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On the Alternative medicine article

Hello CFCF. Since you've been doing a lot of editing of the Alternative medicine article lately, I hope it's okay to come here to continue the discussion from the article talk page. I'll try to be more precise about what I think is unclear and unintentionally alienating about the article. The point of view in almost all of the article is the one quoted in the lede from Roger Fisken in his British Medical Journal article: everything either is medicine or not medicine, either scientific or unscientific, and there's no middle ground. But at the same time, if one reads the article carefully, one sees that it is conceded that there is a middle ground, namely, "traditional medicine". But, in the first place, much of "traditional medicine" is commonly included in "CAM". It is, after all, an alternative set of treatments to rigorously science-based medicine. In the second place, certain traditional treatments or "home remedies" are widely used today even in modern industrialized societies with beneficial effects -- sometimes but not always caused by the placebo effect.

Even in the absence of rigorous clinical studies, there can be other evidence of safety and effectiveness in certain cases. Wouldn't the fact that a certain plant or home remedy has been widely used for a certain purpose and has a good reputation in widely different parts of the world be a type of proto-scientific or quasi-scientific evidence of safety and effectiveness (assuming knowledge of appropriate use and dosage)?

Some examples (that I mentioned before):

1. Perhaps someone with an eye irritation should ideally go to a doctor or at least to a pharmacy and buy Visine or a similar pharmaceutical. But if they live in an impoverished region of the world, or even if they live in a wealthy country but far from a pharmacy, or if they simply want to soothe the irritation without spending money and without waiting to make a trip to the pharmacy -- wouldn't it make sense to use a moist teabag? Would Fisken say (as quoted in the lede) that they're being "magical, childish or downright absurd"? Would you say that the teabags are only effective because of the placebo effect?

2. In many parts of the world certain herbs are ingested (usually in teas) to reduce the chance of pregnancy. The eminent historian of medicine and pharmacology John M. Riddle has written about this extensively. I do not know of any rigorous clinical studies of the safety and effectiveness of such teas. But there has been scientific verification of their abortifacient properties in animals. And, in fact, this folk knowledge probably came about from observation of animals. Some people ("ethnobotanists") might even say that the collective observations and experiences of many generations of women in disparate locations constitute a type of scientific basis for the folk knowledge. Whether or not you or I feel comfortable broadening the definition of "science" in that way, the people who would say that are not quacks or charlatans or fringe.

3. I similarly don't know whether mate de coca, used in the Andes to reduce the risk of altitude sickness, has ever undergone rigorous clinical study. But, if I'm not mistaken, in practice travelers report that it's safe and effective, and most likely not because of a placebo effect.

In short, not everyone in the world has easy access to modern pharmaceuticals or even to doctors. In the U.S. there are many people who don't have insurance or have inadequate insurance. In Cuba, in part because of shortages caused by the U.S. embargo, they have been using herbs for many things, including herbs that have never been subjected to rigorous clinical studies. This is the reality, and I think the Wikipedia article should reflect this. At present its tone is likely to come off as hostile toward anyone who uses or recommends any treatment at all that is not fully within science-based modern medicine. That's why I'm raising questions about NPOV and balance. Thanks for reading this. NightHeron (talk) 00:11, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

NightHeron — I'm a little short on time right now, but I think you're presenting a valid case regarding the confusion that lies in differentiating traditional medicine and alternative medicine, and I will attempt to adress it. Traditional medicine is not de facto alternative, and can be based off experience and many years of (as you call it) proto-scientific use — so far we are not in disagreement. Alternative or complementary medicine however is when practices without proper evidence are used despite access to better studies and better options, or as marketed despite lack of evidence. The Swedish definition that I adhere to in my considerations allows for "proven experience", which is essentially cases were studies are lacking but there are strong indications that the treatment can, ought, and does work. If you look at certain surgical treatments, there can not be proper evidence, because you can't for example randomize cancer patients to not receive surgery, and you can't properly blind subjects with placebo-surgery. Because of these issues it is very difficult to prove whether surgical treatment is good or not, and a rare publication was released by my employer least year SBU 262 showing that conservative treatment was as good or better than surgery in humeral fractures.
What I want to say with that is that the abscence of high quality evidence does not need to mean that something becomes alternative, and neither was the surgical treatment of proximal humerus-fractures. Alternative medicine however does not really rely on proven experience, but primarily relies on hearsay and anecdote, without so much as any evidence, often ignoring evidence that disproves it's effects. What differentiates something scientific such as ethnobotany or ethnopharmacy from alternative non-scientific study such as phytobiology or phytomedicine is the willingness to put their treatments and underlying concepts to test, and the acceptance of results that run counter to the beliefs of practitioners. Alternative medicine only ostensibly performs studies, with most being invalidated due to poor methodology and rejections of any evidence that runs counter to the underlying claims. This is what is incorrect in the logic, as it relies on fallacies and known false assumptions. Traditional medicine practitioners may also rely on flawed logic in their treatments, and much of traditional medicine is flawed (such as using leeches to draw out "bad blood"). Other aspects may be based on experience, such as the use of willow bark for pain (includes acetylic acid). Thus traditional medicine can be both alternative as well as evidence based, and aspects of it can be brought into modern evidence based medicine.
I don't know how to better convey this in the article, and I still contend that alternative medicine relies on the type of "false logic" that is expressed in the quote. The article could really do with an update, but it is so long that I don't really know where to get started. Do you have any suggestions? Carl Fredrik talk 06:46, 29 March 2018 (UTC)
@CFCF: Thanks for agreeing with me that there's some unclarity. I'm very sorry that I can only complain and not do the editing myself because (1) I'm not in the health field and (2) I haven't read the secondary literature (except about herbal contraceptives) and so my information is basically anecdotal. I think that the first step is to decide how to define the topic of the article. It's possible that the way the term "alternative medicine" is understood varies from country to country. Basically, I think that laypeople understand it to mean any healing modality that is not vetted through the mainstream medical establishment of their country -- essentially anything that does not involve going to the doctor or buying something produced by the pharmaceutical industry. I might be wrong about that, but if that's a fair summary, then at least in most countries it includes what you refer to as "traditional medicine", as well as home remedies (like teabags). If my use of the term is a layperson's use, and if medical professionals usually use it differently, then still there's a problem if the Wikipedia article is defining the term in a way that's okay with specialists but clashes with its use in the general population.
Another suggestion is to expand section 1.2 (A failure of mainstream medicine). A few years ago Marcia Angell, who's featured in the Alternative medicine article, wrote a long two-part article in the New York Review of Books sharply criticizing the methodology used to test psychotropic drugs, some of which are used in the U.S. on many children for much of their childhood. I also recall once reading an article by a respected medical "whistle-blower" with the title "Lies, damned lies, and medical statistics." And just a few weeks ago I read in the newspaper about a group of U.S. medical researchers and government officials who formulated an appeal for funding to the alcoholic beverages industry for a study that would show that regular consumption of alcohol should be part of a healthy diet. And of course there's the Macchiarini scandal in Sweden.
In other words, the article needs some humility about the mainstream medical profession, so that people who are somewhat under the sway of CAM but could be convinced to rethink their views don't react by saying "Who the hell are you to be throwing stones?" By the way, I'm not at all trying to slam the medical profession here -- a strong belief of mine is that scientists in all fields need to show some humility and need to publicly acknowledge problems in their field, or else we're going to have big credibility problems when outsiders expose those failings.NightHeron (talk) 12:26, 29 March 2018 (UTC)

Signpost issue 4 – 29 March 2018

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Medical Translations

Hello CFCF, I would like to contribute to the Medical Translations projects by translating in German. However, there is no section at the Sign Up-Page, there I could add my name. How can I add a new language - German - to that page? Thanks! — Preceding unsigned comment added by GentianB (talk • contribs) 18:49, 27 March 2018 (UTC)

GentianB — There is not any current official effort to expand the project to German, mostly because of the German community's opposition to translations. You may still use the tools to find missing articles: [1], there are at least a few hundred. If you tried some to see what response you get we're very willing to pick up the work and include it in our official statistics. It is likely that the opposition has been from editors who do not tend to edit medical articles, but simply dislike any English influences. Carl Fredrik talk 11:02, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

BRD

At talk page for WP:CONSENSUS we have disagreed about BRD. Here is what I saw.

  • You added a short cut
  • You were reverted
  • You re-added the shortcut before discussion had had chance to run its course


Whoever does the first undiscussed re-revert fires the first shot in an edit war, even though WP:3RR was not yet breached. So I do not agree you're following BRD. Instead you are using BRRD. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:07, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

NewsAndEventsGuy — If you look at the edits, I added different shortcuts, the second one in response to criticism (in the edit summary) of the first one. I think you're also out on a limb to call this creep, as that essay targets a different phenomenon entirely. Carl Fredrik talk 13:09, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Yes I should have done a more careful chronology analysis. I apologize, you're quite right. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:25, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

self revert request

Hello.... If you assume good faith..... the section on consensus by discussion does not have a shortcut. I genuinely and in good faith think it should. You slapped a POINTY claim on my proposal. Please self revert that. If you wish to out dent the section heading to == Shortcut for discussion section == or something, then please do! Of course under TPG no one owns section headings so you would not need my permission, I'm just saying if you would prefer it that way to reduce inadvertent and unintended POINTY feelings maybe that will help. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:23, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

(edit conflict) Feel free to act along the lines of WP:BRD and revert my close, but the expression: "All the other subsections have shortcuts, this one probably feels left out." following you clear oppose per WP:CREEP of my suggestion — expresses a clear case of WP:POINTY. If you are going to post any suggestion I propose you rephrase it. Carl Fredrik talk 13:36, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
If you assume good faith, it might also be an attempt at humor, something which has gotten me into trouble in this place more than once.... but that's all it was. Consider venn diagrams. If we are going to talk about the EditConsensus, are there not other times when in the course of reasonable dialogue it might help to refer to a DiscussionConsensus? I already say "Per talk" all the time, so the usefulness of the two shortcuts would seem to enhance compreshension by encouraging some compare and contrast, just as one scans their eye down the page. Truly... that's all I meant. AGF please. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:48, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
NewsAndEventsGuy — Then please go ahead and restore the section, I fully support you doing so. I'm sorry if I missunderstood your suggestion, sarcasm rarely comes across well on the internet. Carl Fredrik talk 14:02, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
Neither does cute anthropomorph-zing, apparently. I think we're done here. I don't care enough about the issue to continue contributing. More power to you go get 'em NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 20:22, 1 April 2018 (UTC)
By the way.... I use that template myself. Please note the bold text at the top of the template documentation. "When used on a talk page this template should only be used by uninvolved editors or administrators..." Another reason to self revert is your obvious involvement. NewsAndEventsGuy (talk) 13:32, 1 April 2018 (UTC)

Translation taskforce

Hi Carl, would you please edit {{TTF tabs}} so that it doesn't remove the page name, Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Translation task_force? Otherwise, it isn't easy for new editors to see which page they've landed on. It currently looks like a personal webpage belonging to the three named editors. SarahSV (talk) 15:36, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

Discussion

Please do not archive discussions that people are still engaged in. SarahSV (talk) 15:42, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

Also, if you move an active, important discussion that is linked from high-visibility, high-traffic locations like WP:CENT, WP:VPP, and User talk:Jimbo Wales, please remember to update those links to point directly to the new discussion. Maybe use some edit summaries, too. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 16:18, 30 March 2018 (UTC)

If we could all go out for a beer together, we'd find we all have a lot in common, and like each other a lot! Please enjoy your weekend; everything always looks better the next day! Cheers, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:58, 30 March 2018 (UTC)
(I stole this from Lingzhi, found on Ceoil's talk page.)
I want to, but I won't. At the very least it should be moved SlimVirgin, it's blocking up an otherwise quite useful page. Carl Fredrik talk 00:05, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Please don't move it anywhere, Carl. People are discussing something of importance to that project; the page is being used not blocked. SarahSV (talk) 00:20, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
When pages are over 300,000 bytes they tend to lagg, prohibiting many users from editing. These types of discussions also obscure other equally or more important issues, that simply get less focus. I can almost assure you that no one from WPMED will want to add anything to that discussion, that they would not have added on some other page. It should be moved. Carl Fredrik talk 00:22, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
Carl, you've engaged in personal attacks several times, plus the sudden archiving. If you move it again, it will be more disruption. You ask people to be civil to you, and you're outraged when people say you have a COI, but you feel fine in calling someone else dishonest, for example. Please step back and take some time away from this. SarahSV (talk) 00:39, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
I think my outrage regarding that accusation is understandable, but I accept the advice and will avoid the issue. My wish to archive was based on wanting to avoid the discussion, not to hide it — so there was no intent at disruption. I would hope that someone else could move it, as it would be very helpful in restoring ordinary activity for the WikiProject. For now I will ignore this issue, and hope that I am not pinged into it as I have very little further to add. Carl Fredrik talk 00:46, 31 March 2018 (UTC)
CFCF, I found three talk sections that had no recent activity or were resolved and could be archived, to at least shorten the page, but I can't find much else for manual archiving. Remember, it is a holiday weekend, so things will be slow for a few days. I reluctantly submit that we are just going to have to live with this problem for a bit. It is unfortunate that Doc James launched the RFC the way he did, because RFCs last 30 days at least, and this one can't really be stopped now, because there is so much community concern. That he also put it on the Project talk page created another problem-- it should have gone to a subpage all along, and then discussion could have been on the talk page of that subpage. And there is no talk page associated with the RFC now, because you moved the RFC to the talk page of the subpage. I do wish it had been possible to get people to listen, hold off on the RFC, get it right, so we might have avoided these kinds of mistakes, but I feel like, since it's a holiday weekend, the Project should not be affected too much. Maybe on Monday, someone else can decide what old topics can be archived, but this topic is current, important, and has nowhere else to go for the duration of the RFC, at least. Please go enjoy that beer :) Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:57, 31 March 2018 (UTC)

That was very nice ... feel free to remove mine and the whole thing, for a fresh start ... I commented mine out so you can choose to delete it if you wish. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:45, 3 April 2018 (UTC)

On "Next steps"...

For whatever it's worth, I was very impressed by your "Next steps" post. I don't feel at all confident that, given similar circumstances, I would have been capable of similar introspection. Kudos! --Xover (talk) 05:54, 4 April 2018 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: March 2018



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Books & Bytes - Issue 27

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Upcoming changes to wikitext parsing

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There will be some changes to the way wikitext is parsed during the next few weeks. It will affect all namespaces. You can see a list of pages that may display incorrectly at Special:LintErrors. Since most of the easy problems have already been solved at the English Wikipedia, I am specifically contacting tech-savvy editors such as yourself with this one-time message, in the hope that you will be able to investigate the remaining high-priority pages during the next month.

There are approximately 10,000 articles (and many more non-article pages) with high-priority errors. The most important ones are the articles with misnested tags and table problems. Some of these involve templates, such as infoboxes, or the way the template is used in the article. In some cases, the "error" is a minor, unimportant difference in the visual appearance. In other cases, the results are undesirable. You can see a before-and-after comparison of any article by adding ?action=parsermigration-edit to the end of a link, like this: http://en.wiki.x.io/wiki/Arthur_Foss?action=parsermigration-edit (which shows a difference in how {{infobox ship}} is parsed).

If you are interested in helping with this project, please see Wikipedia:Linter. There are also some basic instructions (and links to even more information) at http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/wikitech-ambassadors/2018-April/001836.html You can also leave a note at WT:Linter if you have questions.

Thank you for all the good things you do for the English Wikipedia. Whatamidoing (WMF) (talk) 21:18, 19 April 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 26 April 2018

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Could there be a Criticisms of physics page?

Hi, I'd like to respond to a comment of yours on Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Criticisms of medicine directly to you rather than on that page, since I already expressed my objections once to the calls from different directions to delete Criticisms of medicine for all sorts of reasons. I had had doubts about writing the Criticisms of medicine article in the first place -- because I anticipated that the response would be exactly what I'm now seeing on the deletion discussion -- but User:BullRangifer, a very experienced editor and strong opponent of CAM, suggested that I do so, and gave me helpful suggestions about revising my draft before posting it.

Yes, I think that an article Criticisms of physics (or, in the words of my original title, "Shortcomings of mainstream physics") would be worthwhile if enough RS could be found. I know there have been criticisms that physics is too much dominated by theory (for example, the Nobel prizes generally go to advances in foundational questions, not to anything practical -- although historians say that Alfred Nobel himself wanted his prize to benefit humans in the immediate sense and would not have been happy rewarding theory alone). Also, there's been a lot of criticism of "string theory" in physics on the grounds that it's not supported by experiment. Similarly for some other work in physics, such as "parallel universes"; and there's been some criticism of physicists for over-hyping quantum computing. But I wouldn't want to write such an article because, in the first place, I don't know the subject and don't know where good sources would be; and, in the second place, I have no doubt that many physicist editors would take offense, move it to WP:Articles for deletion within a few hours, and then find all sorts of reasons to support deletion. In other words, yes, perhaps there should be an article Criticisms of physics, but such an article would not be likely to survive the wrath of physicists.NightHeron (talk) 23:59, 2 May 2018 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: April 2018



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The Signpost: 24 May 2018

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Ping at ANI

Just a friendly tip. Your ping of me didn't work. You didn't get my username right when you posted, and you edited your own post to correct it, but you must correctly spell my username and sign at the same time for a ping to work. You didn't re-sign. That said, you seem to have managed just fine without me thanks to Swarm.--Bbb23 (talk) 23:56, 4 June 2018 (UTC)

Hmm, I thought I did re-sign, but good you found it anyway. Thanks, Carl Fredrik talk 11:18, 5 June 2018 (UTC)

Fraudolent material?

CFCF,

You wrote me a message in my talk page about the allegedly "fraudulent material" I inserted for the term "healthism". Could you please specify why you are considering my text a fraudulent material? I am a great fan of Wikipedia; still, I recognize that especially for social sciences a better job could be done. "Healthism" is classical example of that. It is a sociological concept, but the larger section is about the book of a physician (Skrabanek). Also, the sociologist at the centre of the final section, Nikolas Rose, never put at the centre of his reflections the concept of "healthism", and the quotation is actually fraudulent. When I saw that I tried just to ameliorate the text and to correct the mistakes. I am not an expert Wikipedia editor and I revised the text following the advice of a Wikipedia administrator, who made me notice that the first version had copyright problem. Anyway, you can verify any piece of information I gave in the earlier version. So, your sentence does make any sense to me. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mauroturrini (talk • contribs) 08:35, 6 June 2018 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: May 2018



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AN/I topic ban discussion

Could you drop by the thread you started at WP:AN/I#Topic banned user commenting on topic ban violation on said topic?

Ideally, you should probably endorse withdrawing your report (as the user you refer to wasn't actually under a topic ban at the time), but at the very least I would appreciate it if you confirmed that you had read and understood my most recent post. Thanks, TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:52, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

(It would also be a worthwhile gesture for you to apologize to Mathsci for your error.) TenOfAllTrades(talk) 20:54, 8 June 2018 (UTC)

Books & Bytes – Issue 28

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The Signpost: 29 June 2018

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Alternative medicine edits

That was quite a tour de force on Alternative medicine. I'm not quite sure I see how that was inspired by the unsourced edit I reverted, but jolly good show! — jmcgnh(talk) (contribs) 20:49, 16 June 2018 (UTC)

Good work -- but I notice that your edit at 10:44 on 10 May 2018 appeared to break a lot of references on the page. They remain broken: for some reason AnomieBot didn't fix them. T0mpr1c3 (talk) 18:33, 5 July 2018 (UTC)
Hmm, yeah that needs to be looked at. I don't have time until next week, but I'll put it on my to-do list. Carl Fredrik talk 13:39, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: June 2018



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Template:Protests against Trump footer has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 16:15, 13 July 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018

Facto Post – Issue 14 – 21 July 2018
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Plugging the gaps – Wikimania report

Officially it is "bridging the gaps in knowledge", with Wikimania 2018 in Cape Town paying tribute to the southern African concept of ubuntu to implement it. Besides face-to-face interactions, Wikimedians do need their power sources.

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Facto Post interviewed Jdforrester, who has attended every Wikimania, and now works as Senior Product Manager for the Wikimedia Foundation. His take on tackling the gaps in the Wikimedia movement is that "if we were an army, we could march in a column and close up all the gaps". In his view though, that is a faulty metaphor, and it leads to a completely false misunderstanding of the movement, its diversity and different aspirations, and the nature of the work as "fighting" to be done in the open sector. There are many fronts, and as an eventualist he feels the gaps experienced both by editors and by users of Wikimedia content are inevitable. He would like to see a greater emphasis on reuse of content, not simply its volume.

If that may not sound like radicalism, the Decolonizing the Internet conference here organized jointly with Whose Knowledge? can redress the picture. It comes with the claim to be "the first ever conference about centering marginalized knowledge online".

Plugbar buildup at the Hackathon
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MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 06:10, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Factual basis

Not being quite omniscient myself , I'm curious what facts caused you to conclude that an IP who posted a question about whether it's possible to be allergic to water, after reading an article on someone with a condition that is actually called water allergy, is trolling ("to attempt to lure others into combative argument for purposes of personal entertainment and/or gratuitous disruption") or engaging in Wikipedia:Civil POV pushing, rather than, you know, just asking a genuine question on a subject that he didn't happen to know very much about. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:31, 21 July 2018 (UTC)

Need help for WikiProject medicine

Brother!, I'm from Bangla Wikipedia. I copied WikiProject Medicine format for— bangla wikipedia উইকিপ্রকল্প চিকিৎসাবিদ্যা . Everything is working well but one Template Template:WPX member box is not working well in Bangla Wikipedia, link for Bangla wiki Template is টেমপ্লেট:WPX member box. English template produce a "preload template text" when user try to join the project or click the button "Join WikiProject" but in Bangla Template it's not producing the "Preload Template text"!. I tried but it's not working. Please help me to solve this problem. Arian Writing Talk 12:28, 26 July 2018 (UTC)

User:Harej will know how to manage these templates. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:49, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Arian Writing, the "add member" feature relies on a bot which at the moment only runs on English Wikipedia at the moment. Harej (talk) 16:53, 27 July 2018 (UTC)
Harej, Thank you brother!, I saw that the following wikiproject right now maintained by the Bot,But is there any process in which I can put the Template:WikiProjectCard in the edit box something like this screenshot when I'm clicking the button "Join WikiProject"?. Arian Writing Talk 18:19, 27 July 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 31 July 2018

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This Month in GLAM: July 2018



Headlines
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Nomination of Fake news for deletion

A discussion is taking place as to whether the article Fake news is suitable for inclusion in Wikipedia according to Wikipedia's policies and guidelines or whether it should be deleted.

The article will be discussed at Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Fake news (2nd nomination) until a consensus is reached, and anyone, including you, is welcome to contribute to the discussion. The nomination will explain the policies and guidelines which are of concern. The discussion focuses on high-quality evidence and our policies and guidelines.

Users may edit the article during the discussion, including to improve the article to address concerns raised in the discussion. However, do not remove the article-for-deletion notice from the top of the article. -GDP⇧ 04:26, 20 August 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018

Facto Post – Issue 15 – 21 August 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
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Back numbers are here.
Neglected diseases
Anti-parasitic drugs being distributed in Côte d'Ivoire
What's a Neglected Disease?, ScienceSource video

To grasp the nettle, there are rare diseases, there are tropical diseases and then there are "neglected diseases". Evidently a rare enough disease is likely to be neglected, but neglected disease these days means a disease not rare, but tropical, and most often infectious or parasitic. Rare diseases as a group are dominated, in contrast, by genetic diseases.

A major aspect of neglect is found in tracking drug discovery. Orphan drugs are those developed to treat rare diseases (rare enough not to have market-driven research), but there is some overlap in practice with the WHO's neglected diseases, where snakebite, a "neglected public health issue", is on the list.

From an encyclopedic point of view, lack of research also may mean lack of high-quality references: the core medical literature differs from primary research, since it operates by aggregating trials. This bibliographic deficit clearly hinders Wikipedia's mission. The ScienceSource project is currently addressing this issue, on Wikidata. Its Wikidata focus list at WD:SSFL is trying to ensure that neglect does not turn into bias in its selection of science papers.

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Books & Bytes – Issue 29

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 29, June – July 2018

Hindi, Italian and French versions of Books & Bytes are now available in meta!
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 16:02, 25 August 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 30 August 2018

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Invitation to participate in study

Hello,

I am E. Whittaker, I am working with Wikimedia’s Scoring Team to create a labeled dataset, and potentially a tool, to help editors deal with incivility when they encounter it on talk pages. A full write-up of the study can be found here: m:Research:Civil_Behavior_Interviews. We are currently recruiting editors to be interviewed about their experiences with incivility on talk pages. Would you be interested in being interviewed? I am contacting you because of your involvement in Wikipedia’s Women in Red project. The interviews should take ~1 hour, and will be conducted over BlueJeans (which does allow interviews to be recorded). If, so, please email me at ewhit@umich.edu in order to schedule an interview.

Thank you Ewitch51 (talk) 19:29, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:MThow

Template:MThow has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Frietjes (talk) 19:52, 31 August 2018 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: August 2018



Headlines
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Orphaned non-free image File:Hathitrustlogo.png

⚠
⚠

Thanks for uploading File:Hathitrustlogo.png. The image description page currently specifies that the image is non-free and may only be used on Wikipedia under a claim of fair use. However, the image is currently not used in any articles on Wikipedia. If the image was previously in an article, please go to the article and see why it was removed. You may add it back if you think that that will be useful. However, please note that images for which a replacement could be created are not acceptable for use on Wikipedia (see our policy for non-free media).

Note that any non-free images not used in any articles will be deleted after seven days, as described in section F5 of the criteria for speedy deletion. Thank you. --B-bot (talk) 17:21, 9 September 2018 (UTC)

Illustration

Dear Carl Fredrik, on the Danish wikipedia we have translated alternative medicine and also used your illustration File:Altmed function 2.svg. There has been a discussion of this illustration. Do you know if there exists a source for these 5 pathways by which alternative treatments "work"? If so, we would very much like to add this source as a reference in the caption.--Weblars (talk) 14:34, 17 September 2018 (UTC)

Facto Post – Issue 16 – 30 September 2018

Facto Post – Issue 16 – 30 September 2018
The Editor is Charles Matthews, for ContentMine. Please leave feedback for him, on his User talk page.
To subscribe to Facto Post go to Wikipedia:Facto Post mailing list. For the ways to unsubscribe, see the footer.
Back numbers are here.
The science publishing landscape

In an ideal world ... no, bear with your editor for just a minute ... there would be a format for scientific publishing online that was as much a standard as SI units are for the content. Likewise cataloguing publications would not be onerous, because part of the process would be to generate uniform metadata. Without claiming it could be the mythical free lunch, it might be reasonably be argued that sandwiches can be packaged much alike and have barcodes, whatever the fillings.

The best on offer, to stretch the metaphor, is the meal kit option, in the form of XML. Where scientific papers are delivered as XML downloads, you get all the ingredients ready to cook. But have to prepare the actual meal of slow food yourself. See Scholarly HTML for a recent pass at heading off XML with HTML, in other words in the native language of the Web.

The argument from real life is a traditional mixture of frictional forces, vested interests, and the classic irony of the principle of unripe time. On the other hand, discoverability actually diminishes with the prolific progress of science publishing. No, it really doesn't scale. Wikimedia as movement can do something in such cases. We know from open access, we grok the Web, we have our own horse in the HTML race, we have Wikidata and WikiJournal, and we have the chops to act.

Links
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The Signpost: 1 October 2018

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Precious anniversary

Precious
Two years!

--Gerda Arendt (talk) 06:10, 6 October 2018 (UTC)

This Month in GLAM: September 2018



Headlines
  • Albania report: Collections of Museums in Albania
  • Armenia report: GLAM+Wikidata
  • Australia report: WikiTour AU
  • Brazil report: Developing tGLAM: a landing-page generator for GLAM initiatives
  • France report: European Heritage Days; Linked data for archaeology; Paris: Edit-a-thon at Mobilier National
  • Germany report: History of Women and Democracy, Wikipedia-Culture-Ambassadors and two GLAM-on-Tour-stations in just four weeks
  • Macedonia report: Wiki camps in Macedonia
  • Malaysia report: Wikipedia for Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museum
  • Mexico report: Open GLAM Mexico 2018
  • Netherlands report: >20,000 press photographs 1940-1990 uploaded, GLAM Wiki Meeting, Aerial Photographs, GLAM-Wiki Manual & Wikipedia Course for Historical Societies
  • Norway report: Women in Red; Researhers Days 2018; The 2019 edition of #wikinobel
  • Poland report: Archival photographs and literary knowledge enrich Polish Wikipedia
  • Serbia report: Impact of GLAM seminars: Decentralization of GLAM activities
  • Sweden report: Wikidata P3595 Biografiskt lexikon för Finland; Student Project at the Nordic Museum; Learning about sources on Swedish Wikipedia
  • UK report: Botanical illustrations and Wiki Loves Monuments in Scotland
  • USA report: Back to school
  • Wikipedia Library report: Books & Bytes–Issue 30, August–September 2018
  • Wikidata report: Wikidata Tour Down Under
  • Calendar: October's GLAM events
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Books & Bytes, Issue 30

The Wikipedia Library

Books & Bytes
Issue 30, August – Septmeber 2018

  • Library Card translation
  • Spotlight: 1Lib1Ref spreads to the Southern Hemisphere and beyond
  • Wikimedia and Libraries User Group update
  • Global branches update
  • Bytes in brief

French version of Books & Bytes is now available in meta!
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Sent by MediaWiki message delivery on behalf of The Wikipedia Library team --MediaWiki message delivery (talk) 03:43, 25 October 2018 (UTC)

The Signpost: 28 October 2018

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