User talk:Colin

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	The Quarter Million Award
	For your contributions to bring Dementia with Lewy bodies (estimated annual readership: 392,000) to Featured Article status, I hereby present you the Quarter Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! Reidgreg (talk) 14:11, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Reidgreg, thanks very much. -- Colin°^Talk 14:44, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

	The Million Award
	For your contributions to bring Ketogenic diet (estimated annual readership: 2,400,000) to Featured Article status, I hereby present you the Million Award. Congratulations on this rare accomplishment, and thanks for all you do for Wikipedia's readers! Reidgreg (talk) 16:14, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Here's this one as well, and added to the Million Award Hall of Fame. – Reidgreg (talk) 16:14, 6 June 2020 (UTC)[reply]

An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Old Royal Naval College 2017-08-06.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Armbrust The Homunculus 01:19, 5 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

What to do with a mess like List of figures in psychiatry ? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:33, 7 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Sandy I looked at it, and then I looked at about 20 other "List of ___" pages, and only found one that had even a few citations. It seems generally these are all unsourced. Referenced lists of people are hard work, so unless you particularly want a great list of figures in psychiatry, I'd be tempted to just leave alone. -- Colin°^Talk 10:35, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

You have done a overwhelming lot of work on the article Ketogenic diet. The article is within the scope of WikiProject Epilepsy and as the Editor in Chief of the ILAE Wikipedia Project I welcome you to join the project. I also welcome you to co-publish this Wikipedia article in some open access academic journal. This would automatically acknowledge your contributions by providing you with author credits. If you are interested, do not hesitate to reach out to me and we can get working on it. Diptanshu 💬 09:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Diptanshu Das. I've applied to join the ILAE project. I'm not sure where I fit into your levels of editors, though, which seems a bit restrictive. My opinion about Wikipedia has always been that it is a community project, open to anyone, to write a free-content encyclopaedia. So currently I'm not bothered about achieving academic credits, particularly when I know how much support I've received from other editors who would not be credited. I hope the primary focus of this project is to write great Wikipedia articles, for the general reader, rather than to write journal papers for other medics. Thanks for the invite. -- Colin°^Talk 11:16, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks a lot for your response. I understand that you are not very active currently but still would encourage you to carry on the good work that you have been doing. I have been a Wikipedian for more than 12 years and have been editing medical articles due to the sheer charm of it and not for academic credits. The purpose of my involvement in the current role remains just the same and I seek to gain from your commitment and experience, especially because of its inclination to epilepsy. I would seek your assistance in shaping the project. The purpose with which I am working is to bring academicians to Wikipedia and to infuse the spirit of Wikipedia into them. Meanwhile, the articles within the scope of the project would get developed.

The article Ketogenic diet already is a featured article. I plan to expose it to the ILAE experts for their take on the topic. I am quite certain that they would be satisfied but possibly they would have a few inputs. I would join hands with you in making updates, if they are needed.

I would urge you to have a look at the plan I have developed and would seek your feedback on the same. If you are willing, I would like to connect off-wiki with you. You can write to me at das.diptanshu @ gmail . com - Diptanshu 💬 11:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

A tag has been placed on User:Colin/PriceMistakes requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under section U5 of the criteria for speedy deletion, because the page appears to consist of writings, information, discussions, and/or activities not closely related to Wikipedia's goals. Please note that Wikipedia is not a free web hosting service. Under the criteria for speedy deletion, such pages may be deleted at any time.

If you think this page should not be deleted for this reason, you may contest the nomination by visiting the page and clicking the button labelled "Contest this speedy deletion". This will give you the opportunity to explain why you believe the page should not be deleted. However, be aware that once a page is tagged for speedy deletion, it may be deleted without delay. Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag from the page yourself, but do not hesitate to add information in line with Wikipedia's policies and guidelines. If the page is deleted, and you wish to retrieve the deleted material for future reference or improvement, then please contact the deleting administrator, or if you have already done so, you can place a request here. --TheImaCow (talk • contribs) 16:16, 11 July 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Colin,

This is to let you know that the featured picture File:Mount Stuart House 2018-08-25.jpg, which you uploaded or nominated, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for September 18, 2020. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2020-09-18. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Cwmhiraeth (talk) 10:55, 4 September 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Mount Stuart House is a country house built in the Gothic Revival style situated on the east coast of the Isle of Bute, Scotland. It is the ancestral home of the Marquesses of Bute. The original house was constructed by Alexander McGill in 1719, but was redesigned by Sir Robert Rowand Anderson and rebuilt for the 3rd Marquess following a fire on 3 December 1877. It is built from reddish-brown stone; major features include the colonnaded Marble Hall at the centre of the main block, and the Marble Chapel with its elaborate spired tower. It was the first home in Scotland to be lit by electricity and claims to have been the first to have an indoor heated pool. Photograph credit: Colin Recently featured: Microorganism Graziella Macrotyloma uniflorum Archive More featured pictures

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Issue 6—November 2020

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Greetings. This month marks the return of the project's long-dormant collaboration of the month! With some luck and effort, perhaps we can keep it going. I hope you're all finding ways to remain sane during another tumultuous month. Ready or not, here is what's happening around the project:

Newly recognized content

Seminal vesicles nom. Tom (LT), reviewed by Berchanhimez Endell Street Military Hospital nom. G. Moore and Dormskirk, reviewed by Amitchell125 Horace Smithy nom. Larry Hockett, reviewed by Ajpolino UPMC Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh nom. Andrew nyr, reviewed by HickoryOughtShirt?4 Intravenous therapy nom. Berchanhimez, reviewed by Tom (LT) Vitamin K nom. David notMD, reviewed by Tom (LT) Homeopathy nom. Aircorn, review by Berchanhimez

Nominated for review

Parkinson's disease now a featured article removal candidate. Discussion here Alzheimer's disease Notice of impending featured article review is at the talk page. Anatomical terms of location nom. Tom (LT), under review by ArnabSaha and Aircorn Charles Bingham Penrose nom. Larry Hockett Louise Boursier nom. Doug Coldwell Intramuscular injection nom. Berchanhimez Blood culture nom. Spicy Late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia nom. Maxim Masiutin

News from around the site

• The WP:MED Collaboration of the Month returns for a trial run. We'll concentrate our efforts for November on Tonsillitis. Please help improve that article, and head to the planning page to nominate articles for future collaboration.
• An open contributor copyright investigation involves edits to ~50 medicine pages that need to be checked for copyright infringement. I've left some short instructions here for the uninitiated. Every little bit helps.

Discussions of interest

• Ongoing discussions consider redesigning the GA/FA icons and moving them to a more prominent place in articles.

For a list of ongoing discussions in WP:MED-tagged articles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Discussions
Also, a reminder to see Article Alerts for a list of medicine-related AfDs, CfDs, merge discussions, and more!

Discuss this issue

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Ajpolino (talk) 20:56, 5 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello! Voting in the 2020 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23:59 (UTC) on Monday, 7 December 2020. All eligible users are allowed to vote. Users with alternate accounts may only vote once. The Arbitration Committee is the panel of editors responsible for conducting the Wikipedia arbitration process. It has the authority to impose binding solutions to disputes between editors, primarily for serious conduct disputes the community has been unable to resolve. This includes the authority to impose site bans, topic bans, editing restrictions, and other measures needed to maintain our editing environment. The arbitration policy describes the Committee's roles and responsibilities in greater detail. If you wish to participate in the 2020 election, please review the candidates and submit your choices on the voting page. If you no longer wish to receive these messages, you may add {{NoACEMM}} to your user talk page. MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 01:17, 24 November 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 7—December 2020

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Hello. I hope this newsletter finds you well. For those struggling to focus on writing articles during these tumultuous times, you are not alone. For those stuck at home with more time and energy to dedicate to the encyclopedia, all the more power to you. There is – as always – lots to do. Here is what's happening around the project:

Newly recognized content

Intramuscular injection nom. Berchanhimez, reviewed by Bibeyjj

Nominated for review

Buruli ulcer nom. Ajpolino Anatomical terms of location nom. Tom (LT), under review by ArnabSaha and Aircorn Charles Bingham Penrose nom. Larry Hockett Louise Boursier nom. Doug Coldwell Blood culture nom. Spicy Late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia nom. Maxim Masiutin Friedreich's ataxia nom. Akrasia25 Fish allergy nom. David notMD, under review by Bibeyjj Kivu Ebola epidemic nom. Ozzie10aaaa UPMC Presbyterian nom. Andrew nyr Crown (anatomy) nom. Bibeyjj Alzheimer's disease Notice of impending featured article review at talk. Management of multiple sclerosis Notice of impending FAR at talk. Major depressive disorder Notice of impending FAR at talk.

News from around the site

• As you can see, the medicine GA queue is full-to-bursting, with the oldest medicine nomination waiting over three months for review. Please help review when you have time, so your colleagues can move on to their next projects.
• The WP:MED Collaboration of the Month was Tonsillitis, attracting edits from 11 medicine editors! December's collaboration will be Dexamethasone. Head to Talk:Dexamethasone to coordinate our efforts.
• Thanks to the medicine editors who helped out, Wikipedia:Contributor copyright investigations/Walidou47 is now closed. If you see other medicine-related backlogs that you'd like announced in the newsletter, please post them here.

Discussions of interest

• There is a large, ongoing discussion regarding the status of subject-specific notability criteria.
• The Community Wishlist Survey is live until December 7th.

For a list of ongoing discussions in WP:MED-tagged articles, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Discussions
Also, a reminder to see Article Alerts for a list of medicine-related AfDs, CfDs, merge discussions, and more!

Backlog of the month
This month I'm trying out a new element of the newsletter – a backlog of the month. The WikiProject Medicine template is on the talk page of 44,944 articles, of which 18,111 have some kind of maintenance tag on them, indicating problems large or small. Each month, I'll highlight some small task to get you out of your normal editing focus and chip away at the project's massive maintenance backlogs. I'll aim for tasks that can be worked on in small chunks, perhaps on days when you can't focus on big problems, or have 15 minutes to burn at your computer.

The first backlog of the month will be the 410 medicine articles that cite no sources. These tend to be lower-traffic topics. Some just need verification that the topic actually exists, along with a quick reference. Others are best redirected to more substantial pages, or even brought to AfD. Feel free to scroll through the list for topics that interest you, or just start at the top. This feature will last as long as folks are interested enough to engage with it. If you see backlogs that would be a good fit, post them here. Thanks all, and happy referencing!

Discuss this issue

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Ajpolino (talk) 01:34, 3 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I Am Half-Sick of Shadows, Said the Lady of Shalott		Happy holidays
		Dear Colin, For you and all your loved ones, "Let there be mercy". Wishing you health, peace and happiness this holiday season and in the coming year. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:10, 25 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This edit was not helpful. Before you start criticising my actions in enforcing discretionary sanctions again, you need to get a grip on the history of the behavioural problems. You are not the judge of what sanctions are warranted and your interference will simply result in encouraging RoY to make biomedical claims without sufficient sourcing again. If you want to see them topic banned from medical articles, you're going the right way about it. They have already crossed a line far enough to attract discretionary sanctions, and your encouragement of their behaviour is equally reprehensible. Until you butted in, I was reasonably hopeful that RoY would take the time to read and understand MEDRS. If you really want to improve COVID-19 vaccine, rather than pursuing personal vendettas by sniping from the peanut gallery, then you should be spending your time cleaning up the article. There's enough cleanup required. --:RexxS (talk) 00:53, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

RexxS, your remarks "rather than pursuing personal vendettas", "sniping from the peanut gallery" and criticism of what volunteer editors are not doing enough of in their precious spare time, are all personal attacks. Repeating them yet again doesn't help you. Admins must be open to criticism, particularly so when performing or threatening to perform admin activity. Responding to criticism by personally attacking the criticising editor is unacceptable behaviour on Wikipedia. In recent weeks, I have been far from alone from asking you be less aggressive towards good-faith editors.

Could you perhaps take "just because I can, doesn't mean I should" to heart wrt your admin buttons and ability to threaten editors. You posted a request at WT:MED for editors there to review the situation at Covid-19 vaccine. I did review it and I did review that editors history which is only a handful of pages long. I saw a good-faith editor trying to improve Wikipedia and who was stumbling with the most common medical-newbie mistakes. I also saw them make the most common and human mistake when responding to being reverted by some random guy on the internet. As an admin, you are supposed to scare away the bad guys, not the newbies. Wikipedia:Please do not bite the newcomers and all that. -- Colin°^Talk 10:32, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, due to your balanced and neutral approach I was able to clearly make sense of the different requirements for bio-medical articles. However, the other chap just came across as angry and hostile leading me to believe his revert was for emotional reasons. Having read up on editing bio-medical articles I can now see his point, I just wish he’d come across less hostile, best regards.Roland Of Yew (talk) 09:01, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Roland Of Yew, thanks for editing Wikipedia. I appreciate your edit was in good-faith and used a source that for most of Wikipedia, including BLPs, would likely be regarded as reliable and accepted. WP:MEDRS can be confusing to begin with and take a while for some of the decisions that the community has agreed on to sink in. My own first edits on Wikipedia used sources I wouldn't use today. I know that being reverted stings, and when some random guy on the internet undoes your good work, it can seem like they are the vandal and the edit warrior. And that brings a big temptation to revert back rather than listen and pause. You chose the worse possible place on Wikipedia to do that, and as a result have earned a "final warning" on your talk page.

As much as I disagree with RexxS's approach, you need to take that warning seriously. I encourage you to remove the comment about "hypocritical editorial methodology" which could be taken as a personal attack. Removing it will also be taken as gesture of goodwill on your part. I had a look at some, but certainly not all, of the sources on that page that cited newspapers and such, and they mostly seemed to be sourcing text covering business facts or government actions, etc, and not requiring WP:MEDRS. If there are some text+source in the article you think should fail due to WP:MEDRS then please post a neutral comment on the article talk page, and they can be reviewed. You mentioned that you may have some "new reports" and "secondary sources" in the next few days. Can I encourage you, should you still want to edit Covid articles at all, to post your proposed edits on the talk page, and to listen to the feedback. If you are in doubt, post a query at WT:MED. With that final warning hanging over your neck, you need to take careful steps. -- Colin°^Talk 10:15, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

(talk page stalker): Roland Of Yew, I'm sorry if my OTHERSTUFFEXISTS post also left you confused; one of the great problems of Wikipedia is that you can find junk in any article that no one has cleaned up, and then new-ish editors wonder why they are being taken to task. We can only deal with what we see when we see it, and I for one am hesitant to dig in to articles that have discretionary sanctions in place to do old cleanup, particularly when those articles are In The News (featured on the mainpage), and being hit with all kinds of WP:NOTNEWS edits. I agree with Colin that, with respect to laypress sources and COVID articles, it is important to take the discretionary sanctions very seriously, and be sure you understand when it is OK to use laypress, and when we should not. The COVID articles are rife with sources that are not compliant, and content that reflects WP:RECENTISM and breaches WP:NOTNEWS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks guys, I really appreciate your advice and want to say that you truly do reflect the very best of Wikipedia.Roland Of Yew (talk) 16:42, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Would be great if you found the "culprit" and asked them to please cite properly. There are hundreds of such paragraphs on WP. I'm busy today. Thanks.--Quisqualis (talk) 18:29, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Quisqualis there is an add-on for Chrome and Firefox called Who Wrote That?. It lets you see who wrote the content on the page and when it was added. It isn't perfect by a long way, and can get confused if page content is moved around. -- Colin°^Talk 18:56, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for the link--Quisqualis (talk) 19:49, 28 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I just ran it on the material you recently removed from Nabumetone. Wonder of wonders, it was User:Doc James who added that sentence. It would be nice if there were something like a Wikidata for drug prices that would, at least, tell users how various drugs' prices compare (as in low-mid-high-priced). In fact, it would be more than "nice"; it would be kind of vital.--Quisqualis (talk) 16:49, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Quisqualis, drug prices have been discussed extensively by the medical project and it is really too complicated to simplify into low/mid/high prices, and our requirement to avoid original research gets in the way. Add to that the problem that volunteers just haven't kept the prices up to date for about six years. I think this is an area where commercial publishers already do a good job. If you are in the UK and interested to know how much a drug costs the NHS, then the BNF website gives you all the data you might need. In the US then GoodRX seems to be the best site for retail price figures. -- Colin°^Talk 17:02, 29 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. It clearly isn't in Wikipedia's ambit to create such a tool. Thanks.--Quisqualis (talk) 05:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 8—January 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

2020 is behind us at last. Off Wikipedia, the year has been trying. On Wikipedia, I hope you've found the time you spent here fulfilling and diverting. I've taken the opportunity to place a few end-of-year statistics for reflection below. If you think of any data that would be useful to find (or begin gathering) to gauge the project's success, please let me know. With that, here is what's happening around the project:

Newly recognized content

Buruli ulcer nom. Ajpolino, my first successful FAC Anatomical terms of location nom. Tom (LT), reviewed by ArnabSaha and Aircorn Fish allergy nom. David notMD, reviewed by Bibeyjj Blood culture nom. Spicy, reviewed by Graham Beards Epidural administration nom. Berchanhimez, reviewed by Bibeyjj Charles Bingham Penrose nom. Larry Hockett, reviewed by Esculenta

Nominated for review

Louise Boursier nom. Doug Coldwell Late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia nom. Maxim Masiutin Friedreich's ataxia nom. Akrasia25 Kivu Ebola epidemic nom. Ozzie10aaaa UPMC Presbyterian nom. Andrew nyr Crown (anatomy) nom. Bibeyjj, under review by MeegsC Alzheimer's disease Notice of impending featured article review at talk. Management of multiple sclerosis Notice of impending FAR at talk. Major depressive disorder Notice of impending FAR at talk.

Year in Review
With 2020 now in the rear view mirror, a few numbers to give a sense of where our project is at: In 2020 we added a record number of medicine articles (i.e. articles with the WP:MED tag on their talk pages), starting the year with 41,243 and ending with 45,247. The ~4,000 new articles is well above the norm, presumably due to new covid-related articles. In terms of reviewed content, we added three featured articles (Dementia with Lewy bodies, Complete blood count, and Buruli ulcer), and lost three to the ravages of time, leaving our total at 66. We also added 42 newly reviewed good articles from 23 different nominators, bringing our total to 296. See a full list of reviewed content from 2020 here. Outside of reviewed content our contributions are more challenging to measure. I'm sure much our time was spent making small improvements, guiding new editors, removing junk from articles, and dealing with the raging global pandemic (on and off the site). I am interested in ways we can quantify and assess our project's progress going forward, so if anyone has ideas for other data we could find or collect, do let me know.

Other notes

• The WMF's Community Wishlist Survey has ended. Results are posted here.
• If you missed it, consider reading folks' thoughts on helping new editors at this recent WT:MED discussion.
• After a quieter month at the Collaboration of the Month (Dexamethasone), we'll be taking this month off. The COTM will return in February. Propose and vote on nominations here.
• Thanks to all who helped deal with last month's backlog, medicine articles that cite no sources. 28 down, 382 to go. We'll pick a new backlog next month. In the meantime, for any interested, I've posted an updated list of articles that lack sources here.

Discuss this issue

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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:49, 9 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Do you ever make Griddle scones, or know anyone who does? We don't seem to have any pictures. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:05, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing, there are griddle scones on this plate (though I don't know whether that term would be used). Certainly the two triangular potato scones at the bottom would be made in a pan or on the hob. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:18, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

SarahSV, I've added the description from the thumb in the scone article, which I think is correct. A "tattie scone" is a potato scone. My mum has a girdle (griddle) that looks like this: heavy cast iron with a handle that rotates for storage. I always assumed they only worked well on a gas hob, but the photo there has an electric one. The heavy base distributes the heat, and the lack of any rim or lip round the edge makes it easier to get something under the scones to flip them. You can cook scones, bannocks, Scotch pancakes (also called dropped scones), and oatcakes. I guess the "griddle scone" is just term for a scone type of food cooked on top of a griddle rather than in an oven, so it is flatter than some other scones. In the photo, I'm not sure about the cheese scone, but the others would all have been cooked on a girdle. Unfortunately, I'm not likely to be visiting my mum any time soon, as she's 400 miles away and we are in lockdown.

Now I'm looking at that hot potato scone, covered in melted butter, and getting hungry. I wonder if I could make them with the Smash I bought to make your Slovenian potica recipe. I just have to figure out the proportion of potato flakes to flour. I don't have a gridle, though, only a frying pan. -- Colin°^Talk 11:47, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

It looks like there are a few recipes that use the flakes directly, such as https://www.imperialteagarden.com/pages/potato-scones and http://www.lauraleacooks.com/2011/03/potato-scones.html, but others use the already-rehydrated form.

Sarah, thanks for finding that photo. Would you like to put it in the article? WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:31, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was hungry and couldn't wait for the sun to move round to your bit of the planet. So I improvised with the very simple recipe here. It is really just mashed potatoes, flour and butter. In the end, I think I should have made the mash a bit drier as I ended up adding more flour and more potato flakes to thicken it. Even then, I needed plenty flour on my hands and board to stop it being sticky. But they turned out fine. My idea of a potato scone is something quite flat like this, but my wife thinks of something thicker, for which I think you'd need to add bicarb. The recipes you linked look just weird and wrong :-) But I'm sure they are tasty too. This is the problem: what people call a "scone" or "pancake" is so variable. We can even agree how to pronounce "scone", never mind bake it. Which makes it harder for Wikipedia 'cause we want to have hard facts and not randomness. -- Colin°^Talk 22:36, 10 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colin, your potato scones look great, but they need a bit of butter or similar. It's supposed to drip down your chin as you eat them. Or you can fry them to eat with a full breakfast. WhatamIdoing, I'll let you add it if you want. I was surprised not to find lots of potato scone photos. There are lots on Flickr but not free. SarahSV ^(talk) 05:27, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was trying to be healthy yesterday. We had some leftover so today I reheated them with lots of melted butter along with a fried egg. Not such a healthy lunch today. To be honest, they reheat so well that there isn't an advantage to eating them freshly-made, unlike some other baked food. So if you can get them in your shops it is probably not worth making them yourself, unless you have lots of mashed potato to use up. A full cooked breakfast is usually something I only experience if staying at a B&B, where breakfast-quality is an important part of the selection process, and the aim is to get so stuffed you don't need lunch. -- Colin°^Talk 14:56, 11 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I've added both pictures to Griddle scone and dug up a passable source for the name. Thank you both for making this improvement possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:22, 12 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello, perhaps you will remember me...We met a few months ago, per some "MEDMOS issues". Perhaps you can help me. While reading Deployment of COVID-19 vaccines, under the Cold chain section, first paragraph, [1] I found the following:

"The Moderna vaccine vials require storage above −40 °C (−40 °F) and between −25 and −15 °C (−13 and 5 °F).[88] Once refrigerated, the Moderna vaccine can be kept between 2 and 8 °C (36 and 46 °F) for up to 30 days.[88]"

However, the reference is from 28 May 2014, and does not mention the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, although it does discuss the cold chain for vaccines in general. Is this a problem? I am accustomed to reading refs that specifically support the article text, but I do not have the education/ability to evaluate this situation. I could be wrong...Thanks for your time. Good to see you editing once again! Best, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 23:02, 23 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks. Good spot. I had a look at the history. It seems a mistake was made when cut-n-paste text from one article to start this new article. I've left a post on the article talk page. I think it will probably be easier for the editors there to investigate their own mistake(s) than for me, especially as all these covid articles are huge. -- Colin°^Talk 11:58, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your good summary on the talkpage and for mentioning me, very kind of you. (I didn't think the Moderna vaccine had managed to time-travel back to 2014, heh, heh. But it was seriously worrying that this important info was un-referenced.) I had already discovered the cut and paste, by searching through Wikiblame. My understanding is that cut and paste is discouraged, because we lose the original/previous page history.

I don't have medical knowledge, but I could compare the pre move text/references (from the historical version of the parent article) with the present references, to see if there are additional errors. That's basic gnoming work. Should I offer my services, on the talkpage? Or can someone with knowledge of moves/merges or whatever "fix" the entire issue, without a tedious point by point comparison? Thanks again, for verifying my discovery. You have done "your part" admirably, by confirming and warning. Others can correct their own mistakes. Best wishes, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 23:10, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Tribe of Tiger you don't need to get permission on the talk page to fix up mistakes. I thought I'd leave it to the original editor to fix because the article text is ok and only the ref got screwed up so no rush. And perhaps they will realise they made other mistakes. But if you want to fix it then I'm sure everyone would be happy. I'm not sure there is any way other than cut-n-paste to split an article. There are guidelines somewhere, about how to attribute properly in the edit summary, but there isn't any way to split the history of an article so that now two articles share a common history, say. -- Colin°^Talk 14:07, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colin, I lacked "the courage of my convictions", so your support was much appreciated. Normally, I would not hesitate to fix reference mistakes, but this is a COVID-19 "medical" article. A reply by the original editor has been posted on the talkpage, and they have made changes in response to your post concerning my discovery. Thanks for explaining "splits ". I can move forward from here! Best wishes to you, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 02:50, 26 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Okay, after a bit of back and forth mistakes, and collegial talkpage conversation (between two other editors), the situation has been rectified. Thanks again for your support. Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 02:34, 28 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You forgot one, [2] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:28, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You are too generous, Sandy. I don't think my contributions there rose above "helping" and "reviewing". -- Colin°^Talk 15:05, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes, they did; you should add it. Your thoroughness brought it over the hump, and you were a co-nom. Don’t make me edit your user page ... there are plenty of admins itching for an excuse to block me. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since when do they need an excuse? Kablammo (talk) 18:04, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Since, never. Considering the latest on my talk, not funny :( SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:10, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh dear. I am reminded of MastCell's advice: If you wrestle with a pig, both of you will get muddy. And the pig will enjoy it. Since none of that seems to be in the slightest concerned with writing an encyclopaedia, I suggest archiving and unwatching whatever other pages irritate you. -- Colin°^Talk 18:29, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

yes, well, instead of that ... heading out to emergency room now for a serious problem. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:49, 24 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

SandyGeorgia, just left a post for Colin, and saw this note. Very concerned! Kindest wishes, Tribe of Tiger ^{Let's Purrfect!} 00:21, 25 January 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 9—February 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Happy February everyone. I hope the new year is starting to look better than the last one did. As always, if you have any ideas to improve the newsletter, please post them at the talkpage. Otherwise, here is what's happening around the project:

Newly recognized content

Late onset congenital adrenal hyperplasia nom. Maxim Masiutin, reviewed by Vaticidalprophet UPMC Presbyterian nom. Andrew nyr, reviewed by HickoryOughtShirt?4

Nominated for review

Louise Boursier nom. Doug Coldwell Friedreich's ataxia nom. Akrasia25 Kivu Ebola epidemic nom. Ozzie10aaaa Biotin nom. David notMD, under review by HaEr48 Lurie Children's Hospital nom. Andrew nyr, under review by HickoryOughtShirt?4 Urinothorax nom. Steve M. Imprinted brain hypothesis nom. Vaticidalprophet Management of multiple sclerosis Currently a FA removal candidate. Alzheimer's disease Notice of impending featured article review at talk. Major depressive disorder Notice of impending FAR at talk. Influenza Notice of impending FAR at talk. Menstrual cycle Notice of impending FAR at talk.

News from around the site

• Another discussion has closed, with consensus supporting continued use of the phrase "committed suicide" in articles.
• The Medicine Collaboration of the Month for February is Cirrhosis. Head to Talk:Cirrhosis to coordinate our efforts. You can nominate future collaborations at WP:MCOTM.
• This month's target maintenance backlog is "articles that need more wikilinks". Just 65 medicine pages have {{Underlinked}} on them, so hopefully we can clean them all up this month.
• Flyer22 Frozen, longtime and prolific editor on medicine and television/film topics, has died. You can read a brief reflection on her Wikipedia work here, and leave condolences at her talk page.

Discussions of interest

• Continued discussion on the role of subject-specific notability guidelines at Wikipedia talk:Notability.
• An ongoing effort to trim talk page banners has brought us a discussion regarding whether {{English variant notice}}s should be converted to editnotices.
• An ongoing discussion at WT:MED considers spinning out parts of the infobox for medicines/drugs into other templates.

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 05:02, 1 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin:, you were very helpful when I had issues editing the COVID-19 vaccine [[3]] using my Roland Of Yew (talk · contribs) username and wondered if you might have any advice regarding resetting Wikipedia passwords? Somehow, my saved passwords list lost my Wikipedia password and I’ve tried and tried to reset my password; however, the reset links aren’t arriving via email even though I’ve checked the trash/junk bin and requested admin help. Best regards, :Inadvertent Consequences Inadvertent Consequences]] (talk) 12:57, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Inadvertent Consequences Sorry to hear this. I don't know any more than you about how to fix this, beyond looking at the help pages which I see you have already done. I see your old account page doesn't have "email this user", which your new one does, so perhaps you didn't setup an email. If you did, have you checked your junk or spam folder to see if your email software has put it there. If you can't fix it, then I guess you have to start over with the new account. I think it may be best to ask a friendly admin to block your old account to avoid anyone trying to hack it. If you did ever discover the password, then they would unblock it. Admins probably know more about this sort of thing than me. Hope you are well and keeping safe. -- Colin°^Talk 16:41, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Colin: ah! I didn’t realise that I hadn’t an email associated with my old account and from everything I’ve read it looks like I’ll have to let that user page go, thanks once again! Inadvertent Consequences (talk) 16:46, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in the English Wikipedia Manual of Style and article titles policy. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Crossroads ^-talk- 17:35, 7 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

see Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/Theuyhjasji. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:47, 20 February 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 10—March 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Here is what's happening around the project:

Newly recognized content

17q12 microdeletion syndrome nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by Bibeyjj Urinothorax nom. Steve M., reviewed by Bibeyjj Lurie Children's Hospital nom. Andrew nyr, reviewed by HickoryOughtShirt?4 Biotin nom. David notMD, reviewed by HaEr48 Imprinted brain hypothesis nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by Lee Vilenski

Nominated for review

Friedreich's ataxia nom. Akrasia25 Kivu Ebola epidemic nom. Ozzie10aaaa, under review by Casliber Diaphragmatic rupture nom. Steve M. Mihran Kassabian nom. Larry Hockett Sophie Jamal nom. Vaticidalprophet Menstrual cycle Undergoing FAR, contribute at talk. Alzheimer's disease Notice of impending FAR at talk. Major depressive disorder Notice of impending FAR at talk. Acute myeloid leukemia Notice of impending FAR at talk. Influenza Notice of impending FAR at talk. Autism Notice of impending FAR at talk.

News from around the site

• There is an ongoing drive to review good article nominations through the month of March. Pick up a review if you have time. Instructions here.
• The Medicine Collaboration of the Month is on temporary (perhaps) hiatus. You can still nominate future candidates at WP:MCOTM.
• This month's target maintenance backlog is "articles with a dead link". Each typically takes around a minute to fix, so please hit one or two when you have a moment.
• The desktop site's default "Vector" skin is being gradually modernized. Details here. Opt-in at Preferences>Skin preferences to begin getting used to the new look.

Discussions of interest

• A large discussion is reconsidering deprecating the aliases for some citation template parameters.
• Please look over edit-protected medicine pages to consider whether some could have protection levels safely lowered.

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Ajpolino (talk) 18:55, 6 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm contemplating MEDMOS and WP:MTAA, and I think that it might be helpful to have a separate essay on Readability tests. IMO the ideal content contains both why you shouldn't rely on them and also some advice about how to get some value out of them (e.g., checking that the sections or paragraphs you deliberately wrote at a simpler level don't score at a higher level). Do you think that you could write such a page? WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:00, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I admit I have at times in the past year contemplated writing an essay. There is a history of using such tests on Wikipedia to "demonstrate" that the reading level of articles (or leads) has been "successfully" reduced. And we sometimes see simplistic advice ("use shorter sentences", "never use jargon", "use simpler words"). I read the short linked article but actually Readability has more on the tests, and is a rambling mess in itself! The final section says "experts warn: can be highly misleading" and has a bunch of citations to 60-year-old books (entire books, no chapters, or pages). How odd that for Wikipedia, "readability" is not about how readable some piece of writing is, but about algorithms to measure it and give it a number. Surely readability should should also include whether one gets pleasure or satisfaction rather than irritation or boredom, or successfully comprehends the topic or subject. I can't see how any algorithm (simplistic or AI) could do that.

Wrt the "get some value out of them", it would be odd for me to suggest such a thing as I've never once thought "I'll run a readability test on my revised prose to see if it really is easier to read", and never then gone "Oh, dear, it has scored higher" or even then "I must try again because the score says so". Have you? What readability scoring tool (website, computer software) do you use? Can you convert me?

We do seem, as humans, obsessed with reducing complex things down to numbers or even binary, and valuing algorithms over people. Wikipedia is a collaborative editing project. So wouldn't the best advice, for someone who has written or rewritten some prose, be to simply ask someone else to look at it? A fresh pair of eyes.

I wonder though if we are making a correlation/causation mistake. Yes, some editors have been focused on readability scores, even published papers about them, and added over-simplistic advice to our guidelines. But it wouldn't have been a significant problem if they were gifted writers, or who actively collaborated with others on their prose. If brilliant prose flowed out of their keyboards, or was the fruit of a wonderful collaboration, none of us would have minded a quaint obsession with algorithms from an age when doctors smoked. Maybe this is fighting yesterday's battle? -- Colin°^Talk 16:28, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Yes on "yesterday's battle". This set a lot of good work completely back, and that sort of editing originated from the same place as "yesterday". I don't think this is a MEDMOS issue, although it seemed to become one because of the group of proponents. (Colin, I pinged you about a Keto edit to Alzheimer's disease.) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The link you give is recent. I agree the edit was not "brilliant prose". But what's the cause? Aiming to improve readability scoring? Bad advice? Lack of talent or ability? Lack of experience? -- Colin°^Talk 16:47, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Look at how this page was built, with advocacy goals from the beginning. View the "Objectives" (advocacy) which have remained constant since the Project's founding. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:11, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Oh, save me from advocacy editing! And leads that nobody other than a translator would want to read. And readability score targets. *sigh*. The talk page history suggests the project is effectively dead, and the project advice is just one person's whacky ideas. -- Colin°^Talk 17:34, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

They mean well, and Femke certainly meant well when she invited that WikiProject to the FAR of menstrual cycle, but it really set back progress, partly also because that WP has pretty much zero experience in how non-advocacy articles are actually written. Hence, menstruation now an article more about advocacy than the actual topic ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:36, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have re-written text based on what the algorithms say, but (a) either never or only rarely in Wikipedia articles, and (b) the goal is to help adults who depend on machine translation or otherwise can't read English easily. I don't think that changes based on these algorithms make the text more readable, but I do think they make it less mis-understandable.

I can give you an example. I turned this:

• In the beginning of this year, we worked with the Wikimedia research team to understand how talk page use impacts article whether editing talk pages changes how much editors edit articles.

into this:

• The Editing team and the Wikimedia research team studied how talk pages help editors improve articles.

Neither of these are brilliant prose, but one of them is much less likely to get mangled by machine translation.

I think that if we create an essay, it should aim for a middle-of-the-road POV. IMO the middle of the road is that the algorithms are a bit like taking blood pressure: if you know what you're doing, you can get some useful information that, in combination with other information, might be useful to you, but if you don't know what you're doing, you're probably going to screw up. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:34, 14 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not convinced the blood pressure analogy is fair. While "treating the measurement" is a flaw doctors know about and suffer from, that's still a tool no doctor would do without. Did you make a typo in your example, because the long sentence makes no sense. Should "article whether" be "articles, and whether". The fixed sentence has repetition, is muddled and is vague. The revised sentence gets to the point, albeit one without any specifics on what you studied or when. You fixed it by writing concisely and eliminating anything not necessary to the message you want to get across. Whereas someone who is a slave to a robot score would fix it by chopping the sentence up. They might even have made things worse, writing:

• In the beginning of this year, we worked with the Wikimedia research team. We wanted to understand how talk page use impacts articles. We looked at whether editing talk pages changes how much editors edit articles.

I've just got myself the Oxford Guide to Plain English, Fifth Edition, by Martin Cutts. Just glancing at the contents page shows that of the 30 chapters, only one, chapter 19, is about pitching at the right reading level/age. The author spends more time discussing the drawbacks and limitations of readability tests than he does finding value in them. The author founded the Plain English Campaign and runs https://www.clearest.co.uk/. There is far, far more about writing clear, concise and engaging prose, than these robots appreciate. It doesn't matter much if a 13-year-old can read it, if it muddled, ambiguous, misleading, tedious or dull. -- Colin°^Talk 12:31, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I didn't write the original draft (and I don't mind that it wasn't polished; it wasn't meant to be).

I think that if we write a page that says they're absolutely useless, then we won't reach the relevant audience. Some people will latch onto a single counterargument and believe that it disproves the entire concept. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:36, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think their limitations suggest they are more appropriate for non-technical writing that has no excuse for difficult or long words and little complexity to explain. Like your Wikimedia business document, or a biography of a musician. And more appropriate for someone writing alone who then has to submit their draft for approval/publication, vs someone who is part of the biggest collaborative writing project on the planet. I wonder if for technical matters they may give too many unhelpful results. And then editors hack the sentence length into PowerPoint bullets just to bring the score down, or naively replace or remove words they think might be giving a high score. Perhaps they should be concentrating on other things that make the text more readable and understandable? If there are, to crudely pick chapter numbers from the book I mentioned, 30 things that could improve the readability of your text, and the tool only examines two variables, then you're going to over-concentrate on those two variables.

What tool do you recommend? Can it highlight sentences or words that might be problematic, or does it just give a score for a whole page, and leave you to scratch your head about what it didn't like?

I'd like to know if any decent writers, other than yourself, find them of value for Wikipedia. You said above that you've only "never or only rarely" rewritten Wikipedia article text on what score it got. That's not a promising start. You speculate on the the consequences of saying "they're absolutely useless" but haven't really convinced me that it would be honest to write "they can be useful for editing Wikipedia articles". It seems like neither of us would be speaking from any personal experience on that front. -- Colin°^Talk 16:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I usually use https://hemingwayapp.com/ because it highlights passive voice (good writing+machine translation), compound and complex sentences (machine+human translation), and overuse of adverbs (good writing). They added the reading score calculation more recently. I don't find that especially helpful myself, but I think that some people might benefit from the occasional moment of discovering how well their instinct aligns with an external measurement. If you're saying "easy" and it says "post-graduate level", then one of you is probably wrong. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:58, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'll have a play with it. I posted some NHS text to it and it thought "However, " and "maximum" were complex and should be replaced or omitted, which didn't seem good advice here. A worry is if a tool highlights all the adverbs or all the passive voice, isn't there a temptation to whack-a-mole them all out? But I can also see value in those highlights if one is careful. Most sensible writing advice does not view English like a computer language with absolute rules and unforgivable sins. I'm not quite sure that a comparison of "easy" and "post-grad" is helping your case, because that's such an extreme difference. Another reader or editor with any writing ability would be able to tell you that too. So perhaps this gives a "wake up call" to someone deluded that they are writing at the patient-information-leaflet level. But I suspect such a deluded writer would also be the same writer who thinks they can make their muddled, ambiguous and rambling prose into low-literacy-friendly clear English by simply chopping all the sentences in two, and in two again (because shorter is ALWAYS better), and replacing all the long words with "it".

Wrt your post at 15:36: what is your purpose and who are you trying to persuade? And ok, perhaps someone is wrong on the internet, but why is this an important battle to spend time on now? -- Colin°^Talk 23:51, 15 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi Colin, I would appreciate any advice you might have on this issue [4]. It's this "80%" claim (again). I have posted a paper there, which might help. Would it be for the best not to quote a percentage at all and just say "most"? Best regards. Graham Beards (talk) 09:38, 12 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hello. Thank you for providing comments on the proposed decision for the RexxS case. In reading your comments you mention about the suitability of other users to be administrators. While it's not a personal attack, I suggest that you alter your comment so that it doesn't mention specific editors. My reasoning is that the committee in the RexxS case is not examining the conduct of the editors you named, and as such detailing specific users isn't necessary when commenting on the proposed decision. Let me know if you have any questions, and in case you were not aware I am one of the case clerks for the RexxS case. Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 18:53, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Dreamy Jazz, I hope this edit is satisfactory. -- Colin°^Talk 19:07, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. It is. Happy editing, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 21:08, 23 March 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 11—April 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Here is what's happening around the project:

Newly recognized content

Influenza removed from the featured article review list thanks largely to Velayinosu's work. Friedreich's ataxia nom. Akrasia25, reviewed by Ajpolino Kivu Ebola epidemic nom. Ozzie10aaaa, reviewed by Casliber

Nominated for review

Mihran Kassabian nom. Larry Hockett Sophie Jamal nom. Vaticidalprophet Northwestern Memorial Hospital nom. Andrew nyr XXYY syndrome nom. Vaticidalprophet CT scan nom. Iflaq Tetrasomy Xnom. Vaticidalprophet Menstrual cycle Undergoing FAR, contribute at talk. Upcoming FARs: Alzheimer's disease, Major depressive disorder, Acute myeloid leukemia, Autism. Contribute to discussions at their talk pages.

News from around the site

• As part of the Talk pages project, the reply and new discussion tools have been released as beta features. You can enable them at Special:Preferences.
• This month's maintenance backlog is articles marked as too technical. Please help clarify these pages for non-specialists.
• Longtime medicine editor, administrator, and tech-wiz RexxS has retired – hopefully temporarily – following an arbitration case. Among other things, RexxS has long advocated improving Wikipedia's accessibility for readers with disabilities. You can help in that regard by reminding yourself of the contents of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Accessibility and learning to write alt text for images.

Discussions of interest

• Template:Authority control is getting a redesign. Contribute to the discussion here.
• A large discussion is reconsidering deprecating the aliases for some citation template parameters.
• Please look over edit-protected medicine pages to consider whether some could have protection levels safely lowered.

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Ajpolino (talk) 02:24, 4 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thanks for your help with the William Lyon Mackenzie article in March, specifically for your comments at the second PR. I have nominated the article for featured article status and I hope you will comment on the nomination here. Thanks again for your help preparing this article. Z1720 (talk) 17:15, 14 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just a note. I found your comments on the person-first discussion quite helpful; they certainly changed how I viewed the topic. Sorry you were upset by the discussion; nobody there seems to have been their best. Maybe one day the topic can be revisited when there's more evidence and all of us have kinder hearts. Wishing you well. Urve (talk) 03:00, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Urve thanks very much for that comment. Yes, kinder hearts would be welcome. -- Colin°^Talk 09:35, 22 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

On 23 April 2021, Did you know was updated with a fact from the article Vaccine ingredients, which you recently created, substantially expanded, or brought to good article status. The fact was ... that an immunologic adjuvant is a vaccine ingredient that makes the immune response stronger and longer-lasting? The nomination discussion and review may be seen at Template:Did you know nominations/Vaccine ingredients. You are welcome to check how many pageviews the nominated article or articles got while on the front page (here's how, Vaccine ingredients), and if they received a combined total of at least 416.7 views per hour (i.e., 5,000 views in 12 hours or 10,000 in 24), the hook may be added to the statistics page. Finally, if you know of an interesting fact from another recently created article, then please feel free to suggest it on the Did you know talk page.

 — Amakuru (talk) 00:02, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

... follow up on <--this--> --Skews Peas (talk) 16:50, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Skews Peas, I'm not quite sure what you are suggesting? Is there a troublesome edit to investigate? Or are you suggesting I work on that article or that section (Immunopathology -- I know nothing). I'm so limited in my free time that I'd rather steer clear of contentious hot topics. -- Colin°^Talk 16:57, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Just sharing some meticulosity with you. I've probably opened a can of worms anyway – there are lots more such paragraphs in that article. Never mind. --Skews Peas (talk) 17:11, 23 April 2021 (UTC)[reply]

You seem bound and determined to win. The source is not WP:FRINGE, it is a legitimate by a scholar the you admit is "an expert in the field". By removing all weight for one expert who disagrees with a position you are engaging in a BATTLE rather than trying to improve the encyclopedia. Abductive (reasoning) 15:15, 5 May 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 12—June 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

No newsletter last month means a double issue this month. Enjoy:

Newly recognized content

Menstrual cycle saved at FAR thanks to the efforts of Graham Beards and others. Tetrasomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by JackFromReedsburg XYYY syndrome nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by MeegsC CT scan nom. Iflaq, reviewed by Bibeyjj Imprinted brain hypothesis nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by Lee Vilenski Diaphragmatic rupture nom. Aeschylus, reviewed by Bibeyjj Pentasomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by Bibeyjj Shellfish allergy nom. David notMD, reviewed by CommanderWaterford Sophie Jamal nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by Premeditated Chaos Mihran Kassabian nom. Larry Hockett, reviewed by Amitchell125 Northwestern Memorial Hospital nom. Andrew nyr, reviewed by Sammi Brie

Nominated for review

Trisomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet, under review by Epicgenius Hepatic hydrothorax nom. Aeschylus Tetrasomy X and Deep vein thrombosis are both listed for peer review to prepare for FAC. Please contribute. Upcoming FARs: Alzheimer's disease, Major depressive disorder, Acute myeloid leukemia, Autism. Contribute to discussions at their talk pages.

News from around the site

• The Medicine collaboration of the month is back with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. Please head to its talk page to coordinate improvements.

Discussions of interest

• The redesign of the {{Authority control}} template continues. Contribute here.
• Please consider looking over edit-protected medicine pages to consider whether some could have protection levels safely lowered.

Discuss this issue

You are receiving this because you added your name to the WikiProject Medicine mailing list. If you no longer wish to receive the newsletter, please remove your name.

Thanks, Ajpolino (talk) 17:59, 3 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

An image created by you has been promoted to featured picture status Your image, File:Plasma globe 60th.jpg, was nominated on Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates, gained a consensus of support, and has been promoted. If you would like to nominate an image, please do so at Wikipedia:Featured picture candidates. Thank you for your contribution! Armbrust The Homunculus 11:17, 7 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

This is to let you know that the Dementia with Lewy bodies article has been scheduled as today's featured article for July 21, 2021. Please check the article needs no amendments. If you're interested in editing the main page text, you're welcome to do so at Wikipedia:Today's featured article/July 21, 2021, but note that a coordinator will trim the lead to around 1000 characters anyway, so you aren't obliged to do so.

For Featured Articles promoted recently, there will be an existing blurb linked from the FAC talk page, which is likely to be transferred to the TFA page by a coordinator at some point.

We suggest that you watchlist Wikipedia:Main Page/Errors from the day before this appears on Main Page. Thanks! Jimfbleak - talk to me? 15:17, 14 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Check it out! Looks like you got a mention and they quoted you saying something smart. jp×g 20:42, 28 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@WhatamIdoing: and @Colin:, just wanted to clarify what you meant by "stop trying to write pandemic-related articles by RFC [5][6]". Do you mean "like the BMI RFC, with overall RFCs that try to have implications for all pandemic articles" or "RFCs period" AKA "using narrow RFCs to try and resolve individual disputes on pandemic pages" is also not productive?

Because, as far as I can determine, using RFCs is the only way to get anything to stick on particularly frustrating pages like Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and COVID-19 misinformation. Otherwise it's like a revert-revert party and BRD breaks down. I admit I only have 6ish years of experience on this site, and I'm still learning how certain things work, but that was my assessment of the situation. There's lots of WP:FRINGE users and also quasi-SPAs, and activist editors, who push one POV or another. It's easy to get drawn into the brawl, and I have on several occasions.

I really see narrowly-worded narrowly-applied RFCs as the only way out of that cave. My understanding is that WhatamIdoing, you would say that RFCs can be useful in some contexts, but that Colin, you think RFCs are the problem here and are actively against consensus-building in these situations. Is that a fair characterization?

If so, Colin, I empathize with your point greatly. I also wish it were easier. I wish that such consensus-building without RFCs were possible in these articles, but this reminds me quite a bit of WP:RANDY. You cannot play chess with someone who will just flip the board when they lose, and likewise, you cannot build consensus with people who are WP:NOTHERE. It is the nature of battlegrounding to get drawn in yourself. That's why it's so insidious.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:02, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

And please, take me quite seriously when I say:I am looking for any and all advice on how to deal with these contentious articles better. I really am all ears, and am interested in all perspectives. I would bet good money you have seen similarly contentious topics emerge before my time, and I would appreciate the wiki-expertise.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 00:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

RFCs have been handled in a weird way (and maybe even in a WEIRD way) for COVID-related articles. I'm not sure how to label the effect, but it doesn't result in a small group of editors improving an article. It's more like a large group of less-experienced editors trying to vote a decision (any decision) into being so that we can enshrine that decision's exact wording as The Decision™, and then rush on to the next thing.

The voting in COVID-related articles has been so extreme that we were seriously talking at WT:RFC about enacting limits on how many RFCs any single editor could have open at the same time.

Paul Siebert recently expressed an important perspective on this question, and if you're serious about addressing this problem, you probably want to talk to him about the problems that RFCs can create, especially when most of the people in the discussion don't know as much about the subject as they think they do. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:00, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I suppose RfCs have long been seen as a tool to wield when trying to control a topic. I'm with XOR'easter, who has written that the fuss around COVID topics is "the first time that I've genuinely feared that our line won't hold".[7] The RfC proliferation has now reached the point where we're breaking WP:DEM. Alexbrn (talk) 07:32, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There are several issues, of which I'm sure WhatamIdoing and the folks at WT:RFC can offer advice. The first is whether a publicly declared RFC is needed rather than a simple discussion on talk, or even it seems just making an edit and seeing if it sticks. The second is whether that RFC needs to be widely advertised. You may think that getting more eyeballs on the thing will help, but often those eyeballs don't actually read the preceding discussions (you had those, right?) and just jump in with an opinion. Everyone loves being asked their opinion and giving it. Wrt covid articles, that opinion is often mostly about scientists or journalists or the Chinese government, and not about article text and what reliable sources say. And nearly all folk there are pushing an agenda of some sort. And thirdly, the RFC almost always begins with a poll rather than a discussion. And we know Wikipedia:Polling is not a substitute for discussion.

This was particularly clear during the biomedical poll where a meme developed that "MEDRS is only about medical advice. It's that simple" and voters latched on to that as a very convenient way of justifying an oppose vote. I've seen it before on a poll about GDFL licence being inappropriate for photographs, where someone voted "A free licence is a free licence". This got endlessly repeated despite being rather mindless. Former British PM Theresa May used the same trick when she tired of Brexit voting, and repeated "Brexit is Brexit" to try to shut down discussion and complaints that the nuances might be causing problems.

The poll started on MEDRS offers voters just two choices. I see that in the discussion someone has suggested perhaps we tweak the original text. While I still think that currently we are just better off without those sentences, it is this kind of "Ok, there are other options too" thing that will likely just get lost and buried under the votes. On a Wikipedia page, you can make edits, I can make edits and all these other people can make edits, and together we might develop some good text. Instead we have an RFC that consumes dozens of editors time and yet only offers two limited choices. Take it or leave it. Oppose or Support. Option 1 or Option 2. One side will lose. That isn't any way for people to figure out an approach that actually keeps everyone happy.

I think it is ironic that editors who are clearly and demonstrably unable to edit collaboratively and work towards consensus are now pushing Wikipedia-wide guidelines around and trying (succeeding perhaps) to restrict them in order to win an argument. And to win an argument about something nobody actually knows the answer to. It's like the entire world decided to argue about who won the 2022 Eurovision Song Contest. It is both pathetic and rather worrisome, because I am worried that editors with covid blinkers on will end up claiming some new consensus that makes it harder to write good biomedical articles.

It is partly for that reason that I tried to find some intermediate ground wrt the latest covid sequence deletion story. Because I think if editors in both sides continue to fight their political fights by citing WP:UPPERCASE at each other, then they will end up wrecking those policies and guidelines in order to get their way.

Anyway, last night I posted a wikibreak notice and I'm still hoping to keep to it. So I wonder if perhaps someone could copy, shift or continue this discussion onto another person's talk page, so I don't keep getting pings.

I'll leave you, for now, with some reading suggestions. I recently read "Conflicted: Why Arguments Are Tearing Us Apart and How They Can Bring Us Together" by Ian Leslie and thought it was really good and encourage editors in disputes to go get it and read it. And I've just finished "Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don't Know" by Adam Grant, which was also good, covering some similar ground, but I preferred the first book. I did like Grant's image of trying to dance with one's foe rather than fight them. Having read them, I don't want anyone to expect me to become some kind of expert mediator diplomat guru: I read them because I'm crap at this and want to be a bit better. -- Colin°^Talk 09:22, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colin and others, Thank you, the advice is much appreciated and will do re: taking this to another venue.--Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 12:41, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I'm taking a wikibreak. Please avoid posting here unless it is vital. Try WT:MED instead. -- Colin°^Talk 09:22, 30 June 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 12—June 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Newly recognized content

Trisomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet, reviewed by Epicgenius

Nominated for review

Trisomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet CYP4F2 nom. Maxim Masiutin Hepatic hydrothorax nom. Aeschylus Vitamin B6 nom. David notMD Transmission of COVID-19 nom. Almaty Deep vein thrombosis is listed for peer review to prepare for FAC. Please contribute. Alzheimer's disease is at featured article review.

News from around the site

• Lung cancer will feature on the Main Page as Today's Featured Article on August 4th. Anything you can do to improve/update the article before then would be a big help to the many readers likely to see the page on that date.
• The Books namespace will be deprecated and its contents deleted. All books have been moved to subpages of Wikipedia:Books/archive so that they can be undeleted upon request after the namespace is gone. There are around two dozen medicine-related books (14 tagged with WP:MED). If you wish to keep any, you are welcome to move it to your userspace.

Discussions of interest

• An ongoing discussion at WP:MEDRS considers the first few sentences of the MEDRS lead.

Discuss this issue

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Thanks, Ajpolino (talk) 19:21, 7 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for this well-considered statement at WP:AE. Your point about the BBC at one time "thinking 'balance' on topics like global warming or MMR meant that for every expert you interviewed, you had to have some weirdo too" made me laugh. Bishonen | tålk 10:50, 25 July 2021 (UTC).[reply]

Bishonen thanks. I don't know where you live, but this isn't just my personal opinion. It was a big cause of frustration to many for years. Their report is Review of impartiality and accuracy of the BBC's coverage of science. One part reads "should be more proactive in searching out information than at present and other areas should more fully reflect the scientific literature. I recommend that the BBC takes a less rigid view of “due impartiality” as it applies to science (in practice and not just in its guidelines) and takes into account the non‐contentious nature of some material and the need to avoid giving undue attention to marginal opinion." There really was a belief by some then that "impartiality" meant they had to consider both sides as equal valid and reasonable as though one was trying to be neutral wrt Labour vs Conservative politics. This report required they also consider "due weight", which is more like our policy. -- Colin°^Talk 11:22, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Though the BBC still regularly fails in this.[8] Alexbrn (talk) 11:44, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Alexbrn, wow, that is very troubling, indeed. Colin, I also wanted to say, your comments on that AE were insightful, and are much appreciated, as is your level headed voice in many of those disputes! :)

But I did also want to say, this is not the first time I've seen news organizations fail at this, and not just the BBC! "The view from nowhere" is an old foundational principle of news reporting, that comes from a simpler time (Pepperidge Farm remembers). I think it belongs in the trash bin of history. One of my favorite NPR programs, On The Media (from WNYC), has reported on this a lot. A few of the best segments if you haven't heard them:

• "Objectivity: What Is It Good For?" (3 February 2017)
• "The view from nowhere is a harmful myth" (2 April 2021)
• "How bad faith mobs weaponize objectivity" (4 June 2021)

Sorry, I know that was a lil bit of soapboxing... Maybe I'll write a userspace essay about this instead of a screed plastered on Colin's talk page :)-- Shibbolethink ^{(♔ ♕)} 13:32, 25 July 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My comment is a bit late, but WP's "encyclopedic" style was often contrasted to "journalistic" style, the latter more prone to be a list of equal opinions/refutations/denials, with the former more a summary of what is due, while avoiding to rehash debates everytime it makes the news, except for major developments. IRT Shibbolethink's comment, some scientists also feel that it's part of their responsibily to participate to public education and some are of course also teaching at universities, while others will be happy with more technical or lab work and less public exposure. I personally think that this is fine. Then coming from those who write for the public and appear regularly in shows, is good, as well as misleading pop-science, unfortunately. Another issue is that if they accept invitations to "public debates" it may provide a public impression of legitimacy to people who want to make a show and pretend that there's an actual scientific debate on the aspects they would like to dismiss and that even prominent scientists are listening to them (anti-evolution apologists for instance)... —PaleoNeonate – 01:57, 4 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

@Shibbolethink: The above reply is so late that I'll ping... and I forgot to mention that I liked the speech. —PaleoNeonate – 06:10, 6 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 12—August 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Newly recognized content

Nothing this month Please help review articles when you have time.

Nominated for review

Trisomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet Hepatic hydrothorax nom. Aeschylus Vitamin B6 nom. David notMD Transmission of COVID-19 nom. Almaty, under review by Aircorn Atul Gawande nom. BennyOnTheLoose C. Edmund Kells nom. Larry Hockett Clarence Lushbaugh nom. Tpdwkouaa, under review by Larry Hockett Slipping rib syndrome nom. TheRibinator Charles Lester Leonard nom. Larry Hockett, under review by Dracophyllum Subglottic stenosis nom. aeschylus Deep vein thrombosis is listed for peer review to prepare for FAC. Please contribute. Alzheimer's disease is a featured article removal candidate.

News from around the site

• We have a bit of a backlog of good article nominations. Please help improve these articles by reviewing one if you have time. Instructions here.
• WP:URFA/2020 is reviewing and updating FAs that were promoted long ago. Several medicine-related FAs are on the list. Noting current work below. Feel free to jump in and help wherever you're interested:
  • Acute myeloid leukemia (promoted in 2006) is getting a thorough update led by Tom (LT) and Spicy. Help is welcome.
  • Influenza (promoted in 2006) was updated by Velayinosu and is awaiting review.
  • Lung cancer (promoted in 2007) was updated by Axl, Graham Beards, and JenOttawa in preparation for a now-aborted run as WP:TFA.
  • Autism (2007 promotion) and Major depressive disorder (2008 promotion) have requests for featured article reviews on their talk pages.
  • I believe the oldest unreviewed medicine-related FAs are Michael Woodruff (2006 promotion), Bacteria (2006 promotion), and Coeliac disease (2008 promotion). These are likely to receive some attention soon.

Discussions of interest

Discuss this issue

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Thanks, Ajpolino (talk) 02:29, 2 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

My intent wasn't to insult any British editor, but merely to point out that every time such a RFC or general discussion on such topics concerning the UK, are held. The result is always going to be the same. Just too many who oppose the usage of "British" in the intros & UK in the infoboxes. Vaze50, is only starting to realise that. GoodDay (talk) 14:44, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

GoodDay, you were identifying editors as being "British" and suggesting they were collectively being both unreasonable and stubborn. It would be tempting for me to make a similar comment about non-British editors. But that sort of personal attack doesn't progress the argument in any way, other than to suggest that as a source of our differing views. I can't change being Scottish and you can't change being Canadian (I assume from your user page). I suppose we could go live in each other's countries for a few years to gain the opposite perspectives, that's not really a practical solution to trying to work out what Wikipedia should include in an infobox. With these kinds of debates, where editors have strong opinions, and don't seem minded at all to reach a consensus, it is often useful to see how other professional publications handle it. -- Colin°^Talk 15:23, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

There's never going to ever be a consensus for what Vaze50 proposes. He'd have about the same amount of success convincing American editors to use "Californian" or "Minnesotan"; Canadian editors to use "Manitoban" or "Prince Edward Islander". It just ain't gonna happen for him. GoodDay (talk) 15:29, 15 August 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Issue 15—September 2021

WikiProject Medicine Newsletter

Newly recognized content

Charles Lester Leonard nom. Larry Hockett, reviewed by Dracophyllum Clarence Lushbaugh nom. Tpdwkouaa, reviewed by Larry Hockett Elmer Ernest Southard nom. EricEnfermero, reviewed by Khazar2

Nominated for review

Trisomy X nom. Vaticidalprophet Atul Gawande nom. BennyOnTheLoose C. Edmund Kells nom. Larry Hockett, under review by AryKun Slipping rib syndrome nom. TheRibinator Body image disturbance nom. Srobodao84 Vitamin B6 nom. David notMD Deep vein thrombosis is listed for peer review to prepare for FAC. Please contribute. Body image disturbance is listed for peer review. Please contribute.

News from around the site

• Vaticidalprophet, our reigning expert on chromosomal disorders, has retired (temporarily, we hope)

Discussions of interest

• A discussion considers merging the functionality of {{find medical sources}} into {{Talk header}} with a manually applied parameter.

Discuss this issue

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Thanks, Ajpolino (talk) 20:24, 8 September 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I think you might appreciate this talk (~8 minutes) from the recent m:CEE online meeting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SNeXoSou2h4&t=6694s WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:20, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

WhatamIdoing, was there a particular presentation, such as the first one? That was certainly provocative. -- Colin°^Talk 11:12, 9 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

The timestamp in the link should skip you straight to Łukasz's presentation, which opens with Conway's law. It is an interesting idea, isn't it? WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:07, 10 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I have some deja vu about the comment that a Wikipedian insisted on the food that event organisers should offer. I'm not sure what best describes Wikipedias social model, but I agree it isn't a fit for an organisation or company. -- Colin°^Talk 12:22, 11 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Colin, I am iPad typing, not home and having a hard time keeping up. Could you please have a look at WT:MED? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:40, 12 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I would rather go back to my garden then to have to conduct a community-wide RFC to deal with something that never should have happened. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:21, 14 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Regarding this question, I've only written N-glycosyltransferase, RVxP motif and Subgenual organ, none of which are "medicine" per se. Jo-Jo Eumerus (talk) 10:49, 15 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

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Can't blame you unwatching! :-) But as to the BBC and Guardian, media critique sites have noticed that too, see [13] for the UK and Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting have reported a few times on the same sort of thing in the US. The BBC have never mentioned Thordarson's recanting of his testimony which underlies most of the US case, and I don't think it has mentioned the CIA planning to kidnap or murder him either. The Guardian has mentioned both eventually at least. NadVolum (talk) 18:37, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

NadVolum, you cite a source whose purpose is to right-great-wrongs, as they see it. WEIGHT isn't interested in why sources don't cover some stories, and it isn't up to us to try to argue for Wikipedia to give more coverage than reliable sources do. Editors who are passionate about a story, as many on that talk page seem to be, usually have a different sense of its importance to neutral people. I don't want to get drawn into the politics of it all, which generally seems to be about being deeply unpleasant about those one disagrees with, and more interested in finding ways to misunderstand an analogy than to understand the other person's point. -- Colin°^Talk 18:53, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I understand that and I'm not asking for anything like that. I was just pointing out that your argument from lack of coverage in the BBC is wrong. If you read WP:WEIGHT it does not require coverage in corporate media sources, only decent coverage in reliable ones. If you went by the BBC you'd probably only know that he and Stella Moris are hoping to get married and that the court decided he could be extradited. There are other reliable sources which cover things in more detail. NadVolum (talk) 19:03, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

NadVolum I don't think the lack of coverage, and buried coverage in the BBC and Guardian are irrelevant: they indicate a concern. A full analysis of WEIGHT looks at all reliable sources (and really, we shouldn't be including the tabloids at all). That you have a publication that claims the BBC and Guardian are somehow deliberately not covering the topic, isn't relevant to WEIGHT. One problem with googling for sources is that one can find any minor factoid if you search for it, but you can't find publications that don't mention the factoid (for whatever reason). So it isn't enough to say a, b, c and d all mention some fact, when you find those sources with Google. You have to deliberately pick some other reliable sources that you might expect to cover it, and look for it there. That's why I'm concerned about this topic's weight. In the end, editors tend to over-weight recent current affair topics, and often forget to revisit it in a year or two when nobody anywhere is mentioning it. Remember too this is an international encyclopaedia, so you need to check the US media at least. -- Colin°^Talk 19:54, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I was interested in your choosing the BBC and the Guardian as those two are well known for this sort of thing as shown by that reference I gave above, the BBC for its strategic omissions, much more than others, and the Guardian for its strong bias against Assange after some trouble between them and Assange some years ago, though lately it has got a bit better. I wondered why you chose them in particular. All the news sources given in the middle of that discussion get the green light at WP:RSP and yet you wanted even more. Please just follow what WP:WEIGHT actually says. Doing what you say makes Wikipedia an unreliable government or corporate source rather than a reliable encyclopaedia - basically you are filtering to accentuate government and corporate bias. See [14] about what you are supporting. Wikipedia has an article about it at Media bias and Media_bias_in_the_United_States#Corporate_power is quite relevant too as it shows how it happens - read what George Orwell said in the 'pro-government' section there about England! NadVolum (talk) 23:52, 16 December 2021 (UTC)[reply]

I chose The Guardian as that's my newspaper (like, I act