Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, Great floors! Welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. You may benefit from following some of the links below, which will help you get the most out of Wikipedia. If you have any questions you can ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and ask your question there. Please remember to sign your name on talk pages by clicking or by typing four tildes "~~~~"; this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you are already excited about Wikipedia, you might want to consider being "adopted" by a more experienced editor or joining a WikiProject to collaborate with others in creating and improving articles of your interest. Click here for a directory of all the WikiProjects. Finally, please do your best to always fill in the edit summary field when making edits to pages. Happy editing! Alexbrn (talk) 11:42, 21 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions at Vegan nutrition. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.
If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to lose editing privileges. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a loss of editing privileges. Thank you. Alexbrn (talk) 11:50, 21 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Hi Alexbrn. This is a lie. You accuse me of "repeatedly reverting or undoing"". I've only made 12 edits, and one was a revert. Please try to improve Wikipedia instead instantly reverting when you see a new editor and then making false accusations. Thanks for the "welcome". Great floors (talk) 11:54, 21 October 2016 (UTC)Reply
Hi, I'm a bit confused by your criteria for deleting stuff. Summaries like "Per WP:[insert policy here]" are better than nothing, but if there's a sentence about a study on how different doses affected some bodily function, how can someone know if you're going to delete it?
I'm very glad to see someone else is willing to put work into the article, so this isn't a criticism but I've got stuff to add to the article and I'll only put in the effort if I can know the criteria for whether my effort will be deleted. Can you let me know? Thanks. Great floors (talk) 19:03, 9 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Great floors - thanks for the cordial comments. WP:MEDRS is the guide for sourcing content pertaining to human nutrition, health and diseases. Please read the section under "Basic advice". The content I removed from the Choline article did not comply with MEDRS and in fact was primary research, i.e., preliminary studies which do not allow conclusions suitable for an encyclopedia. Some of the removed content drew from different sources to reach an unwarranted, unconfirmed conclusion; WP:SYNTH. Feel free to ask further questions or try out drafts on me first. Thanks. --Zefr (talk) 19:57, 9 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Ok, so I've read some of the policy now. So, the ideal reference is a paper that's published in a respected journal, where said paper reviews the existing papers, (without reporting on any new research) and is written by people who are not connected to those who wrote the existing papers.
For choline, from my brief searches, there aren't many such papers. Especially not for the number of topics that can be discussed in relation to choline (dose for normal liver function, relation to TMAO, relation to cancer, effect on cardio vascular risk, pregnancy...).
And indeed, now that you've deleted the paragraphs that used primary sources, there's almost no information about health (except for the two big, verbose sections, "Pregnancy and brain development" and "Choline and lactation", which I don't feel like wading into). And the few sentences that are left are almost all backed up by writings involving one person, Steven H. Zeisel. (Even the Linus Pauling webpage has him as an author.) This can't be the goal.
So for such situations where peer-reviewed second sources are rare, how can we still get info (and diversity of sources) into the article?
Parts of papers where the authors discuss the existing literature. For example, this paper's findings would be a primary source, but the first paragraph of the section titled "Identification of dietary phosphatidylcholine metabolites as markers for increased CVD risk" just discusses the findings of existing papers.
Include primary research (like the study on 60 Mexican Americans) and note that it's unreviewed research, or put it in a section for recent-and-still-to-be-reviewed research?
I'm going to take some time off editing, so an urgent reply isn't needed, but my goal for this article will be to make it more informative, so advice on the right ways to do this would be appreciated. Great floors (talk) 22:14, 9 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Tertiary sources such as well-respected textbooks can also be used if you have access. We do sometimes to have to wait for new secondary sources to emerge to give us a high-quality source to reference when adding certain types of information so the waiting game may be pertinent in this case (though I haven't done a search myself to see how many review articles are out there on the topic). What information do you need a secondary source for that you're unable to find? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 22:30, 9 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Thanks to both for replies. I'll separate them to reply to TylerDurden8823's question first. What I'd like to add (if initial research confirms that sufficient scientific/expert authorities support it), but don't have secondary sources for, is that many experts think 550mg/day is not necessary (not needed to be "adequate"), that such high levels seem harmful, and that this 550 figure has very little (and flawed) research behind it. That's what I'd like to try to draft a text about but I haven't given it a try yet because when I came to this article I found a lot of mistakes in the other direction with 550mg/day being labelled as "necessary" (which no government actually claims), and further that 550 may be "less than the optimal intake", and even a few claims of choline benefits that simply weren't at all in the referenced papers. So my edits so far were just to get the article to reflect the studies and government policies it already linked to.
One usable source that supports the idea that 550 might not at all be necessary is that the US DRI (the official US document where the 550 figure is published) says "it may be that the choline requirement can be met by endogenous synthesis at some of these stages", so a dietary intake of zero may also be fine. But my goal today isn't to defend a proposal for the article to say the 550 figure doesn't convince many/certain experts. I have to research this first.
Another thing I'll look into is how an authority can say 550 is needed to be "adequate", and also say that only 2 or 10% get this amount, and then also say that there are zero reported cases of deficiency. These three things are all in the article and each is backed up by good sources. Logically, at least one of these affirmations has to be erroneous, but mentioning this in the article would have to be done carefully to avoid making any implications (which might be "original synthesis").
So if either of you know of usable references that don't follow the 550 recommendation, or that discuss the cancer and cardiovascular impact of choline, I'd be interested to read them. Great floors (talk) 23:58, 9 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Great floors, thanks for the explanation. The "ideal reference" per WP:MEDASSESS is a systematic review (refs. 5-6), meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials or position paper by a clinical association like the American Heart Association, WHO, regulatory authority like FDA, EFSA (ref. 8), the US Institute of Medicine (similar to refs. 3, 7), NIH, etc. Nutritionfacts.org, Vegan Health and the preliminary research you listed are not suitable, as they are WP:PRIMARY. There's a difference between being informative (which could include some limited preliminary research which some WP nutrition/health/disease articles contain) and being encyclopedic, i.e., factual as best as possible, which enables Wikipedia to present conclusive information based on the highest-quality evidence. The Choline article still contains significant preliminary, non-factual content which I will address. I'm going to move this Talk discussion to your page for your own use and will monitor from there. Thanks to you and TylerDurden8823 for discussion. --Zefr (talk) 22:55, 9 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Fyi, EFSA reference values for choline are here. --Zefr (talk) 00:36, 10 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Thanks. I missed that when I checked their site. And their definition of "adequate intake". I find the definitions of "adequate intake" to be kinda awkward, it's like they're having a hard time avoiding the words "recommended", "suggested" etc. but maybe the way to understand it is that it's descriptive rather than prescriptive. Great floors (talk) 08:09, 10 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago9 comments4 people in discussion
Hi, Great floors. Regarding actions like this and this, you should to stop doing that. We archive for valid reasons. There is no need to have a talk page with discussions from the early to mid 2000s, or similarly old discussions, on the talk page...unless the talk page is not really big and not very active. In most cases, readers don't read the talk page. And if an editor replies in an old section, that reply will likely be overlooked; see Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines#Layout (what it states about newer sections going at the bottom). Flyer22 Reborn (talk) 13:07, 20 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Hi Flyer,
I'm aware there can be valid reasons for archiving a page, but in my opinion the above examples are accidents and should never have been archived. I wish someone would fix the archive bots (either their code or by imposing policy) to prevent this. Wikipedians put serious time into discussing topics on Talk pages so this work should not be hidden away in archives (yes, of course, they're technically as accessible as any other page but we all know they get looked at a lot less often). I hope others will also fix incidents of discussions being wrongly archived. Great floors (talk) 13:10, 20 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
@Sam Sailor: I will continue to unarchive discussions and entire talk pages that have been unjustifiably stuffed into an archive. Us human contributors put our time into discussing topics and bots are our servants, not our masters. Thanks for the link to the howto. I presume you noticed that it says at the top that it's neither policy nor a even a guideline. Great floors (talk) 16:52, 9 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
You did not fix any errors, you made good faith mistakes. When both Flyer22 Reborn and I ask you not to do that again, please heed the advice: do not touch bot settings, and do "unarchive discussions and entire talk pages" that have been archived. It sounds as you'd like the guideline link as well, it is WP:TALKCOND. SamSailor 17:19, 9 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Your advice is a good faith mistake. Those bots archive lots of discussions which, while inactive, are in no way "stale" - they contain a wealth of information which has been gathered and discussed by Wikipedians about why the article is how it is. Archiving these discussions shows contempt and disrespect for the editing community. The bots also archive unresolved questions. Some of the best questions take years to be seen by the right person with that specific knowledge. Archiving them simply because they're 2, 3, or 4 years old, or whatever, defeats the whole purpose of asking such questions on Talk pages. Such questions must be unarchived for them to serve their purpose.
(And if a bot blindly archives 30 threads and some of these are wrongly archived, as described above, there is no obligation on the editor who is undoing this mistake to do additional work of sorting through all 30.) Great floors (talk) 18:28, 9 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
@Great floors:: Regarding your large-scale unarchiving today of old talk threads at Talk:German orthography reform of 1996, I see from the discussion above that this is not the first time you've done this. For the latest incident, please see the discussion at User talk:Mathglot#Archiving important documentation. I note that despite the fact that you saw fit to unarchive 38,000 bytes of ten-year old discussions, you have no edits at all on the article page, and none on the Talk page prior to your edits today. The talk policy says: Do not unarchive (that is, restore) sections for the sake of reopening discussions that are effectively closed. Instead, start a new discussion and link to the archived prior discussion of the subject. Please heed the earlier comments by Flyer22 Reborn and Sam Sailor requesting you not to manually de-archive again, or seek consensus on the article talk page before doing so. This is starting to look like disruptive editing; please stop. Mathglot (talk) 10:23, 15 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
What might my edit disrupt? What is going to happen on that Talk page that requires a blank page? When an editor wants to see the discussions related to the drafting of that article, why is it more useful to show them nothing than to show them the discussions of those who wrote the page? Nobody discusses anything of relevance, just links to guidelines and howtos and accusations of bad conduct (probably because no one checked that in all of the above discussions, I left the Talk pages the way Flyer, Sam, and you requested). I'm not the one forcing my opinion on others. Great floors (talk) 16:33, 15 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Collaboration is a fundamental principle on Wikipedia. When several seasoned editors ask you to stop, please carefully read the links provided and understand that you are acting against a consensus that was reached by the community. On Talk:The China Study you had no edits to either the article or the article talk page prior to dearchiving the entire talk page archive. And you made no edits to either the article or the article talk page after dearchiving. On Talk:Plant-based diet you had no edits to either the article or the article talk page prior to dearchiving the entire talk page archive. After dearchiving you made 9 edits to the talk page on the same day, but none of them were specifically related to prior discussions. Why then dearchive 10 year old discussions? After replies from User:Jytdog and User:Roxy the dog, you never returned to the article and its talk page. When you threaten to persist: "I will continue to unarchive discussions and entire talk pages" and then do it on Talk:German orthography reform of 1996, your editing is disruptive. As correctly noticed by Mathglot, you had not prior edits to German orthography reform of 1996 or to Talk:German orthography reform of 1996. You have made no subsequent edits to either page. This was exactly the same scenario with Talk:The China Study. Please read Wikipedia:Do not disrupt Wikipedia to illustrate a point. If you want a change to the way talk pages ar archived, follow the advice Mathgloth gave you in User talk:Mathglot#Archiving important documentation. If you do so, be prepared to explain why you would set |maxarchivesize= to 75 times the local limit (2000K) of the slightly higher 2048K MediaWiki $wgMaxArticleSize. SamSailor 05:00, 16 August 2018 (UTC)Reply
Adding unsourced content to Wikipedia; sources for content about healthedit
Latest comment: 7 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Please do not add or change content, as you did at Plant-based diet, without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you.
WIth regard to content about health, this needs to be sourced per WP:MEDRS
Remember that when adding content about health, please only use high-quality reliable sources as references. We typically use review articles, major textbooks and position statements of national or international organizations (There are several kinds of sources that discuss health: here is how the community classifies them and uses them). WP:MEDHOW walks you through editing step by step. A list of resources to help edit health content can be found here. The edit box has a built-in citation tool to easily format references based on the PMID or ISBN. We also provide style advice about the structure and content of medicine-related encyclopedia articles. The welcome page is another good place to learn about editing the encyclopedia. If you have any questions, please feel free to drop me a note. Jytdog (talk) 16:06, 20 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
I'm aware of these two policies. I think everyone is. Thanks for the templates although I'm a bit puzzled. If you have anything specific to say, I'm all ears. Great floors (talk) 16:19, 20 January 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 7 years ago4 comments2 people in discussion
Great floors: thanks for the feedback and thoughtful edit. My reasoning to include the 2004 FDA warning letter to Diamond Foods was partly to address what became a media firestorm due mainly to the FDA's conventional language for refuting a health claim on an unproven product, in this case walnuts. Google "fda warning walnuts drug", and you'll see the numerous reports (few of them from reliable secondary sources) disputing the FDA referring to walnuts as "drugs" (original letter here). This was not so much the FDA's declaration as it was their conventional language to refute the California Walnut Commission's wish to make a health claim. In the FDA's view, if a producer says its product produces an effect like a drug does, then that means there must be evidence for the drug effect, even if it's from walnuts.
I feel this might have value in the discussion on health claims because 1) it has historical significance about walnuts and presumed health, and 2) it is an example of how walnuts are regulated in the USA for labeling language that promotes a walnut-containing product and influences consumer decisions. Following you here. --Zefr (talk) 15:54, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Hmm, I think the relevance is borderline, but I re-added a condensed version that might cover what you want included. Good/bad?
(It sounds like more detailed coverage of this case might be interesting in an article about the FDA or about food labelling.) Great floors (talk) 21:36, 2 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
If editors continue to revert to their preferred version they are likely to be blocked from editing Wikipedia. This isn't done to punish an editor, but to prevent the disruption caused by edit warring. In particular, editors should be aware of the three-revert rule, which says that an editor must not perform more than three reverts on a single page within a 24-hour period. Edit warring on Wikipedia is not acceptable in any amount, and violating the three-revert rule is very likely to lead to a block. Thank you. Alexbrn (talk) 10:55, 19 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
This is not true. I reverted once because someone reverted my edit without giving any reason in the edit summary (and without commenting on the explanation I gave on the Talk page before my edit). This is a completely valid reason for reverting - an unexplained revert is surely an error. Please be more careful, and more civil in future. Great floors (talk) 14:29, 27 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Do not repeatedly try to force your bad edit. You have been warned. Alexbrn (talk) 14:33, 27 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
This message contains important information about an administrative situation on Wikipedia. It does not imply any misconduct regarding your own contributions to date.
Discretionary sanctions is a system of conduct regulation designed to minimize disruption to controversial topics. This means uninvolved administrators can impose sanctions for edits relating to the topic that do not adhere to the purpose of Wikipedia, our standards of behavior, or relevant policies. Administrators may impose sanctions such as editing restrictions, bans, or blocks. This message is to notify you that sanctions are authorised for the topic you are editing. Before continuing to edit this topic, please familiarise yourself with the discretionary sanctions system. Don't hesitate to contact me or another editor if you have any questions.
Latest comment: 6 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, Great floors. Voting in the 2017 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 10 December. All users who registered an account before Saturday, 28 October 2017, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Wednesday, 1 November 2017 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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.
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
I was looking at older work of mine on Wikipedia and came across this comment of my which you replied on. I've made the table of copyrightexceptions.eu as a wikitable on a subpage of my user page: User:Martsniez/limitations. You might be interested in further tweaking the table. I have to admit that I'm not that familiar with table styles. --Martsniez (talk) 08:12, 9 July 2018 (UTC)Reply
Latest comment: 5 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion
Hello, Great floors. Voting in the 2018 Arbitration Committee elections is now open until 23.59 on Sunday, 3 December. All users who registered an account before Sunday, 28 October 2018, made at least 150 mainspace edits before Thursday, 1 November 2018 and are not currently blocked are eligible 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.
Latest comment: 4 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion
Hi, I didn't see your message until now, after it had been archived. Well, one good thing about "extreme" colours is that they are easier to discern for people for are colour-blind, like me. FunkMonk (talk) 18:43, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
Interesting. I admit, I hadn't thought of colour-blind people. And you'll have to take my word that if you could see the colours, they're awful :-) So we just have to find two colours that are distinguished by something other than hue, e.g. light orange and dark orange. I'll give this a try. Great floors (talk) 19:46, 14 August 2019 (UTC)Reply
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 2019 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) 00:20, 19 November 2019 (UTC)Reply
Hello, and welcome to Wikipedia. You appear to be repeatedly reverting or undoing other editors' contributions at Vegan nutrition. Although this may seem necessary to protect your preferred version of a page, on Wikipedia this is known as "edit warring" and is usually seen as obstructing the normal editing process, as it often creates animosity between editors. Instead of reverting, please discuss the situation with the editor(s) involved and try to reach a consensus on the talk page.
Please do not add or change content, as you did at Plant-based diet, without citing a reliable source. Please review the guidelines at Wikipedia:Citing sources and take this opportunity to add references to the article. Thank you.
