Merge proposal edit

Brachial plexus injuries are, in essence, traumatic lesions of the plexus. x.qz (talk) 17:04, 17 March 2009 (UTC)Reply

I am inclined to concur that it would be advantageous to merge the two articles (Brachial plexus injury and Brachial plexus lesion. On reviewing the two articles, I considered finding and adding citations for both articles, and then seeing where that led. However, I found it easier to start with the Brachial plexus lesion article for no other reason than that it had a handy structure. I therefore worked on the lesion article, and then sought to incorporate relevant text from the injury article. Having done this, I added citation tags to the injury article, to prompt input which can be utilised in any subsequent merger. In the lesion article, have cited only material at hand, and if I haven't physically read it while doing this exercise, I've added a citation tag. This doesn't mean I doubt the veracity (nor in the injury article). It means only that I don't have the citation ready-to-hand.

I would suggest keeping the Brachial plexus lesion article for no other reason than that it has some structure which facilitated further expansion, including input from the injury article. I hope this is of some help.Wotnow (talk) 16:08, 8 October 2009 (UTC)WotnowReply

I have now fleshed the Brachial plexus injury article out, adding citations, links, comments and sections, thus providing some structure. I would suggest this article is now at a point for comparison with the Brachial plexus lesion article. I am still of the opinion that perhaps the lesion article should be the one to remain. Nevertheless, the exercise of fleshing out the injury article has helped to identify useful information, hence the utility of the exercise.Wotnow (talk) 03:04, 9 October 2009 (UTC)WotnowReply

I agree with everything above. How much time/discussion needs to pass before a merge is officially initiated? Josconklin (talk) 05:09, 9 October 2009 (UTC)Reply

Articles now essentially identical, and ready for merge edit

In answer to Joscon, I'm not aware of any specific time-frame other than the act of being reasonable. So if there is much discussion to be had, this should be allowed. If on the other hand, there appears not to be a demand for discussion, and/or if the opportunity presents itself to do a merge before moving on to further article improvements, I would think the idea would be to proceed forthwith.

I have now updated both this Brachial plexus lesion article, and the Brachial plexus injury article so that they are identical apart from the article name. This should make it easy to merge. The only question will be which article is merged into which. I would suggest that the answer to that is whichever term is used most commonly. I have the impression from this exercise that perhaps the term 'injury' is used more commonly than 'lesion'. I note too that the ICD system uses the term injury. Obviously, the article can still be improved upon. However, it may be prudent to do a merge sooner rather than later, while the text in both is identical.Wotnow (talk) 10:44, 11 October 2009 (UTC)Wotnow.Reply