section" is a misunderstanding of our guidelines. Many of our "sister" (sexism alert) links contain info that is SO bad that they will automatically fail ELNO, and should be shot on sight. I'm reminded of the time Slp1 (talk · contribs) and I were dealing with a persistent POV pusher on the article stuttering. When he couldn't get POV and promotional, commercial, COI material into that article, he moved it over to a sister link, where it stood, and then tried to link it back to the Stuttering article with a "sister" link. "Sister" links are external links, and when their (typically horrible) information fails to meet our EL guideline, they should be shot on sight. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

That was rather my point, wikipedia is not a how to manual, which is partly why wikiversity was created, and why there is a template available to link there. I'm not suggesting that we should put these links automatically in every article ... like I said to take a long view ... eventually (and ideally imo) more articles would have learning materials available (and of higher quality) to link to. Anyway we are going off on a tangent. My point was that (1) it is not necessarily a goal to eliminate all ELs, they should be given a fair assessment for their quality and not deleted to get rid of the whole EL section, and (2) templates containing ELs already exist, and are intended where appropriate to go in the EL section, where I suggested emedicine links could be moved from the infobox, into a EL template with fields identical to those which would be removed from the infobox. Why not include some hidden text as part of this template which states directs to EL policy and states that not all these fields have to be filled. E.g. the corresponding article on emedicine has aspects which are inaccurate and a consensus develops to not include it. It is a valid suggestion, and I think would alleviate some of the issues people are raising about infoboxes. Lesion (talk) 17:10, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

Because in practice, all that will do is move the infobox problem to a template. That "not all fields have to be filled" will be ignored by the intransigent, bot-happy, technical-minded editors who don't know, understand, or engage the content issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:20, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I have not generally found this to be a problem at medicine-related articles. If you see a Medline link that you think is worthless, then you remove it and mention the reason on the talk page, and 90% of the time, that's the end of it. It may be more hassle at a heavily watched page or on a controversial subject, but in my experience, 90% of the time people don't care when an external link is removed with any plausible-sounding reason.

As for the ICD codes, some of our readers want those numbers. They don't want "the links" necessarily (although providing the link is the fastest and easiest way to make the numbers verifiable), but people do actually ask for those code numbers when they're not present. We need to keep them because they are content that our readers (not editors that you consider second-class) actually want. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, we are discussing info boxes in the lead, not whether to abolish ICD codes altogether. We are in this mess because info boxes have become a dumping ground for data points and because they are in the lead. It wouldn't be nearly so much of an issue if info boxes sat at the bottom of the article, though the external links issue remains. Colin°^Talk 17:39, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

WhatAmI, that you have not "generally" found it to be a problem doesn't help the "specific" situation that I tried to delete inaccurate links from the infobox on TS and was overruled by consensus. I have tried again, now that there is more awareness, and am happy to see that there is now a different consensus evolving and a better understanding of the issues than before. Again, moving the same problem to a template elsewhere doesn't remove the problem: there is no reason to be linking, for example, to that extremely inferior medline TS article anywhere. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

While I agree a tiny number of readers find ICD codes useful, if we didn't have them and somebody suggested adding them, would anyone really think the lead was the place? It is the opposite of the right place for codes of interest to very few readers. Our WP:EL policy is quite clear that external sites must exceed "Featured Article" standards of comprehensiveness and reliability. If any of these sites in our infobox meet that (and many don't) then they deserve to be linked properly by name, not some obscure code no reader would guess to click on. I feel the DMOZ response is just to make someone go away and be a problem to somebody else. If you actually look at the site, you'd never think of sending a reader there. Colin°^Talk 14:45, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

DMOZ is crap; for that reason, it's exactly the kind of place to send the typical editor trying to use our ELs for advocacy :) :) I'm not strongly attached to any position wrt DMOZ or ICD codes; I am strongly against adding more useless templates of ELs or including by default anything in the infobox. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:17, 17 July 2013 (UTC)

This matter has been discussed at WT:MED previously. I am not convinced that ICD and other technical codes are of any value to a general encyclopedia, but Doc James insists that he finds them useful. These codes certainly don't need to be in/near the lead section. I would be happy to see them removed from articles, or as a compromise moved down to an "External links" section. Axl ¤ [Talk] 21:34, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I have added very few ICDs as most are already there. So others must find them useful to. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:09, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

People add the ICDs (and other codes and external links) because the infobox has parameters for them. No other reason needed. To assume that those adding them also "find them useful" is not valid. This is the main problem with info boxe templates from an editor-point-of-view: it encourages the unthinking accumulation of stuff. And the main problem from a reader-point-of-view is that it is in the lead and screws up the layout of the article when long. Colin°^Talk 07:35, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

No, people add the ICDs because actual people want those numbers. I'm not "assuming" that people find them useful; I'm telling you that I have read and responded to actual, direct requests from real people to please provide those numbers when they were not already present. I personally don't need those numbers, and you apparently don't need those numbers, but some of our readers need them enough to figure out how to ask for them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I made a comment further up but it seem to have got lost. WP:EL does not permit mediocre external links as long as the article is crap too. All external links on all articles have to meet or exceed the quality we'd expect of a featured article on the topic. And the links we do add are hidden in a code like ""neuro/386 derm/438 ped/2796 radio/723"". Absolutely nobody is going to click on those links. Especially not after they clicked on the ICD ones above and got negative information. So really it is time to get the broom and sweep them away and move the category codes out of the lead. Colin°^Talk 07:35, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Here is your reply:

Emedicine is not generally considered to be a mediocre link.
The label on a link is not what determines the quality of the link. If this bothers you, it can be changed in the template.
To understand how the community actually interprets ELNO #1, you will have to read the archives for the guideline. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:06, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

1. So what. Doesn't change the fact that it should only be added if it is a fantastic link, and infoboxes encourage brainless addition of all links possible. 2. No it can't because a proper link would take up more room than the info box can give. 3. I don't believe you wrote that. That's quite an unacceptable situation for such a clearly worded and unambiguous guideline point. I found an archive comment of yours where you claim IAR is invoked on crappy articles. So I suspect this is a wee bit more like WhatamIdoing's opinion than community opinion, as otherwise it might be written into the guideline. I do accept, however, that you have vastly more experience than me. I think that it is more like CBA than IAR than makes people not remove such links.

What I find incredibly frustrating is this project has spent thousands of words arguing for the presence of utter nonsense like "ICD-10 K13.0 ICD-9 528.5, 686.8 MeSH D002613" in the prime position on our medical articles. Of the thousands of people who read our articles every day, what percentage do we think find value in these hieroglyphics or follow the links? I'm willing to bet that to two decimal places it rounds to 0. Until wikiprojects get real with the nerdy data only they love and start focusing on readers needs, infoboxes will continue to be a problem. Colin°^Talk 19:37, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Colin, I'm going to suggest that you click here for the list of the most common contributors to that guideline. This will do the same for its talk page. This will do the same for ELN. After you've looked at those, then perhaps we'll continue this conversation about the usual way that ELNO #1 gets applied. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:33, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

If in order to understand a law one has to read the committee minutes of the lawyers who drafted it, then it is a badly drafted law. And if you think that hanging about the talk pages of our policy and guidelines gives you an accurate impression of Wikipedia and its community, then you are mistaken. I've seen before where you comment that you or I have mostly written some guideline or other as if that settles the argument. It is an argument from authority. If you want people to understand what the community has decided about EL policy, make sure the EL text is accurately worded to reflect that community decision. The EL aspect of this isn't really the most interesting one to me. Emedicine could be all brilliant prose and it wouldn't change my point. Infoboxes cause unthinking external links and codes to be added in the prime position of the article. And those links are done in a way that absolutely guarantees that nobody will even think to click on them. And if they did click on the, the first few are two obscure categorisation pages that for nearly all our readers was a waste of their time. Let's have people read our articles, not send them off somewhere else as the very first thing we do. Colin°^Talk 11:11, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I have been unable to get a consensus to make changes in the past. The too-strongly worded line is very convenient for experienced editors when they encounter a newbie. EL does not exist primarily to tell regular editors what to do. EL exists primarily as a weapon against spammers and fanboys.

But now let us discuss this particular website: Emedicine articles almost always comply with the strict letter of this poorly phrased "law". Desirable links provide "a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article". An FA should not contain a detailed explication of differential diagnosis. An FA should not contain information about doses of drugs. Emedicine articles almost always contain both of these things. Therefore, Emedicine articles meet ELNO by providing "a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article". WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:41, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Wrt WP:EL reason to exist, this is an unhelpful opinion but explains your responses above. Let's move on. You make a good case for emedicine appearing as an external link with a good-quality hyperlink text at the end of our articles in the appropriate section (though it is a US-focused website aimed at healthcare professionals, so not without its problems). It doesn't make the case for it being the prime position in the lead of the article or for us to hide this "unique resource" behind the cryptic "neuro/415" link. Perhaps that's a code like ICD. Oh, wait, I'm not a healthcare professional so I don't know what ICD is either. We've just got a box full of random numbers and letters. Let's click on eight of them. One of them probably meets WP:EL much of the time. Medline Plus might make a great link for the Simple English Wikipedia but not here and is also US-focussed. The others are websites providing very little information at all and only really of interest to healthcare professionals. And if we haven't categorised the disease in the opening sentence or two, then we've failed. Colin°^Talk 19:59, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Is your definition of "prime position" something like "thing I automatically ignore"? I don't usually read infoboxes, beyond glancing at the picture (if any) and its caption, unless I'm specifically looking for some detail that is well-suited for display in that format. If I am searching for that kind of detail, then I don't really want to go digging through the whole article for it. I don't believe that I'm unusual among editors in this regard. Do you find yourself reading infoboxes?

Perhaps rather than telling us what you don't want in the infobox, why don't you tell us what you do want to see in that "prime position"? WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:32, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Infoboxes - any consensus for changes?

So, as I see it there are few Qs that ppl are raising here. Would be good to move towards a clear consensus on each issue:

Should ICD links be kept?
Should ICD links stay in the infobox if they are kept? (if no please state where)
Should MeSH links be kept?
Should MeSH links stay in the infobox if they are kept? (if no please state where)
Does EL policy apply to the EL in the infobox?
Should the ELs stay in the infobox? (if no please state where)
Should anything else be added to the infobox?

My opinions on these issues are:

Yes - seems most people here want to keep ICD links
Yes - for want of anywhere better to put them
Yes - I think some people find them useful, and it is encyclopedic to incude them, same as for ICD codes
Yes - for want of anywhere better to put them
Yes - If an EL fails the EL policy (by consensus), it should not be included, i.e. they do not necessarily need to be populated just because there is a space for them.
No - I say move them to the EL section
~~Potentially~~ Probably not - but only if EL get removed and there would be more space. I do not support a brief summary of the disease, per James' comment it is not so easy to summarize the etiology of a disease into a few words. Would also require a massive effort, first to alter the infobox disease template with new fields ad second to update infoboxes for every page. I don't see a bot being able to do this so it would be by hand. A simple surgical sieve term has less effort involved, but would still require a lot of work. I ask myself is it worth it? Would anyone be willing to do this? Agree that editors' time would be better spent improving content. Lesion (talk) 18:28, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Think this (7.) would be a huge blunder. It would inevitably lead to a host of issues (cf WP:CLASSICAL etc). As Lesion says etiology, pathogenesis etc are often unclear, brief descriptions simplistic etc, etc. Whatever their failings, an advantage of the current infoboxes is their standardization (and "opt-in" entries). 86.161.251.139 (talk) 19:02, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

True, the advantage of keeping the infoboxes as they are is that we don't have to do anything. It's a very valid reason imo. Lesion (talk) 11:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Mine:

Don't care.
Don't care.
No MeSH in the infobox: again, in the case of TS, the link has contained inaccurate info for as long as I have been on Wikipedia.
In the case of TS, it belongs nowhere-- it is unhelpful and inaccurate.
EL is not a policy, it is a guideline, and it applies everywhere, so yes.
No, but if some/any links are kept as possible parameters, editor discretion, discussion and consensus should apply to which ELs are in the infobox-- nothing should be automatic, nothing should be added via automated tools. A given link/brand may be accurate for one condition and not another. Further, the question is formed incompletely: inaccurate links shouldn't be added anywhere (neither the infobox nor the EL section-- the process of consensus applies everywhere).
No.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:38, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

Keep the ICD/MESH codes and their links but in a new template box ("Disease categories" or something like that). This can go in the External links section. Remove all other external links from info box as they encourage mindless addition rather than thoughtful policy-based inclusion of relevant links. There never was any key data of lead-importance in the info box disease so it can just be deleted and replaced with a captioned image. This change could be done by a bot initially -- the category code stuff is just moving things around. The other external links would really benefit from being replaced by meaningful names rather the code. This could be simply the name of the external web site and the article title but would probably be better done by scraping the web page title -- something that would need a fairly intelligent bot. I agree there is no point in editors doing this mass change by hand. We could, though, deprecate Infobox disease and create the new one, as a step in the right direction. Colin°^Talk 20:29, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I like the idea of a classifications" template box. MeSH is useful for PubMed searches (not for the definitions themselves, per Sandy's TS objection above). The key info is imo: 1) the actual heading (and entry terms), and 2) how it fits into the tree. Query: Why not blue-link the MeSH heading itself rather than the ID/tree number? I could also see an argument for linking to the NCBI browser with the PubMed search builder [12] rather than the browser we use now [13] (though I'm not you can do that with an ID). 86.161.251.139 (talk) 22:18, 18 July 2013 (UTC)

I don't recall seeing Sandy complain about MeSH. Just to make sure we're all on the same page, this is MedlinePlus and this is MeSH. Sandy's TS complaints appear to focus on the MedlinePlus patient-oriented page, not on the MeSH category tree for PubMed search terms. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Sorry if that wasn't clear. Sandy mentioned MeSH here: [14]. I agree that the MeSH descriptions/definitions are often imprecise, but the whole point of MeSH is that it's a controlled vocabulary (of descriptors) for use in PubMed searches etc. Linking to Entrez [15] rather than the MeSH browser [16] would seem to make sense to me, but I don't know if that would be technically feasible. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 15:46, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

yes, I did mention Mesh ... sorry, I'm having a hard time keeping up here ... busy IRL. The MeSH article on TS still includes the "significant distress or impairment" qualifier from DSM-IV (cited to a 1994 source), which was removed long ago in DSM-IV-TR. That inaccuracy forced me to have to add text to the Diagnosis section with the corrected information, that otherwise would not have been necessary (or would have been better placed in History of Tourette syndrome, which Colin and I are going to write someday when we have a free moment). For gosh sakes, how many years does it take for MeSH to update info? PS, I do now have DSM-V and will be updating the entire suite of motor disorders (an article we don't even have yet!) hopefully within the month.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

That's one reason why, imo, they'd be better located outside the infobox, in an alternative "template box", per Colin's suggestion [17]. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 16:32, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Mine:

Should ICD links be kept?
Should ICD links stay in the infobox if they are kept?

Personally don't mind if they are kept or not, probably some readers will find them useful; so I would say keep them but at the end of the article.

Should MeSH links be kept?
Should MeSH links stay in the infobox if they are kept?

Same as for ICD's

Does EL policy apply to the EL in the infobox?

Yes; medlineplus and diseasesdb should probably be removed altogether; whereas emedicine, omim and genereviews potentially include details beyond what would be provided by a wikipedia article.

Should the ELs stay in the infobox?

No, should go in the external links section

Should anything else be added to the infobox?

I would find it useful to include basic facts (prevalence or incidence; treatment: surgical/medical; main symptoms, etc.) Would need a lot of thought to get this right, and might be something we could achieve using wikidata in the long run.

--WS (talk) 10:58, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

How would you do this? Put the ICD code in plain text in the infobox, and then repeat the same information, but this time with the link, under ==External links==? That sounds to me like the worst possible solution. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:18, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

No, delete them from the infobox, sorry if that was unclear.--WS (talk) 16:00, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Should ICD links be kept? Yes
Should ICD links stay in the infobox if they are kept? Yes
Should MeSH links be kept? Don't care
Should MeSH links stay in the infobox if they are kept? Yes
Does EL policy apply to the EL in the infobox? Yes—see WP:ELPOINTS #2
Should the ELs stay in the infobox? Yes—see WP:ELPOINTS #2
Should anything else be added to the infobox? Yes—the medical specialty (or specialties) most closely connected to the disease. This has been discussed previously but no one got around to implementing it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:11, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I am of the same opinion as WAID generally. Am happy to keep MeSH but we could also remove it and use it as a ref to support the names of the condition in question. The reason why the medical specially has not been added yet is we do not have a good source and many pertain to a number of specialties. There however is usually one or two main specialties though. This change is also probably fairly low on the priority list. I could see including the "prevalence" as there is good data from WHO for more than a 1000 conditions but not the others mentioned by WS. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:49, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Could I get you physicians to think outside of the disease model? Pleeeeeeese ... try to imagine the edit wars that will break out if you try to add something like prevalence to an article like autism. This Is A Very Bad Idea ... and encapsulates everything that is already wrong with infoboxes that has ended up at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Infoboxes. You cannot summarize nuanced or controversial issues in an infobox! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Agree it would be disastrous to put controvertible (or simplistic) information in the infobox. @James: I think we need to remember that MeSH is an indexing system that is relevant for bibliographic searches. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 16:19, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Re. previous consensus to include the medical specialty in the infobox-- I think I remember this, but not sure... The fact that no-one has done anything is compelling-- it might just be too difficult. Any constructive addition to the infobox would need to be very carefully thought out and have willing volunteers to do the work. Adding the specialty-- how useful is this? Firstly many diseases are multidisciplinary (e.g. diabetes), so was this decision to put only the main specialty involved (potential for arguments?) and secondly, the talk page is already tagged with the wikiproject e.g. neurology/dermatology etc. I know this is not quite the same thing as putting the specialty in the infobox, but I think we should be weighing the potential benefits against the amount of work involved, when editors might better spend their efforts building content... Lesion (talk) 16:52, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Hooray (for the final sentiment expressed :) :) By the way, because of time constraints, I unwatched Marfan syndrome over a year ago. In trying to figgerout who's who in here among editors I've not met before, I see you've been holding down the fort over at Marfan. Thanks for work in the trenches !!! (For years, we dealt with the unsourced addition of Michael Phelps there.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:05, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

I think that a prevalence item would be useful for identifying rare diseases, but otherwise it doesn't seem important to me. The answer needn't be numbers; you could say |prevalence=Rare disease or |prevalence=common (e.g., common cold) or even |prevalence=Most common form of cancer (e.g., non-melanoma skin cancer). You can summarize complicated things in infoboxes: IMO the only sensible entry at Autism (where I personally would leave it blank) would be |prevalence=Disputed.

Lesion, the only reason nobody's added the parameter is because most of us aren't admins and don't know how to program templates. For most diseases, it's not at all difficult to identify the primary specialty: infectious diseases, cancers, heart diseases, lung diseases, kidney diseases... There are actually very few where the disease truly requires a multidisciplinary approach involving more than two specialties. A patient with diabetes might see many healthcare providers, but fundamentally that disease "belongs to" the endocrinologists. The problem isn't figuring out the specialty for most diseases; the slowdown that Doc James mentioned is figuring out a source that could be processed systematically for thousands of articles at once, rather than individual editors adding the information to one or two articles whenever they wanted to. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

I object in the strongest possible terms to any of these suggested additions to the infobox (prevalence, specialties, etc). They are nothing but an invitation for trouble, of the same type that led to the current arb case. I can just imagine when, for example, someone tries to add chiropractic as a treating specialty. Or acupuncturists. Or what would we do about psychologists being added to every disease imaginable, since they fancy that talk therapy works for anything? We can't assume that infobox parameters are or will be handled reasonably by reasonable people and based on reliable sources: they aren't. That is exactly why we now have an arb case. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:05, 20 July 2013 (UTC)

It sounds like you're beyond the ability to AGF where infoboxes are concerned. WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:44, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I'm not reading that at all, WhatamIdoing, but rather the voice of experience. Even the simple rare/common attempt at categorising prevalence fails when one considers that this is the International English Wikipedia, not the US Wikipedia. So how does someone deal with a disease that is very common in much of the world but extremely rare for many of our readers: by writing prose. "For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong". These boxes work for the atomic weight of elements, but the attributes of diseases and treatments are often more complex than that. Colin°^Talk 15:54, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

Really agree with that (prevalence figures, by definition, depend on the population within which they're estimated). 86.161.251.139 (talk) 16:29, 21 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that complicated things are complicated.

Sandy says "We can't assume that infobox parameters are or will be handled reasonably by reasonable people". That's the opposite of AGF. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:35, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

They may be "handled unreasonably by reasonable people". In the distant past, I've added fields to infoboxes templates because they are there. That was stupid and unthinking of me. And to deny the existence of unreasonable people, or the particular attraction of infoboxes for such people, is simply to deny reality. It is claimed above "WP:EL exists primarily as a weapon against spammers and fanboys" - it seems many of our guidelines are concerned with unreasonable people. Are all the people who contribute to that guideline also "beyond the ability to AGF"? Of course not. So let's just be practical about this. I'd be interested to know which "medical specialty" tuberous sclerosis fits into, or how having yet another field of interest only to physicians is improving our infobox. -- Colin°^Talk 11:07, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Infobox parameters that are open to debate tend to be honey-traps for controversial gf edits, polarized discussions and, regrettably, edit-warring. A drain on our human resources... 86.161.251.139 (talk) 09:14, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Saying it twice doesn't make it any more factual. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 10:36, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Colin, the answer to your question about Tuberous sclerosis is in the ICD code: Phakomatoses are central nervous system disorders that have dermatological components. Therefore the primary specialist to follow a patient with TS will be a neurologist, and if you wanted to be more complete, you could add a dermatologist. Whether one needs, for example, a nephrologist depends on the individual case. You could, alternatively, say that it is a multidisciplinary disease, on the grounds that multiple body systems could be involved.

I do not understand why you say that this information is only of interest to physicians. In my mind, the primary purpose of this field is to answer the very much patient-oriented question, "What kind of doctor should I see, if I want to consult a specialist for this condition?" WhatamIdoing (talk) 14:58, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I am not comfortable with the idea that we are here to guide patients to physicians. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and not a whole lot of other things. Per our terms, "the content we host is for general informational purposes only, so if you need expert advice for a particular question (such as medical, legal, or financial issues), you should seek the help of a licensed or qualified professional." Telling patients who to consult isn't our role. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:27, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

The ICD code is no help whatsoever. The term "phakomatoses" is from the 1920s and pre-dates both genetics and our understanding that TSC is a multi-organ disorder of extremely varied penetrance and severity. That this outdated term is is used in ICD10 says more about those inventing hierarchical categorisation systems than it does about the disease (they need to find a name for the node on the arbitrary tree they have created). I don't know how healthcare works in the US, but in the UK one can't simply turn up at a consultant's door saying "Wikipedia says you are the specialist I need". What kind of doctor should I see: a GP. It is a gross oversimplification to put TSC in any speciality. The first specialist the parents of an unborn child might see is pre-natal cardiology. And the first speciality a thirty-year-old female with previously undiagnosed TSC might encounter is pulmonology (if that's the right word). The question really is why are we trying to over-simplify something that is complex. The answer is to find something brief enough to fit in a little white box up the top-right of our article. That's not a good answer. Colin°^Talk 15:59, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

Agreed most people go through gatekeepers in primary care before they see a specialist, and this weakens the argument that the specialty is useful info. Still potentially encyclopedic though... What about a surgical sieve term, does no-one like this idea? Similar implementation problems with any constructive change to infoboxes... arguments about how to classify things (already starting here?) ... need to change the template ... need to program a bot to help fill out the new template fields.

Having said this, I like idea of a classification template with ICD and MeSH, this would take these "codes" out of the top of the article when most people will not be interested in them. Also support moving EL out of infobox to EL section, potentially in a template or just an old fashioned bullet list. So far the only thing everyone has agreed upon is that EL policy extends to EL in the infobox, and since this was already part of policy, there is nothing to change based upon that individual consensus. Lesion (talk) 16:33, 22 July 2013 (UTC)

I agree that we can't have it both ways: either it's useful for non-physicians or it's not. If I had a family member with an odd disease, I'd probably want to learn more about it and I would probably want to know whether or not the GP was doing reasonable things. A Wikipedia article is a lousy way to make a medical decision, but it's a great way to learn basic information about a disease, like whether or not TS is basically considered a neurological disease. Learning that might help me understand why what looks to me like a skin disease resulted in a referral to a neurologist rather than a dermatologist, for example. This is basic information, not medical advice. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:13, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

There is also a proposal at wikidata to add a medical discipline property: Wikidata:wikidata:Property_proposal/Term#medical_discipline. Would be good to coordinate between the two, so the data could be reused in the infoboxes. --WS (talk) 15:17, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

@Wouterstomp:, that link goes nowhere? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Thanks, fixed now; needed a second wikidata:. --WS (talk) 15:54, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I forgot to ask at the beginning of this thread: is there any reason we are keeping ICD-9 codes? Lesion (talk) 13:57, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

ICD-9 codes are still used for some purposes (see [18]). 86.161.251.139 (talk) 15:57, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Splitting it up

Proposed split

Current use

Here's a quick mockup of what we'd get if we split the box into two. The second box would presumably go under ==Classification==, a section that is (1) about how the disease is subdivided (e.g., subtypes of leukemia in the article Leukemia), not about how the disease relates to other diseases, (2) normally the first section, and thus immediately underneath the existing infobox, and (3) not present in a majority of disease-related articles. Given that there's no place to put it in most articles and it takes up more screen real estate, I'm not very excited about this option, but I can't say that I really care much one way or the other. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:20, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

the suggestion was to put a potential separate classification template "at the bottom of the page" (EL section?) rather than in the classification section. Assume the same objections to these codes being in a prominent position will still be raised against it being in the classification section. Moving the ELs out of the infobox would leave just an image and a caption, arguably no need for an infobox at all. Getting rid of the infoboxes entirely I do not think reflects consensus, meaning that we need to keep at least some content. Unless there are constructive additions (potentially things like specialty involved, surgical sieve term) then both EL and ICD/MeSH codes surely can't be removed? Lesion (talk) 10:36, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes I think these classification codes should go at the bottom along with some of our other grouping templates and Commons links and the like. The argument for that (beyond the fact they are just random letters to most people and so don't belong up top) is that we put wiki categories there too. So one may hopefully see some correspondence between the two. Potentially, given the room there, one could consider spelling out the category hierarchy words rather than just showing the terse code. Then at least it would provide some information, even if I feel these categories are rather arbitrary bureaucratic constructs. And yes the thing in the top-right of the article would just be a thumbnail image with caption rather than a collection of external links hidden behind truly random letters and numbers. Hallelujah. Remember that Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Infoboxes says "The use of infoboxes is neither required nor prohibited for any article. Whether to include an infobox, which infobox to include, and which parts of the infobox to use, is determined through discussion and consensus among the editors at each individual article." The info box on the mock-up above contains no information (except the image and caption, which don't require an infobox). See Wikipedia:Disinfoboxes. -- Colin°^Talk 11:01, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Respectfully, that's just an essay. I don't think there is any consensus to remove infoboxes entirely from medical pages. I potentially support removing ICD/MeSH and/or other EL out of the infobox. If I had to choose to move out ICD/MeSH or the ELs, I would leave the ICD and the MeSH codes, I think they are more encyclopedic. Lesion (talk) 11:19, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Agree that MeSH/ICD links would be better placed at the foot of the page. Regarding Colin's point about spelling them out, I feel that could be good for MeSH, where the heading itself provides a PubMed entry term. By contrast, it seems both impractical and undesirable for the multiple ICD codes (see, for example, Cancer). 86.161.251.139 (talk) 11:56, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

IMO Wikiprojects are probably the last sort of people who should have final say about what goes in an infobox or whether an article needs one at all. Our guideline on the subject makes no mention of projects, just editors on articles. By definition, the members of a wikiproject form a special-interest group that makes it hard for them to appreciate how irrelevant their special interests are to 99% of the actual readers. The railway project think that entry/exit figures for the last five years, to five significant figures, with deltas to four significant figures, is of key vital infobox importance. But they probably look at our box and say that at least theirs has some information in it. I agree that this project doesn't seem keen to make any changes. -- Colin°^Talk 12:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I am happy with simply leaving them as they are. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:29, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Proposed template at bottom

For what it is worth, here's a crude mock up of the bottom of Tuberous sclerosis. It includes the already present navigation templates and categories. Note how it fits nicely here :-) I've shown all external links for comparison with above, without judgement as to whether they are suitable.

External links

V·T·E	Diseases of the skin and appendages by morphology	[ show ]

V·T·E	Phakomatosis (Q85, 759.5–759.6)	[ show ]

V·T·E	Deficiencies of intracellular signaling peptides and proteins	[ show ]

Scheme	Code	Category
ICD-9	759.5	Congenital Anomalies → Other and unspecified congenital anomalies → → Tuberous sclerosis
ICD-10	Q85.1	Congenital malformations, deformations and chromosomal abnormalities → Phakomatoses, not elsewhere classified → → Tuberous sclerosis
MESH	D014402	Tuberous sclerosis

Categories: Genes on chromosome 9 Genes on chromosome 16 Autosomal dominant disorders Genodermatoses Rare diseases

Colin°^Talk 12:39, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

It does look nice, but how much work would be involved per page? Can a bot do all these tasks unaided? Remember how many pages there are. What has been done is expanding the ICD tree, but apart from this it is moving content around that we already had ... ignoring for a moment whether this is desirable to move or not, I am thinking of effort vs benefits here Lesion (talk) 13:16, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, using a bot would be the only viable way of doing this and this should be no problem to do this way. --WS (talk) 15:13, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Colin, it looks good, but bear with me as I'm thinking aloud. Most folks (hopefully) know that Wikipedia is 99% garbage, and some use it only for a reference site to locate other sources. Even I do that for searching medical info, unless I can see an article is FA-- I go straight to the bottom to look for sources. I'm wondering if this will just encourage those who go straight to the bottom to explore the faulty MeSH, Medline etc articles which, in the case of TS at least, are inaccurate. In the case of TS, most of those links do not belong in the article, period. Do we have consensus at least here that we don't *have* to use anything, regardless of where we put it? Because my efforts to remove bad links in the past have been overruled here. I'm afraid your proposed template will give them even a more "official" air of accuracy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:10, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

So far everyone agrees that EL policy applies to the EL currently in the infobox (correct me if I am wrong...has been a long discussion and I have been in and out of it). I think on a case by case basis, according to consensus, any given EL is included or not included, and this decision should be based on EL policy rather than simply blindly wanting to fill out the fields in the infobox. Whether EL policy applies to ICD / MeSH links is another matter ... you could argue that they are EL links they are actually links, but as someone said somewhere above, this link is the easiest way to verify the code is correct. I would want to include them routinely regardless of their potential problems in any single case, otherwise not include on any page. I think ICD/MeSH should stay in all cases, they are encyclopedic ... but I am open to the idea of their location being moved, I just question the benefits for the amount of work involved. Lesion (talk) 13:26, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

And that is the same logic (re MeSH) that has forced me to keep inaccurate info in the TS article for as long as I've been on Wiki, although MeSH can't be bothered to fix info that is about 15 years wrong. Then if we are forced to keep it, let's add it some hidden code or text somewhere, so our readers don't have to read inaccuracies. One must not have significant distress or impairment to be diagnosed with TS, and many people with TS have no impairment and are not bothered by their tics-- this was addressed over a decade ago, but MeSH is still wrong. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:31, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

What Wikiprojects decide is not gospel (even when they think it is) and of no greater weight than per-article editor consensus. The guideline on infoboxes (and I'd include any such box regardless of location) makes it clear this is for each article to decide on a field-by-field basis. So if the consensus is that TS MESH category is not just unhelpful but wrong or misleading, I think you have a case for excluding it. Possibly best done by commenting out the wikitext so that any good-faith wikignome that comes along to add it gets the message. I wouldn't call the ICD/MESH links "external links". They are codes/categories with in-place hyperlink references which I think we all invoke IAR to combine. There is an argument we should accept those categories even if we disagree with them. There's a limit to how much of this imperfect world we are allowed to fix on Wikipedia :-) Colin°^Talk 13:49, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

This is MeSH [19] ... something to do with how PubMed searches for synonyms of the keywords you enter in a search ...someone explained this diffrence somewhere above, I'm not the best person to ask, didn't know what MeSH was before this conversation, just about was aware of ICD before I came to wikipedia ... but these are things that an encyclopedia should concern itself with. Do you mean Medlineplus when you are talking about inaccurate info? (e.g. [20]). MeSH is just a list of terms, I don't see how it can be drastically wrong... whereas a Medline plus is a patient advice type enclopedia, with v few references. I can see how MedlinPlus could contain questionable and undesirable info as an EL, but I don't really consider MeSH to be an EL, it's more part of the classification. Lesion (talk) 13:54, 23 July 2013 (UTC) Just saw above where you specifically criticized this example of a MeSH link. Lesion (talk) 13:59, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

MeSH and ICD are really quite different. From a practical standpoint, the controlled vocabulary of the Medical Subject Headings indexing system [21] is a useful tool for PubMed searches [22], and are especially convenient when making specific ("efficient") searches on particular topics. While the alpha-numeric codes are only of organizational significance, the MeSH headings themselves (and the synonymous PubMed entry terms) really are useful. On the other hand, the alpha-numeric ICD codes actually are of some relevance both to patients [23] and professional (epidemiologists etc). That's one reason why I feel it's a good idea to link to MeSH entries via the heading and to ICD via the codes
For example (formatting apart):

MeSH term: Cancer
ICD-10: C00—C97

(Also, you'd scarcely want to have a template for tabulating 98 ICD-10 codes plus another similar bunch of ICD-9...) — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.161.251.139 (talk) 15:40, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

86.161.251.139 (talk) 15:35, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Looks good, would support using this template. --WS (talk) 15:29, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

If we leave the content in the infobox than the template is not needed. It is not like our infoboxes are overly long thus I see no need. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:37, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

The terseness of our info box is the problem, as well as the issue of external links already covered. Our infobox is unhelpful for nearly all our readers. Proper external links, each justified per WP:EL, is much more useful and belongs at the end. And a bigger wider box gives us a chance to make the categorisation codes provide some information rather than meaningless codes. Colin°^Talk 10:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Even if MeSH remains in the infobox, per James, I feel the meaningless MeSH codes might readily be substituted by a bot so as to link to the actual heading - eg Leukemia, hairy cell. As I've argued elsewhere, I also feel it might be more helpful to link to Entrez (eg Leukemia, hairy cell) rather than the MeSH browser we currently use. That's because Entrez pages for MeSH terms incorporate the PubMed search builder tool [24], letting you use the term directly in ways that the MeSH browser doesn't. 86.161.251.139 (talk) 16:29, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

I would much rather see all the Emedicine stuff on a single line. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:02, 23 July 2013 (UTC)

Once removed from the constraints of the infobox, with its meaningless terse code, people can format the external link how they like. Colin°^Talk 10:17, 25 July 2013 (UTC)

Infoboxes: Moving data to Wikidata

Independent of the outcome of this discussion I think it is important that the data is copied to Wikidata first. The various codes ensure that the interwiki-links are set right, that duplicate articles can be flagged, that duplicate codes can be flagged, etc. In addition we are starting this: links between genes/proteins, diseases, and drugs. So please give us just one or two more months to acquire the data. So everyone can check on the progress I made this table which I promise to update once a week: d:Wikidata:Medicine_task_force#Data_aquisition_progress. --Tobias1984 (talk) 08:27, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

There is no clear consensus to change anything at this point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:56, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Yes, strongly support this. In the long run, I would imagine wikidata to provide a much better interface for accessing these data, e.g. as a tab on a wikipedia article or something similar and preference settings for if you want to see infoboxes at all or not. In the short run, it also makes it easier to move any parameters outside of the infobox, you could set up a template such that if you add it, it automatically takes the value from wikidata (e.g. you could add {{ICD_box}} to the end of the article without having to specify the codes there). --WS (talk) 11:08, 19 July 2013 (UTC)

Conclusion?

So, before this dissappears into the archives, is there consensus for any change? --WS (talk) 20:11, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

I do not see any. We seem divided. The issue does not seem that significant (ie there are bigger issues). Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:21, 3 August 2013 (UTC)

Suspect the people who wanted the infoboxes to change have been more motivated to comment, whereas those who didn't really mind have failed to comment. There is no clear consensus for any of the suggested changes imo. Lesion (talk) 20:18, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

On a related point, it's much too easy to accidentally delete an infobox while using WP:VisualEditor. If you're pro-infobox and see someone remove an infobox (without an edit summary explaining why they're doing it), it would probably be a good idea to assume that it was an accident. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:25, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Well there seems to be consensus on one point, namely that WP:EL should apply to external links in the infobox (and further almost consensus to move them to the external links section). The most crucial things to be considered from EL are: included can be:

Sites that contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to copyright issues,[3] amount of detail (such as professional athlete statistics, movie or television credits, interview transcripts, or online textbooks), or other reasons.

And (to be avoided):

Any site that does not provide a unique resource beyond what the article would contain if it became a featured article.

So, going through those:

DiseasesDB - offers nothing beyond what wikipedia (and/or wikidata) can offer
OMIM - provides relevant extensive overviews of the literature
MedlinePlus - does not provide anything beyond what would be in a featured article; in almost all cases, the wikipedia covers the subject in more detail already
eMedicine - sometimes very detailed coverage of a disease directed at professionals, in other cases offering not much more than wikipedia
GeneReviews - extensive detailed descriptions of genetic background of diseases

Based on this, I would propose dropping diseasesdb and medlineplus altogether, keep OMIM and GeneReviews, and decide for eMedicine on a case-to-case basis. Furthermore, would be good to hear some more opinions on whether to move the links to the external links section or keep them in the infobox (WP:EL allows for both).--WS (talk) 13:38, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm not certain that's entirely advisable. The "what the article would contain if it became a featured article" test might be suitable once articles approach that level of maturity, but early on in development such ELs are helpful in identifying content areas and sources that the article has yet to address. In the meantime, they help to address readers' information needs that have not been fulfilled by the less-fully developed article. A better (IMHO) approach would be to remove or comment-out such links when the maturing WP article has effectively rendered them redundant.LeadSongDog come howl! 17:08, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

As the majority of articles have already progressed beyond what medlineplus and certainly diseasesdb offer, I would prefer working the other way, removing them in general and (re-)adding links when relevant/helpful.--WS (talk) 11:49, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Well, at the risk of missing the boat and chiming in a bit late, I have two opposing opinions:

Support infobox links. (1) Gives Wikipedia an air of confident authority on a topic. (2) Ethically good as it allows access to more information. (3) Supplements poor article quality/quantity. (4) Edit reference for editors. (5) Accessible benchmark for article quality.

Oppose. (1) There is a specifically-provided 'External Links' section below. (2) It's unfair to promote these sources above other sources (even if they are free and large). (3) Adherence with Wiki's EL policy debatable.

Comment. There should be a link to related wikisites (wikibooks, wikiuniversity, commons, dictionary, especially for definition-based med articles).

LT90001 (talk) 10:07, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I wish I could agree with WS here, but Category:Medicine_articles_by_quality is still rather less than convincing. I certainly would not want to see these links disappear from the over 12,000 stubs or the nearly 9,400 Start-Class medicine articles. Certainly by GA, and perhaps at C-Class or above, but even that is far from being the majority of our articles. Moving the links down to the EL section does seem helpful though, irrespective of the article class. LeadSongDog come howl! 15:16, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure but you would be hard pressed to find a stub which has a corresponding medlineplus article. They cover only ~900 topics, and the vast majority of those will be C class or above here. Diseasesdb is broader in its coverage but hardly offers more than a simple start-class article here does. --WS (talk) 18:51, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

In the past twenty minutes, I picked four arbitrary choices under "M" from diseasesdatabase. In each case, our article was missing synonyms and the corresponding redirects (see my recent contribs). One of the four was C-Class, the others were Start or Stub. This is rather the point of wp:Build the web: the very fact of interconnection allows us to improve our content, often in unforeseen ways. Whether medlineplus is immediately as useful or not, (I haven't yet tested that idea) it eventually may be. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:23, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Integrating tens to hundreds of one-page stubs

Hello all; as you may know I and Lesion have been working on integrating the multitude of lichen planus articles that are one-two sentences into the main article. I've found a similar issue on sarcoidosis and several other topics. In fact a full list can be found here, in an active user's 2009 creates (based on the WP:DERM policy). I left a message on the user's talk page requesting comment, this user has made many valuable edits and remains an active member of Wikipedia and Wikiproject Med, so it would be great to have their comments. My request for discussion is:

(1) Views towards integrating these into articles? I refer here to articles that are clearly a subset or presentation of a primary pathology and consist of 1-2 sentences only.
(2) Request for assistance if consensus is reached on (1).

I feel it's unhelpful and troublesome to users to have a dispersed diaspora of different articles 1-2 sentences when these could be displayed in main articles; plus there is always the potential to recreate separate articles at a future time if needed. Kind Regards LT90001 (talk) 11:09, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Why not both? Realistically, more than six or eight related conditions is going to be awkward in most articles. Why not create a separate list of the subtypes, but leave the separate articles as they are? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:20, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

The reason is because if we do this, I fear Wikipedia will end up with millions and millions of articles, of which only a few are of any depth, length or encyclopedic quality. I also think that having all these small articles in one place makes editing easier for users, and viewing easier for readers. I don't think readers or editors are inclined to view lots of separate little articles and I'd rather direct any goodwill to a moderate-quality parent article. The other reason I am pursuing this is to improve the ability of current and future WikiMed members to be able to make edits. I feel some significant factors impeding this are (1) lack of members (2) huge quantity of medical articles and (3) protracted disputes and edits by users on certain popular pages. I'm hoping this gets (2) moving. LT90001 (talk) 13:55, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

That said, having lists or at least central articles that the small stubs can move to is not a bad idea if these articles don't exist already.. LT90001 (talk) 13:55, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm basically a mergist myself, but it is actually much easier for a new editor to expand an existing short stub than to improve a larger article. If your goal is to improve the ability of new editors to make useful edits, then you want a lot of stubs hanging around.

Now, there's no reason why the existing information can't be at the tiny stub and in a decent article or list, but turning the stubs into redirects will reduce the likelihood of someone deciding that there isn't enough information about his or her favorite condition and making an edit to expand it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:38, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

In principle I would agree that a one or two sentence stub about a subtype of a disease should be merged into the parent article for that disease. However, this would need to be on a case by case basis, and there needs to be people willing to do this work as you hint. I suspect that this process will naturally occur as the parent article of these stubs is expanded over time. IMO, the merging that has been done on lichen planus has made it a much better article. If the stub hasn't been expanded in a long time I would be more inclined to merge. Lesion (talk) 15:45, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Per WP:notdictionary and WP:merge, the stubs clearly should be merged. Merging necesarily includes redirection of the redundant stubs. In my experience, some people will be upset with this and invent reasons outside of policy to keep the stubs. This causes headaches, and ultimately, persistence of the useless redundancy.--Taylornate (talk) 07:01, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

I think you should go read those pages again. These are not pages about words; they are merely incomplete encyclopedia articles. We have no rule saying that articles about subtopics must be merged. In fact, WP:MERGE gives two relevant reasons—"The separate topics could be expanded into longer standalone (but cross-linked) articles" and "The topics are discrete subjects warranting their own articles, even though they might be short"—why these shouldn't be merged. These are technically separate skin diseases. Merging them would be akin to merging all the articles on warts together, just because they're all warts. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:26, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

You weren't advocating against merging, you were advocating for an incomplete merge with large redundancy. I don't think that is supported anywhere.

You're right about stub articles not necessarily being in conflict with WP:notdictionary--I missed that.

Your point about WP:merge regarding reasons to avoid merging is subjective and could be made about any proposed merge. Consolidating the information will result in a more useful encyclopedia, as a large number of 1-2 sentence stubs is not very useful at all. If later on, someone wants to expand some of these into encyclopedic articles, they can split the articles as they do it.

I've looked a bit deeper into what lead to this. It appears a group of WP:DERM editors made a push to create a new stub for every single derm condition. I think this is fundamentally misguided, as it seems like they placed great importance on this as an end-goal itself rather than as a stepping stone to building an encyclopedia. They did this by referencing a dermatology text book. WP is not a text book and every separate (x) does not necessarily warrant its own encyclopedic article. Creating a separate stub article for every (x) purely for the sake of having them is not justification to create the articles.

If all articles on warts were 1-2 sentences each, then they absolutely should be merged.--Taylornate (talk) 20:43, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Taylornate, how long has it been since you read NOTTEXTBOOK? That section is about not creating teaching materials. It is not opposed to including all notable subjects that happen to be included in a major textbook. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:11, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Maybe I didn't make my point clearly enough. The group wasn't taking all notable subjects from the textbook. They were systematically taking all subjects from the book. I don't think appearing in a text book is sufficient notability for having a standalone article--because we're building an encyclopedia, not a textbook. I think the fact that they have remained stubs for years is evidence that they are not notable.--Taylornate (talk) 23:52, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

The fact that the only source currently listed in the article is a textbook does not mean that the textbook is the only reliable source in the world for this subject. For example, you support merging away Annular sarcoidosis, but PMID 19663829 is a recent review on that specific disease and PMID 21677887 is a (free) paper discussing a new treatment for it.

Generally speaking, we have found that all individual, generally accepted/mainstream diseases are actually notable, and that this is confirmed if anyone bothers to go look for the information. WP:There is no deadline for people to expand stubs, and articles about rare diseases like these tend to expand both slowly and unpredictably. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:57, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you all for your contributions. It seems like consensus has been reached that there are indeed a huge about of 1-2 line dermatological stubs that haven't been significantly edited in years and that, if due caution is exercised and the merge progress followed, where possible these can be merged into their relevant parent article. LT90001 (talk) 22:08, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

AfC submission

Care to comment on this submission? Thanks! FoCuSandLeArN (talk) 18:03, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello. A couple of rapid observations:

Looking at posturalrestoration.com, the topic would appear to emanate from [25] a single commercial organization, the Postural Restoration Institute^(R)
Any clinical claims as such, including (though not limited to) those regarding "effectiveness" and "evidence", would need to be carefully worded and supported by reliable medical sources, per WP:MEDRS. At present case reports etc are being used as anecdotal evidence of effectiveness, which is completely unacceptable. Of course, that doesn't mean that suitable evidence-based MEDRS sources on effectiveness don't exist, though on a rapid search I haven't been able to spot any that specifically regard the name of the proposed page topic, "Postural Restoration".
86.130.63.47 (talk) 09:41, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Review request ahead of GA nomination?

I have been working on Genital wart for some time and would like to nominate it for GA review soon. I am working through the last remaining parts (Management and Epidemiology) and feel like I could use some comments on the remainder of the article in preparation for formal review (If that's necessary? a bit unclear on that.)

Thanks. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 08:04, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Fine, I think putting it up for Wikipedia:Peer review is one channel (though you doubtless knew that already). 86.130.63.47 (talk) 08:47, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Hi, although I am not too familiar with the GA review criteria I have left a review on the article's talk page. LT90001 (talk) 08:54, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

How to make a free text line in Infobox disease?

Problem = Have 2 MeSH IDs for the same wikipedia article due to merges. I want to include both, tried this didn't work as one was ignored and not translated from the source.

| MeshID          = D008010
| MeshID2         = D017676

Any ideas? Article is Lichen planus btw. Lesion (talk) 11:58, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

You have to use MeSH2 instead of MeshID2. Have changed the article accordingly. --WS (talk) 13:00, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

I see now, thanks. Lesion (talk) 13:03, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

COPY AND PASTE

Most of what this user has added is copy and paste user:Seppi333. Would others help look through it. I am heading out for a few days. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:07, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I will watch. Peter.C • talk • contribs 00:40, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

I've added a total of 3 "copy and paste" sentences to wikipedia, all of which were recent, and which I've already addressed after you brought the issue to my attention. I'm not sure that qualifies as "most" given the number of edits I make every week...

In any event, I'm flattered that I now have a thread about me on this talk page. Seppi333 (talk) 23:05, 9 August 2013 (UTC)

I personally don't see a problem with direct quoting of sources, especially say the conclusions of a cochrane review which are very carefully worded deliberately, and as long as it is made clear where the quote came from and that it is a direct quote. E.g. see Temporomandibular_joint_dysfunction#Occlusal adjustment/reorganization the text which is directly quoted is clearly separated from the other text, using blockquote and quotation marks. Lesion (talk) 12:26, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Links to external videos

What do people feel about these sort of images with links to videos in the caption? [26]. Should the expectation be that they are on commons and under a free license? The still image adds little and my concern is that this is simply a way of getting around our open content policy. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:18, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I do feel there is some sort of expectation that links like that do provide a false sense that the image is, at the very least, hosted on Wikimedia servers, ergo under a CC license. This seems more like a way to advertise a service or company on Wikipedia. Peter.C • talk • contribs 03:41, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I am indifferent on this matter. I just added the links because the illustrations and videos have a direct connection (they are the videos Blausen listed in their spreadsheet as associated with those specific illustrations, and seem to use the same 3D models, etc.) and when I viewed them they seemed like educational content relevant to the articles. If consensus is to exclude them or clarify that they're third-party in some manner (e.g. by moving them to the External links section) then I'm all for that and will be happy to do the legwork of removing/modifying them myself. The links would have to remain on the file description pages since that's source info, but I don't imagine that's an issue. Dcoetzee 04:33, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

The links should be standard size and they should not be in the lead. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:39, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I have not viewed the linked video. The still picture has a free license and is hosted on Wikimedia Commons. It is an appropriate image to illustrate the accompanying text. It is unclear—and unnecessary to indicate—that the image is derived from a video. The picture's caption should not include a link to the vdeo.

A hyperlink to an external website, such as the video, should comply with WP:EL. The guideline states "2. External links should not normally be used in the body of an article. Instead, include appropriate external links in an "External links" section at the end of the article, and in the appropriate location within an infobox, if applicable." While the caption of a picture is not the body of an article, I do not believe that it is an appropriate place to insert a link to a video. I am concerned that links of this nature, even when placed in an "External links" section, may violate 4. in WP:ELNO: "Links mainly intended to promote a website." As I mentioned, I have not viewed this particular video. Axl ¤ [Talk] 10:14, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree that the still image suffices; the video is unnecessary. -- Scray (talk) 14:27, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

From the footnote on the ELPOINTS item that Axl quoted: "Other exceptions include use of templates like {{visualizer}}, which produces charts on the Toolserver, and {{external media}}, which is only used when non-free and non-fair use media cannot be uploaded to Wikipedia."

I don't think that our readers even care whether something is CC-licensed. What they mostly care about is whether they can view it without paying. If the video meets the normal criteria for including a video, then I'm personally not going to get too hung up on a small link in the caption vs a full-size link under ==External links==. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It's not clear to me that a consensus has been reached on this matter. In the future should I include these links in captions or not? Should I use the {{external media}} template, should I put it in the external links section, or should I omit it altogether? I'm not a regular editor to this topic area so I'd prefer to remain neutral in this decision. Dcoetzee 18:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

Sample for discussion: for years, there were complaints that the Tourette syndrome article had no visual for tics. Tics cannot be captured in an image, since they are a movement or a sound, and we got frequent queries along the lines of "what does a tic look like". Someone (I can't recall who) got the TSA and HBO to release a video clip to us ... included at Tourette syndrome#Characteristics. I was not fond of the idea of having a video clip in text, but it has served its purpose well here ... no more complaints or queries about what is a tic, and the video was properly released to Wikipedia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:31, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I'd already spotted video and I feel it's a great example of smart embedding of moving images for genuinely useful illustration. I like the fact that it's the reader who decides whether to start the video (as with all our audio recordings). Whereas here (in another subject area that obviously benefits from moving-image illustration) the loop is already running... Not so desirable, imo. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 20:57, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes videos should generally be stopped until turned on. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:54, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

New Taskforce proposed

Hello all, I've been considering creating a new taskforce (or at least categorisation) for med articles and I'd like your opinions. A link is available on 'taskforce:talk'.

Summary: I propose a new taskforce, the Society & Medicine taskforce, which would include medically-related events, people, organisations and publications (journals, almanacs, etc). My original name was "OPP" (Organisations, people & publications). Rationale: WikiMed covers articles about the practice of medicine, and also about medicine in society (organisations, events, famous doctors). I think is is useful to demarcate these. These two types of articles are fundamentally different:

Proposed Society & Medicine taskforce.
	WikiMed	Society & Medicine taskforce:
Articles covered	current set of articles	Articles already part of WikiMed that refer to: organisations, events, doctors & patients, journals, publications, and textbooks.
Likely infoboxes	Disease, Symptom, Diagnostic, Intervention	Other
Likely editors	Doctors & Scientists	Historians, sociographers, laypeople
Classified according to	ICD	Notoriety
Theoretical extent	Finite number (ICD is finite)	Infinite number (history is ongoing)
Likely organisation	Heirachically organised (organ - disease - subtype)	Categorised by characteristics (country, year, etc.)

I hope I have illustrated just how different these articles are. I suspect a significant amount of WikiMed's current 35,000 active articles are, in fact, relating to Society & Medicine. If there is a way to get them out of the pool, medical-practice related editors can get on with the job with a lot less clutter. Topics I am sure will come up:

Wiki is already super categorised. I personally think that this is a very useful category, because we can start to sift medically-related articles vs. medical practice articles apart, with a view to either a fork, takeover by another taskforce, or simply altering any lists that we displayed. Any attempt at automatic or manual categorisation (eg infoboxes, standardised headings etc.) of medical practice articles can also be made much easier if this group of articles is excluded.
Category is too ambiguous. I don't think there is much cross-over between Organisations, Persons & Publications vs. actual diseases.
Taskforces are for groups of ardent people working towards a common purpose. Yes, OK, but they do have to start somewhere. Also this taskforce would be a great place for laypersons to contribute to WikiMed (if so desired).
Who's going to do this? Well, it will have to start with me (and anyone else interested)
This falls under the scope of another project. Not to my knowledge (although there certainly is some cross-over here).

Discussion

Opinions? LT90001 (talk) 07:21, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

It does seem strange to see History of tuberculosis, say, supported only by WP:WikiProject India. I feel that the history of medicine and diseases is an eminently encyclopedic field which perhaps tends to get upstaged a bit by the need to provide reliable clinical information. One concern could be that such a taskforce might become a target/focus for various kinds of POV-pushing. Presumably, there would be ways of defending against that? 86.130.63.47 (talk) 13:51, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

That just means that nobody noticed the need to tag the article. Ottawahitech tagged it, and I've assessed it. It's quite an interesting article, actually.

Speaking of which, if you're interested in a particular area, it's worth spending an hour looking through the major categories for unidentified articles on occasion (and articles not tagged for the task force, if there's a relevant one). Read the top of WP:MEDA to get a handle on what's in or out of scope, and then start pasting {{WPMED |class= |importance=}} on to the talk pages. This is a pretty easy task, and it really is helpful, because then these articles will turn up automatically in our lists if they get sent to AFD or tagged with a problem. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:39, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I've added "History of medicine" to WP:MEDA since it wasn't explicit, hoping others agree. -- Scray (talk) 19:11, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, that is exactly why I proposed this taskforce. WikiMed is replete with these articles yet there is no specific taskforce to cover them.LT90001 (talk) 23:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

LT910001, have you seen WP:WikiProject Hospitals? We dumped all of the hospital articles on them a while ago. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

No, I wasn't aware! If another WikiProject were to form (eg. MedHistory), they would more easily be able to transfer their related articles from this taskforce.LT90001 (talk) 23:17, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

Comment -- Note that organ articles would be WPANAT, and as I understand it, should not be tagged with WPMED (?). I feel that the scope of WPMED should extend beyond the ICD headings/diseases. What about investigations, clinical and surgical procedures, theory of medicine-type pages, signs, symptoms ... and I'm sure many other topics that are not disease, but still need to be under WPMED. It seems like it would be easier to make a taskforce called pathology for a scope limited to disease, but we probably already have a dormant ... yes here it is: Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Pathology task force, and it does look a bit dormant. It seems that many of the taskforces and allied wikiprojects that were set up historically have become less active, and editors seem to congregate here now... Lesion (talk) 23:59, 10 August 2013 (UTC)
Great idea. I would suggest revising your header to be a little more clear about what you're proposing so interested people notice it more easily. II | (t - c) 18:33, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for your feedback. I have altered the header accordingly and hopefully this proposal is clearer. LT90001 (talk) 22:11, 11 August 2013 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea. To separate them out a bit more, instead of having a taskforce here, maybe it would be a good idea to transform the hospital wikiproject into this? (there has been some discussion about the scope of the project there before) And then you can have taskforces there for hospitals, organization, doctors, history, etc. --WS (talk) 13:06, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree with WS's proposal. Expand WP hospitals to include this rather than create a new taskforce. Also easier to do. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 14:19, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments. I won't persist with creating this taskforce unless there is a sudden an unexpected show of support :D. Is there any way to view how med articles are categorised? (eg. diseases, physicians, etc?). I think this is a useful metric which, if not developed, I will find a way to construct. LT90001 (talk) 10:09, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

We do not have a good set of sub categories for medical articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:17, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

CatScan is a useful tool to get an overview of categories. You have to be careful though, as you might sometimes get surprising results due to the way things are categorized on wikipedia. E.g. searching for articles in the physician category (with a depth of 10) results in 16436 articles found, the majority indeed physicians, but also some odd results like Functional colonic disease. Also, you can quickly browse through the category tree here. --WS (talk) 12:01, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

• @ LT90001, I agree that this is the logical place to start before determining which taskforces are required. I also agree with Doc James that there is a lot of work required in order to straighten out Category:Medicine. XOttawahitech (talk) 19:16, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Merge Perinatal infection and Vertical transmission

I think these articles should be merged to Vertically transmitted infection, because neither is long enough to justify being split into a separate article as is. Besides, there is currently no article for Prenatal infection to accommodate fetal infections acquired before 22 completed weeks of gestation (which is the earliest limit of the start of the perinatal period) which is the period of greatest risk for e.g. congenital rubella syndrome. So, instead of having at least 3 small articles (Perinatal infection, Prenatal infection (before 22 weeks) and Vertical transmission) I suggest that we have one article, Vertically transmitted infection to cover it all. The ICD infobox in Perinatal infection can be put at the top of it, since it says in ICD-10 "includes infections acquired in utero or during birth", which implies infections before 22 weeks as well. Also, the term "perinatal infection" does not necessarily mean that the infection can spread to the child, but all the text in the Perinatal infection article refers to this risk, so the article name Vertically transmitted infection better reflects the article content. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:30, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

Seems logical, (and less daunting and potentially controversial than merging infection + infectious disease). Lesion (talk) 14:40, 13 August 2013 (UTC)
Agree. could be achieved by renaming 'Vertical transmission' and merging the second article into it. LT90001 (talk) 21:42, 14 August 2013 (UTC)
Sound like a good idea. --WS (talk) 13:04, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Fluorodeoxyglucose vs Fludeoxyglucose - WP:MEDMOS vs WP:COMMONNAME

Please consider commenting over there. -- Scray (talk) 06:42, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Neuroaid again

There have been some major changes at Neuroaid in the last hours. Particularly distrubing are the changes to the table of ingridients, where the animal substances Contained have been deleted without explanation. There has also been a removal of secondary sources and exchange for primary sources. These newly introduced sources are misquoted and misrepresented, for example this study, which distintly states " Statistical difference was not detected between the treatment groups for any of the secondary outcomes. Subgroup analyses showed no statistical heterogeneity for the primary outcome" is quoted in the revision as "The data of the trial showed that patients treated by NeuroAiD had positive benefits with an increase of 11%in the Odd Ratio (OR) of achieving functional independence at acute stage. This improvement rate increased to an OR of39% (CI 95% 0.97-1.98) when NeuroAiD was initiated more than 48 hours after stroke onset, when the variability of patients post stroke condition is smaller than at the acute stage. Authors of the paper conclude that “it is plausible that with a larger study population, such a moderate clinically relevant treatment effect may be detected with statistical significance". Some experienced eyes might be good on this. Ochiwar (talk) 07:29, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The edits appear promotional, so I reverted. Biosthmors (talk) 08:02, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health

The article Maharishi Vedic Approach to Health appears to be filled with very large medical claims and is written from the pseudoscience perspective. e.g

"Andrew Weil writes that, in India, Ayurveda is an inexpensive alternative to allopathic medicine available to all people, while Maharishi Ayurveda is expensive.",
"Chemical analysis has found that the formula is a mixture of low-molecular-weight substances that serve as antioxidants. Research has found that these antioxidants scavenge "free radicals" that damage cells, scavenge dangerous molecules known as lipid peroxides, and scavenge oxidized low-density lipoproteins that are a cause of cardiovascular disease.[49][50] Research suggests that Amrit Kalash can reduce the frequency of angina in patients as well as lower systolic blood pressure and improve exercise tolerance.[51] Free radicals have been implicated in the formation and growth of cancer cells. Studies on lab animals have found a reduction in tumors and increased survival rate with a diet supplemented by Amrit Kalash."
"Listening to a form of classical Indian music called Maharishi Gandharva Veda is purported to integrate and harmonize the cycles and rhythms of the body. Maharishi Gandaharva Veda is described in the TM Movement as the science of sound, focusing on finding the healing properties of sounds. It is said that the melodies date from the Vedic period, and that particular melodies or ragas express the qualities of specific periods of day or night, divided into eight three-hour periods."
"According to the Maharishi, illness comes about when there is a lack of coordination between the body's inner intelligence and its outer expression"
"Individual metabolic differences and seasonal variations as described in MAV are an important part of a healthy diet. MAV considers taste and quality to be central features in the classification of foods, and seasonal factors as crucial in determining nutritional needs. MAV also advises use of certain herbal nutritional supplements to maintain optimum health."

TLDR summary: no mainstream rebuttals are provided for any claim, als this seems to be full of marketspeak for people selling products by filling the article with pseudoscience, IRWolfie- (talk) 19:28, 10 August 2013 (UTC)

I agree it needs to be cleaned up to comply with our standards for medical content. A quick glance at the edit history suggests to me that the issues are likely related to the widespread COI editing which afflicts the walled garden of Transcendental Meditation-related articles. Thus, anyone seeking to fix the content faces an uphill battle. Good luck. MastCell ^Talk 04:12, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes a number of long term editors have been done in on the battlefeilds of TM. I have no idea how to deal with the issue in question. Arbcom appears to support those within this religion making scientific claims about the effectiveness of their religion. The topic areas has been full of pseudoscience for some time. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:14, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Related to the walled garden, there was also issues with John Hagelin (which had even managed to become a GA through a bad review) and Maharishi Effect along a similar vein, though non-medical, IRWolfie- (talk) 09:42, 13 August 2013 (UTC)

There is an ongoing discussion on the talk about whether certain sources are WP:MEDRS reliable and have due weight. See Talk:Maharishi_Vedic_Approach_to_Health#Aug_10_edits IRWolfie- (talk) 21:57, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

Phimosis article again and gender identity, including gender identity at other articles

Have a look at this, this, this and this with regard to the Phimosis article. As can be seen, it's a matter that has to do with cisgender/gender identity. While I understand where transgender and/or intersex people are coming from on this matter, it is most assuredly WP:Undue weight to state "individuals with penises" instead of "men" or "males," or "people" instead of "men" or "males." Secondly, sources on this matter do not state "individuals with penises" or simply "people"; thus the addition is WP:Unsourced. The sources state "men" or "males" (or even "boys"). Thirdly, the word people could include anyone. Not surprisingly, Lesion started a discussion about this at Talk:Phimosis. But for a similar matter, see the following late 2012 discussion that was had at the Human penis article: Talk:Human penis/Archive 1#"male humans" should be changed to "humans assigned male at birth". It was decided by WP:Consensus that we should not state "The human penis is an external sexual organ of humans assigned male at birth." because the wording is WP:Undue weight and is not supported by sources. However, my suggestion of "The human penis is an external male sex organ." had support, including from those who feel that the wording "The human penis is an external sexual organ of male humans." is ignorant of transgender and/or intersex people. Some transgender people are okay if we employ the sex and gender distinction, using the term male since it is more so a biological matter while the term man is more so a sociological matter. I thought that the sex and gender distinction is why Lesion used males, but, as can be seen, even that was reverted.

Is there anything that this project thinks should be specifically done about matters such as these, such as perhaps amending Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine)? Or is it unnecessary to amend Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) just for this, especially since that guideline is clear that it's about what the sources state and what type of sources to use? I'm bringing this matter here because it is a subject that is sporadically, but more frequently, coming up at articles noting sex anatomy and especially at articles specifically about sex anatomy. See, for example, this discussion section and this edit (both from 2011) with regard to the Human male reproductive system article (some of those changes have been removed since then). A similar section was also started at the Human male reproductive system article by the same editor, where it's gotten one reply thus far. All of this is why I will next leave a note about these matters at WP:Anatomy. However, since WP:Anatomy is very inactive, I believe it will take the help of WP:MED to address this matter. Flyer22 (talk) 17:17, 16 August 2013 (UTC)

I think it would be more WP:MEDMOS or WP:WTW than MEDRS. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:06, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Good point. Flyer22 (talk) 03:10, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

It's more than a single user, I've counted more than one editor involved in pushing this POV on Phimosis, Human female reproductive system and the other articles listed above:

@YEloi:
@Captain Fishy:
@Cmantito:
and a group of IP editors.

Suggest that first a clear consensus be reached through a centralized discussion, then perhaps a line can be added to the MEDMOS to clarify this matter for future incidents. On the other hand, the previous consensus that you point out is pretty compelling (Talk:Human penis/Archive 1#"male humans" should be changed to "humans assigned male at birth"), and perhaps it is enough to simply draw the attention of the editors in question to this. Lesion (talk) 10:25, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

Problem articles

I posted a couple of requests, inappropriately, at WT:MEDRS, which I'm repeating here now.

Epimedium

I would be grateful if any editor who thoroughly understands WP:MEDRS could find time to look at the relevant sections of Epimedium. There have been constant attempts to add material based on Chinese medical use, but even when these are removed, some of the remaining information seems inappropriate to me.

It seems reasonable enough that you've reverted some changes to the article. However I think the article merits a section about its use in TCM. It seems quite legitimate for a separate section of the article to be on TCM, much as other articles might have a 'use in traditional medicine' section. I think that's quite encyclopedic and that there's a risk of a bias by editors against traditional medicines (still used by many) and non-Western schools of medicine if nothing is written.

How about you add a separate section, or edit it? There seem to be some relevant articles on Google scholar and if language is couched in "According to the internal heats theory of TCM..." Seems a bit harsh to revert completely, this editor could make some valuable contributions in future if they increase the quality of their writing. Kind Regards, LT90001 (talk) 00:12, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

Galactagogue

If anyone has time to look at Galactagogue, I think it needs attention in relation to WP:MEDRS standards.

Peter coxhead (talk) 18:52, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

ABCD2 page/table seems incomplete

please see Talk:ABCD² score.Skookum1 (talk) 06:24, 18 August 2013 (UTC)

What do you think is wrong with it? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:51, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Redox therapy

This was an article full of mostly-unsourced material around the topic of vitamin C megadosage and the like. The sources it had didn't use the term "redox therapy" at all, and there was a focus on Linus Pauling.

After cutting back, I have tried to rebuild a small article based on good sources. However, it seems that "redox therapy" is the term used for a legitimate novel line of therapeutic research, and that it enjoys a historical usage (and altmed usage) as a shorthand for vitamin megadosage. I am not sure how/whether a line should be drawn ... do we for instance need a "Redox therapy (alternative medicine)" article. Or is the current research on the same continuum as the altmed usage?

Expert advice/thoughts welcome! Alexbrn ^{talk|contribs|COI} 09:21, 17 August 2013 (UTC)

I'm no expert but that looks like a very nice job you've done there. Thank you. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 11:38, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Wiktionary:WikiProject Medicine

Greetings, all. I write to inform the members of this project that the analogous Wiktionary:Wiktionary:WikiProject Medicine has a great deal of development to be done ahead of it. We would like to create the world's premier online medical dictionary, as a complement to the world's premier online medical encyclopedia. Cheers! bd2412 T 01:12, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

My only experience of adding a medical term to Wiktionary was less than satisfactory.[27] --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:55, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

This unsatisfactory interaction with one of their administrators leaves me reluctant to contribute. Axl ¤ [Talk] 16:36, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

RfC: Should Roundup (herbicide) be un-merged from glyphosate?

See Talk:Roundup (herbicide)#RfC: Un-merge from Glyphosate?. The previous article contained health claims before it was merged, so is of relevance to this board [28]. Cheers, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:50, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Responded. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:00, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#Unsupported_medical_statement

There's a question at Wikipedia:Teahouse/Questions#Unsupported_medical_statement that I noticed. Someone here might have a chance to address it before I do. Biosthmors (talk) 08:53, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

I have responded. Axl ¤ [Talk] 09:24, 21 August 2013 (UTC)

Dishonest source misrepresentation

Hi. I've been floating around Wikipedia for a few years now and I've seen some funny stuff, but the other day when looking into an ANI complaint (Wikipedia:ANI#Herbxue (permalink) I noticed some misrepresentation of references which looks about as bad as what we had going on in the Jagged 85 debacle but appears to me to be more deliberate and possibly more dishonest. I just pinged a few of the old veterans from around here to see if they can give their input and provide social pressure, but I'd welcome some comments. Source misrepresentation is a subtle, difficult, and relatively uncommon problem which needs to be taken seriously when it is discovered, as it is just as unfair to the authors of sources as it is to the readers. I've spent some time cleaning up the misrepresentation conducted by Jagged 85 in his 80,000+ edits and I can tell you that it is extremely time-consuming. The misrepresentation here is from the anti alternative medicine perspective, which is good in that it runs against the typical misrepresentation or poor sourcing by newbies and vandals, but also means it may be more difficult to spot. Anyway, I would love to hear from neutral editors. Maybe I'm just naive or missing something and this is not a big deal, in which case I want to know that too. I summarized the situation in my first comment to the topic. II | (t - c) 09:20, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh, that's ugly! However the vast majority of Jagged 85's edits are not relevant to WikiProject Medicine. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:19, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

Sorry, I should have been more clear. The misrepresentation in this ANI complaint is about acupuncture. I'd welcome your input. II | (t - c) 14:05, 19 August 2013 (UTC)

The acupuncture page is obviously a prominent one and will continue to be. Quite independently of the ANI controversies, I think it could be useful to ask Hildabast to comment on how the page might most faithfully reflect the best MEDRS sources regarding efficacy/effectiveness. However, Hilda appears to be busy IRL at the moment. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 09:45, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Yep, real life got incredibly hectic, but it was temporary. Won't look at acupuncture straight away, but will soon.Hildabast (talk) 02:12, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Cochrane Collaboration Wikipedian in Residence position open

Hey folks, just an announcement that the evidence-based systematic review library, Cochrane Collaboration, has a WIR position open for applicants. Wiki Project Med Foundation] is coordinating the process. Cochrane is a fantastic organization, and the position is both paid and remote. More info here: Cochrane/WIR. Check it out and sign up! Cheers, Ocaasi (talk) 14:03, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Talk:Gender identity disorder#Updates required to reflect DSM-5

Do any of you mind weighing in on this matter? We definitely need some members of WP:MED to comment on it. Flyer22 (talk) 21:03, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Commented. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:59, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Category Medicine

As stated in my taskforce attempt, I've been working on straightening out Category:Medicine. I hope the current state is more satisfactory and useful. I've also been trying to reduce the cross-linking of medical categories (and have a more hierarchical organization).

Next thing I would love to do is see if the task force assessment or something similar can also be used on categories - that is, {{Task force assessment|Medicine}}

Cheers, LT90001 (talk) 03:52, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

GA

Proactiv was recently nominated for GA. Not really medicine but more marketing IMO. Thoughts? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:43, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

I saw this too, in the WP:MED Article alerts template. The article is listed with the Economics and business nominees, and not Biology and medicine, so it looks correctly categorized to me. This is 95% about the company and marketing and very little about the biomedical effects of the products, which can be summarized in the few sentences in the article like: "...a mixture of benzoyl peroxide and butenifine out-performed Proactiv in the study. A physician writing in Salon noted that Proactiv uses the same active ingredient as cheaper generic store drugs, but that its three-step system made it easier for teens to be diligent." Unless it were identified as important to WP:MED it would not be a GA I'd be interested in picking up. Zad68 13:58, 5 August 2013 (UTC)

Wondering if it should not be part of WPMED at all? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:54, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

According to WP:MED?, it depends whether or not we consider Proactiv a medication. Given that it contains benzoyl peroxide, which is on the WHO list of essential medications, it seems obvious we should. That said, benzoyl peroxide itself isn't tagged as being under WP:MED. I suspect we have many medications not tagged as being under the project that should be. Biosthmors (talk) 07:31, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

The active ingredient in the Proactiv product is benzoyl peroxide. Agree benzoyl peroxide should be within WP:MED. In an ideal world I would not care to have Proactiv, the article about the company, in WP:MED scope but I'm not sure who else would be keeping an eye on the biomedical claims made in the article if we don't. Zad68 19:33, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Not WPMed. I agree with DocJames's musings. I was going to review this article but I don't think it should be under WPMed. We have covered in previous discussions the MedMOS covers articles not under our scope. There is no med scale I can judge this by, because it is primarily about a company. In my mind that is a good indication that it shouldn't be under WPMed. I suggest move to WPPharm and remove WPMED involvement and leave that tag about medical sources on the page. I have also left a note on the talk page about this discussion. LT90001 (talk) 05:01, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

WikiPharm/WPMed scope

According to the current guidelines, medications should be tagged with both wpmed and wppharm. Personally, I don't think adding multiple projects is very helpful or productive; it only adds to the work of keeping ratings up-to-date which are already often outdated. I would suggest we tag medications only with wppharm, just like we do with anatomy articles. --WS (talk) 10:38, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Support. there is enough on WPMED's plate without drugs being included. It seems like needless duplication. If there's enough consensus we can update the Assessment page accordingly. To clarify, I think that the following should be under WPMed: Drug classes, and other forms of medication should be under WPParm. Opinions? LT90001 (talk) 22:52, 14 August 2013 (UTC)

How would we keep a lid on medical assertions without MEDRS support? Even now there are FA-Class drug articles loaded with outdated primary source cites, rodent studies, etc. LeadSongDog come howl! 05:14, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

Just because an article does not fall within WPMED doesn't mean MEDRS does not apply. Actually, parts of MEDRS and MEDMOS mention articles already outside the scope of WPMED, including anatomy and pharmacology content. The addition of medications to the scope of WPMED is relatively recent (maybe a few years ago), whereas they had been excluded/relegated to WPPHARM before. I don't think there was much discussion on the change to make them included at the time. Consensus about scope seems to change over time depending on which editors become involved in the discussion. --Scott Alter (talk) 05:59, 15 August 2013 (UTC)

The article is technically on the product, not a corporation, and that product is a dermatology one. That technically makes it fall under WP:MED, but I believe that - since this particular product is best known for infomercials and celebrity endorsements - it's generally not an article that would interest medical editors. There is very little medical information on it and the bulk of the article is probably not going to be generally interesting to most medical editors. CorporateM (Talk) 13:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC) (PR guy for Proactiv)

If this article is to be reviews here, then MED manual of style:drugs should apply. There is significant discrepancy between the article and the recommended style for this sort of article. LT90001 (talk) 23:53, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Alltop, all the top stories

Here is a list of links to 77 medical categories at Alltop, all the top stories.

List of Alltop sites

If this list of links is deemed to be useful to this WikiProject, then it can be copied to Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Alltop stories. (Even if news sites are not reliable sources of medical information, they can still alert editors to search for reliable sources elsewhere.) I hope that participants in related WikiProjects are watching this talk page, because I prefer not to spend time in posting various subsets of this list to additional talk pages.
—Wavelength (talk) 00:35, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Not suitable references. Is better to simply find a current high quality review and improve an article while summarizing it than going through this sort of site IMO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:44, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you for your reply.—Wavelength (talk) 15:24, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Missing articles (or redirects)

Hello all. I just created Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Missing aka WP:MEDMISS. Feel free to drop anything you observe that should be created there. Thanks. Biosthmors (talk) 10:10, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

How does it compare to Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine? WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:40, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes the two should be merged Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:04, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

The newly created WP:MEDMISS list seems to be rather more specific than Wikipedia:Requested articles/Applied arts and sciences/Medicine, imo. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 16:49, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

See also Wikipedia:WikiProject Missing encyclopedic articles#Lists, and specifically these lists.

I suggest that the lists be copied to WP:MEDMISS but not merged.

—Wavelength (talk) 05:22, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Preclinical clubfoot deformity

A new article. Needs looking at by someone familiar with the subject. Language is probably far too technical for Wikipedia, and seems only to cite the author of the article as a source. AndyTheGrump (talk) 13:29, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the note. I've dropped a note at User talk:BrianRothbart but yes it definitely appears problematic at first glance. Biosthmors (talk) 13:41, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

The below two posts were copied and pasted from User talk:Biosthmors

Hello,

I am Professor Rothbart. I have been a researcher and clinican for over 40 years. I am credited with discovering and publishing on a previously unrecognized abnormal inherited foot structure, the PreClinical Clubfoot Deformity. I first published on this foot structure in a peer reviewed medical journal in 2002. And have subsequently published several other papers on this foot structure in Podiatry Review (Podiatric peer review journal).

As the discoverer of this foot structure, I believe that I am the expert on this foot subject. My research suggests that this foot structure is one of the most common causes of chronic muscle and joint pain. Both my research and clinical practice provide data that substantiates this statement.

The language is technical, because the subject matter is technical. The language can be geared more towards the layperson in future revisions.

Professor Rothbart — Preceding unsigned comment added by 188.250.162.178 (talk) 14:23, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the info. For what it's worth, when I search Web of Science for "preclinical clubfoot deformity" I get 0 hits. Are there synonyms? Are you the only researcher in the area? Let's continue this at WT:MED. (I'll copy and paste this there). Biosthmors (talk) 14:31, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, hello Professor. Without wishing to sound discouraging, there do seem to be some substantive issues here. As Biosthmors I think implies above, the scholarly notability of the topic could be a concern, per Wikipedia's guidelines (eg WP:GNG) The single instance of the exact expression "preclinical clubfoot deformity" on Google Scholar [29] appears to be at a personal commercial site, curingchronicpain.com [30]. Please note that we have rather strict rules for sourcing of clinical information on Wikipedia (please see WP:MEDRS). I imagine Wikipedia's competing interest guidelines (ie WP:COI and WP:MEDCOI) could also be pertinent. Regards, 86.130.63.47 (talk) 16:06, 23 August 2013 (UTC)
May I point out to the Proffesor that the term PreClinical Clubfoot Deformity is as far as I can tell, not even mentioned in this article(Medial column foot systems: an innovative tool for improving posture by Brian A. Rothbar) published in Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies (2002) which he must be referring to above as a peer reviewed medical journal and which is cited as the first (and main) reference in the article. Besides this, a review by Craig Payne in his response to Rothbart, published in the same journal concludes that "the approach advocated by Rothbart is not coherent theoretically, is not consistent with the published evidence, is not supported by the references given by the author. The clinical approach proposed by the author may even be detrimental. " This puts into context the use of this study as a WP:MEDRS in general and as a reference to support this topic in particular. Besides this, that such opinions which do not reflect Rothbarts views are not even mentioned in the article shows the COI on the side of the author.Ochiwar (talk) 09:19, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks Ochiwar. I have summarized these concerns at Talk:Preclinical clubfoot deformity and I will now request a speedy delete with the rationale that it is a promotional page. Biosthmors (talk) 09:52, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Combine these articles?

Frequent urination and Overactive bladder are both very low quality articles that appear to have overlapping information. In a random fit of trying to get away from articles that infuriate me, I'm putting myself out on another little personal project, and the first of the two came up as a high importance stub-class article. I've downgraded it to a mid-class as my first step in improvement, but it seems likely that we could merge these two articles and we'd have one poor quality article that I'll work on rather than two poor quality articles that are somewhat redundant and potentially conflicting. 71.231.186.92 (talk) 02:35, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree. To merge article Y into article X, tag Y with {{mergeto|X}} and article X with {{mergefrom|Y}} . This allows discussion on article X's talk page. The normal waiting period is 1+ weeks (you could in the mean time edit one of the articles to improve its quality) to allow for discussion. LT90001 (talk) 04:10, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Are these the same as polyuria? (?the commonly used clinical terminology) If so we could merge all three. LT90001 (talk) 04:10, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Any sense on which would be the appropriate survivor of the merge? I know we're very partial to technical names for the medical articles. 71.231.186.92 (talk) 04:24, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

They are closely related, but distinguishable topics. The lead of the articles make clear that they commonly may occur together, but not necessarily. Polyuria- increased volume of urine, frequent urination- increased number of times to urinate per day, overactive bladder- urinary urgency +/- urge incontinence, nocturia and frequent urination. It would complicated to merge such pages, unless you chose such a vague title like "urinary symptoms", but then arguably such a titled page should include other symptoms too. Lesion (talk) 10:20, 24 August 2013 (UTC)
It sounds like each of the articles needs to link to the others, with an explanation of how they compare and contrast. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:58, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

OK, I concede that these are different articles. The parent article here is lower urinary tract symptoms. I have marked frequent urination and overactive bladder for merge and we can continue discussion about them on their talk pages. LT90001 (talk) 23:39, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

persistent, tendentious editing at Orthomolecular medicine

A user there keeps insisting that their particular interpretation of an NIH consensus document says what they want it to say. They are persistent, and appear to be ignoring consensus. Or at least that's my interpretation, and I am certainly involved there. There is lots of talk page discussion that goes absolutely nowhere.

Additional eyes would be welcome. I have already mentioned this at WP:FRINGE/N. -- [ UseTheCommandLine ~/talk ]# ▄ 02:52, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

The issue appears to be that the user in question is using primary sources. Have informed them that secondary sources are a must and watched the page in question. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:07, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

AN/I discussion: Otto Placik editing plastic surgery articles

See ANI discussion concerning a dispute at labiaplasty, incl. a proposal that plastic surgeon Otto Placik be topic-banned from plastic surgery articles and/or community-banned. Andreas JN 466 06:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Have commented. Agree that there are concerns but also some positive contributions. Would be good to get more input from WPMED members. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:04, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Andreas JN 466 00:40, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

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-Hope to see you there, Ocaasi^{t | c} 14:59, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Torus fracture

Torus fracture is under discussion at WP:RFD ; from the discussion it seems this should have an article? -- 76.65.128.222 (talk) 01:20, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Wikidata update

As promised a quick update about the Wikidata activities:

Data acquisition from the diseases infobox is progressing well and User:Kompakt will be done with all the codes in a few days (Progress)
A similar discussion about infoboxes on the French project has called for more descriptive infobox information and possible storage of such information on Wikidata (fr:Discussion_Projet:Médecine#Infobox_maladie and d:Wikidata_talk:Medicine_task_force#French_infobox)
Drug-drug interactions can now be stored and we are discussing how to find appropriate qualifiers to scribe the interaction (drug-drug interation)
No news on better item-statistics and page-view statistics. The 31,823 transclusions of the medical infobox can not be reconstructed with existing properties yet. I still hope that we can independently get that number by counting (items that have ICD-10) + (items that have Drugbank ID) + a few others. I'm also still in contact with the analytics-team if we could use the information from Wikidata to track global page-view statistics for medical topics, but much of that seems to be still in development.

As usual all questions are welcome, even if you never heard of Wikidata before. --Tobias1984 (talk) 20:54, 6 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 03:21, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

The larger database of identifiers is also helping us with finding duplicate entries. Some are of course false positive. Others are gems like this one:

Can somebody take a look at this potential merge-candidate?--Tobias1984 (talk) 08:55, 7 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure, thanks, merged them. Do you have a list of other such potential dupes? --WS (talk) 11:31, 12 August 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the help. A pretty good check is to look for duplicate DiseasesDB identifiers. You can look at the list here: http://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Wikidata:Database_reports/Constraint_violations/P557#Unique_value. But because topics can overlap there are always a lot of false positives. --Tobias1984 (talk) 10:39, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Oh wow, that's great to have. LT90001 (talk) 12:25, 20 August 2013 (UTC)

Small thing, but couldn't a spelling uniformity be agreed for words like fibre [UK] fiber [US] as you have both, often almost side by side in the same sentence, eg. 'strong collagenous fibers called Sharpey's fibres' on the periosteum page. Since there is also use of 'fibrous' it would seem logical to stick with fibre since many named procedures/terms include this spelling [developed by a Brit?]. I'm not a medic, but consistency is important! 87.114.172.109 (talk) 10:19, 25 August 2013 (UTC) Peter Simmons.

Hello Peter. We do have a guideline for national varieties of English (WP:ENGVAR), and a few of the more developed articles include a talk-page note to flag the variety which should be used (example here). But due to the character of Wikipedia we don't have proofs, and pages may get "proof read" largely by users such as yourself. As you say, consistency within articles (WP:CONSISTENCY) is a key style criterion. In reality, when the attention of volunteer contributors is actively focused on the content of the page they may simply not spot spelling variations (or other glitches, typographic or otherwise). That's one reason why people who are happy to copyedit pages, however casually, are so valuable to Wikipedia. So if you feel like making any corrections, do be BOLD. Happy reading and happy editing... 86.130.63.47 (talk) 11:16, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Regarding "fibrous": I'm not aware of any national spelling variations for this word. Its usage wouldn't in itself be a factor for determining which variety of English a page should follow. You might like to take questions like this to the Teahouse. Regards, 86.130.63.47 (talk) 11:32, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Whey protein - Nutrition/Sports science- Which journals?

Hi, in lieu of there being a wikiproject nutrition this seems the most relevant wikiproject. I'm interested in updating Whey_protein#Whey_protein_and_muscle_building with some review/meta-analysis etc (mainly out of a personal interest to find out more about the impact of whey protein if any). Is anyone aware of what the most reliable journals/books would be in this area? IRWolfie- (talk) 11:49, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I would not image that it is different than any other protein. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 13:54, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

Sure, I don't think it is meant to be anything other than a protein source. What I'm interested in improving the article with regard to whether the supplementation with protein (where Whey is the most common type) has any benefits or not in muscle training etc. Currently the article is in quite poor condition with a reliance on primary studies, IRWolfie- (talk) 11:32, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

So the is more general question than is does a high protein did help with mm building. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 16:22, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

There's a very extensive literature on that topic, including a number of recent review articles. Our article on bodybuilding supplements gives some pointers. An example is PMID 18384284 -- you can use Google Scholar to find online pdf versions if you need one. PMID 20368372 is a recent review that deals specifically with whey protein. Looie496 (talk) 16:35, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

cheers for the pointers, IRWolfie- (talk) 23:29, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Can we explain bulk procurement of HIV tests in a way a five year old can understand?

Recently I tried to figure out what http://www.who.int/entity/3by5/en/HIVtestkit.pdf seems to say about the bulk procurement of HIV tests, and realized I knew about as much as what the WHO seems to say about bulk procurement of birth control and family planning materials: contact them and maybe if you're lucky they will reply. Is that an accurate summary of the procedure the pertinent articles should describe? 192.81.0.147 (talk) 23:29, 22 August 2013 (UTC)

I wonder if we're reading the same document. The one you linked (on the last page) indicates a clear series of steps one should use to procure HIV tests in bulk at reduced cost. -- Scray (talk) 02:14, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Thank you. I don't know how I missed the last page. I must have fallen asleep earlier in the document. Can you please find the corresponding process for contraception? 192.81.0.147 (talk) 10:49, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

From the Humanities Reference Desk: 192.81.0.147 (talk) 22:03, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

WHO: Reproductive Health Essential Medicines: Procurement. There appear to be different documents for different contraceptives and different countries. 184.147.116.153 (talk) 20:14, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Er, you want to inform a five-year-old how to make a bulk purchase of HIV tests? Axl ¤ [Talk] 08:21, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

No, it's a figure of speech. 192.81.0.147 (talk) 10:49, 23 August 2013 (UTC)

Is there a specific Wikipedia article that you are considering? Discussions here should mainly be about improving Wikipedia's content. Wikipedia is not a "how to" guide. Axl ¤ [Talk] 19:02, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Updated Birth control and requesting edit on Diagnosis of HIV. 192.81.0.147 (talk) 20:00, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Professionals - notice of discussion

Some of you may be interested in this deletion proposal: Wikipedia:Categories_for_discussion/Log/2013_August_22#Professionals. Regards, Ottawahitech (talk) 13:43, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Long dash travesty

The page Fox–Fordyce disease is named after George Henry Fox and John Addison Fordyce, AND YET the wikipedia page uses as "long dash" instead of a hyphen. Comments? pitch forks? flaming torches? Lesion (talk) 18:38, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Note that there is a redirect for those unable to recognize the topic due to the misspelling: Fox-Fordyce disease. --Mark viking (talk) 19:05, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I thought it should be the other way around, with the hyphenated article being the article and the other being the redirect. Hence the post, but now I think it's right the way it is. I'm sure we had this conversation recently, and apparently I forgot the correct way already, apologies. Lesion (talk) 19:12, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Yeah my bad, mob stand down. Lesion (talk) 19:13, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

=) for the ones who want to see examples/a rationale why it's correct: WP:Endash under number 2. Biosthmors (talk) 21:40, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

I have never understood these dashes. The long ones are a pain as I find them very hard to make. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:54, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

See Wikipedia:How to make dashes.—Wavelength (talk) 23:03, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes, I agree. This is an utter travesty and it must be halted before this appalling mistake despoils the eyes of those who peruse them. Seriously, however, I note there's a Wikipedia:speedy move policy to deal with these heinous crimes. Thank goodness for that! LT90001 (talk) 23:27, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

LT, in this instance it is correct that the hyphenated page is redirect, sorry for confusion. James, in all honesty you can probably just safely always use a hyphen and forget about all this, it is likely that a helpful bot will change things where necessary at some point. With naming articles it creates more work though because the pages have to be moved. I've never seen a bot do this automatically. With Eponymous conditions, such as above, use em en dash to separate the names. Another example is Plummer–Vinson syndrome, with Plummer-Vinson syndrome as the hyphen redirect. Lesion (talk) 23:50, 24 August 2013 (UTC)

Just to avoid confusion: I think you meant to write "use en dash to separate the names" (i.e. a dash which traditionally has the length of an 'n' rather than an 'm'). --Boson (talk) 01:15, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Fox—Fordyce disease

Sorry about that. Wow, this really is turning into a travesty. I'm going to stop now because I'm just confusing others more. Lesion (talk) 01:22, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Hello! I'd just like to say that (I think!) the reasoning behind this dash rule is that if we used a hyphen you might be confused about whether it's named for someone with a hyphenated last name rather than two people, and also doing things this way is better when you have the unholy combination of something being named after two people, one of who has a hyphenated last name. You can type &ndash with a semicolon just after the h to render it, like so – or you can just copy an en dash from somewhere else and even though it looks like a hyphen in the source it'll come out a dash. AgnosticAphid talk 15:56, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

My favourite is Fitz-Hugh–Curtis syndrome. Axl ¤ [Talk] 11:31, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Awesome. Biosthmors (talk) 11:43, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Medical advice box

Hi to all. Requesting medical advice on talk pages seems to be pretty prevalent, and, in my opinion, pretty dangerous (for poster and responder, if responder is a medical practitioner). To spell out dangers (in case it's not clear enough):

To person seeking advice: advice is incorrect, not up-to-date, dangerous, deliberately misrepresented, with a COI, advocates for a dangerous or untrialled therapy, deters from seeking currently accepted medical advice, legitimises a grievance or legitmises sense of Wikipedia as a forum for advice (rather than doctor), gives improper drug names, fails to take into account patient history, requester misdiagnoses self, does not take into account local or extenuating factors (such as drug shortages or differences in genetic or family histories), and many more.
To adviser: if a medical practitioner, make abrogate legal responsibilities to fully assess a patient; is not 'ethically' responsible in consideration of the above factors and not being able to physically interact and examine the patient; risk of encouraging patient harm by failing to encourage to go to medical practitioner, and I am sure many more.

In my mind, it's therefore very important that requesters are told to seek medical advice, and not to wait for wikipedia advice, and also to discourage inter-Wikipedia responses. I've been playing around with a box we can put around requests for advice, along the lines of:

The following comment seeks medical advice. This is not a suitable place. Please seek a real-world medical professional.
Wikipedia is not a forum for medical advice. Comments from well-meaning Wikipedians may not represent best practice in the poster's country of origin, and there is a danger that best practice may be misrepresented or, at worst, deliberately distorted. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
(with Poster's original question here)

What do you think? We could have med template along the lines of {{medical advice box}} and {{close medical advice box}} . I think this is a good way to standardise and minimise responses to medical advice. Thoughts? LT90001 (talk) 03:09, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes looks good. I do not see requests that frequently but yes occasionally. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 11:54, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Agree the box could have a dissuasive potential. Though imo it might be good practice for editors also to leave a brief, signed reply so as to avoid presenting an impersonally bureaucratic face to people who have been making gf human queries in search of reliable information. Regarding the wording, I'd suggest using real-life here in preference to real-world. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 12:26, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

See also the medical disclaimer, which might be useful to wikilink from the template you are proposing. Ignoring the ethical issues, it's only medicolegally dangerous for a medical professional to give advice in this manner if one is able to determine the person's real name from their wikipedia user name, otherwise the only risk to them is breaking wikipedia policies and the potential warnings/blocks/bans that other wikipedia users & admins hand out. Note also that often it is simply a matter of wording that separates a request for medical advice and a request for a particular point to be clarified in the article. Lesion (talk) 12:42, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

I suspect medicolegal considerations for individual editors may vary from country to country. But surely the main issue here is an ethical (and strategic) one for Wikipedia? Even if there's no absolute bright line to identify a request for "personalized" clinical information, imo the box could be a good auxiliary tool to help implement existing policy. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 13:08, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

To clarify, I support this idea for talk pages, and I support the concepts in the medical disclaimer, including the ethical justifications for not handing out medical advice. I was just pointing out there is no conceivable medicolegal risk if a user did start handing out medical advice in this manner (before they were blocked that is), in the setting of anonymity and the general and medical disclaimers that are in place. Lesion (talk) 13:17, 25 August 2013 (UTC)

Strong support - great idea ...we should be more blunt like the disclaimer and link it up as mentioned above...something like below? -- Moxy (talk) 01:12, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

The following comment seeks medical advice. Wikipedia does not give medical advice. Please seek a real-world medical professional. Wikipedia is not a forum for medical advice. Comments from well-meaning Wikipedians may not represent best practice in the poster's country of origin, and there is a danger that best practice may be misrepresented or, at worst, deliberately distorted. No further edits should be made to this discussion. See also Guidelines on medical advice

I prefer the shorter one. More low key. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 02:30, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Should we even say please seek a medical professional? How about keeping it simple, and having the text read=

"Content hidden because Wikipedia does not provide medical advice. Please use talk pages to discuss ways to improve the article."

I prefer this phrasing because it is not so harsh, and sort of hints that if the request for personalized medical advice is reworded to ask for clarification about a particular point in the article, then users might be allowed to respond, and perhaps a small improvement in the article occurs in the process. In a way, you could think that if anyone has to ask medical advice after reading the article, then it is not up to scratch... Lesion (talk) 03:17, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Yes would be happy with that aswell. I do not think we should be harsh. Many people have serious health issues and either do not have access to or cannot afford to see a medical professional. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 15:41, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Template 'medical advice' created

Thank you for your input. I have created the template {{medical advice}} . I have made the change to 'real-world' as suggested, and also changed to 'wikipedia does not provide medical advice' as suggested. I think keeping this low-key is best.

Like any box template, the box surrounds text. A second template needs to come after the text: {{cob}} . For example: {{medical advice}} then text then {{cob}} Will create this:

This comment has been hidden, as Wikipedia does not provide medical advice.

Wikipedia does not provide medical advice. The following comment seeks medical advice. This is not a suitable place. Please seek a real-life medical professional. Comments from well-meaning Wikipedians may not represent best practice in the poster's country of origin, and there is a danger that best practice may be misrepresented or, at worst, deliberately distorted. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

then text then

This template was created and deleted in 2007, but I think that there is a place in a Wikipedia that has grown in users by 10-100x since then. I hope this is useful! LT90001 (talk) 10:19, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Having created this template, I don't intend to stop discussion about its contents. What is the feeling about replacing this with Lesion's suggested "Content hidden because Wikipedia does not provide medical advice"? I like this because it's more impersonal.LT90001 (talk) 10:19, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

Support this simple version. Personally, I feel that the link to WP:MEDICAL with its upper-case message could appear UNDULY LOUD. 86.130.63.47 (talk) 11:21, 26 August 2013 (UTC)

I've made the change to the above message. Enjoy! LT90001 (talk) 03:06, 27 August 2013 (UTC)