User talk:SandyGeorgia/arch97

Latest comment: 10 years ago by Anthonyhcole in topic stickyprod-medrs

Speedy deletion declined: Harm OCD

edit

Hello SandyGeorgia. I am just letting you know that I declined the speedy deletion of Harm OCD, a page you tagged for speedy deletion, because of the following concern: Article claims coverage in sources; clearly not invented by the author. Thank you. — Malik Shabazz Talk/Stalk 01:32, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks, Malik ... after I placed the template, it occurred to me I should have used PROD ... I don't do this often! Sorry for the trouble, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:41, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Eric Corbett

edit

So, it's alright for your friend Eric Corbett to refer to me as an "ignorant PITA", but reporting him for breaking 3RR (for which no one said a negative word to him about) is grounds for discussing how I avoided getting blocked for it ("spared a block")? Exactly what is going on in your group of Wiki-friends? How long do you expect for your gang to be able to go on this way? (Meanwhile he's free to refer to others as "coward"s and "low life"s... [1]) :bloodofox: (talk) 19:07, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Have you actually ever taken the trouble to read WP:3RR? Specifically the part that says "Considerable leeway is also given to editors reverting to maintain the quality of a featured article while it appears on the main page"? Eric Corbett 19:11, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've written a few articles of my own, Eric, and I've been around here nearly as long as Sandy. Meanwhile, that's an interesting way out of the situation: I'm pretty sure that's for purposes of vandalism and not content disputes; not for you to grind your axe towards keeping the word slut in the article without quotation mark or apostrophe.
I'm sure you also didn't miss the section below what you quoted that says: "If you are claiming an exemption, make sure there is a clearly visible edit summary or separate section of the talk page that explains the exemption. When in doubt, do not revert. Instead, engage in dispute resolution, and in particular ask for help at relevant noticeboards such as the Edit war/3RR noticeboard". Interesting that you chose not to do that. :bloodofox: (talk) 19:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
So that's a "No" then. Eric Corbett 19:18, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply


Boo

edit

I saw that [2], even if that Mad Scientist bloke decided to delete it in some sort of fake edit conflict - I think he must fancy you, and was being protective in case I was stepping on his turf  ...

Thanks.

I remember once saying about you "she speaks sense", and I think I said it to jc37, can't remember - but I'll settle for being "liked" - that's cool. Begoontalk 00:29, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Oh, God, I suppose I have to put - "this was a joke and I am happily married" - cos I am, and forgot it was wikipedia for a second... See you can all stop typing that now... Begoontalk 00:34, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

That was some seriously funny shi ... stuff! Don't let the kids get you down! Perhaps I'm speaking more sense than some folks can digest. Boo, too, to you two (you and the wife!) Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:44, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
3 - we have a 10 year old - and she's prettier than you - no, hang on, she's prettier than me - that was it... Begoontalk 00:51, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Awwwww, that's sweet. I won't beg to disagree ... on your count! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:54, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sorry, but my ten-year old is prettier than all you people! No smiley face cause I'm very serious. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 16:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hey Christine - how's it wiggling? I don't think we spoke for ages. We did once, but I'm instantly forgettable, so you're forgiven in advance. We're both right, obviously, since every parent's 10 year old is prettier than every other 10 year old. Mine is prettier than yours, and yours is prettier than mine. There's nothing mutually exclusive about that, and I have the Venn diagrams to prove it (well, if I don't I can draw them - I do that). Begoontalk 16:16, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
No B, I remember you kinda-sorta. I'm sure you helped me in some way; I tend to ask for lots of stuff around here. Obviously, about my favorite band. I'm good, busy as heck. I survived upheavals with two of my niches: the afore-mentioned band and controversy where there shouldn't be any. And I didn't win the Wiki-Cup, didn't even get into the finals, gursh-durn it! Re: our 10-year olds: I may not have Venn diagrams (I am not a math person), but have the pictures and the videos to prove my position! So there! Still not using those smiley-faces. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 16:33, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
 Still not using those smiley-faces. - nor I - they suck. Impressive you could find controversy (or maybe it found you) on an Elmo puppeteer article, though. This truly is the ultimate cosmopolitan hobby, with bonus, free, bizarreness, isn't it? Begoontalk 16:40, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I actually use them all the time, I was being ironic. ;) Yes, I never thought that I'd have to spend time dealing with something like that, since the articles I work on tend to be drama-free. Compared to others' experience, I had it easy. I'm still resentful towards Clash, though, and not only because of the hassle it caused on his article. Christine (Figureskatingfan) (talk) 17:50, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Speaking of the civility police ... there's never a good man around when you need one. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:06, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Wow. And sadly, that's just your ordinary day around here. I don't think you and I and all our friends will ever clean that up. But here's the "good" thing - I don't think we'll stop trying either... (you'd have stopped long before me if that was gonna happen) Begoontalk 01:15, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

And what happened to the secund and thurd times? Inquiring minds want to no... Begoontalk 01:18, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make a mule drink? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:19, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Apparently, the Forth bridge is so long it takes lots of blokes lots of days to paint it - but that seems like an awfully long and elaburat way to take the piss out of a speling misstake, so I wish you hadn't done it really - it seems beneath you. Begoontalk 01:25, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I didn't mean to misspell ass. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:45, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
See, now you made me laugh out loud today - so we're even. Imagine a world where... (never mind) Begoontalk 01:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Now, where was I ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:09, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi II

edit

I think you may have misinterpreted me on my advocacy of WP:Involved. I merely echoed an earlier thought by another upthread. It is no solution, and is ridden with holes. I fully see the huge magnitude and systemic issues with some of the admin corp in terms of their unreliability and bias. Maybe they were elected early, things were different, I am unsure. But there is a small disruptive group of loose cannons, who cause the poo to hit the fan by COI and crap judgement/bullying/favouritism. Please check out my earlier, original proposals which are quite radical. It was shut down in indecent haste, or is that just me? Cheers Irondome (talk) 01:48, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Not to worry ... but there is more than a "small group" and "unreliability and bias" are more benign than what really goes on. Just registering the point that there are plenty of ways to get around INVOLVED and get away with it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:12, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
No worries. It looks like some productive further drafts may come out of that. See you around Irondome (talk) 20:14, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Autism 2

edit

Hi Sandy, I am not particularly emotionally tied to the topic, but what struck me as incorrect materially was the following: Autism has a strong genetic basis, although the genetics of autism are complex and it is unclear whether ASD is explained more by rare mutations, or by rare combinations of common genetic variants.[5] I check the reference and the most recent citation was from 2007 and much more information was draw from earlier than 2007. If you check the Mayo Clinic or another other reputable medical source, discredits this sentence. For instance check http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/autism/DS00348/DSECTION=causes or recent research http://www.health.harvard.edu/books/the-autism-revolution. It is misleading to write there is a strong genetic basis. The truth is the cause is unknown. Further under controversies, it would be more up-to-date to state there is actually quite a bit of consensus around environmental causes. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=autism-rise-driven-by-environment. and of course you could cite the Lancet for the vaccines.

GMO should be included in the suggested causes. The correlation is quite convincing. — Preceding unsigned comment added by FrenchFrench99 (talkcontribs) 01:52, November 1, 2013‎

Hi French ... this post would be better placed at Talk:Autism, so I will copy it to there so others can respond and you can continue discussion there, but a) Mayo is not a high quality source (and in the case of autism, or several other conditions, they aren't even a good source), and b) see WP:RECENTISM and WP:NOT (news) on "recent" news, and c) see WP:MEDRS on the types of sources we use. The Mayo text is quite dumbed down, and not really at odds with our text. And "The Autism Revolution" isn't a source I would advocate for over peer-reviewed high-quality journal articles. Also, you can sign your posts by entering four tildes ( ~~~~ ) after them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:13, 1 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Disruptive

edit

I'm not trying to be disruptive. Sorry for creating harm OCD. I thought I would be able to find a reliable source. I will try to find a reliable source for Didi Beck.— Preceding unsigned comment added by OnBeyondZebrax (talkcontribs) 23:13, November 1, 2013‎

Core Contest and core topics

edit

Following on from the note at Talk:Sea: the contest is Wikipedia:The Core Contest. To be fair, there is a history to this (I only know a small part of it). Cas and others (including me) tried to start something at Science which failed when people realised the scale of the task. I tried something once at physical chemistry (userspace notes here). I'm full of admiration for people that actually go several steps further and manage to do something (look at what the article on sea looked like previously). What may be needed is to learn from the different approaches taken (it would be possible to talk all day about this), the one taken here, the one at Middle Ages, the approach taken at WikiProject Chemistry where the elements articles are being steadily brought up to a consistently high level, and so on. To switch to military history, World War I is an article that someone may try to bring up to FA level given the upcoming centenary, but as people are still debating the underlying causes of that war (and the already immense literature on it is being added to continuously) that may not be easy. I don't know what the approach is in medical articles, but what would by a typical core topic article and its sub-articles and where do people start at organising efforts to raise standards on core topics? Carcharoth (talk) 19:00, 3 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

As far as I know, most of the medical FAs rely on sub-articles that align with the MEDMOS structure. The length of sea-- with no clear inclusion criteria, and a lead that is jarring and rambling all over the place with no paragraph structure I can follow-- seems to be part of the problem, and I didn't find any evidence in talk (may have missed it) that anyone actually thought about the structure before tacking the article. In medicine, we have structure guidelines, I know film does, other areas do, but maybe one was missing in the development of Sea. The FAC makes it look like the blind were leading the blind in terms of what to add to the article, and it was done ad-hoc (which looks like cheerleading for the sake of the reward culture) as the FAC unfolded. One major medical topic that is too long is major depressive disorder, and that leads to problems (content, maintenance), but at least there is a clear structure. If you want an example of a core topic in medicine, influenza is an FA on a major topic, has about 8,000 words, follows the MEDMOS structure, and relies on sub-articles. Many editors spent many years developing the guidelines (structure, sourcing, manual of style, etc) for health topics, and maybe more projects could do similar ... I don't know if that would help the issues at Sea, because some of the problems are beyond structure (prose, and that sea v. ocean thing is just one example that the FAC review was not thorough-- that link is in the first line of the article!!!) Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:14, 3 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I find many of of these so-called core topics to be ridiculous. If I want to know what a house is, for instance, I'll look in a dictionary. Eric Corbett 20:37, 3 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
That is just from the "official" list of years ago, which no one takes any notice of (except you really). The Core Contest takes a very flexible approach, but looks for articles that are in some way important subjects, and have high views - you know them when you see them. See the discussion/judging pages on past entriesJohnbod (talk) 21:26, 3 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for all the feedback guys, but I am determined to get back to editing medical articles, and I'm pretty sure that diving into pages of another program like Wikicup, and exploring the effect these programs have on FA quality, will depress me so much I may quit :)  :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:05, 3 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I wouldn't touch Wikicup with a bargepole, but I think the Core Contest is excellent - if only it were bigger. Sea may have issues as an FA (which came after the Core Contest), but the improvement during the contest was massive. Johnbod (talk) 02:06, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I see ... it sounds like then that the issues at FAC are separate from whatever the Contest is about. But did it end up with cheerleaders at FAC, who were soft on review, because of the Core contest? We've seen that before in group projects and contests ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:12, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I didn't realize it was also in the Wikicup, & the FA counted for that. The review was pretty long (6 weeks also) with just about everyone raising lots of points. As previously the scope issue was raised - it may be an issue of "too many cooks" here. I don't see a Core posse - there aren't really enough people. Most look like the FAC regulars. Johnbod (talk) 12:06, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't know what you've been drinking Johnbod, but whatever it is I'd like a pint of it. The Wikicup scoring rules state quite clearly that "Any article on the vital level 3 list is eligible for double points". Eric Corbett 03:28, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ok, as I say I never look at that - how often does that rule get used I wonder? Relatively few easy points there, at least at DYK and FA. GA is something else I wouldn't know about. I did much of Romanticism up for the Core Contest (1.7 million views pa I think, and not something I'd recommend looking up in a dictionary) and it was a lot of work (having been a complete disgrace before). Johnbod (talk) 12:06, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Removing "pathodysmorphia" from anorexia nervosa, BDD and alexithymia pages

edit

Dear Sandy Georgia,

There is good neurobiological to suggest (prompting more research in this area) that this new term can be linked to anorexia nervosa, BDD and alexithymia. I am happy to agree that perhaps this new term should not be introduced in a prominent position on these other pages. However, I respectfully request that I can be allowed to add a link to my pathodysmorphia page in a less prominent position on these other pages?

I look forward to hearing from you,

Regards,

Samantha

— Preceding unsigned comment added by DrSamanthaBrooks (talkcontribs) 20:27, November 3, 2013


Autism and Employment

edit

Sandy, I will check out the policies to which you refer on citations and am happy to fix them myself. I was under the impression that references should follow the style on the page WP:CITEVAR), which is not consistent on the autism article, so I made sure I had sufficient information for others to check the reference.Benutzer41 (talk) 23:54, 3 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I apologize Sandy for your unnecessary extra work -didn't realize. Nikpapag (talk) 14:33, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Vcite and reference tool

edit

I will gladly follow vcite, here's hoping that will be a standard not challenged in other articles. Can you help me get that tool you mentioned? When I went here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Diberri/Template_filler, I followed links to a dead end, 500 error. I could really use a tool to speed up referencing. Thanks. Benutzer41 (talk) 22:20, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Re: AFD

edit

Happy to come and have a chat! It's not policy so much as convention and logic. Yes, those are the five possible AFD outcomes but the only one that should motivate you to nominate something for deletion is "delete" *. If you wanted to keep the article, you wouldn't nominate it. If you wanted to merge the article, you would started a {{merge}} discussion. If you wanted to redirect the article you could simply do so either boldly or after a talk page discussion. Thus it follows that you are only nominating something for deletion if you want to see it deleted (and nominations that propose something other than deletion can be, and often are, speedy closed). There is no reason, then, to add an additional !vote reinforcing your opinion that the article should be deleted. Other editors can suggest merger or redirection as alternatives to deletion (though they aren't really).

*Transwiki is rarer and more complicated - it is theoretically an option but is only really applied where a fan wiki (like Wookiepedia) exists.

Striking duplicate votes is just something AFD regulars do to make it easier for admins to consider discussions and for the AFD bots to collect statistics. But if you feel strongly that !voting again would add something to the discussion, I certainly won't edit-war with you. Stalwart111 22:47, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks! No, not at all worried about the struck !vote-- I just struggle to understand AFD. User:Stalwart111, I'm still not sure if that article is a candidate for transwiki to Wiktionary? It's basically just a definition now. Thanks again for the help, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:54, 4 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hey, even "AFD regulars" (and I'd consider myself among their number) struggle to understand AFD sometimes. I'm not familiar with Wiktionary at all, but I can't imagine they'd allow made up words there either. That's effectively what this is without proper verification beyond what the creator has said about the term. Isn't it?
By the way, I was prompted to add a note to the article creator's talk page. Any more of that and we'd be in WP:IDHT/WP:NOTHERE territory. Stalwart111 00:11, 5 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

TOC limiting on WTMED

edit

Hi Sandy,

You changed the TOC limit in this edit [3] with the edit summary: "Really?"

This is unhelpful as you neither provided a reason for the change nor adequately described your edit in the edit summary. It took me a while to figure out who made this change. If you have a reason to alter the TOC limit, please discuss in the section: Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#Scrolly_box_for_TOC (which in all fairness is not particularly well described either). The rationale is to restrict the size of the page when loaded, it is getting out of hand because of the traffic. In a small way, I think this limit helps with this problem. Level 3 headings are not required for quick navigation since none of the level 3 headings are widely separated from their parent level 2 headings. Many thanks, Lesion (talk) 01:22, 5 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Talkback

edit
 
Hello, SandyGeorgia. You have new messages at Template:Did you know nominations/The Sacred Twenty.
Message added 00:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC). You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

I, JethroBT drop me a line 00:53, 6 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

MOBA Dedham

edit

I can't tell you how devastated I was, after moving to Dedham, only to find that this branch of the Museum of Bad Art has closed. Woe is me, and whoa said I. Maybe if I move to Texas they'll raze all that Ima Hogg stuff.  :-(Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

OH, dear, you are supposed to come here with GOOD news, dontchaknow? I suspect that the Ima stuff will outlast us all ... don't mess with Texas, and all that ! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:33, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, Dedham is otherwise very nice. It's kind of like Iceland (named to deter people from streaming into a wonderful place). Don't tell!  :-)Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:35, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Look at it this way ... you can lay claim to the third World Series championship for the Red Sox in recent years ... and pay $2,000 to go to a ballgame! Well, the last time I was in that neck of the woods, there was a bear in the front yard. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:38, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I happened to walk into a bar during Game 3, bottom of the ninth. I figured it would be good to cheer for the Red Sox, so I started cheering for the guys wearing the most red. Turns out I was cheering for a Cardinal! Ouch.Anythingyouwant (talk) 03:45, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Silly goose, you were supposed to cheer for the facial hair! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:26, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ah, next time.Anythingyouwant (talk) 17:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Kinky Boots (musical)

edit

Would you kindly comment on this Peer review? You might check the article's talk page re: the recent failed GA. Thanks for any help! -- Ssilvers (talk) 00:35, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Well, you've got your hands full on that one :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:29, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I strongly object to you handling this for obvious reasons. Blethering Scot 16:24, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Of course you do; so, moving on, in the interest of the article, please keep personalization off of the article talk page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:26, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I can tell you right now there will be no moving on until he apologises and explains his actions. Now your peer review is utterly useless. All you did was copy your mates peer review which included stuff he plagerised off me. A second peer review will be requested. It's biased as you are two due to connection with another user. Blethering Scot 16:36, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Apologies are rarely extracted on Wikipedia, and I see nothing for which he needs to apologize. Should he apologize for helping to advance the article through content review processes, and giving a solid peer review? Peer review is open to anyone who wants to participate; my comments do not preclude or prevent anyone else from weighing in. I am most certainly connected to Ssilvers in the sense that we both know what constitutes top content in the musical theatre realm. If you continue down this battleground path, you are likely to find yourself in dispute resolution for personalization and disruption. I suggest you accept the help offered by Ssilvers to move that article forward. Perhaps taking a day or two off will help you gain a better perspective. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:40, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
He called me disruptive for reverting his edit and taking to talk page per bold revert, discuss cycle. He then reverted that which was edit warring yet he called me disruptive, at that points that is all i did. Ill quite happily take this to dispute resolution right now. Because going to your mates specifically to back you up, which is whats happened here stinks. I also believe that your peer review is a waste of time and space as its no where near independent as you just copied his. Now i would also note he was feeding the reviewer everything that was wrong with it and in my view he wants it to fail.Blethering Scot 16:50, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I again suggest you take a few days to cool down and gain some perspective. If you get this upset whenever someone tries to help advance the article, it is unlikely to ever make it through the GA process, much less something like FA. Also, please review WP:AGF; I find it extremely unlikely that Ssilvers wants an article to "fail", much less after the effort he put into it, and making such statements doesn't bode well for you. I am unlikely to respond to you again today as I will be heading out soon for a busy day and weekend; perhaps others will be able to reason with you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
if he is willing to discuss his comments against me then maybe we can go forward, however he has to explain them. Also i have equally put time in improving this article and i won't be accused of not wanting it improved. Ive made more suggestions to improve than he has as he copied mine as his, which i don't like he simply had to concur rather than using them in his. I suggest Ssilvers reviews AGF as well because his allegations were totally against that. The only way this is going forward is if he comes to my talk page and discusses his initial comments, he's been avoiding doing that since the word go.Blethering Scot 17:05, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm beginning to see why. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:06, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
You cant make comments you cant substantiate, especially when you are unwilling to explain the basis of the comment. The offer is there if he is willing to discuss it with me, thats an olive branch and its up to him whether he wants to use it. Also why did you post at the teahouse.Blethering Scot 17:09, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Mostly because I wonder if they are useful for anything, but also because I'm hoping someone over there will get you to drink some calming tea. If you don't mind, as I mentioned above, I need to head out soon and would rather you not continue posting here today. Perhaps tomorrow you will see things differently. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:13, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Already drink plenty of tea. I would appreciate you inviting @Ssilvers: to actually discuss the issues between us with an interest in actually moving forward. Anyway enjoy your day/evening, what ever it is where you are.Blethering Scot 17:18, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Mostly because I wonder if they are useful for anything... -- If you're going to make editorial comments about whether the Teahouse is useful or not, you're not likely to receive any help, Sandy. That said, the Teahouse is the wrong venue for this, and it's not really the place to go for content-related or GA-related conflicts. Sort it out yourselves or go to dispute resolution. I, JethroBT drop me a line 22:59, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Why does everyone appear to be so angry on WP? I think I know, but I'd be curious to know what you think before I reveal the truth behind WP's inevitable demise. And it won't be much of a surprise to those who've been here for more than a few minutes. Eric Corbett 23:10, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Who's everyone? (Why does Jethro think I need or want help in sorting out GA issues-- aren't they here to help the disgruntled?) I take one, but I recommend two lumps for the tea folks. I thought they were here for happy talk to disgruntled people like Blathering. Now I guess it has been revealed that the TeaHouse is not here to build an encyclopedia. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:17, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, too many editors then. You take sugar in your tea? That's disgusting; all you can taste is sugar. Eric Corbett 23:19, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
well, at least I'm not a completely hopeless NorthAmerican ... I don't put ice in my San Pellegrino. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:40, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Try lemon in black tea, much more refreshing. Eric Corbett 00:27, 9 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
You never really made it clear what you wanted, honestly, until just now. You pointed to a thread saying to help someone unspecified. Now that I know, I can tell you that most hosts do not mediate content disputes or "give people tea" (I mean, unless they want to do that, but it's not expected). And it's pretty clear you had your mind made up about the Teahouse before you made your request, so I find it unlikely that anything was going to change your mind about it. Oh well. If you look at the kinds of questions we get, you'll find we help lots of people, typically new editors. Dealing with issues like the above is just out of our scope, that's all. I think your accusations of WP:NOTHERE are not really based in anything factual. @Eric Corbett: I think most folks feel frustrated from time to time, but it usually passes like everything else. Some of that comes down to poor communication and probably lots of other crap I can't think of right now. I don't have much to say about WP's inevitable demise (seems a little dramatic), but I'm sticking around for a while. We'll see what happens. I, JethroBT drop me a line 01:57, 9 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Jethro, not "really [making] it clear what [I] wanted" might otherwise be referred to as, not trying to unduly prejudice others one way or another, rather just pointing them to the thread and letting them make their own decisions. I was hoping you would help calm an obviously upset editor, who has no reason to be upset (the content issues will be solved by several competent editors who are in there already). If that isn't what the TeaHouse does, well, I really don't know what it does. I do know that it has, in the past, habitually embraced sockmasters, so ... yea. Anyway, thanks for coming over here to clarify. It's no skin off of my back one way or another what happens in the GA review: I thought someone ought to try to help calm that editor. Thanks again, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:03, 9 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Student editors welcome page

edit

Hi Sandy! I've been working on text for a little template that can be added to the pages of student editors. I will be proposing some changes soon on WP:Med as to how classes edit and the 'classes editing' page, as I don't think the current system (? there is no system) approach is working very well. Some changes I will be proposing include: (1) new 'classes editing' page with a better, standardised explanation of how to edit. (2) steps for classes to edit, included on the page, including an emphasis on selecting a relevant title for a page, and not editing in mainspace, (3) a position statement from Wikimed on student editors, and (4) a new user template to be plopped on the pages of student editors, emphasising a single point of contact (their professor) and the need for secondary sources.

I'm also considering including as part of the position statement something along the lines of "Content on articles being currently edited that is not supported by reliable sources will be immediately removed by editors with reference to this statement (and a footnote explaining it's been previously a serious problem). "

I'd like your feedback on what you think about this, and also I'd really value your feedback on what the the three most important things student editors need to know is (I'll try and integrate this into the above things). Kind regards, LT910001 (talk) 06:32, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Generally, I'm not sure if any template will help, because the fundamental problem is that profs don't read before setting up courses, profs are not engaged, and the students never seem to read anything. But, if you want three things:
  1. Students do not communicate as "established" or "regular" editors do (because they aren't invested, aka, they don't care). They don't respond on user or article talk or sandbox talk, they don't tag the article talk pages correctly (assignment), and even when they do, they almost never link their sandbox on article talk page, so one has to go wandering all over Wikipedia to find the course, the prof, the sandbox, etc. They need to use talk, just like we all do.
  2. They do not take into account where their potential content belongs (which article, which section, whether it is already covered somewhere), and they choose their topic before consulting established editors. So, do the TALKING mentioned in point 1 before choosing a content area.
  3. They need to realize that their habit of putting off work until the night before the assignment is due is disruptive and infuriating for established editors. We do this as a hobby-- we don't have deadlines, and we do have real lives. When they are desperate to get their text in NOW so they can get a grade, it may be the worst possible timing for us (since it often coincides with, for example, Thanksgiving holiday). If they can't work in advance of deadlines, they are more likely to find wholesale deletions of poorly sourced and poorly written text.
Another issue is that I frequently encounter obvious student editing, but can't locate the course of prof. We need a template where we can query a rash of new redlinks as to whether they are students, and pointing them to <whatever>. On one article I'm editing, if they don't stop the antics, I'm going to submit the rash of 'em to SPI to see if they can be blocked for meatpuppetry ... I have tried to communicate with five new redlinks for about a month, with narry a single response from a single one of them anywhere. I wish I had a template to let them all know where they are headed ... potential meatpuppetry block. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:44, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks for your response, SandyGeorgia. By redlinks, do you mean uncreated pages? I'll have a think about what you've said over the next few days. LT910001 (talk) 22:37, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
red-linked account names ... new editors who either don't know how to or don't care to put up a userpage. When they all appear at once, beginning of term, disappear at university term-end --> students. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:43, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Important

edit

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Hans_Asperger#Franz_.22Hamburger.22 121.214.29.71 (talk) 20:56, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Regarding medical BLPs

edit

Hi SandyGeorgia, I was hoping that you could specify which medical BLPs I created are the most problematic with regard to sourcing. I have provided a list at WT:WikiProject Medicine, and was hoping you would respond there, but since you have yet to do so, I have come here instead. Thanks, Jinkinson talk to me 02:35, 9 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Jinkinson I've seen you hard at work on my watchlist. I should be able to get to that by tonight, if not. tomorrow ... busy IRL. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 12:30, 9 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation

edit

Hi,

I am the one how upload this page Barneayg (talk) 08:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I have noticed that you removed it almost completely and i really don't understand why.

I made this page in comparison to the already exiting transcranial magnetic stimulation page and tried to make it similar.

I think the page, in its former status, was very informative to anyone how is interested in this technology, and particularly to any one how considering treatment using this technology.

In its current status, this page gives almost no information.

I will be happy to fix any problem concerning ref's but i think we should restore the page to its original formation. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Barneayg (talkcontribs) 08:50, November 11, 2013‎

Hi, Barneayg and welcome to Wikipedia. You can sign your talk page entries by entering four tildes ( ~~~~ ) after them.

There were numerous problems with the article you created, so I hope the information I will give you will not be too overwhelming, and that you will process through all of it. I will start a discussion at Talk:Deep transcranial magnetic stimulation explaining the issues. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:50, 11 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Inflammatory Bowel Disease Talk Page

edit

Hi SandyGeorgia Thank you for the feedback. Should I revert the changes to the talk page then? LiZhang1312 (talk) 05:25, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I don't think that is necessary at this point, LiZhang1312; doing so now may just confuse matters further, and I added a link showing the changes anyway. I just pointed it out so that you would know in the future that we don't usually use article talk pages as sandboxes. The best way to indicate your proposed text in sandbox is just to add a new post, saying you've updated your sandbox, and linking to your sandbox so others will head over there to review it.

Also, in the version I posted on talk, you might note that I added a PMID to your citation, and did some copyediting of your proposed text, and asked Jdfwolff to take a look (he is a physician who knows that territory well). Thank you for engaging on talk-- it makes everyone's work so much easier :) Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Covert medication

edit

Hey, thanks for fixing that mess of an article. After my drive-by AFD comments, I kept telling myself that I needed to go back, purge the twaddle, and cite some sources, but kept getting distracted by other thi-- ooh, shiny! Thanks for cleaning up after me. Squeamish Ossifrage (talk) 22:40, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I was going to change the world ... until I saw something shiny :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:03, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Mass biomedical plagiarism

edit

Could be. Dr James pointed this out. Possibly thousands over a year.

User_talk:DrMicro#Copyright_infringement Tony (talk) 07:25, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Tony1 I hope you don't mind, I've changed your heading from "medical" to "biomedical". I have never encountered this editor on an article I edit or at WPMED, and most of his edits are biology related. (Fortunately-- in the sense that many of his edits are to create stubs that can be mass AFD'd). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:15, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Nearly 20,000 involving nearly 2,000 articles and possibly going back 8 years. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:45, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Jmh649, the few I checked were lifted from article abstracts. Are most from abstracts, or from text behind paywall? That matters in terms of cleanup, since most/many of us don't have journal access. I see that many of the articles he edited were created by him, so it seems the recommendation at ANI could be to mass AFD all of them-- but I'm curious to know if journal access will be needed for cleanup. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:15, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I just tried looking at a couple, and it looks like journal access may be required. E.g. Plasmodium vacuolatum didn't appear to be taken from the abstract. I assume if we do mass rollback, we won't need the journal access.--S Philbrick(Talk) 14:22, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks! Let's move discussion over to WT:MED- I'm likely to be recommending mass AFD and rollback, then. We have no business using scarce resources to fix something of this magnitude. Hey, S, look at the section above this one ... an OR guy! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:28, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes seems to be abstracts or full papers but have not looked at that many. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 07:17, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks

edit

Thanks for popping up at WT:MED. =) Your perspective was appreciated. Thanks again. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 14:19, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Test one-click archiver

edit

Dummy to test one-click archiver. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:14, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Xyn1

edit

The more I look, the worse it is. I am too lazy to start the process, but if you decide to take him to one of the boards, ping me. What an utter waste of time. <sigh> Abecedare (talk) 04:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Abecedare Ha! Thanks for the help. But that scenario is commonplace; I dropped it at BLPN in exasperation because if I dealt with every editor disrupting content in the medical area, I'd be doing that full time. Oh, wait ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:29, 7 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Save diff: [4] SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:18, 8 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Electro convulsive therapy requires a rewrite

edit

I absolutely don't buy the rationale to revert my edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Electroconvulsive_therapy&curid=44093&diff=581050055&oldid=581035074 . The article badly requires a re-edit. The efficacy of the procedure has been heavily exaggerated. Perhaps expert opinions favour ECT in rare cases but this goes along with disfavour of ECT relating to the general public. There certainly is some scope to highlight the true effect sizes of ECT. The sine-wave and bifrontal electrode placement, argument is extremely strong. This is no original research. It is taken from retrograde amnesia article. It should be kept in mind that this article is targeting the uninitiated. They are completely clueless that most meta studies find ECT effect sizes around 50 percent. Its proper for the article to be biased against ECT. Xyn1 (talk) 15:22, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Its better if you edit minor parts of my edit. Xyn1 (talk) 15:24, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I think I've spent enough time this week cleaning up after you, and considering the number of warnings and issues removed from your talk page over quite a number of years now, and that you have introduced POV, BLP vios, or other policy violations into numerous articles now at AFD, you should begin to follow Wikipedia policy and guideline, and not expect other editors to clean up after you. In other words, start doing it right yourself. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:32, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I already provided my rationale for keeping lower standards for non-anglo sphere articles. The problem with POV is that I do not believe there is such a thing as neutrality. The people who acknowledge their edits are not neutral tend to self select themselves into openly disclosing their edits are biased and/or not edit complex topics such as this. And the people who do believe in pseudo-neutrality tend to self select themselves to openly make edits which others might deem biased. It's always the one who openly admits her edits are (mildly) biased that tend to get reprimanded compared to the pseudo-neutrality folk's edits which are more biased than the former. Relating to this article, is only the intro that is POV? or the body as well? If its the former, then I will argue that the earlier version's intro also had a tinge of bias. It mentioned it was a 'standard' practice, although, another editor provided citations as to why it was controversial in the talk page. (I believe pro-ECT folks, who are better organised, added that in). The second point is that the entire article had a certain essay tinge. (Although I believe that tinge is okay in low-trafficked non-anglo articles) In this case, it goes overboard, you can see my edit diff so see the kind of wordings they used. The level of manipulation is intense. Xyn1 (talk) 16:03, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Three editors now (myself, Anythingyouwant and Abecedare) have explained here the problems with your rationale. We don't lower standards depending on the country. If you do not believe in the core policies that govern Wikipedia, I would not be surprised to find you won't last long here. Yes, we all have a POV; that doesn't mean we can't edit according to policy. If you plan to edit medical articles, please understand the correct use of secondary reviews, per our medical sourcing guidelines. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:08, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't believe in WP's core policies, in fact I think some are positively childish, and I'm still here. But I do try not to let that bleed into article content, which is the point here I think. Eric Corbett 19:28, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

@Xyn1: I find your repeated claim/excuse that we must adopt "lower standards for non-anglo sphere articles" to be indefensible and frankly, risible (reminds me of GWB's line about "soft bigotry of low expectations"). For example at Mental Healthcare in India: You seem to have spent no time actually searching for sources on the topic; have chosen to use the article draft as a soapbox for your own thoughts; backed up the text with poor sources or individual studies, which don't even say what you cite them for; and then argue that this is an acceptable way to edit articles for non-anglo countries. What utter poppycock!

Have you even tried looking for comprehensive sources on that topic? Five minutes of search found me these (look especially at the numerous references cited within the following reports):

  • WHO Mental Health Atlas 2005, Country profiles: India (see pages 231-235) (2011 update)
  • Kumar, A. (2011) Mental health services in rural India: challenges and prospects. Health, 3, 757-761. doi: 10.4236/health.2011.312126.
  • Kumar, A. (2004), History of Mental Health Services in India, Journal of Personality and Clinical Studies, Vol.20, No. 1-2, March-September, 2004.
  • Cohen, Alex, The effectiveness of mental health services in primary care: the view from the developing world, Geneva: World Health Organization, 2001.
  • Agarwal, S.P. (ed) et al, Mental Health: An Indian Perspective (1946-2003), Directorate General of Health Services, Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, New Delhi, ISBN 81-8147-195-4

Compare with the sources that you found/chose to use. As I see it the problem is not with availability of sources, but rather with your willingness or ability to search for them. So I hope you'd stop using the former as an excuse, and start complying with wikipedia's content and sourcing standards if you wish to continue editing here. (apologies to SG for using her talk page to post this rant) Abecedare (talk) 20:44, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I second that rant.Anythingyouwant (talk) 20:54, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Rant away, folks ... it's a daily occurrence with medical articles, and I was just off cleaning up another of same. Thanks! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:30, 10 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

User talk:SandyGeorgia/arch97#Kinky Boots (musical)

edit

Hi Sandy. I wanted to apologize for being short with you and refusing to help cool things down when you requested it. That was not really fair to you or to the other editor involved and it ultimately reflects poorly on myself and on the Teahouse more generally. I'll extend another invitation for you to use the Teahouse for whatever you think it can help you with; I'm not really in any position to define the scope of what hosts can and cannot do for editors. I hope you will give it another chance, though I understand if you choose not to. A slew of other editors and I spend time there because we want to help guide new editors around Wikipedia on an interface that is accessible and inviting, something we thought was missing before it got started. Even experienced editors who've had a question or request every now and then have used the Q&A board; hosts bring in different kinds of experience, so we try to be broad in our approach. I don't know much about the sock puppet incident you mentioned, but if one or multiple hosts were defending an editor who was known to be socking, I would not tolerate that behavior, and I know many hosts who would not either.

On an unrelated note, I appreciate you bringing attention your concerns about DYK reviews; I'd like to join in on that conversation given recent events. I, JethroBT drop me a line 19:39, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, I JethroBT; thanks for coming by, and please don't worry. The upset editor was hitting my talk page with nonsense just as I was trying to get out the door for the day, so I probably wasn't clear enough anyway, and should apologize to you as well for being short!

I'm not sure where to direct you to join in the DYK conversation, because no reform ever results-- the "regulars" are too entrenched, and too many editors are tied to the endorphin high of seeing their stub on the mainpage. Resistance is futile :) The ANI will die out soon, with the current offending editor blocked, and no one remembering that this comes around about every two months, and no one at DYK acknowledging that we've been having this conversation for about eight years. So ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:50, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Eight years is a lot more than twice as long as I've been on Wikipedia, so hard to acknowledge anything from personal experience even if I qualify as a person "at DYK". (I review only approximately one DYK for each that I submit, and seemingly I've submitted all of six DYKs in 2013 - and none at all for eleven months before that. I have little to no other involvement in DYK.) Has DYK really been around for eight years? And having the same problems for eight years?
You might have written it after it already became true (probably coincidence), but you are right, the current offending editor ended up blocked... and given the way ANI works, that will indeed mean the ANI will now die out soon with nothing else done. Given the editor's age (which I believe is true, though I accept you may not), I would have thought a one-year topic ban from BLPs and race related articles and content, and a six month ban from submitting DYKs, would give them a bit of time to mature into a different approach. The indef based on the assumption of "trolling" seems more like an approach of stamping as harshly as possible on the individual who uses the loopholes existing in the law, so that one can dismiss discussion of dealing with the loopholes.
As for the Teahouse, it's great that you would give it another go. It really does have a different feel, not just in how people asking for help are treated, but also (not sure why) in the quality of the requests. It is a wonderful dreamland of constructiveness, compared with things like Wikipedia:WikiProject Articles for creation/Help desk which is about 75% variations on "ENTER YOUR SUBMISSION NAME HERE (sic) my client asked the article be published by tomorrow so help me NOW also its (sic) not a copyright violation because its (sic) all copied from our website! (unsigned)" I am slightly biased in this though, as I hold the lofty position of Junior Wrangler at the Teahouse :) --Demiurge1000 (talk) 20:35, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Some DYK history is at Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-05-02/Dispatches; I've been editing since 2006, and I've known of the problems since 2007.

Re Teahouse, I was looking for something like the old Wikiquette page, where someone could be wrangled into talking sense into editors who on the verge of <whatever>. Not sure where that is these days, but that particular fellow was quite upset that SSilvers had solicited feedback for a peer review, when that is exactly what one should do. (Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-03-17/Dispatches) S/he also seemed to think some "independent review" was required at PR, as if PR is an assessment. And s/he wasn't going to listen to any amount of reason from me-- and wasn't going away, either. I'm still not sure if the current Teahouse is the same as the old Wikiquette page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:56, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks Sandy... yes the removal of WQA was silly... I personally never found it very useful (I did use it... a bit), but some people did. It's useful in the sense that ANI is obviously a fair bit stupider.
Teahouse is a very different thing... more on that later, sorry.
I made a proposal! This one. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 23:56, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
WQA was childish, which is why it was closed. Eric Corbett 00:01, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm childish, but no-one seems to have succeeded in closing me. Nor has anyone succeeded in closing my proposal that DYK be restricted to one third the frequency it currently has. Which would help. Well, all things in time. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 00:42, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, there's two fine messes. And I had a perfectly reasonable proposal already on the page, several sections earlier, that made have had a snowball's chance. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Some people would rather play civility police than do anything about DYK. --Demiurge1000 (talk) 07:07, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hatnote question

edit

Would you please take a look at the new hatnote at Kinky Boots (musical)? I'm no expert on hatnotes, but my understanding was that it is not appropriate to have a hatnote like this for a title that's already disambiguated. Otherwise all musicals that are based on a notable work or that have an album with its own article would have a hatnote like this, and as far as I know, none of them do. The film and recording are already linked and cross referenced within the article. Can you comment on the talk page please? -- Ssilvers (talk) 12:24 pm, Today (UTC−5)

heading out for the day if I forget later pls remind me ... SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:45, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

User:Ssilvers, when I looked yesterday, what was there was wrong. But I've reviewed Template:Redirect and can't find anything that is right. I see there is nothing there now. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Thanks. Everyone seems to agree now that no hatnote is needed. -- Ssilvers (talk) 21:35, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hypothyroidism

edit

Hi Sandy, I just wanted to give you a heads up that I'm working on the hypothyroidism article. I'm turning in for tonight and did a little bit of work on it but I'm going to work on it more tomorrow. Let me know if I make any missteps along the way or let me know if you have any suggestions. =) TylerDurden8823 (talk) 07:53, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi User:TylerDurden8823! I briefly glanced at your work, and you're on the right track ! I'll take a moment this morning to do some citation cleanup, and (now that I know someone is on it) then post some more suggestions on article talk.

I also have to go over to the cite journal template talk page to sort out why someone messed with the syntax; PMC (PubMed Central) free full text sources used to show up as blue links from the article title, and no longer do. (I think that is somehow related to numerous noobs changing things around at WT:MED, but perhaps User:Colin, User:MastCell or User:Jmh649 know why the bluelinked article titles for PMCs went away. It is no longer obvious to our readers that by clicking on PMC, they can get the full text; it is conventional for free full text to be linked in the article title, and it doesn't make sense for us to have to add the url= parameter as well as the PMC= parameter.) Did that.

The sources I added in Further Reading all have free full text available. Tyler, are you aware of the PMID citation-filling template that renders a cite journal template used in the format used by most medical articles ? It is here; you just plug in the PMID, and it gives you the cite journal template. For example, I see you have now worked one of the reviews I identified (PMID 22962987 Gaitonde) in to the article, but with a different citation format. In that case, you can just grab the citation I had left in Further reading, move it in to the article, and delete it from Further reading (Further reading doesn't need to include sources that are used as citations).

I will catch up over there this morning, so let me know when you're ready to keep going. So glad someone is on it! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

OK, now I'm caught up with you. A couple of things on citations. See the BogHog (formerly Diberri) citation filler above-- it will give you consistent formatting. You were using a style that added a long and unnecessary string on author names, and didn't include free full text when available. Also, take care in ref naming, because using common terms like "Update", "Causes" or "Pregnant" can lead to two refs ending up with the same name. I'll stop for now so you can continue-- nice work so far! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'll attend to formatting issues later with respect to the references. For now, let's just get this article on track. Also, really? That's how we format references for page numbers and the journal? With abbreviations like that? The URL part, I just forgot about, but IMO I always thought that was an awful format for it and never used it. Is that the standard per MEDMOS or is there some wiggle room? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 17:55, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
You can always wiggle, but then you'll be out of sync with most medical articles. Have we adequately covered that at MEDMOS? I don't remember. Page numbers, yes. Journal titles-- there is some bot going through and changing them, so I don't know what that is about (but I find it all silly since the PMID takes us to everything we need to know). URL, the cite journal template was wrecked recently, so don't know how that will be addressed, see link above. Agree on first fix the content, then fix citations ... but one thing I was aiming to do was to replace sources whenever we can with those that have free full text available, so wanted to identify those. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:03, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I understand, I've been using free-text review articles so far. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 18:30, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hey, I am zonked for the day (and it's early!!!), so Hashimoto's is all yours-- thanks again for the good work. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:34, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, it's just hypothyroidism, not Hashimoto's specifically, but yeah no problem. I worked on it a little more and I'm taking a break and will return to it later too. Have a good rest. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 19:10, 16 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Followup discussion at Help talk:Citation Style 1#Reboot: inconsistent citation style due to change in long-standing URL v PMC parameters. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:01, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Bon appetit

edit

Mrs. Drmies helped me make this tonight (and AB is a Georgia native!). Plenty of fiber, and if you crank up the heat on the butter and sage, yum. On another note, we have a dual-flush toilet downstairs which takes a little bit of force to flush. Rosie (4) claims it's too heavy for her, so you can guess what I found as an appetizer--and all of this after Liam, who wears reusable cotton diapers, made papa an extra-special pie. One final note: when Mrs. Drmies comes home from work, the next ten minutes are called "mama time". So given how important this stuff is worldwide, you should forgive the Dutch, for instance, for their "display toilets". That needs an article. Enjoy your Saturday evening, Drmies (talk) 01:09, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

You do know, I hope, that User:Bishonen is the go-to person on toilet articles? I had Domino's pizza for dinner, so there !! Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:14, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Why would you do that to yourself? Come have dinner with us sometime. Caution: I believe butter is an essential food group, though I disagree with everything else Paula Dean has said and done. Drmies (talk) 04:42, 17 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Jami's role

edit

Hey Sandy. I'm not sure what you mean by saying Jami is a "menace". (I don't agree, and I think Mike shares my perspective that she is very competent and has a tough job.) If you're specifically referring to the fact that she's signed up for all of the classes as a "volunteer" even though she is not actually serving as an Online Ambassador for them, I would do the same thing I my job was to manage the US and Canada Education Program. It's an unfortunate shortcoming in the current software that it's not simple to get an activity feed of all the classes at once without doing that, but that's got nothing to do with her.--Sage Ross (WMF) (talk) 14:52, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sage Ross (WMF) She's obviously not competent in her role, and the message being put out by her/WEF/WMF is a menace. She's drinking too much Kool-Aid, and putting out the message that is being publicized and driving more and more students to Wikipedia, with worse and worse results, while doing nothing to address the severe issues that scores of us have been raising for at least two years now. This is the sort of WMF PR claptrap that is driving the bad medical editing that will end up chasing off any of us who are able to deal with it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:51, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Your comment

edit

I did think of that and that's fair comment.--Wehwalt (talk) 21:29, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

--

edit

Do get a life, old girl. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 137.222.228.42 (talk) 00:16, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Did you get a case of indigestion from Blenheim? [5] And who knew we can thank editors for diffs, but not SineBot? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
And a history of logging out for edit warring, too. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
And more edit warring logged out here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:20, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Georgia calling

edit

There is currently a response waiting for you in the Administrator's noticeboard. Thank you. MyNameIsGeorgeNathanielCurzon (talk) 04:31, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

SPI calling. Wikipedia:Sockpuppet investigations/MyNameIsGeorgeNathanielCurzon SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:42, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Input...

edit

Sorry to see you're not going to write a full guide this year. I think I've finished up my "selections" - can you let me know if I've missed anything vital User:Ealdgyth/2013 Arb Election votes? Ealdgyth - Talk 15:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

My time is pretty tight, and I'm not sure what you want me to look at. I can't come up with even six supports, and am glad we have Floquenbeam at least. I don't know how anyone can be neutral on serious BLP offenders. Other than that, well ... I know I shouldn't feel responsible for the students who are begging for help, but it sure is hard to just ignore them. Ruin their holiday or ruin mine ... my time is too tight to write a guide, so I'm not sure what other feedback I can help you with ??? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:55, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Mainly just wanted to make sure I hadn't supported anyone with a major problem I'd missed. We've always disagreed about some folks, but I'd hate to have missed a big issue with someone I supported! Ealdgyth - Talk 15:57, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ha! You have people in every category I don't agree with, but that's what makes the world turn :) I don't suppose it occurs to you how insulting it is to see "clean block log" as one of your criterion, considering that having a block log doesn't always have anything to do with the price of shit in China. But don't mind me-- I'm just the furniture. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:06, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

That ping was a life-saver

edit

You're the best; I'd been looking for this article from that discussion for ages! It's a shame the book is gone; it must have sold out due to overwhelming interest in jockstraps. Эlcobbola talk 17:11, 21 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hey, you :) I've got your book sitting right here should you ever want it. When I first went looking for it on amazon, you can imagine the images I got to browse through (I said "got" to browse through, not "had" to browse through). I gave up (eventually) and went to archives. It still makes me sad to re-read those old talk threads. We did have a good thing going there once, and it was fun, too. The education program has made medical editing not fun anymore. Best, miss you, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:51, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Coffee vs. Espresso

edit

I'm ignorant to whether or not there's a significant difference. Is there a significant difference? If so, what is it? I know it has something to do with how it's made, but it's still coffee, yes? By the way, I found your reaction hilarious. You're not hypothyroid, are you? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 01:19, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Sure am :) And there's a Wikipedia story that's related! Once, my pharmacist made a massive goof up, and I ended up with a double dosage of levothyroxine for three days. (I had a small dog who died when a friend dropped their synthroid on the floor and she got it, so I know what too much levothyroxine can do !) Well, after three nights of no sleep and before I realized the medication mixup, I made a mistake when editing, whereby I misread an article at DYK as a BLP, when it was actually a dead guy. So, although I fixed my mistake and made my peace with the article editor, in the meantime, one of my edits there was wrongly revdel'd, claiming I had vandalized, the admin (Nyttend) who did it wouldn't retract his allegation, and we ended up with an RFC. At the time, I thought it absurd that I should have to reveal on Wikipedia that my editing mistake was a result of a medication mixup for low thyroid. Now I just think it's funny :) Maybe because since then I've learned about *real* admin abuse, making that incident look trivial.

So, yes, espresso is much stronger than coffee. But I can't figure out how that made it into a review anyway, when the original study only had eight subjects. And of course, since I'm a coffee addict, inquiring minds want to know. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:27, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

The information made it into this review as well: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3401749/ That was an interesting story and I'm glad I read it. :) By the way, the article is beginning to look a little bit better, right? TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Oh, great ... so now you're going to take away my coffee and my fiber? I think User:Drmies will have something to say about the effect on ... never mind. Yes, I am thrilled that you are taking on that cleanup. That frees me for ... medical cannabis. Lovely. (Based on the second review, maybe you have to switch it back to just coffee? I dunno ... can you access the original study?) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:14, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yikes, med cannabis has a lot of tags on it and looks like it will be a good deal of work. Good luck with that. I'll see if I can access the paper and update you. I'm not trying to take away your coffee and fiber, you can have those things, you may just need a dosage adjustment if you want those things to remain in your life. Sorry, I know it's a bummer. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:20, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Based on this http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/18341376?dopt=Citation it sounds like either coffee or espresso can do the job, but I do not have access to the full text of this particular paper. We could just say coffee and espresso... TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Nah, I think you have enough that you have to go with coffee now. I shall forever curse you! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:37, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Please don't hate me! ;) TylerDurden8823 (talk) 02:58, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Well now, I seem to have acquired an actual function on Wikipedia. TylerDurden, it seems to me that what's at stake is (and Wittgenstein would agree) a matter of definition: what do you mean with "coffee"? Espresso is a kind of coffee, but espresso is not a kind of drip coffee. Now, what about that "medical" weed? Can I get a hit? Drmies (talk) 03:16, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Wasn't me who originally said coffee. If you have further questions, the articles are referenced above. The subtleties of various types of coffee/espresso are not my area of expertise. If espresso is a type of coffee, I think that means we can just say coffee in this instance. TylerDurden8823 (talk) 04:34, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • As long as everyone here takes their fiber pills and drinks 2 quarts of water daily. Drmies (talk) 04:57, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Come on, Georgia. It's rough. Last night I got up only twice to take care of my boy--and that's the best in a week. I'm tired. But I'm secretly working on an article where I can legitimately include the chart; the only problem is, well, there appear to be no sources available, though that's never stopped Colonel Warden from improving the project. Drmies (talk) 15:00, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Stop it; I haven't had my coffee yet, too early for bursts of laughter. Hey, pardon my manners; I am truly sorry that I failed to ask about your son. I hope he is improving, and you all get some sleep soon. And ... I hope every woman's wish for her husband is fulfilled-- that you got barfed on as much as she did :) Take care there, get well, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:04, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
  • Most of the barf landed on the bed, and I do that washing since Mrs. Drmies hates barf. It makes her puke, she says, the weakling. But little has landed on me, and a lot on her, this is true. You are incorrect, by the way: she wants me to be barfed on more. But she doesn't get up at night to deal with him, so I don't care hahahaha. Yeah, Liam is improving, thanks, and not a moment too soon since MY MOTHER IS COMING!!!! Drmies (talk) 16:23, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Did not mean to offend...

edit

Sorry if you were. It is a minor criteria and mainly there to exclude some folks, rather than worry about folks with stupid blocks on their record. Ealdgyth - Talk 16:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

OK. Happy Thanksgiving to you, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Gobble gobble. Try not to work too hard... it's wonderful you're helping those students, but shouldn't the campus ambassadors be doing it? I'm so thankful that most medieavalists dont' want to do squat with wikipedia...Ealdgyth - Talk 16:27, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
What campus ambassadors? It's all a myth. There is no program. Just hundreds and hundreds of students dropping medical content in, and they have nowhere to turn for help, and we have nowhere to turn for help. If we remove or correct their content, they don't get a grade. Then they're desperate. Then we feel like shit. I've found my legs and decided I'm going to start telling them, I'm really sorry, but taht is the fault of your incompetent freeloading professor who thinks he can get free TAs on Wikipedia, talk to your advisor, department chair, school newspaper, and parents, and tell them your prof has no clue and is setting you up to fail. The truth is that there is no program ... there is no one in here to help with the mess ... it's a few of us to hundreds of them. And always at Thanksgiving. But it's not the students' fault, so you have to be nice to them while seething inside at seeing what their profs are doing to them and to us. I hate it here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:31, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm just trying to brainstorm a solution. While not pretending that submitting a paper to a peer-reviewed publication is the same as editing an article, I thought it would be worth thinking through the analogy. What if, for example, a professor of X required his 300 students class to successfully submit a paper to the Journal Of X? While not likely, I think the Journal of X would take some steps. They would find it quite overwhelming to have to deal with 300 submissions, almost all of which will not qualify, and it would take some time to process, even a quick rejection. I am sure there would be some repercussions, although I'm not sure whether they would simply be between the Journal editors and the prof, or whether the school would get involved.

One reason it is unlikely to happen is that the prof probably has a relationship with some of the editors at the Journal of X, and cares about their reaction. In contrast, the prof may not know any editors at Wikipedia, and views it as a source of free labor, anonymous and unable to complain. Sort of like TAs, without the ability to effectively complain.

The requirement by the prof puts a burden on us, while providing benefits to the prof, and no negatives to the prof if it doesn't go well. We need to think about how to change the balance. The carrot a[[roach would be a more concerted effort by the WMF to reach out to universities and engage them. The stick approach would be to identify places to complain, whether it be University administration, ethics committees, university departments, or others able to change behavior.

Another stick approach would be to declare that if we identify a prof making such a requirement, that we will unilaterally revert every single editor from the class. That would require a community agreement, as it flies in the face of some of our existing rules, but it may not be unreasonable for us to declare that such assignments must meet certain standards. Of course, this approach would require us to codify reasonable standards. --S Philbrick(Talk) 17:13, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Do not want to have this conversation one more time. Please go read the volumes already typed on the WP:ENB. The problem are growing in leaps and bounds; there are no solutions on the horizon. It can't be fixed; tere aren't enough of us; the number of courses and students using Wikipedia as a training ground is bigger than we can manage and handle-- we don't even have the resources to stop them. We've been over the problems ad nauseum at ENB. No Can Do any more discussion. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:30, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
My apologies for trying to help.--S Philbrick(Talk) 17:43, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I shouldn't have brought it up-- can't stand the topic anymore, appreciate your effort. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Cannabidiol effect on epilepsy

edit

Wrt this paper it looks like an early version was withdrawn (PMID 21212005) but the actual cited paper is PMID 22520455 which is ok, though still just primary research paper on animals. -- Colin°Talk 12:07, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

OK, thanks, yea-- still a no go. I also feel badly that I didn't get to pinging Diannaa soon enough, and hadn't realized when I first started looking at the article that she had recently edited and may not have had a chance yet to issue the student warning. Bad news ... when I merged the text to Medical cannabis, I found that I'm going to need to spend a week in there cleaning out primary sources. Think of all the work we could be doing if we weren't TAing. We used to talk about writing the History of Tourette syndrome and that was always an exciting prospect because the material is so interesting; I have lost all motivation. I have even lost motivation to update the citations at Tourette syndrome so that dear Bencherlite can take it off of his not-run-yet list at TFA. Maybe the muse will restrike me in the New Year. Colin, I saved the first student version of that mess in my sandbox in case an example is needed later used for illustration. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:32, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I haven't done any serious editing on Wikipedia for years. Keep meaning too. More active on Commons these day. Real life is busy. I continue to believe there is actually plenty scope for me to write articles that will be unharmed by vandals or students. I've only got myself to blame for not getting round to it. So all this doesn't discourage me but it is a timesink. I know that writing a solid article is a good defence.
I'm going to have a go at just ignoring Mike Cline completely, otherwise I will have to join you in once again unwatching the EB page. I think we need to involve the wider community. Perhaps a Signpost article coupled with a proposed policy. -- Colin°Talk 14:11, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I'm not sure where to focus next on the problem, but I do know that what always happens is that the term ends, we get back to regular editing, and we forget how awful it is until the next university term, when we are hit again with increasingly worse but more of same.

I'm not sure whether to push hard on the proposal worked up by User:Alanyst to get a prominent disclaimer on our articles at User:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer (discouraged that even the folks in there can't agree and there are eight versions up now, so taking that forward right now doesn't look optimal); work up a big post to WP:AN explaining the issues and asking for admin help; or to begin an essay explaining why the problems we encounter with students are not the normal "anyone can edit" stuff.

I am burnt out. Mike Cline emailed me, I explained to him that neither you nor I like to conduct Wikipedia business offline but that I would entertain his points if he posted them on Wikipedia; and I encouraged him to get to know better one of Wikpedia's finest gentlemen and scholars. It looks to me like one of the problems with any venture with WMF folks involved is that they are too accustomed to working behind closed doors, and don't have the same respect for transparency that you and I have (not meaning Mike specifically-- just the whole thing with WMF/WEF staffers). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:22, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

An essay or opinion piece perhaps. I don't see why the problems with student editing should limited to medicine, though there are specific issues there with "it matters" and the controversies affect everyday life (whereas the controversies in physics are likely to be of interest only to physicists). I suspect it works better with classes that are writing less demanding articles (like a biography), are more mature, are better at written English, and of course, supervised and led by actual Wikipedians. Looking at Wadewitz's class was an eye opener -- we are lectured about working nicely with the students to help them yet that is precisely not what is happening in the "best" examples. They are self supporting. As they should be. We've been sold a pup. Rather than getting the best that academia might offer WP, we're getting the dregs, and are sometimes (like with Joordens' class) just plain abused. I don't see why I should comment on student drafts to help polish them. In fact doing so just encourages the misbelief that this is scalable. There's only one Colin, one Sandy, one Doc James. Too many people, to use your American expression, drinking the Kool-Aid. -- Colin°Talk 14:48, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Starting a user draft essay is on my checklist. I haven't even gotten through my watchlist this morning yet. I hate what the ed program has done to us, and I hate that they do it at two key times of year: Thanksgiving, and the beginning of spring. Must I really unwatch most of the articles I care about? I will ping you when I start the essay; guests arriving in three days for Thanksgiving week. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Oh, and check this out. I removed it to user talk once, it was reinstated by Bios. Now we are not only the DailyMail; we are also Facebook. Students who know nothing about Wikipedia (and for all we know are roommates IRL) using talk pages for assessing their friends' work, even though neither of them know anything about Wikipedia's internal assessment processes. Why don't these profs have them do their facebooking on user talk pages? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:26, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Hi Sandy. I checked my browser history and I did have the user's talk page open to issue a warning at 18:27 my local time; the edit must have failed to save in one of those Wikimedia-error things I am getting so often lately. Sorry about that. -- Diannaa (talk) 15:12, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes, I know-- I was getting tons of them for about three days (but they seem to have stopped now). Anyway, I'm sorry I hadn't yet gotten around to pinging you. The education mess has been so overwhelming that I'm keeping a checklist now of things I need to return to on my watchlist, and plugging away at it as able. Diannaa if you are around, would you mind deleting User:SandyGeorgia/Sample student editing so that I can re-do it? We are likely to want to use that article as a sample in the future, and I want to be able to link to a version that doesn't mention no warning being issued, which isn't fair to you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Okay, that's done. Sorry you are experiencing such a stressful period. The one article I looked at made me literally feel ill, so I can only imagine what you are going through :/. Off to the bank now, ttyl. -- Diannaa (talk) 16:12, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thank you, and thank you. I believe I've straightened out all of that at ENB. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:22, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Colin, see peer reviews, going off all across my watchlist. Cannabis/epilepsy rated 16/20 and 17/20 by fellow classmates-- that's a helpful addition to my watchlist when I'm busy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:00, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Boston Globe opinion piece, and Jimbo's talk

edit

On my way to see if we should link marijuana/epilepsy article there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:34, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hbarton

edit

Hey Sandy I was wondering if you had any tips for me on how to get my page back online. I am new to wikipedia which obviously showed in my first draft, but this is for a school project and I need to get my page back into the main space. Any help would be greatly appreciated. HBARTON3 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.61.102.18 (talk) 01:58, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi, Hbarton3 When you post to a user talk page, you should start a section at the bottom of the page, and you should sign your posts by entering four tildes ( ~~~~ ) after them. Please remind your professor that he should be teaching you how to interact on Wikipedia before you move articles into mainspace from your sandbox.

I assume you are posting about Cannabidiol effect on epilepsy? It is in the mainspace, and unless you contest the deletion, it will be there until Nov 29.

From several other articles I've seen from your class, it appears that your professor designed the course poorly, and you students are left in a lurch. First, he didn't make sure you had enough sources and were writing on topics that wouldn't end up deleted or merged (that should have been the first step), and second, he has you publishing articles before he has graded them. He should have been grading your work in your sandbox, and they should not have been published to mainspace until they were ready; as soon as you publish anything to Wikipedia, you no longer own it and it can change. Your professor should learn how to go through the diffs to see the history of the article; your original version is still in the article history (and in your sandbox, I imagine). He can grade it there if he didn't set up the course to grade in sandbox.

Perhaps you can talk to your campus or online ambassador and have them educate your professor, so that he can learn where to find your work and how to grade it. If not, it might be best to tell your parents, your school advisor, your school newspaper, and the chair of your Department that your professor has no clue what he's doing, and he's ruining the college experience. And you can tell him SandyGeorgia said that. Please let me know how it goes. If your professor doesn't know how to read diffs, and doesn't plan to grade you from your sandbox, please tell him to stop by here because I'd love to have a chat with him. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 11:36, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Cholera Article

edit

Hi,

You asked about my plans to make further edits to the Cholera article. While I had not initially budgeted more time to work on the article, I am not closed off to the idea. However, I am a student, and final exam season is rapidly approaching. If I make further edits, it will be in a few weeks after exams are over and I have more time. Thank you for your advice!

Kimmyfromtexas (talk) 16:21, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

ANI

edit

Hi, Sandy, I didn't expect that certain editors would be happy with the closure, but you're going to have to heed it anyway. I've reverted your change and I don't expect to see you insist. If you want to start a brand new topic (not a subsection), either at ANI or somewhere else, that's up to you.--Bbb23 (talk) 22:47, 25 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Hi Sandy - the editnotice was blanked by Wehwalt a few days ago, and no longer appears when editing the article. I agree it was pretty dubious, but it's gone now so probably not worth pursuing at AN/I. The more general question of page ownership is a valid one, but not one that's likely to be resolved constructively on AN/I. MastCell Talk 22:53, 25 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Thanks both. Bbb23 a more appropriate place at this juncture is probably WP:AN, since it's no longer an "incident". MastCell, what does need to be resolved is whether something like that should keep happening on any other FA. I had never encountered such a thing, and didn't realize it could even be done until Overagainst brought that to attention. If that went on in an FA without even *me* knowing it, how many other FAs might have followed suit? We need further discussion and clarity not for this article, but for however many others might now realize they can do this, or have done this. Here we have the ability on Wikipedia for an admin to influence editing on an article s/he "owns", without the broader community even becoming aware of it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:05, 25 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
There's really no guidance on appropriate criteria for an editnotice (at least not that I could find here). I do agree with you that the editnotice in question was inappropriate on several levels. I generated this list of active editnotices using Special:Prefixindex. As you can see, there are a lot of them, but many are just page-specific notices describing discretionary sanctions (e.g. in the Israeli-Palestinian topic area). I suppose it would be an interesting project to go through and see what they all say, and what kinds of standards we have for editnotices. It would also be relatively easy to generate an intersection of Featured-Articles-with-editnotces if you're interested. MastCell Talk 23:17, 25 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
It would be interesting to see how many are on FAs, but it could still be too many to go through (many of them may be just things like date formatting). What I'm really after is guidance that can specifically be given at WT:FAC. There are always issues at FAs vis-à-vis WP:OWN#Featured articles, and this one crossed the line, but now that this one has come to light, others may begin something similar. I want to have clear guidance to the FA community about when an editnotice crosses the ownership line relative to the normal BS that goes on in FAs (I'm thinking, for example, of editing at the autism article, where I'm now realizing we could have saved loads of time by using an editnotice). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:33, 25 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Favour

edit

Sandy, I have a favour to ask of you: I'd like to get tutored in MEDMOS and MEDRS.. If you have time, I'd like to go there every single change that Kimmyfromtexas made to cholera, and understand what is OK, what's bad and has to be removed (and why), and what's a good addition. If you have the patience to go through this with me (perhaps on a subpage of my talk page) I think I'd end up knowing a lot more about medical articles and being in a better position to participate in conversations about them. I know this is a lot to ask, and it would be very time consuming for you, but there's no deadline -- and in any case I wouldn't be able to work on it at high speed as I have lots else going on. Let me know if you think this is something you could take on. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

After Thanksgiving? I have out-of-town family here, and am still trying to just get through my morning watchlist so I can get outta the house, and I've still a list of things I need to get back to. Ping me if I forget. Also, Mike, since you're the only one one of the few who listens ... JEEEEEEEEEZ !!! We need to get this under control. As soon as I saw the new board, my goal was to quickly put up three samples so we could figure out a more efficient way of dealing with these problems and get off on the right foot (getting header info, things like that). For every single incident now, we have talk scattered all over the Wikipedia, I'm constantly updating posts, edit conflicting, ... it's crazy making. I wanted to establish a system early on, which is why I took the time today ... Best to you, Happy Thanksgiving, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:06, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Sure, after Thanksgiving. I'll put a page together with the first diff, and will post a question that you can answer, and we'll just go back and forth as we have time. Thanks! and enjoy Thanksgiving. Talk to you in a few days. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 19:12, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
@Mike Christie: Sure. By the way, the Society and culture section still has elements of what should be in Prevention, History, a whole lot more. We will look closely later. It's a good example of why student "essays" sometimes go wrong. The student set out to write on one topic, rather than to write on a topic in the way the "encyclopedia" Wikipedia does, and put that all in one section. I'm not sure if Doc James will eventually get around to fixin' it up. The most likely scenario is that, because so many student edits hit us at once and we can't get to them, the incorrect work gets forgotten. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:31, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yes was hoping that leaving the social and cultural section that would encourage the student to keep working on it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 20:01, 27 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

circadian rhythm

edit

Hi Sandy -- I'm not keen on the changes you are making. This is not really a medical article -- it has medical relevance but the scope is much wider, and MEDRS should really only apply to the medical parts, -- mainly the "Human health" section. Also I fail to see the advantage of replacing primary sources with cn tags -- why not add a "primary" tag if you feel the source is inadequate. This is a pretty important article, and both Hordaland and I keep an eye on it. Regards, Looie496 (talk) 18:32, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

HI, Looie496 ... note the difference in how I'm tagging general content from human health content. I'm tagging the sources on animal stuff; I'm dealing with the human health content differently. Please have a closer look; I'm all done now (sorry I just saw your message). I only remove primary sources on human health. Sorry, but we shouldn't allow Wikipedia to be used for researchers to advance their own pet theories by cobbling together primary sources, particularly when human health is concerned. There were some pretty damaging things cited to primary sources. I started out only to clean up citations per WP:CITEVAR (see the earliest versions of the article), but found health content with consequences while I was in there. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:12, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply


Morality

edit

I'm just perusing the talk page archives of Natalee Holloway and I came across this little gem from Talk:Natalee Holloway/Archive 4#Disappearance of Natalee Holloway: "I never remember an agreement, just your threats to oppose it based on your personal morality (aka nothing to do with Wikipedia). - User:AuburnPilot" I'm going to start collecting quotes like that. I was trying to explain the ethos here to someone yesterday. I told him it's not generally thought necessary to put a disclaimer about the unreliability of our medical content at the top of medical articles, which staggered him. Then I told him it's a generally accepted norm here that we don't care about the feelings of our subjects or readers - or each other for that matter. He thought it was sad. I'm not as angry as I used to be about it, I'm starting to find it interesting.

While I'm here: Thank you so much for all the effort you put in on this project. I am really pleased to see you so engaged these days. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 16:22, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

I'm in favor of a disclaimer on our medical articles. With the addition to the normal POV-pushing and agenda-pushing by various researchers and corporations of the mess caused by student editing, there is no possibility we can ever keep up, and we should have a gigantic disclaimer on every article. After all, Wehwalt can install his own version of a threatening ownership on an FA; why can't we install a template on all medical content that warns everyone who hits Wikipedia first via Google that they are reading something written by RandyfromBoise? It wouldn't bother me at all; we can't keep up, we shouldn't pretend we can.

If you think that quote shows the dominant "morality" present on the Holloway article, I can only say that you ain't seen nothing yet. That's a long and deep and sordid story. What brings you to Holloway? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:38, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

That's funny! I just came here to mock them for this template:{{maintained|Wehwalt, AuburnPilot, Kww}}
Sorry I don't know how to point to it without putting it on your page. I saw Holloway mentioned on a talk page somewhere. I can't remember where. So, tell me a sordid story. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:53, 12 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Anthonyhcole it usually becomes evident to anyone who follows there for any length of time, and I think it more effective to let people discover the depth and breadth of the issues on their own. It is enough to make one wonder about the ethics associated with some professions, but then in the medical realm, we have Otto Placik and his plastic surgery edits, so "first do no harm" is no exemption when it comes to Wikipedia! SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:33, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I've pretty much got the idea. Grrr. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 20:02, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I don't know if I should commend your diligence ... or point out that it's not exactly rocket science :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:24, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
When you boot up the internet we should just show a disclaimer reading: "Pile of shit ahead." --Laser brain (talk) 21:07, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Well, Wikipedia:General disclaimer states that "WIKIPEDIA MAKES NO GUARANTEE OF VALIDITY", which is semantically equivalent if less emphatic. MastCell Talk 22:24, 13 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I sometimes patrol medical articles using Recent changes/Medicine and can confidently assure you that anything could be in our higher-hanging fruit. As for Wikipedia's general and medical disclaimers, they may protect the Foundation from legal liability for somebody overdosing, neglecting symptoms, eschewing treatment, etc. due to what they read here (I'm not as sure as the WMF seems to be on that point) but I'm talking about moral not legal fault.
The prominence of a warning that appears behind a tiny-font link at the bottom of an article among a bunch of other tiny-font links is not commensurate with the seriousness of the potential harm. I know a lot of non-Wikipedians of widely-varying tech-savviness, and those at the more naive end of that spectrum - even the smart ones - have no idea that anyone can add whatever they like to our articles. None of them is ever likely to click the Disclaimer link. You may say, "Oh, smart people would never take anything we say seriously" but (a) I'm not so sure and (b) half our readers have a lower than average IQ. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 09:49, 14 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Followup at ANI, at BLPN, and at Nikkimaria talk; [6] [7] I see the "sordid" part is becoming more clear, even without me having to say a thing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:59, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Ooooh. Please don't make me read that review. I don't mind some kinds of sordid - but I haven't yet acquired a taste for fetid. This is whole saga is fetid. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 18:06, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ya think? No sympathy from me. I've dealt with it for seven years. Get tough! Here's another reason it's fetid: [8] I am reluctant to bring even an obvious SPI because of the spurious block from an involved admin after a simple question related to socking. That thread was a waste of everyone's time. At least Arsten didn't involve himself; maybe he's learning. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:45, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I started reading the talk page: yep. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 06:46, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Yep. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 17:49, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Medical disclaimer

edit

After discussion on multiple talk pages, it was revealed that multiple other language Wikipedias do have medical disclaimers.

Wikipedia language Number of articles Template Position in article
Chinese 732,000 zh:Template:Medical small Top
Dutch 1,700,000 nl:Sjabloon:Disclaimer medisch lemma Top
German 1,600,000 de:Wikipedia:Hinweis Gesundheitsthemen Bottom
Indonesian 322,000 id:Templat:Penyangkalan-medis Top
Norwegian 399,000 no:Mal:Helsenotis Bottom
Portuguese 802,000 pt:Predefinição:Aviso médico Section: Treatment
Turkish 220,000 tr:Şablon:TıpUyarı Top

This proposed version for use on en.wikipedia emerged from discussion at User talk:Alanyst/sandbox/reliability disclaimer and several other on-Wiki talk pages and external websites:

Anyone can edit Wikipedia; do not rely on its medical content. See the full site disclaimer.

I am planning to install it on   Tourette syndrome (where I am the only significant contributor) unless a significant consensus against emerges. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:37, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Overagainst

edit

I was quite open that I was a novice on an FAR. Wehwalt asked me on the FAR page for what I wanted, the goalposts as he said. "I asked you to put down what you wanted done so we could talk about it." I then used an analysis of the 'Media coverage' section to explain my thinking on is wrong in the article, giving concrete examples. Several other sections have similar problems. Kww queried and I enlarged on what I said. I'm sorry if it was the wrong place but please understand that I was told there that I had not made my position clear there so I replied there. I have never had an objection to discussing things on the Talk page and have been doing so, all they had to say was let's take this to talk. Today I immediately took the issue of the refs and external links to the talk page.

At the start there were 3 saying there was no need for a FAR, 2 for, and the first uninvolved editor said the FAR was a waste of time. I did not think it a good idea to just leave things unanswered and maybe let the FAR be halted. Sorry if that was unnecessary I continued that longer than necessary and annoyed you, I can assure you it was no fun for me either. I am a complete novice at FAR which I made clear more than once. When experienced editors of FA like Wehwalt and Kww are asking me things on a FAR page or making an argument on a FAR page I took it to be OK to reply on that same FAR page. Answers take longer than questions. I understand you want peace from me on the FAR page. You supported the FAR when it was in danger of getting squashed (I thought it was anyway), so your wish is my command. Please feel free to contact me here or on my Talk for any reason.Overagainst (talk) 19:56, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Overagainst, I realize you have acted in good faith, and that you didn't understand FAR. That is why I made the long post on talk. Now I think the best thing everyone can do is to let it alone for a bit, and not spread the discussion all over. Let the process work, please. It is a deliberative process, and the delegates do not act rashly in either direction. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:01, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Do you want me to shut up on the DoNH Talk page too?Overagainst (talk) 20:15, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I do not know what DoNH stands for, but Overagainst, I am not your keeper, and I really don't want to be drug any further into this mess. I made a post to try to help ALL of you stay on track, mostly because what you are all doing to the delegates is miserable, and I've been in those shoes. Please do not continue to expect anything from me; it appears at times that anything I may do to try to help on that page is destined to backfire. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 20:26, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
DoNH Talk page = Talk:Disappearance of Natalee Holloway. Disappearance of Natalee Holloway is what the article is called now. I was not clear if you when you said "I think the best thing everyone can do is to let it alone for a bit, and not spread the discussion" you thought my participating in the discussions on Talk:Disappearance of Natalee Holloway was unhelpful to the FAR. But as you have obviously not been paying any attention to Talk:Disappearance of Natalee Holloway I was being obtuse. Adieu.Overagainst (talk) 20:49, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Ah, yes, sorry-- I have not looked at the article talk page. On the DoNH, I'mADork. Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:10, 22 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Today

edit

Re my recent comments. I have never had much to do with admins, especially ones actively opposing what I was trying to do, and those I interacted with on the Natalee Holloway page ran rings round me with BLP caveats. So I took 2 months off and came back to the article when I initiated the FAR. About those comments today; frankly, I was intimidated by the complaints by an admin (who has popped up on the Talk and the FAR) about taking things to BLP noticeboard, (which I have done only once, ever) and worried my name was cropping up a lot in disputes there over the last couple of days. I panicked. However I see from the discussion at the admins notice board that you and Anthonyhcole can keep things above board. I also felt, after reading an edit summary about juvenile pretentiousness (which, though I'm old, I took to be about me) that I had made a bit of a fool of myself on some of that stuff. I just mentioned the issue of naming all 3 to give it an airing, and then got carried away as is my wont. In the event nobody thought there was a problem or the matter needed to be taken further so there is consensus for using the names of the trio, which is fine by me. My ideas for possible improvements to the 'Background section might include things like: she had got her driving licence, church affiliation (if Natalee was a churchgoer) could be added to the article. Also there could be a brief reference to what I believe her mother said about her not being particularly worldly for her years. Another possible addition is I believe she and the school group were from a state where they not old enough to to buy drinks, but they could do so in Aruba. The way the drinking is talked about currently in the article is completely over the top. There could be a mention that there was drinking by her group on their holiday (as if that is surprising), and then maybe something about her being bought a shot of 151-proof rum at the end of the night by van Der Sloot. She had a drink in a nightclub, not drunk though; her puzzled remark when she saw the brothers in the car rings true. Your approach to the way Natalee is portrayed seems right to me.Overagainst (talk) 19:59, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Overagainst It is hard for me to know how to best answer you. This is complicated by the fact that I find it much more effective-- and that I have much more credibility on Wikipedia (Anthonyhcole came to this article and came to his conclusions without ever having had any contact with or feedback from me)-- because I don't take things like this backchannel to email, where I could speak more openly. Someday, I will issue you a Barnstar of Integrity for sticking with this in the face of the intimidation visited upon you from not one, but three, admins. Although I cannot stomach reading the talk page of Natalee Holloway (the misogyny and misrepresentation repulse me), I was aware that you were in there because I keep the page watchlisted, see edit summaries, and know that the same struggle has been going on for six years (just based on what I see in edit summaried).

I understand how you feel and what you are facing, and do not mean to make you feel worse by pointing out that you may not fully understand BLP policy. Again, your instincts about that article (that POV is used to create a BLP situation, whereby victims are re-victimized) are entirely correct, but you are, to put it bluntly, naïve in the ways of Wikipedia and the ways groups of editors can protect POV, and the effort that it takes to get it addressed. You remind me of me when I first came to Wikipedia and thought Hugo Chavez could be neutralized; it took me four years to realize that there were more of "them" than "us", and that Chavez would be dead before a neutral article was written. I was right. He's dead, and his article is still POV.

It seems to me that you thought that by pointing out what is obvious to anyone who knows the case, the right thing would be done. That isn't how it works in here. To work on an entrenched problem like the Holloway article, you have to really know and understand policy, and you have to be willing to go point-by-point, for years, arguing the case based on sources. There are sources that can be used to correct the POV in the article, but as far as I have been able to tell, your arguments have not been based on those sources. And some of your BLP arguments haven't been entirely correct, which has extended the case and impacted your credibility.

Based on your passion and persistence, you will be a force to be reckoned with in your future Wiki career. But laying out things that you think should happen in the article, arguing from a logical, common sense perspective, isn't going to get you anywhere in that article, and it is creating discussions that are long and unwieldy. Have you read the book I recommended on the FAR? The only way to begin to neutralize the Holloway article is to work on one point at a time. There are hundreds of things wrong with that article, but as long as the ratios of editors willing to change that are not in your favor, you cannot expect to make much progress. One thing at a time. I have already provided, I think, three samples on the FAR. Here's another: on May 10, Joran received part of the extorted money. He went to Peru. He killed the Peruvian on May 30. Why does our article not mention that it was the money he extorted from the Holloway family that allowed him to travel to Peru to kill? What do sources say about that? You have to argue the missing pieces from sources.

I could go on and on with examples, but I do not want to work on that article. The worst victimization of a victim that we could ever visit upon the mother of her dead child is to run an article on our mainpage on the dead girl's birthday when that article is slanted towards a negative characterization of the mother and her dead daughter. Wikipedia has already done the worst thing it can do to living people: anything else is irrelevant to me, and I imagine to the victims by now as well. We, at Wikipedia, should hang our heads in shame.

I'm sorry that I have discouraged you by having to point out where you have been a bit off on BLP policy. I do admire the work you've done. And I really do wish I didn't have to be involved any more there. I have little hope anything will ever change there, and I find it most frustrating to even have to think about how repulsive that article is. Best regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:09, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Oh, the article is going to change, thanks to you. People are beginning to pay attention to what happens there now. I have had this problem before with a coven of editors protecting POV, when I tried to do some work on Murder of Meredith Kercher. I got nowhere and people were complaining about unwieldy posts on talk there too. The difference then was that an admin (SlimVirgin) was put on the page to ensure the facts and tone changed to reflect the Knox acquittal, and although he reverted me a few times, I got the message and was greatly aided by a really good book on the case that had just been published, and which I bought (duh), it was plain sailing. Unfortunately, I was re-convinced I was a master of persuasion and editing after that. I knew you had a good book from a couple of things you said before. I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with, and the best thing seems to be if I wait for you to take the lead.Overagainst (talk) 22:24, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
OA, I'm afraid you might not be understanding. I am not going to "take the lead"; it's unlikely I'll even take a major role. If I see more abuse (of process, of admin tools, or of people), I may weigh in periodically. Or I may not. It is not a great book-- it is merely a bit better than what the article currently relies on (RECENTISM, FOX news and CNN, with slanting towards the Aruban/Dompig POV, painting the girls as trashy promiscuous drunks). If you want the article to change, you need to argue from sources. Do not expect or count on me to do that for you. SlimVirgin is a she, and she knows BLP as well as anyone; perhaps you can ask her to help you. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:46, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
OK, I think I get the picture. Hopefully when the featured review re-starts I'll be able to be more constructive, and less obtrusive.Overagainst (talk) 14:15, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
That's the spirit ... bite-size pieces. One point at a time, keep discussion always strictly based on sources. Forget about what makes sense and what you think should be obvious; just say what the sources say. And not with a wall of text. I'm glad you're not discouraged ... the ride you've had would have chased out a lesser person! Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:12, 24 November 2013 (UTC)Reply


Thanks

edit

Thanks for what you do around here, again. Biosthmors (talk) pls notify me (i.e. {{U}}) while signing a reply, thx 10:47, 19 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you

edit
  The Bio-star
Kudos for all your work this morning on hypothyroidism! --some jerk on the Internet (talk) 15:24, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Why thank you! I'd rather do that than watch the testosterone fest evolving at WP:ANI! I don't know if I've ever told you that I think you have the coolest username since my last favorite coolest user name (may you not end up where he did). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:30, 15 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

A barnstar for you!

edit
  The Original Barnstar
For the excellent work you do to keep Wikipedia high quality ( at least as much as you can ). And hold the line on quality over quantity. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:58, 20 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

Some stroopwafels for you!

edit
  Just a snack, best enjoyed with a cup of warm coffee. JFW | T@lk 14:44, 21 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

stickyprod-medrs

edit

Sorry for not explaining what I meant more thoroughly when I suggested it, I was in a bit of a rush. My idea was to implement something analogous to how we handle new unsourced BLPs for medicine-related articles - a prod for medicine-related articles that fail our medical referencing guidelines that could only be removed if the article had been brought in to compliance with them, and would otherwise be userfied or deleted at the end of a seven day period. It seems like it would help address problems with shitty medical editing, both student and non-student related. If you agree that it sounds like a useful idea, I would be more than happy to write up and run a proposal for it. Kevin Gorman (talk) 23:29, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

That is a wonderful idea; thank you very much for explaining it, for suggesting it, and for offering to work on it. There are many areas of Wikipedia I'm just not familiar with (like AFDs and prods and such) because most of my Wikitime has been spent working at the FA level. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:48, 23 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
Once I'm back from thanksgiving, I'll write something up and run it by you and WT:MED. I'm not entirely sure we'll get it passed through the general community, but it really does seem a way to make it a lot easier for all y'all. Kevin Gorman (talk) 17:43, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Reply
I love this idea. --Anthonyhcole (talk · contribs · email) 04:03, 3 December 2013 (UTC)Reply

Demo of the Medicine box

edit
 
 
Recent changes in WP:Medicine
Articles and their talkpages:

Not mainspace:

 Top  High  Mid  Low  NA  ??? Total
 99  1,098  11,489  38,317  18,883 971  70,857 
List overview · Lists updated: 2015-07-15 · This box:

SandyGeorgia, above I have added the Medicine box to this page, you asked about. See the code; you can put it on any page. I also added {{clear}} below to prevent the box flowing into the next section.
Also I added two "personal" pages to follow (took autism example from your recent contributions). See the code, for the two options (link & textlabel). I can give more examples if you want to. -DePiep (talk) 06:58, 26 November 2013 (UTC)Reply

QOL followup

edit

Note to self, from WP:ENI for followup:

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:14, 29 November 2013 (UTC)Reply