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On manuals of style and "consensus"

"I only added the (talk page stalker) to alert you to the fact that someone else was joining the conversation. Remind me not to extend you the courtesy in future." Oh, I thought that you meant that I was the "talk page stalker".
"In 2002 there was this version of Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layou" Sure, but, again, the obvious and valid justification for that original order does not exist anymore.
"You can denigrate the consensus process with scare quotes, but it's still project-wide consensus, and it is not optional at any editor's whim to ignore it." If a style rule is the consensus of the members of a WikiProject, then members of that project may feel obliged to respect it. But why should it be binding on other editors?
Again, WikiProjects do not "own" articles. This is not a spurious opinion: it follows from the most basic principles of Wikipedia. And from this it follows that WikiProjects do not have the "right" to define style rules for "their" articles. Sadly, there are many that do; and Wikiproject Medicine seems to be particularly abusive in this regard...
"Consensus" is not an absolute state. It must always be qualified as "consensus of" some group of people. It means that those people either wanted the decision, or grudgingly agreed to accept it because they concluded that further fighting for their choices would be pointless. So, whose consensus are the MOSes? I doubt that there is any MOS that is the consensus of more than a couple dozen editors...
"you'll need to raise the issue and get consensus at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Layout." That would be totally a waste of time. I know that from a long experience. It is an inherent flaw of Wikipedia's "consensus process": any complaints about problems such as bad policies, rules, habits, etc are invariably ignored, because they are only seen by the editors or administrators who created the problem -- who will be quite unwilling to fix it, if only out of laziness.
For instance, over 90% of the extant templates are harmful: they should not have been created, and should be phased out. But the only persons who read the Talk page of a template are the creators of that template.
There is a robot-assisted user who has decide to insert " " between numbers and units of measurements; which is against the "contents rather than appearance" principle, hogs the watchlists and histories and makes the source much harder to edit, while having a minuscule effect on article readability. But any complaints get read only by that user...
Years ago there was an effort by the Foundation to identify the factors that were causing a steady drop on the number of editors. A study was done with volunteers who were asked to edit articles for the first time. The study clearly identified that the biggest factor was the complexity of Wikipedia: the cryptic source and the billion style rules, templates, navbars, tags, procedures, tools, markups, categories, linkages, ... --- each with its own contrived syntax and semantics, with its baffling bugs and its crooked workarounds to the bugs. How can Wikipedia expect to attract new editors, if its "reference manual" (which is highly incomplete, buggy, and scattered over thousands of random places) is itself bigger than the Encyclopaedia Britannica?
But "of course" this finding of the study was completely ignored by the Foundation -- because fixing this problem would require discarding thousands of "features", including many pet projects of senior editors...
Anyway, After some 15 years ot frustration, I got tired of "going through the proper channels." All I can do now is, once in a while, to complain to the wind. Sorry for that, and all the best...--Jorge Stolfi (talk) 05:11, 7 July 2020 (UTC)

Jorge Stolfi, What were you expecting WMF to do about it?· · · Peter Southwood (talk): 14:46, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
@Jorge Stolfi: I was discussing other things with Whywhenwhohow and their talk page was still on my watchlist. It's often polite to add the {{tps}} tag when adding to a discussion on another editor's talk page and the use of "stalker" for the person adding the tag is not meant to be taken seriously.
I think you're still mistaking WikiProjects for the Manual of Style. As I said earlier, we don't accept that WikiProjects have any authority to create policy or guidelines and that is codified at WP:CONLOCAL

Consensus among a limited group of editors, at one place and time, cannot override community consensus on a wider scale. For instance, unless they can convince the broader community that such action is right, participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope. WikiProject advice pages, how-to and information pages, and template documentation pages have not formally been approved by the community through the policy and guideline proposal process, thus have no more status than an essay.

Wikipedia has a standard of participation and consensus for changes to policies and guidelines. Their stability and consistency are important to the community. Accordingly, editors often propose substantive changes on the talk page first to permit discussion before implementing the change. Bold changes are rarely welcome on policy pages. Improvements to policy are best made slowly and conservatively, with active efforts to seek out input and agreement from others.

The Manual of Style has been accepted by the community as a guideline and as with all policies and guidelines, editors are expected to abide by it, unless they have strong reasons not to. This is usually what WP:IAR permits, but IAR is only valid when you can show, beyond dispute, that the edit improves Wikipedia. You will not find that other editors will agree that placing external links before references improves the encyclopedia, and IAR is not applicable. The original reasons for placing external links at the bottom of an article (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Layout #cite note-5) apply just the same as they did in 2002.
Nobody has to learn all of the policies, guidelines and conventions before they start editing, because other editors, more familiar with those, can correct any mistakes that are made. That will only work, however, if editors are willing to accept that not everything will end in accord with their personal preferences. When you deliberately move an external links section above the references, simply because you think it's better that way, you are setting yourself up for an unnecessary conflict when another editor reverts your change because we have agreed, as a project, what the order should be.
There's no problem with you expressing your opinion when it contradicts a consensus, but you can't expect to be able to enforce your opinion if nobody else agrees with it. It is a shame that editors leave because they feel that the encyclopedia doesn't fit the way that they feel it should, but what's the alternative? You can't continue to improve the largest encyclopedia ever written if everybody can write whatever they want in whatever way pleases them. --RexxS (talk) 17:07, 7 July 2020 (UTC)
"We don't accept that WikiProjects have any authority to create policy or guidelines and that is codified at WP:CONLOCAL" Good to know, but some WikiProjects need to be reminded of that. But it is not sufficient that "participants in a WikiProject cannot decide that some generally accepted policy or guideline does not apply to articles within its scope". The reverse is equally important: they should not feel entitled to define additional rules for "their" articles.
A common instance of that abuse is when the Project decides to stick a navbox at the top right of every article in their "territory", with links to "their" other main articles. Such navboxes are not only useless, but they are a problem for articles that span the "domains" of two or more Projects: whose navbox should those articles get? And the top right corner should be reserved for a good image related to the article's subject.
Infoboxes are at least useful, and some do contain a good relevant picture of the article's subject; but, for most areas, 99% of the readers will not read any of the box data below hat image. The long infobox often messes up the layout of the first few sections, and violates one of the anti-goals of Wikipedia: "WP is not a database".
I mentioned WikProject Medicine as a particulary bad one. First of all, they decided that any chemical that is used as a medication "belongs" exclusively to them -- even in the case of chemicals like benzoyl peroxide and docusate that have many important non-medical uses. And of course they will stick their extra-long infobox on all "their" artcles.
Moreover, they decided that all "their" articles should strictly follow a peculiar order and format -- which makes the head section of all "their" articles objectively very bad in style and contents.
Not long ago,for instance, I spent many hours cleaning up one of "their" articles, only to see all my work reversed -- with no attempt to salvage any part of it -- for the only reason that my version did not strictly follow their mandatory order of paragraphs in the head seection.
I believe that recently there was even an intervention from Higher Up on one of the most obvious blemishes: the Project's requirement that the drug's price be specified in the head. That seems to be on the way out now; but there are still several other Project-required items that do not belong in the lead, like the "mandatory" mention of the WHO List, means of administration, side effects, and availability. That information should be further down, in the body of the article -- if at all. But just try fixing that...
On a higher level, WikiProject Medicine seems to have decided that "their" articles should be sort of a reference work for medical professionals or medical students. That too is a violation of Wikipedia's anti-goals -- "WP is not a textbook", "WP is not a manual" -- and is downright dangerous. People should not come to WP for that sort of information; they should go to official public health websites in their countries, or the WHO. While some of that information should be included in the article, it should not be presented in such detail and style as to mislead the readers into thinking that it should be trusted when taking decisions about their health.
"The original reasons for placing external links at the bottom of an article (Manual of Style/Layout note-5) apply just the same as they did in 2002." Again, I will not try to fight that rule. But I must insist that the reasons given in note 5 are quite weak or even nonsensical; and that the introduction of the <ref> ... </ref> mechanism invalidated them.
On a higher level, again, the first reason in that note assumes that consistency of layout is an important goal for Wikipedia. It should not be. Layout consistency was important for commercial paper ecyclopedias, for marketing and operational reasons. Those reasons followed from the fact that their creation was tightly managed: a few Chief Editors were expected to ensure that coverage was uniform over all areas, and to carefully check all articles for contents. Consistent layout and style would be a natural consequence of that work; and it would be the main visible evidence that could convince the prospective buyer that the information itself received the same level of competent care. But Wikipedia does not need to do that. In fact, it is salutar that its looks are rough and inconsistent, to remind the reader that the information is equally rough. "You should not try to look smarter than you are."...
All the best, --Jorge Stolfi (talk) 04:04, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Citation question

Hi, since you are a key player the Citation Bot debate, and my understanding of academic citation is limited, I'd like to understand the nature of the problem and was hoping you could help. Say for example citation #68 in Greenhouse gas which has 4 IDs (Bibcode, PMID, DOI, S2CID). The paper is open source and freely available, but there are no direct links in |url=. If I or another bot were to add |url=http://www.geol.umd.edu/~hcui/Reference/Hoffman98Science-Snowball.pdf to that citation -- what would happen to the 4 IDs, would they stay as is, be deleted, or would the URL be redundant and not recommended? Also, would there be a place or use for Fatcat.wiki [1] in this case? Thanks! -- GreenC 21:19, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

@GreenC: There is a considerable degree of agreement among a lot of editors that we should always, where possible, provide a link to an online source from the title of a citation. However, we currently have:
  • Hoffmann, PF; AJ Kaufman; GP Halverson; DP Schrag (1998). "A neoproterozoic snowball earth". Science. 281 (5381): 1342–46. Bibcode:1998Sci...281.1342H. doi:10.1126/science.281.5381.1342. PMID 9721097. S2CID 13046760.
That has no link from the title "A neoproterozoic snowball earth".
So, we could add the link that you suggest to the title like this:
Now, that allows anyone who is unfamiliar with those identifiers (i.e. the vast majority of readers) to follow the title link that they expect to be there and reach an online version of the source.
Unfortunately, if we do that, the next time CitationBot visits the page, it will remove the link that we just added. I'm not asking for the bot to add those titles links, I'm just asking that it doesn't remove those that exist and impose its programmed view of what shouldn't be linked over the view of an editor who has put the link there for a reason. It doesn't have approval or consensus to remove title links, and it needs to stop doing that if it is to be usable again. I hope that clarifies the problem that I found. --RexxS (talk) 16:05, 13 July 2020 (UTC)
Got it, thank you for taking the time to explain. Is there (theoretical) consensus bots could be adding a |url= where it can discover the open source URL, like in this case? Or is the |url= field contested enough ground bots should probably be not be adding URLs when IDs exist? -- GreenC 19:27, 14 July 2020 (UTC)
@GreenC: if you have a read through Wikipedia:Village pump (proposals)/Archive 167 #Auto-linking titles in citations of works with free-to-read DOIs, I think you'll see considerable support for the premise that readers expect to be able to use a link from the citation title. There's also a strong sentiment that it would be desirable for the CS1 template to create those title links whenever it can be deduced from an identifier, especially when a free, full-text version is available. Ideally, imho, any identifier to an online source should automatically create the title link, which would free up the |url= for editors to override the automatic link for some uncommon exceptions.
So, I don't think there's much point in trying to use a bot to add |url= in order to create a title link, as that functionality ought to be in the CS1 template code. Eventually, we ought to be able to converge to a situation where a bot can legitimately remove |url= when it merely duplicates the title link that is already being automatically added by the template code. We would then only have |url= in cases where there is a positive decision by an editor to override the automatic link, and I'd suggest having a tracking category for those, so that they can be kept under review. I hope all that makes sense. --RexxS (talk) 20:56, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Two things

  1. I'm losing it: I went to Talk:Rexx and spent about two minutes trying to figure out why your user talk page looked like an article talk page.
  2. Is there an existing magic word, parser function, template, module, script, or anything, that you know of, where I can input a revision ID number and it outputs the timestamp of that revision? Thanks, Levivich [dubious – discuss] 19:11, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
@Levivich: I'm not aware of any existing magic word, etc. that does the job you want. The parser function {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:Page name}}, documented at mw:Help:Magic words #Technical metadata of another page can only use page titles as far as I can tell.
However, the information is retrievable using the Wikimedia API which has scattered documentation starting at mw:API:Main page. In essence, you make a request to a webpage which processes the request and returns the information. Follow this link for example:
The revision id I used is for Special:Permalink/968181989, which was your edit to this page.
You can make it return plain text like this:
To make it into a usable tool, it would need to be dressed up in some code that read a revision id, made the call to the API, and then extracted the timestamp from the plaintext and output it. If it was okay to use an external webserver, it could be programmed in php or python or whatever. If you wanted to use it within a Wikipedia page, it would best be programmed in JavaScript which you would need to put into your common.js page. It's too late tonight to knock that together, but I could look at your preferred alternative over the weekend, if you let me know.
Optionally, one of the page watchers might be aware of a script/gadget that already exists to do the job, and might be able to point you to that, which would be quicker. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:46, 17 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks, Rexx, the info about the API is very helpful. I was basically looking for something that would work like {{REVISIONTIMESTAMP:Special:Permalink/968181989}} (which doesn't work). I'm thinking if it can only be done by script and not template then maybe the best way to package it is into something that works like WP:EASYLINK (which, if you're not familiar, converts the URL of the page you're looking at into a wikilink and copies the wikilink into your clipboard so it can be pasted elsewhere... makes linking to pages/sections very easy). A "diff link" script could get the rev ID from the URL, call the API to get the timestamp, and put it in the clipboard as a wikilink. So if you're looking at Special:Permalink/968181989 and click "diff link", it would put into your clipboard [[Special:Permalink/968181989|19:11, July 17, 2020]] so when you hit CTRL+V it pops out 19:11, July 17, 2020. A quick and easy way to link diffs. Still, if this doesn't already exist, I'm not sure if it's worth bothering any other editors (like you) over it, as it's a minor convenience and not a really important thing; I might play around with putting together a script at some point. Levivich [dubious – discuss] 06:01, 18 July 2020 (UTC)

Thank you

Thank you for attempting to work with the editor regarding Akathisia before blocking becomes necessary. It seems to me like they're attempting to POV push, but I also recognize that the article may very well be missing information that is understood by some to be accurate, thus if we can convince them to work with us it may be a net positive even if it's hard. bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 02:10, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@Berchanhimez: you're welcome. I've just left a few notes on the talk page as well. In all of these cases, the best plan is to go back and compile a list of the sources, pick the best quality ones and read them thoroughly, then sling the rest. There are several editors offering suggestions, so perhaps one or two will be willing to take on the task of revamping the article. Thanks for your endeavours. --RexxS (talk) 02:25, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Today

July
pale globe-thistle above the Rhine

Today is a birthday, of a great woman born in the 19th century, flowers and music and memory, - good song about the year at its height even on the Main page. - Thank you for all you do, such as the little precious template that makes each of my days easier! --Gerda Arendt (talk) 09:51, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

More archiving magic foo...?

Can you make Talk:Lipizzan auto archive every 180 days or so? There’s an archive but it’s manual, I think. Need to make old dead discussions go away sometimes. Montanabw(talk) 22:24, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

@Montanabw:  Done. The bot will do a pass in the near future, but let me know if that doesn't happen in the next week. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:17, 23 July 2020 (UTC)

Remove protection from Kingdom of Jeypore

Hey, can you please remove protection from Kingdom of Jeypore. I would like to fix the article, it’s inaccurate & filled with misinformation. Students and researchers must be using this article in our country, by blocking the editing you are taking away their right of right information. Hattershush (talk) 22:28, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

@Hattershush: You are welcome to suggest any changes you think would improve the article on its talk page, along with the reliable sources that support your proposals. As far as I can see, all of the information on the present page is reliably sourced, so I'm at a loss to understand how your students and researchers are reading anything not already published in those sources. I simply reject your assertion that my protection of the page removes any rights your students and researchers have here. Perhaps you can quote the legislation that provides them with the particular rights you claim are being denied, and I'll have a better chance of being able to address that. --RexxS (talk) 23:10, 26 July 2020 (UTC)

User you blocked

A user you (partially) blocked from editing akathisia has continued to attempt to insert their POV in other pages, still with no source, and still with no talk page discussion prior. Please see here for example. I would prefer not engaging them again as it's clear they won't listen to me, but if you could possibly look into it I'd appreciate it. Thanks. bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 01:15, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

@Berchanhimez: Thanks for spotting that. Our most precious resource is editor time, and I see no need to waste any more of it on that user. I've indeffed them for disruptive editing. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 03:28, 27 July 2020 (UTC)

Hinokitiol

So papers like that are primary sources and don't fill the bill. Maybe I can revert the next one. Thanks, --Deepfriedokra (talk) 13:34, 8 July 2020 (UTC)

@Deepfriedokra: I checked the first few and found three of them were different formats of the same paper:
If you look at a PubMed version pmid:18922875 and scroll down to Publication types, you see "Research support". That's a good indication of a primary study, although not infallible. But a quick look at the text, which starts "We have discovered ...", and you can see that it's not a review. As soon as there are claims for the effect of a drug on the body, or its mechanism, we really need quality secondary sources from good academic publishers. You can always point folks to WP:MEDRS if they need a full explanation.
Hinokitiol is currently being hyped quite strongly, presumably by pharma, because of the current climate of desperation to find effective remedies for COVID-19. No doubt it won't subside for some time. --RexxS (talk) 13:54, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
Time for a formal SPI ? That is now four accounts, two blocked. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: I don't think so. The last one, Special:Contributions/Amugune has a broad span of interests; they definitely aren't an SPA, and have no detectable POV. Compare that with Special:Contributions/Georgedouglas123 and you can see exactly where the latter account is coming from. The previous IP, Special:Contributions/82.132.185.208 was simply angry with me for reverting the codswallop they had inserted into Buoyancy and decided to revert me at Hinokitiol in retaliation. I think we got the main culprits earlier, thanks to the notification at WT:MED. I suggest we see if we get any more problems before we bother the checkusers. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 14:55, 8 July 2020 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: Since then, I've had another couple of new-ish editors trying to insert the same dodgy content using the same dodgy sources, so I'm trying an alternative approach. I've just requested page protection for Hinokitiol, so it will be interesting to see if another, uninvolved admin sees the same problems. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 22:43, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for keeping me informed ... watch the calendar so we don't go stale :0 I'm busy cleaning up yukky paid editing-- sheesh. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:55, 16 July 2020 (UTC)
Just came across this in the new pages feed. Sigh. Spicy (talk) 11:46, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
@Spicy: Thanks for spotting that. I've been through the article and stripped out all of the biomedical content sourced to news reports and primary sources. That left two sentences (and they're a bit dubious). Thank you for also sending it to Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Zinc and Hinokitiol synergism. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
I thought you may be interested in this - a job ad for Hinokitiol appeared on Upwork in early July, and they hired the banned editor User:Barkaat Ahmad. That job is hidden, but since then they've hired at least 15 other editors to translate the version that was posted here (prior to the recent edits bringing it back in line with MEDRS) to different language Wikipedias, including Bulgarian, Serbain and Albanian. My guess is that Barkaat Ahmad was one of those who made recent changes, but I'm not sure if there's anything we can do from here for the other languages. This is the most Wikipedia editing jobs I've ever seen from one group in such a short time. - Bilby (talk) 23:31, 29 July 2020 (UTC)
The original mess is translated to every language I checked, including the copyvio. I removed it from Spanish. Not a good investment: [2] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:27, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Copyvio for revdel ... multiple, but see paragraph beginning with Chemist Martin Burke ... http://en.wiki.x.io/w/index.php?title=Hinokitiol&diff=prev&oldid=957755138#A_Promising_Future SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:22, 30 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks Sandy. I've revdeleted all of the content containing the copyvio from https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/molecule-of-the-week/archive/h/hinokitiol.html. What a mess. --RexxS (talk) 16:06, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

I did an insource search for "hinokitiol" and then did a bit of clean-up on a few other articles Ionophore, Thujaplicin and Martin D. Burke. We're probably clean of hinokitiol-promo for now. --RexxS (talk) 16:52, 30 July 2020 (UTC)

Message

I left you a message here [3] please take a look when you get a chance.GizzyCatBella🍁 14:27, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I've seen it, thanks. I need a little time to research the background before commenting at WP:AE. --RexxS (talk) 14:47, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

New article

Howdy, I hope all is well with you. If you get a moment and want to look over User:Berchanhimez/sandbox/depot for me, I'd appreciate it. I have not crafted the lede section yet, and I'm still working on the pharmacokinetics section (aside from three tables someone else had created that I found), but I'm wondering if it is "complete enough" to go ahead and move to an article so I can start linking from other articles/etc or whether you think it may need some more work first. Thanks in advance if you're able to, and if not no worries. bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 14:59, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

I've left you a set of notes at User talk:Berchanhimez/sandbox/depot. Hope you find them helpful. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:48, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

WP:MED Newsletter - August 2020

Issue 3—August 2020


WikiProject Medicine Newsletter


Despite continued tumult in the real world, the show–and the newsletter–must go on at WP:MED. As always your comments, concerns, and ideas are welcome at the newsletter talk page (and at WT:MED). Here is what's happening this month:

Newly recognized content

Buruli ulcer nom. Ajpolino, reviewed by Tom (LT)
Pantothenic acid nom. David notMD, reviewed by HaEr48








Nominated for review

Parkinson's disease At featured article review. Discussion here
Prostate nom. Tom (LT), under review by Dunkleosteus77
Niacin nom. David notMD, under review by Ajpolino
Willis J. Potts nom. Larry Hockett
Dimple nom. MonkeyStolen234
Atul Gawande nom. Vrrajkum, under review by BennyOnTheLoose
Louise Bourgeois Boursier nom. Doug Coldwell
Ureter nom. Tom (LT), under review by Dunkeosteus77
Anatomical terms of location nom. Tom (LT)
Antibiotic sensitivity testing nom. Tom (LT)

News from around the site

  • If you've got the time, please review a GA nomination (criteria/instructions). Nominations currently sit two months before review. Let's aim for a month or less.
  • Starting July 3rd, the WMF's "Wikipedia" social media accounts will highlight an "article of the week". If you've got the bandwidth, you can watchlist Social media/Article of the week (on meta) where they'll post the article around a day ahead of time for us to clean up. You can also suggest articles to highlight.
  • A new sister project has been approved by the WMF Board: Abstract Wikipedia.

Discussions of interest

  • Several medicine-related FAs promoted 5+ years ago could use a review and update. An effort to organize our efforts is at WT:MED.
  • A large university class is working on medicine-related articles this month. They're largely focused on articles with maintenance tags. The students are working in small groups and posting their goals at each talk page. Consider watchlisting some of the assigned articles and helping the students (and us regulars) have a positive experience.
  • Tom (LT) is spearheading an effort to clean up and organize medicine-related templates, resulting in many active TfD discussions. See a list of active TfDs at WP:MED/Article alerts.

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!

Under the Wikimedia Research Spotlight

Number of academic papers focused on Wikipedia's health content each year

This month's Wikimedia Research Showcase was on the topic "Medical knowledge on Wikipedia". It featured two presentations from invited academics (link).

First, Denise Smith (Mcbrarian) at McMaster and Western Universities received a WMF grant to review the academic literature on "Wikipedia as a health resource". She found 89 papers on the topic, most of which aim to assess our health content's accuracy, comprehensiveness, or readability. Findings vary, but are complicated by poor comparators (e.g. Wikipedia vs. a surgery textbook), the fluidity of content (research becomes dated quickly), and attempts to generalize to "health content" with no discussion of how our content is a patchwork of articles in vastly different states. The remaining papers fall into one of three categories: the use of Wikipedia as (1) a general medical resource, (2) a tool for health education, or (3) a tool for research. Interesting papers in each group, but I'll leave further exploration to the reader. There's a general trend of more papers on this topic over time; Smith is hopeful the stigma towards Wikipedia in academia and healthcare could be eroding. With any luck, her review will help orient academics as they consider studying our content. For more, see her paper in PLoS ONE.

Second, Giovanni Colavizza at the University of Amsterdam sought to assess the reliability and comprehensiveness of our covid-19 coverage by studying our citations. He collected the ~3k citations in our covid articles and compared them to the ~160k total papers on covid/coronaviruses. He found we disproportionately cite articles in more reputable journals, as well as articles that are highly cited, mentioned on Twitter, downloaded on Mendeley, etc. We disfavor citing preprints. To investigate the comprehensiveness of our citations across topics, he used the titles and abstracts of all covid papers to cluster them into five broad topical groups. He finds our citations to each group largely match its proportion in the total literature, with some exceptions (we overcite molecular biology and epidemics papers relative to their proportion in the literature, and undercite clinical medicine and public health papers). One might assume this means our coverage of covid-19 is fairly balanced to the broad topics of the literature. For more, see Colavizza's slide deck and biorxiv preprint.

For the time/interest constrained, see summaries from the authors and from WhatamIdoing.

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) 20:37, 1 August 2020 (UTC)

Paragraphs

After thirteen years of not knowing anything about this, I now find I am in the habit of using the same number of colons on the blank line between paragraphs.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 19:23, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

@Vchimpanzee: you're a star! Screen reader users will love you. --RexxS (talk) 19:44, 2 August 2020 (UTC)
I don't think it was there before, or I didn't see it, but I think this is what you said to do and now it is in the directions for indenting on talk pages.— Vchimpanzee • talk • contributions • 20:11, 2 August 2020 (UTC)

18.4%

I did not mean to say that it killed 18.4% of people over 80. Rather, I meant to say that it killed 18.4% of cases in cases over 80 years old

@4thfile4thrank: That's not what the source says. Please learn to sign your posts. --RexxS (talk) 15:43, 4 August 2020 (UTC)
@4thfile4thrank: I've only read the summary and scanned the rest, but all I can see is that "...estimates of the proportion of infected individuals likely to be hospitalised increased with age up to a maximum of 18·4% (11·0–37·6) in those aged 80 years or older." Hospitalised isn't dead. Boing! said Zebedee (talk) 16:23, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Edit war accusation

How did I edit war? "An edit war occurs when editors who disagree about the content of a page repeatedly override each other's contributions". I took it to discussion and only reverted it once? How is this an edit war?

@4thfile4thrank: You twice inserted the same incorrect content into a highly-visible article under general sanctions, and now you want to argue about whether you are edit-warring? You need to read WP:CIR. --RexxS (talk) 17:52, 4 August 2020 (UTC)

Jaydoggmarco

Jaydoggmarco (talk · contribs · deleted contribs · logs · filter log · block user · block log) Testing behavioral policy enforcement, perhaps? [4] --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:42, 5 August 2020 (UTC)

Quite possibly, thanks for the heads-up. The problem with being able to take decisive action in these sort of cases is the lack of discussion on the relevant article talk page(s). I know it's a hassle, but if you always open a discussion on the article talk, the moment you revert, you put the onus on a problematical editor to actually justify their edits. Subsequently, if you get deadlock on the talk page about a source's reliability, posting at RSN will often result in a situation where you're not just in a one-vs-one argument. I understand you already know all that, but I just wanted to ensure if I do take admin action, I've got a solid case to defend if it gets challenged. I promise I'm keeping an eye on the present situation. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 18:44, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Much appreciated. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 19:23, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
He only made one edit. I don't get your overreaction.2600:1700:BFA1:AEB0:B960:7AF:BB57:4A82 (talk) 23:13, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Sock/meatpuppet? --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 16:00, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
Not worth an SPI, so no way of knowing. They've been around for a while, though: see their contributions. They are interested in conspiracy theories involving the CIA and are currently engaged in an edit war at Kiki Camarena, where Jaydoggmarco is involved. See Talk:Kiki Camarena #Recent edits (May 2020) and nearby threads. --RexxS (talk) 16:47, 6 August 2020 (UTC)
(talk page watcher) Reversion of removal of challenged content on a WP:BLP? --Deepfriedokra (talk) 23:19, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
Yep, and seems to be a habit. --Hipal/Ronz (talk) 03:23, 6 August 2020 (UTC)

User Smartbash

Hello RexxS, user Smartbash was requested (multiple times) to disclose link(s) to all active accounts at websites where they advertise paid Wikipedia-editing services but, instead of replying, they removed the paid disclosure from their user page. Can you please take a look? Thank you, GSS 💬 05:13, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Category:Short description with empty Wikidata description has been nominated for deletion

Category:Short description with empty Wikidata description has been nominated for deletion. A discussion is taking place to decide whether this proposal complies with the categorization guidelines. If you would like to participate in the discussion, you are invited to add your comments at the category's entry on the categories for discussion page. Thank you. Fram (talk) 12:04, 7 August 2020 (UTC)

Nomination for deletion of Template:OnlyOffline

Template:OnlyOffline has been nominated for deletion. You are invited to comment on the discussion at the template's entry on the Templates for discussion page. Tom (LT) (talk) 04:36, 8 August 2020 (UTC)

Greetings and Semantic Scholar

Hello RexxS! It's been years. We met in D.C. at Wikimania in 2012, and I used to be involved with WPMEDF. But no worries if you don't recall! Anyhow, I'm contacting you because I saw you posted on this thread. I have to say, I do not like this whole citation bot linking to Semantic Scholar bit. I also don't like the aforementioned thread because I feel like the original idea has been generated without sufficient community oversight. It appears as a sneaky backdoor tactic to drive internet traffic in a COI-y way. I'm pinging User:Ocaasi in case he wants to take a look too. I've posted at WT:MED about this previously.[5] A recent edit to DVT added quite a few links to Semantic Scholar. The only one I have investigated thus far (partially because I feel there's no consensus for these links in the first place -- and I feel it's an unfair burden to research this repeatedly -- including having to type out these kinds of posts and do research about them -- when I'd rather just focus on article content) was to this paper cited on the DVT article. As I see it, there's only one link to a PDF that I would imagine is a copyright violation. I suppose that could help someone verify the content. But is that was a Wikipedia citation is supposed to be used for? We now value ease of verifiability so highly that we link to sites that contain links to presumed copyright violations? Of course this is just a theoretical. I'd imagine no human is actually doing that anyhow. I kind of "own" DVT and my observation is that no one else does the same level of research and edits to add sources and prose that I've been able to scrap together over the years in my attempt to keep it updated. To give you context about why I find this frustrating: these days to save time (I have so little right now) I largely don't even add edit summaries anymore when I edit DVT, and I hope to get it published in the WikiJournal of Medicine. Best wishes, and I hope you're doing well. Biosthmors (talk) 01:03, 31 July 2020 (UTC)

Hi Biosthmors I do remember you well, both from Wikimania DC and from all your work with WPMEDF (now a thematic organisation using the name Wikimedia Medicine!) – I hope you're keeping well.
I share your unease with Semantic Scholar, principally because I worry about copyright violation. It's certainly a desirable goal to make full text available if it can't be easily reached elsewhere, but not at the expense of possibly breaching someone's copyright. Nevertheless, the community seem to accept it, although it was introduced with very little discussion by a group of bot operators on the assumption that it was a good thing. I'm also concerned about the effect that decisions made by a small group to extend a bot's functionality can have on a huge number of articles. We need a better system of checks and balances for bot operation but until a sufficiently large number of editors become concerned, there's very little that a handful of us can do.
Please keep in touch when you're not too busy and let me know if there's ever anything I can do for you at the article level. I'd love to get a break from mending broken things and do some more article building again. --RexxS (talk) 14:45, 31 July 2020 (UTC)
Thanks for the kind note RexxS! I was thinking that a formal discussion or RfC might be needed on the topic because I would imagine it's more than a small minority of people who would be concerned by this expansion of citation bot's use, but maybe I'm wrong. Things are going pretty well here. I've started medical school here in the states, so that's one reason why I'm so busy at the moment. Also I'm a husband and father now. I can't complain. As for article work, it might not be fun, but if you're interested, there's a lot of prose, content, and sources that I cite at DVT that could be used at pulmonary embolism (PE) and venous thromboembolism (VTE), since DVT and PE are just two manifestations of one disease process, VTE. I've hesitated to "spread myself thin" by doing this, because I've been focused on polishing DVT over the years, but that's an idea for you in case you're interested! The PE page seems to consistently get higher page views that the DVT page (or the VTE page I believe) so perhaps that would be the best target. I've always hoped to get PE looking good after working on DVT, but I haven't gotten there yet! Best wishes. Biosthmors (talk) 01:24, 9 August 2020 (UTC)

Hi RexxS, sorry to bother, but you're the first medicine-interested admin that comes to mind. I was happily cleaning up Mycobacterium ulcerans the other day when I thought some of the existing wording seemed a bit fishy. I plugged it into Earwig's and lo-and-behold nearly the whole article was copy/pasted from a 2000 WHO report. I went to check when the material was copy/pasted, and it goes back to SEPTEMBER 2006! The copy/paste is the first substantive edit to the page (the previous edit created the page as a redirect)! In a tizzy, I posted at WT:Copyright problems and was gently guided to re-post at the more appropriate Wikipedia:Copyright problems/2020 August 9 but it seems like there's quite a backlog there. I'm not sure what the normal course of action here is. I don't think I've ever seen a copyvio that stood for so long. So a penny for your thoughts? I'd like to clear this up so I could go back to editing the page. Thanks in advance for your guidance! I hope you're staying well! Best, Ajpolino (talk) 00:23, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

You Need to RFA ;) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:22, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
@Ajpolino: Thanks for the heads-up, but there's not much for me to do right now. You've followed all the right steps by removing the suspected copyright-violating content from the article, posting a report at WP:CP and placing the warning notice on the article. It's a bit late for me tonight, but I'll look again tomorrow, although one or more of our copyright specialists like Diannaa might have dealt with it already by then. As it's been in place since 2006, it probably won't be a problem to give it a day or two for the investigation. After that's sorted you'll be able to get back to cleaning up the article. In the meantime, I found https://www.who.int/buruli/resources/who_cds_cpe_gbui_2000.1/en/ which you might want to check to see if it's the same as the document you suspect is the original source. If so, you can probably then summarise that to replace the excised content. Please let me know if you run into any problems. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 02:33, 11 August 2020 (UTC)
Cases that are listed at WP:CP normally stay on the page at least one week before being cleaned. I have downloaded a copy of the WHO report but I am unable to search within the document to check whether there's any overlap. Beats me how you checked it against that document using Earwig either. So I won't be able to help check that particular document. Hut 8.5 has confirmed there is indeed overlap, so it must be a quirk of my laptop. The current version has a lot of overlap with this paper which is copyright, and the 2006 big edit has a lot of overlap with this one. At the bottom of that big edit, the person who added it says it's a copy of their thesis. I have added my findings at WP:CP.— Diannaa (talk) 04:15, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

WP:ANI#Александр_Мотин_reported_by_Zefr

Hi RexxS, I have moved the AIV report to WP:ANI#Александр_Мотин_reported_by_Zefr. Perhaps it is no longer relevant or dealt with already; you might like to comment. Thanks and best regards, ~ ToBeFree (talk) 20:35, 11 August 2020 (UTC)

Page-level sanctions

Re. the page level sanctions you added at Talk:Gam-COVID-Vac, you probably want to add that into the editnotice as well. {{Gs/editnotice}} isn't really ready for usage, so I guess some kind of generic notice banner with the info would work. ProcrastinatingReader (talk) 16:57, 12 August 2020 (UTC)

@ProcrastinatingReader: I created Template:Editnotices/Page/Gam-COVID-Vac at the same time as I added the sanction. I used {{COVID19 GS editnotice}} per the instructions. That template currently only takes a |expiry= parameter, so isn't capable yet of displaying page-specific sanctions. I'll hack it now to allow for that. --RexxS (talk) 17:39, 12 August 2020 (UTC)
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