User talk:WhatamIdoing/Archive 17

Hello WhatamIdoing, I want to add two sentences to the talk page on Multiple Chemical Sensitivity (to which I have made very occasional small edits over the last decade), but even the talk page is locked. You seem to be at the center of the conversation and stick to the rules, neutral between the warring factions. What do I do, or should I simply wait? The editors do not seem to understand that (1) the medical literature on MCS was distorted 25 years ago by well funded and unethical PR on the chemical companies' side; and (2) MCS as experienced by people like me cannot possibly occur given the basic theory underlying the practice of medicine, so debating what is happening assuming that theory is correct is at best a waste of time. I advocate shortening the page by 10x, summarizing the two sides' positions succinctly, and removing all of the advocacy and disinformation from both sides. -Fstevenchalmers Fstevenchalmers (talk) 06:29, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Hi Fstevenchalmers,

I agree with you that one of the problems we've been having is confusing the theorized etiologies with the reality of what people experience. Those are entirely separate questions.

What kind of sources have you found? So far, I've found one highly reputable (though not super recent) medical textbook, which is a good way to represent the mainstream medical viewpoint. I haven't "used up" this source yet, so I haven't spent a lot of time looking for another, but I would like to get a couple of more recent sources. Ideally, when we're done with this round of updates, almost all the sources in the article will be from the current decade. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:50, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

From a practical point of view, research into physical causes of MCS stopped 25 years ago when ESRI, run by Ron Gots and funded as a litigation defense effort largely by the chemical industry, went to the grant funders, institutions, researchers, and the journals with a story which painted the research as enabling these poor, poor mentally ill people and in so doing harming them. Best retelling (in a non peer reviewed form, of course) http://annmccampbell.com/publicationswritings/publication-1/ .

There was a bequest to Harvard to study this area but I see no useful results. https://sites.sph.harvard.edu/hoffman-program/

There is work by Ann Steinemann, who in the last few years left the US for a university in Australia, carefully never using the words "Multiple Chemical Sensitivity", the best of which is https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11869-019-00699-4 . Her work more generally is linked at https://www.drsteinemann.com/publications.html .

There is also work by Claudia Miller (who co wrote a seminal book almost 30 years ago, and invented the term TILT for Toxicant Induced Loss of Tolerance, and the QUEESI questionnaire). https://tiltresearch.org/ None of this comes close to forming a theory of how a minute exposure could, in a sensitized person, rapidly produce a subjectively noticeable change in the operation of the nervous system. Neither does anything the Environmental Medicine community has done since Theron Randolph. Martin Pall was in the right space, but even there IMHO was looking at a special case and not the general case.

None of these papers are of the quality Wikipedia's rules treat as the gold standard. The fact that Ron Gots' name was featured on the Wikipedia MCS page for over a decade says his disinformation effort of 25 years ago continues to bear fruit. It also bore fruit in litigation, shutting down chemical injury claims (including my own) for decades. The people with MCS (my side) were so totally outgunned that we lost decisively. I assume paid advocacy for the chemical industry is still occurring, but not through a visible organization.

The reason why I advocate radically shrinking this page is that it has been used to distribute disinformation in the past, disinformation which was deliberately injected into the science/medicine literature so it could be cited for litigation defense. There is no one really working directly on research, or trying to publish, papers which disagree. They're just sidestepping the issue and trying to chip away at its edges. It will be decades before science and medicine are ready to invest in looking here again.

Thank you for listening. Not sure if anything I've shared here is useful. Oh, and for the record, I hypothesize MCS is an autoimmune disease of the system of circulating proteins in the bloodstream allowing what are normally haptens on those proteins to interfere with the miniscule supplies of neurotransmitters and ion-channel ions supplying the nervous system. Utter heresy in medical circles, no possibility of discussion or publication of a hypothesis remotely like this, any more than Semmelweiss could get heard about washing hands. And I'm just a retired computer designer, no credentials.

-Fstevenchalmers Fstevenchalmers (talk) 07:26, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thanks, Fstevenchalmers, those look like they'll give me a clearer idea of the clinical ecology POV.

I understand that the one thing that they've settled on recently is that the original cause is "multifactorial". What I think doesn't matter for the article, either, but I'm currently liking the neurological notions myself, which connects to your hypothesis. The neurological notions seem to explain more than the psychological hypothesis.

The litigation thing is another area that I'm not sure how to represent. The history section is a mess, and that might be the place to talk about various organizations and lawsuits. We're also spending too much time on who "recognizes" MCS. Most of those aren't even about recognition as a practical syndrome; they're about whether the organization has stated a belief in a particular etiological hypothesis. Wikipedia then ends up with self-contradictory claims, in which 5% of people have been medically diagnosed with MCS, but the people issuing those diagnoses supposedly "don't recognize" MCS as a valid diagnosis.

The debate over etiology reminds me a bit of cancer patients. When people get past the initial shock of being diagnosed with cancer, they're usually desperate to identify (and control) the cause. When the cause isn't obvious, the thing they decide to blame can be almost random. It's not unusual to have cancers grow for five or ten years before they're diagnosed, and yet cancer patients almost always pick a cause that produced a strong emotional response (e.g., disgust or fear, which are both primary emotions) and happened just one or two years before the cancer was diagnosed (i.e., when the tumor had likely been growing for three to nine years already). Humans are wired to think this way, and humans with MCS are presumably no different in that regard. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 31 December 2019 (UTC)

Thank you for listening, WhatamIdoing, and I apologize for my mishaps on both style/indentation/formatting and almost certain etiquette errors. Four more thoughts for you:

First, on the "recognition" issue, here's the real story. There are somewhere between 10,000 and 100,000 people like me in the US, who simply don't function well in the presence of everyday things which are routinely tolerated by the rest of the population. We can't work in a normal work environment, we can't socialize, we have a limited ability to go in stores. The recognition of this under ADA varies, and quite frankly in many cases it's too hard to practically accommodate. There is a 30 year old battle for accommodation. It's existential for the disabled: without the ability to work, without the ability to have housing one can function in, without the ability to go about one's business in public, one generally falls through the social safety net. These recognitions are about precedent for ADA accommodation and precedent for landing in rather than falling through the social safety net. Again, it's existential for a lot of people with my disability, and to be honest, what's written in Wikipedia may well affect the perceptions of those who approve and deny accommodation and social services. A good reference on this is a Yale Law Review article from about 6 years ago, ^[1] . From that piece:

" Much about MCS remains unknown and undefined, and unlike fibromyalgia, the development of MCS as a diagnosis has met with resistance from industry, as well as the medical community. Manufacturers of everything from fragrances to chemical pesticides have billions of dollars at stake; some doctors suggest that industry public relations efforts are the only reason MCS research has moved so slowly and remained so controversial. 02 If this is the case, the anti-MCS movement has certainly been effective: Even in the most recent material, highly contentious debate about the condition continues. 103" (Pages 20-21)

Second, the Clinical Ecologists (now called Environmental Medicine) can serve only the well off. A normal person doesn't have $10,000-$20,000 and the resources to live in special rental housing for a few months to visit the Environmental Health Center at Dallas. Insurance doesn't cover non-mainstream medicine. A normal person doesn't even have $500 for a normal intake exam at a local Environmental Medicine practice, much less all the tests they'll call for to see if there is anything wrong with you that medicine does know how to fix. So mainstream people with MCS are a different constituency from the MCS doctors.

Third, the term "Idiopathic Environmental Intolerance" was created and driven into the literature by the chemical industry funded disinformation team 25ish years ago, as part of their litigation defense effort to separate the chemical industry's products from what patients were experiencing. As author and advocate of that era Bonnye Mathews said at the time, "There is nothing idiopathic about being poisoned." I have no credible cite for you here. I want to be neutral on your proposed change (moving the disinformation under a header created by its proponents is poetic justice) but think there will be political blowback from the pro-MCS-recognition side if that is done.

Fourth, I'm sure you've seen the extraordinarily well done lit review from 2 years ago done in Italy. I don't speak academic, so it took my son to translate the last few sections into plain English for me, but those last sections are very important. ^[2]

Will have to think about the cancer patients thing. Some folks with MCS can point to a single large exposure (read up on Cindy Duehring, who was poisoned by improper professional use of an organophosphate pesticide) while in others it creeps up gradually. I tend to agree that there is a blame game after the fact. In the end, I can tell you the chain of events which created whatever soup it was that poisoned my family in our sick house 24 years ago, but none of the over $10,000 of chemical tests we ran found the exact culprit. A consultant we flew in told me that no customer of his had ever found the [culprit] in a situation like ours before running out of money, and he was right.

Again, thank you for listening. FStevenChalmers Fstevenchalmers (talk) 06:15, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

The problem with some of the names is that they claim that the "poisoning" is the original cause, and not merely the trigger for the everyday symptoms. (You see this thinking in cancer patients, too: when the patient decides that the cancer was caused by poor diet, then it's difficult to resist the temptation to believe that drinking vegetable juice will make the cancer go away. It doesn't work that way: bacon causes colorectal cancer, and surgery cures it.)

Identifying a single incident or sudden onset was one of the requirements in an older MCS definition. (It seems to have disappeared at some point, but I haven't found any explanation why. Perhaps it just wasn't pointful?) I'm seeing that a number of new MCS diagnoses have identified a single incident as the cause, but that incident is physical trauma rather than a chemical exposure. For the MCS person with sudden onset after a car wreck, "toxicant-induced" sounds factually wrong. "Concussion-induced" seems like a more plausible explanation. This isn't even a new idea among clinical ecologists and related fields; William Phillpott published a book about what he called "brain allergies" 20 years ago.

The Yale paper is probably usable in the article. I'll try to finish reading it later this week. I'm not hoping for a quick fix on this article. It's taken a year to get this much done, and I think that moving slowly is going to be ultimately more effective. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:05, 1 January 2020 (UTC)

Thank you again for listening, WhatamIdoing. A few thoughts in response, then I'll stand down, but I am around if needed/helpful. Your choice to go slow is wise, as I see it.

Your cancer analogy is a good one, it just took me looking from a totally different perspective to understand it. Your description of two phases of cancer (bacon to cause onset, polyps which result) is very true of MCS as Claudia Miller articulates in her TILT writings. But I think it's also spot on in another way: I've had polyps removed but do not have cancer. I have moles on my skin, but no cancer there either. Ann Steinemann's work in the last few years shows a prevalence of about 25% in the US of fragrance sensitivity, that is, some impact on the nervous or respiratory system from exposure to one or more ingredients. Other work in the last 30 years has varied from 33% of the population noticing they were affected, to about 16% who had modified their life (the example given at the time was not walking down the laundry detergent aisle in the grocery store). Full blown MCS is more analogous to cancer which has metastasized. The anti MCS recognition folks have a valid point in fearing bad PR from people in the 16% who freak out at normal, everyday perturbations of their nervous system caused by everyday things in our lives, and end up in anxiety or phobia as a result. But the across the board denial means if there are a handful of common solvents and enhancers (think MSG, but for the nose) which are impacting the ability to function of a large fraction of the population, they aren't being identified and phased out. To the cancer analogy I would add that EHS (electromagnetic hypersensitivity) is in the same family of syndromes as MCS, as are Gulf War Syndrome, Fibromyalgia, maybe ME/Chronic Fatigue and a few others. In all cases something changes in the body, leaving the nervous system malfunctioning either momentarily in response to trace environmental stimuli, or seemingly permanently malfunctioning.

On the MCS sensitization phase: the diversity of experience of people both here and in the being-sensitive phase has led to a lot of infighting in the MCS community over definition. Any time someone writes down a clear definition, it excludes someone else's experience, which makes that person afraid whatever disability income and accommodations are keeping them functioning will be withdrawn, and they react like a cornered animal. There are absolutely people like me who can point to a specific experience in a specific place on a specific day and say I was normal before this and had MCS afterward. There are other people like those who worked in the EPA building in Washington DC when the chemically defective carpet was put in 30 years ago who can point to a continuing exposure as their cause. A lot of people slowly develop MCS after their residence has construction work of some sort, as did a number of people who worked in unventilated spaces where large amounts of carbonless paper copies (the colored back sheets of the NCR forms of 30-50 years ago) (formaldehyde), as did a number of people exposed to certain materials at certain Boeing aircraft manufacturing facilities 20-30 years ago as well. But there are also people who say "I got the flu and when I got over it I had MCS" or simply that it came on gradually over a period of years or decades with no discernible cause. Just as cancer finally settled on I look at a tissue sample under a microscope and it looks like cancer cells, regardless of where they are or what caused them, I favor a very inclusive definition of MCS which leaves no one behind. In the end, the rigorous definition will require measurements (laboratory work, instruments) which do not exist today, and just as the invention of the EEG ended 2000 years of the medical profession thinking epilepsy was psychological, there will be something we can measure which all of a sudden makes MCS, EHS, GWS, and the like make perfect sense, from a viewpoint we do not have today.

-Fstevenchalmers (by the way this is my real name and I can be found on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Medium as @Fsteven...) Fstevenchalmers (talk) 01:46, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Fstevenchalmers, if you wanted help from the best of the best you came to the right place. . Waid, still thinking about including WHO. I've tried but have been unable to find their list of current diseases. I'm wondering if they include Gulf War syndrome or Post-Ebola virus syndrome. Can you help me? Gandydancer (talk) 19:35, 4 January 2020 (UTC)

You're very kind, User:Gandydancer.

When editors write that something isn't "recognized" by the WHO, they usually mean that there is no separate International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems code for it. I believe that GWS gets coded (and therefore billed) based on the separate components. For example, if the symptom is headaches, you bill for headaches, and if it's PTSD, then you bill for PTSD, etc. This page on the WHO's website shows information for WHO and IPCS's 1996 Berlin meeting, which produced one of the definitions. It links to two publications from this century which might be useful.

The other thing that's going on there is that various orgs have said "Yes, you're sick, but it wasn't triggered by the chemical you claim". It's not recognized as being chemical-caused, which is different from being recognized as people having symptoms under certain circumstances.

Post-Ebola virus syndrome may be too new for an ICD code to be available (in the master list; there's a system for individual countries to add anything they want at any time, so some individual countries might have done so already). WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:17, 5 January 2020 (UTC)

This might help. --Brogo13 (talk) 19:07, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Brogo13, the unsourced assertions by an IP, which have now been WP:CHALLENGEd by four (two IPs and two registered editors – I am the fourth) do not convince me of anything. Furthermore, that would only matter if policies were supposed to be written in the American or Canadian WP:ENGVAR, which they aren't. Please stop making those stylistic changes to policy, guideline, and help pages. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:12, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

From the article's only ref (caveat: curlies):

The word that can be omitted in standard English where it introduces a subordinate clause, as in she said (that) she was satisfied. It can also be dropped in a relative clause where the subject of the subordinate clause is not the same as the subject of the main clause, as in the book (that) I've just written (‘the book’ and ‘I’ are two different subjects). Where the subject of the subordinate clause and the main clause are the same, use of the word that is obligatory, as in the woman that owns the place (‘the woman’ is the subject of both clauses).

Kthxbai

Brogo13, there's a significant difference between saying that the word "can be omitted" and that "In American and Canadian English" is is "only" used under certain limited circumstances. If you want to restore the claim that American and Candadian English "only" include the word that to avoid confusion, then you need to produce a source that includes words like Canadian, and that actually says anything at all about it "only" being used under certain circumstances.

And, in reference to our previous discussion, the fact that it "can be omitted" under certain grammatical circumstances does not mean that editors should go around and remove it from policies. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:28, 2 January 2020 (UTC)

Yea ... here. A whole new approach. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:49, 6 January 2020 (UTC)

There is currently a discussion at Wikipedia:Administrators' noticeboard regarding an issue with which you may have been involved. The thread is "An update on and a request for involvement at the Medicine MOS". Thank you. Barkeep49 (talk) 03:37, 7 January 2020 (UTC)

Not sure I like the changes at the council page at all.... Seems to be used for recruitment for a few projects rather than an explanation of what we do. Really don't like the changes at all.....all the main links are now scattered throughout the page rather than being in a nice paragraph in the the lead. Plus why are we listing names ...most I have never been active in the council... they agreed to be spokesman for the council? I would normal revert....but there is an ongoing talk.-'Moxy 🍁 03:11, 15 January 2020 (UTC)

Am I seeing this right - recruiting to form a new council? Wikipedia talk:WikiProject History#Request help with new Council for WikiProjects--Moxy 🍁 05:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Anyone can create a new WikiProject. I wish them lots of luck. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:42, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello WhatamIdoing I am an editor from Ghana. Recently I have been working increasing content on https://tw.wikipedia.org/. Unlike in English Wikipedia where one can click the cite tool from the visual editor to easily add a reference, one has to use the source editing to add reference on Twi Wikipedia. I would be very glad if you can help me enable the cite tool in the visual editor for Twi Wikipedia. Also It would be very cool if references from a translated article could be added to the article using the the translation tool. Celestinesucess (talk) 09:05, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Celestinesucess. User:Mvolz (WMF) is the expert on the mw:citoid service. Have you used the mw:Content translation tool before? WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing yes I have used the Have you used the mw:Content translation tool before. I will reach out to User:Mvolz (WMF) then but I also need help on how to enable the cite feature in the visual editor that makes it easy to city articles without using the source code.Celestinesucess (talk) 21:51, 26 January 2020 (UTC)

Looks like you're starting at the beginning. Celestinesucess, have you found mw:Citoid/Enabling Citoid on your wiki? I think it has links to the instructions.

Also, while you're thinking about templates, I think you should consider w:es:Template:Ficha de persona and similar infoboxes from the Spanish Wikipedia. It's a Wikidata-enabled infobox, which could be very useful for getting basic information on the wiki with minimal effort – just type {{ficha de persona}} (or whatever the Twi translation is) at the top of any article (about a person, in this case), and it will figure out most of the contents by itself. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 27 January 2020 (UTC)

I don't have a clue what happened! You or I could revert, but then I don't know what would be lost. Could two users have been editing at the same time??? Can an Admin solve it?

AHA! There are TWO styles of page! The one I use is the old style while your link directs to the new one. I don't know who, what or how.

My reply to user: Colin further down that discussion should clarify my point: "...the lack of balanced research and reporting in various medical areas does not originate with WP: it has been inherent in the medical profession as a whole for lo these many hundreds - if not thousands - of years." (Like the fairly recent discovery that men and women DO NOT react the same way to the same medication, because clinical trials were performed on men only.) Cheers! Shir-El too 18:31, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

That "fairly recent discovery" was made before Wikipedia was created. That therefore does not seem like a logical explanation of why Wikipedia editors have not repeatedly omitted that information. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:58, 11 February 2020 (UTC)

I find the above confusing: are you saying editors 'are' or 'are not' including that data? As to my main point: it's going to take time to reverse the cultural and personal bias, the thought patterns, that have been accepted as fact for centuries and millennia. I agree that it can and should be done but humans are not as flexible as electronics: it will take time for many to 'shift gears' - and many will not be aware of their own blind spots. So I wish you Good Luck and will do my best to support an unbiased WP. Cheers! Shir-El too 10:38, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

PS Glad you solved the problem! Thank you.

Sorry about the confusion. I blame the fever for that typo. 🤒

Yes, it takes time. IMO the time will likely be shorter if we tell people that there are plenty of high-quality sources available, and have been for years, and that they need to include this kind of information. We need all the diversity-type information – not just articles on conditions affecting female anatomical parts, but also things like urban vs rural medicine in Africa and Asia. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:13, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

Agreed. I added "2017 medical review" to Man flu and had trouble keeping it there - or having it taken seriously. I even contacted the BMJ to confirm that it was for real, but emails are not citable on WP. So I understand the problem first-hand. Back to the salt mines! Cheers! Shir-El too 18:41, 12 February 2020 (UTC)

I know the discussion isn't funny, but If you feel like adding "by Colonel Mustard with the vaping products", you've got the right idea. was just the laugh I needed today, thanks! Schazjmd (talk) 20:31, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

I was fucking close to cry after reading your Quack post at ARB and I mean that literally. You've seen what I've seen and you managed to write it down in a comprehensive way I'm not capable of. You've hit the nail many times over. Thank you.--TMCk (talk) 23:00, 13 February 2020 (UTC)

On the MCS Talk page you asked "One difference between the 1999 and 1987 definitions .. is that the older one requires a "documentable" event that caused the symptoms. ... I haven't yet figured out why this changed."

Are you sure the 1987 (Cullen) definition does require a documentable event? I don't have access to his original papers and can only find it in second-hand sources as: "Multiple chemical sensitivities (MCS) is an acquired disorder characterized by current symptoms, referable to multiple organ systems, occurring in response to demonstrable exposure to many chemically unrelated compounds at doses far below those established in the general population to cause harmful effects. No single widely accepted test of physiologic function can be shown to correlate with symptoms. (Cullen 1987a)" ^[1]. The criteria of 'acquired' is much weaker than a specific identifiable event and wouldn't be seriously disputed by other authors on the subject I'm aware of. In any case his focus was occupational medicine and he diagnosed industrial workers. An initial toxic exposure event would have been more common and more noticeable among them than the wider population of patients. If there is that difference in definitions then that's probably the explanation. Update: I think I'm confusing a documentable event that preceded the original onset of illness (ie. an acute chemical injury scenario), with a documentable event that triggers symptoms each time after the illness has developed? I don't think Cullen is arguing the later has to be particularly rigorously proven for a valid diagnosis but he was obviously keen to eliminate symptoms triggered by imagined exposures.

The 1999 consensus definition ^[2] was published by 34 physicians and researchers, and built on a wide survey 10 years earlier which drew on work going back before Cullen's time. This seems, to me at least, more authoritative and I'm not aware of any more recent similar effort. It's citation rate in recent years seems to be increasing.

There are some more recent definitions, however all that I'm aware of are by lone or small groups of authors and tend to exhibit bias. An example is Lacour's ^[3] which is quite widely cited. It's based on a literature survey and the authors don't appear to have much first hand experience with patients. I don't have a citation refuting it's conclusions - there may well be one - but the logic of it is that since central nervous symptoms are - just barely - the most often mentioned by MCS patients they should be required and all other symptoms are secondary. That's in keeping with the perspective of a psychosomatic origin for MCS but on very flimsy grounds. There's also a telling reference to odour hypersensitivity thrown in without any justification. Odour isn't part of the other definitions because many patients report reactions to odourless compounds (notwithstanding the distinction between odourful and odourless chemicals isn't clear cut, varying from person to person). Definitions such as this should really be regarded as controversial. 82.24.190.199 (talk) 13:48, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Two thoughts:

1. The Harrison chapter says (page 819) "These seven criteria should be met: 1. The disorder is acquired in relation to some documentable environmental exposure(s), insult(s), or illness(es)." That could include acute chemical injury, but it also includes things like moving to a new house.
2. Requiring some CNS involvement is not consistent with psychosomatic notions. It's consistent with neurological ("brain damage") notions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:58, 15 February 2020 (UTC)

Hi WAID, if you’re still interested in my response to this comment at VPPR (which I must admit dropped down my priority list once the discussion was archived without a request for closure)...

For the specific question: as always, it depends on context, so I can’t address the example directly without seeing it. However, if we assume that it was a legitimate usage, then one can expect that it would be possible to gather a consensus in support of it (and if that isn’t possible, then it wasn’t a legitimate usage in the first place). One could argue that this is less efficient, but for the full context we would need to make a comparison to all the analogous discussions that would be required for the reverse case, and for a deprecated source there are far more cases of illegitimate usage than legitimate. Similarly, any harm to the encyclopedia from removing information incorrectly must be compared to the harm mitigated by all the cases where it was removed correctly.

On another note, though, “sometimes people don’t follow directions” isn’t really a valid argument against trying to figure out better directions. Besides, if people really didn’t read the directions, then opposing a particular change is pointless as well because it will never affect anyone in the first place. Of course, an example where someone fails to follow the directions is not "nothing to worry about", except perhaps in the sense that expecting perfect compliance for anything is unreasonable - because, of course, people don’t always read the directions. :-) And this also has to assume that the frequency of mistakes is high enough to be relevant (otherwise the most productive approach is simply to fix any individual instances), that it is in fact a mistake instead of a genuine disagreement, and so on.

I’m interpreting your comment as being about the broader issue of deprecation as a concept, rather than the narrower scope of that specific proposal, but please correct me if I’m wrong. (Separately, as a purely informational statement, phrasing like "righteous mission" comes across to me as an ad hominem, by implying that people are editing for ideological and/or dogmatic reasons. Of course, that might just be a perspective unique to me, plus I don't think you'd ever intend that, thus "purely informational".) Sunrise (talk) 05:19, 17 February 2020 (UTC)

Back in the day, if someone removed a source for being reliable, then I would expect people to have a discussion and come to some sort of conclusion. I would also expect that the editors engaged in the discussion would mostly be people who know something about the subject matter, and can figure out whether the source is good enough for the statement in question. Now, though, even at RSN, it's all about the publisher's reputation, with little or no consideration at all for the author or the statement that's being made. So instead of saying "Eh, it's the Mayo Clinic website, but the sentence it supports only says that Down syndrome is a congenital condition, so who actually cares if it's not the fanciest source we could cite?", editors are saying, "Oh, no, it's the Mayo Clinic website. That might be one of the most popular and trusted consumer health websites in the world, but it shouldn't be cited for anything. We require MEDRS sources, even to say that water is wet."

Worse, the creation of these "banned books lists" seems to be making discussions impossible. If you try to have that consensus-oriented discussion, you won't get a discussion. You'll just get a series of votes, in which editors say that they vote for exclusion because someone else voted to put it on the "deprecated sources" list. If we didn't have these lists in the first place (or if they were limited strictly only sources that had repeatedly produced drama), then we might be able to have a discussion that goes beyond editors asserting that a prior RFC said that No True™ Wikipedian would want to use a source like that. But we don't get that. We get editors starting RFCs to deprecate websites that nobody is actually trying to use. Closer to home, we get people blanking sources written by apparently decent authors, with no apparent problems in their content, because they were published in bottom-tier "journals", and then hoping that someone will add a source to the now-uncited content, and also that this magical editor will somehow know not to re-add the same source. And we're doing this even when we have every reason to believe that the content is 100% correct and that changing the source has no effect on article content.

(Of course people are editing for ideological and dogmatic reasons. Wanting to provide the sum of all human knowledge to anyone, at no cost, is a radical political goal. In the relevant context, some people are trying to gussy up the appearance of where our information comes from, in the hope that nobody will poke fun at us for citing the "wrong" sources.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:04, 18 February 2020 (UTC)

It would be good if you check and improve this article Draft:Anaplastic oligodendroglioma. Wname1 (talk) 18:44, 1 March 2020 (UTC)

Wname1, I think you should WP:MOVE that draft into the mainspace as soon as possible. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:47, 2 March 2020 (UTC)

A quick note to thank you for the discussion you started on Iridescent's talk page on 'License attribution requirements'. In that vein, I recently made this comment. Carcharoth (talk) 16:58, 3 March 2020 (UTC)

hi WhatamIdoing! Just wanted to give you a quick update. I followed the advice you gave me, as well as from some other experienced editors, and posted some wikiproject event information at an existing resource, the Wikipedia:Community bulletin board. I made sure to proceed gradually, and to get useful input and consensus for any items to be added. There is now added in a new section there. you are welcome to look at it, and to send me know any comments that you may have. I really appreciate your help and input. thanks!! --Sm8900 (talk) 14:50, 6 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for being so kind and helpful to the new Cochrane editor. I always notice your patience and kindness on Wikipedia. Have a nice day. JenOttawa (talk) 15:54, 9 March 2020 (UTC)

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. The discussion is about the topic Trauma Trigger. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you!-Pengortm (talk) 06:00, 15 March 2020 (UTC)

Since there has not been any further discussion since 3/16, I have re-listed this. -Pengortm (talk) 16:02, 27 March 2020 (UTC)

I am not confident of my answer and need someone experienced to review. I really appreciate it. I am just afraid that my answer is misleading. --Reciprocater (talk) 15:12, 20 March 2020 (UTC)

		Editor of the Week
		Your ongoing efforts to improve the encyclopedia have not gone unnoticed: You have been selected as Editor of the Week in recognition of your concern for others. Thank you for the great contributions! (courtesy of the Wikipedia Editor Retention Project)

User:Gandydancer submitted the following nomination for Editor of the Week:

I feel honored to nominate WhatamIdoing to be this weeks Editor of the Week. I have visited her page countless times for help and she's never let me down. For years I've been following discussions she has been involved in with our most knowledgeable and experienced editors who work on Wikipedia policies and she again and again has impressed me with her knowledge of our encyclopedia and how to explain it to others, and yet never appear to be offended when disagreements break out, nor does she use harshness when others may disagree. Active since early 2007 WhatamIdoing has amassed 93000 edits over a broad spectrum of WP platforms. Efforts at Leukemia and Cancer, and articles of special importance to women such as Breastfeeding and Breast cancer awareness display a keen interest and participation in Medical topics. She has been very involved with the Village Pump, dealing with policy and proposals and other important decisions. Being a member of WP:MED, and active at External Links, Verifiability, citing sources and notability show how truly diversified her interests are. No one is more deserving than WhatamIdoing to get this badge of appreciation.

You can copy the following text to your user page to display a user box proclaiming your selection as Editor of the Week:

{{User:UBX/EoTWBox}}

WhatamIdoing

Editor of the Week for the week beginning March 22, 2020

Confers with our most knowledgeable and experienced editors. Impressive knowledge of WP with ability to clarify for others. A Peacemaker during disagreements. Active since 2007 with 93000 edits over a broad spectrum of WP platforms. Focuses on efforts to improve articles of special importance to women and displays a keen interest and participation in Medical topics. Has been very involved with the Village Pump, dealing with policy and proposals and other important decisions. A truly diversified Editor deserving appreciation.

Recognized for

work at the Village Pump, being a member of WP:MED, and active at External Links.

Notable work(s)

Leukemia, Cancer, Breastfeeding and Breast cancer awareness

Submit a nomination

Thanks again for your efforts! ―Buster7 ☎ 15:17, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you all for this surprise. User:Gandydancer, you're very sweet. I hope I can live up to your praise. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:40, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

So many congrats W. Well deserved - many thanks for all your work here at the 'pedia. MarnetteD|Talk 18:49, 22 March 2020 (UTC)

Congratulations, WhatamIdoing, this is indeed well deserved. Thank you for your work, your insights, and your dedication. SarahSV ^(talk) 01:13, 24 March 2020 (UTC)

From your request on January 5th to this day when you receive this message, it will be a total of 78 days. I no longer have the patience for you, therefore, I am withdrawing from your request along with the barnstar I created. There will be no replies from me. Happy editing & Cheers. Jerm (talk) 21:18, 23 March 2020 (UTC)

Have a cupcake to say thanks for formulating and steering that price RFC, and your recent advice trying to help others with their RFC excess and wrong-headedness. -- Colin°^Talk 16:50, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for the sweet treat, Colin. I offer you a basket of virtual strawberries in return. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:03, 29 March 2020 (UTC)

You are involved in a recently filed request for arbitration. Please review the request at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case#Medical pricing and, if you wish to do so, enter your statement and any other material you wish to submit to the Arbitration Committee. As threaded discussion is not permitted on most arbitration pages, please ensure that you make all comments in your own section only. Additionally, the guide to arbitration and the Arbitration Committee's procedures may be of use.

Thanks, Barkeep49 (talk) 03:34, 31 March 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, I have no idea where to put this but don't really want to add it at the Arbcom statement but because I hope you will reconsider what you wrote there, much of which doesn't seem relevant to what an arbcom statement is for, as I understand it. If this isn't permissible then just delete it. Ping SandyGeorgia too.

What you are proposing User:Wugapodes and User:Ymblanter do cannot be done and should not be done. In your "potentially clearer version" you have invented proposals that nobody made in the RFC, such as 10% of drug articles could have prices in the leads, or describing situations where prices in leads can included. Even a drug with an exceptionally high price need not have a dollar and cent amount in the lead. The statement "Editors are generally opposed to inclusion of prices in the lede." is a summary of the RFC. That means anyone wanting to include prices in the lead has a mountain to climb and it better be pretty obvious that this particular drug article needs it and is hugely improved by it and you can convince others that this is an exception that is warranted.

Similarly "Editors may, however, cite other reliable sources that use this database" is also not supported by any discussion in the RFC. We'll just get James quoting some obscure WHO essential-medicine document that has a price citing IMPPG for the second row fifth column of a table on page 134 out of 456 pages and that mentions the drug name on the first column. Or citing some 2002 WHO/HAI survey of Haiti that uses the IMPPG as a reference, and claiming it represents the price of the drug in the developing world. Remember those WHO/HAI surveys also pick an arbitrary dose and formulation of the drug simply as a price-comparison metric and not to claim it represents the drug price in all possible uses of that drug.

Those are just examples of course, but I do believe we had the RFC clarified today and that is more than sufficient for good faith editors to make progress and for some editors to accept their argument is rejected. In particular it clarified the sort of sources needed both as evidence of inclusion-justification but also for the prices themselves. The closing admins can summarise the consensus but they are not empowered to invent their own new specific rules and regulations. Nor are they empowered to make exceptions to policy. -- Colin°^Talk 18:06, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Colin, maybe I misunderstood, but WAID wrote at the top of suggested text, "NB purely an example of style, not real content". I take that to mean she was saying do something like this example to better clarify the RFC findings. Did I miss it? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:16, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

At any rate, because of the time delays in arbs actually looking at the case request page, I fear WAID's intent will be missed anyway, in terms of timing and considering the escalating rate of the conflict at Talk:Simvastatin. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:19, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

You are right but as an example of the sort of thing the admins might do then I think its a impermissible approach. Wugapodes and Ymblanter were asked close and summarise the consensus, not to teach us how to write drug articles. I think the Bradspeak approach is fine if we had a WP:MED god who wanted to law down the rules in a very prescriptive fashion that us dolts could easily abide by without too much argument. But we don't have one of those, do we? We have a consensus, which has now been extra clarified, and we should get on with working out how to implement that in a respectful and professional manner. WAIDs comment suggests that Doc James ignoring half the RFC conclusion and edit warring with Ozzie against five editors is somehow Wugapodes and Ymblanter's fault for not writing their summary like we are all five-year-olds that have problems doing our shoelaces. I think that's unfair. -- Colin°^Talk 18:44, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

Yes, it's meant to be stylistic only – an example of both the level of detail and the bluntness that we apparently need. IMO we need that in the RFC page itself, not in a long discussion on a different page. Nobody looking at the RFC later is likely to discover the WT:MED discussions. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:15, 1 April 2020 (UTC)

did not arrive · · · Peter Southwood ^(talk): 07:05, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

You were recently listed as a party to a request for arbitration. The Arbitration Committee has accepted that request for arbitration and an arbitration case has been opened at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine. Evidence that you wish the arbitrators to consider should be added to the evidence subpage, at Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine/Evidence. Please add your evidence by April 21, 2020, which is when the evidence phase closes. You can also contribute to the case workshop subpage, Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine/Workshop. For a guide to the arbitration process, see Wikipedia:Arbitration/Guide to arbitration. For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz 🎷 ^{talk to me | my contributions} 20:33, 7 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi there. Not to beat a dead horse, but I was wondering if perhaps you could clarify something from an old discussion here due to it coming up again and the fact that I was never able to respond at the time. While I agreed with you at the time (and now) that generally referencing YouTube, Amazon, iTunes, Spotify, etc etc was OK, my problem at the time was (and still is) with them being used as ref bombing as the majority of sources in an article. Which I had made clear at the time and other users like Ian.thomson had agreed with me was not appropriate. It never came down to how necessary or not it is as you insinuated, but the intentional over use of those specific references in articles. Especially in cases where they did not contain the information they where being cited for. Which often times they did not. So, I would appreciate some clarity on it if you have any. Since it has repeatedly came up since then and there is currently an ANI and a COI claim related to it. Here are some examples, This Is Jesus Culture, Starlight (Bethel Music album) (also excessively uses praisecharts.com which is very similar), Bethel Music discography (like 150 references are to Amazon and iTunes), Have It All (Bethel Music and Brian Johnson song) (over half are), The Father's House, Elevation Worship, Let the Redeemed, At Midnight (EP). I figured I would ask you because you seemed to be the dissenting person at the time. Plus, the user whom I originally had the issue with keeps using your original opinion as an excuse to revert people and act in an extremely untoward way. --Adamant1 (talk) 01:12, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

Hi, User:Adamant1. I've been thinking about your note here.

I wonder whether the idea of m:Immediatism resonates with you.

I wonder if you know that a couple thousand discography articles cite iTunes.

I wonder what you would do to improve a page like Fabolous discography, where iTunes is heavily cited, and you couldn't be accused of any religious bias.

I wonder if you are aware that you have claimed to know other editors' intentions (e.g., "the intentional over use of those specific references"). Mind reading can make a fine parlor trick, but it's best if the magician isn't fooled into thinking that he really knows what other people are thinking.

I wonder why you care enough about these articles to complain that the sources aren't up to your standards, but not enough to add better sources.

I wonder why you don't put relevant keywords into your favorite web search engine and try to find better sources. I did that for a sentence in the Bethel Music discography#cite ref-3, which says that the album was released in March 2013 with Integrity Music. I found several possible reliable sources that you might think preferable. Why haven't you done that?

WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:30, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, I appreciate the thought and those are all good questions. Although, I might be inclined to lament that you answered my questions that way. Hopefully at least it's not all rhetorical since I am going to answer you.

Immediatism resonates with me, when I am being immediatist. I am not being that here though. Since it took 2 years for me to follow this up, it would be hard to claim I had a dire need to deal with it right now (or then). The fact that those links still remain mostly intact in the articles is a testament to that. Ultimately, I could care less about it. Except a certain ghost appeared and started beating his chains on the subject. Otherwise, it probably would have been another 3 years (or never) that I would have followed up on this.

Yes, I am aware there is an amount of articles that cite iTunes. It's a weird whataboutism though IMO. Should I never do another AfD because of all the other non-notable articles out there? When I do an AfD, I'm only concerned about the notability of that article. Maybe I'll be concerned about the others at some point, but there's no obligation to be. Nor does it mean they become notable due to my current lack of caring about them. It is the same here. It takes focus to deal with things. I deal with what I have the time and energy to. Right now, this is it. Some other time, it probably won't be.

Same goes for Fabolous discography. Honestly I wouldn't do anything with it (improving it or otherwise), because I run quickly away from any article with that many tables.

Well yes, you got me there, I guess. Intentional though as in how we can say a lion intentionally stalks it's prey but without having to put the lion in an EEG machine to do so, or more on topic how a paid editor intentionally writes articles in the way that they are being paid to. That's not magical mind reading, or else there could never be a COI claim. Any complaint would be shot down because they aren't in the editor's head. Btw, the lion and paid editor are way different then judgments about feelings. Which is what Walter was doing.

I care because I care, or I wouldn't. Don't fault me for caring. This is only one of many things I care about and it's extremely extremely low on the list. It's more a curiosity then anything. Asking legitimate questions isn't complaining and nowhere did I say the sources didn't meet my standards. I have no standard for this, or I wouldn't be asking. I'd just be deleting the sources instead and calling it a day.

I do add sources to some articles sometimes, but I'm not obligated to for my question to be legitimate or worth asking. I didn't add sources to those articles, although I found some, because things reached a point with Walter where it would have been an uphill battle to do so. Since his only middle ground is me not editing Christian articles. Even if it was to improve them. He's reverted plenty of improvements and I just didn't feel like dealing with it. I don't think they are mutually exclusive though. We can all get rid of bad links, if that's what they are, and better ones can be added whenever. At least I assume that's the case or I don't see what the point is. At the end of the day, we put into this what we put into this. Maybe what I put in is different then what you do, but that's life. It doesn't devalue what I am doing or mean this shouldn't be dealt with. Realistically though, people aren't going to add better sources to an article when it is being played off like the current ones are perfectly fine and that anyone who thinks otherwise just disdains Christians. The first step of dealing with a problem is admitting that there is one. So, is how the sources are being used a problem or not? P.S. sorry for the message length. --Adamant1 (talk) 07:34, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

The fact that these same sources are used in thousands of similar articles suggests that the community, in practice, has decided that they're acceptable sources.

These aren't bad links. They are mediocre sources. That distinction has a direct bearing on how good editors can respond to them. If they were bad links, anyone could remove them. But they're not bad links. They're mediocre sources. Removing a mediocre source (or an unnecessary source) is worse than leaving it in. The only appropriate response to a mediocre source is to replace it with a better one. It sounds like that puts you in between a rock and a hard place, but I don't see any proper alternatives. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:45, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

That seems like circular logic to me. The same could be said for un-sourced material or things that violate copyright. All the existence of those things show is their existence. Which has zero relation to if they should be in Wikipedia or not. Even more so considering the existence of users like Walter, who watches a large amount of articles related to certain subjects and reverts any edits to them they don't like. It's ridiculous to equate that to community acceptance. Even more so because there are standards for article quality that include what sources to use or not. Also, I know for a fact people have tried to remove the commercial sources, but both Walter and Kuda188 just reverted them. Even in cases where the sources didn't contain what they were being cited for. Which in no way is just a mediocre source. It's just wrong. Not to mention Walter routinely reverts people for adding any kind of "better sources needed" banner or inline citation to articles. So, no one is ever going to come along in the first place to improve the sourcing. Even in cases where better sources do exist. Ultimately, I'm not going to face the endless gauntlet of abuse that it would probably take from Walter to improve a source in an article. Let alone the edit warring just to add an inline note. I doubt anyone else would either. And that's the only reason the sources are there at all. -Adamant1 (talk) 07:57, 22 April 2020 (UTC)  

Do you really believe that maintenance banners cause people to improve articles (articles that they wouldn't be improving anyway)? WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:08, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

I was under the impression that the maintenance banners cause articles to put in maintenance categories. Which people who feel like improving articles look through to find things to improve. Or are they just there to give editors a rudimentary task, so they won't stop and think about what they are doing because of all the busy work? Ultimately, they are just a convenient shortcut/signpost of what to work on. Having them doesn't make the article look bad or automatically mean the article will get deleted. Which seems to be the perspective of people like Walter. Which I can understand; because Christian articles tend to have extremely stretchy sourcing and are susceptible to targeting, but no more then any other hot button subject. Walter and people like him have no issue putting banners on none Christian articles anyway. So, I'm not sure what the difference is. I'm not a big fan of hypocrisy. I also don't give Christian articles a special pass, even though I'm probably as interested in the subject as anyone else is. Wikipedia provides banners as one option to improve article quality. If banners aren't effective at doing that, it's on them for providing an ineffective tool. It's not on editors for using banners. If the banners are a wash and do nothing, all the more reason reverting people for adding them is problematic IMO. Especially if it's coming from an unfounded place of fear, paranoia, or a persecution complex like it seems to be. --Adamant1 (talk) 23:46, 22 April 2020 (UTC)

They do place articles in hidden maintenance categories. It's that bit about people looking through them to find articles to improve that I'm skeptical about.

All the maintenance banners were created by volunteers like you and me. There's no "them" to blame for the banners' existence. We create useless, pointless, needless, and overly complicated stuff all the time. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:51, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Well, I wasn't aware that the categories where hidden. More like hard to find, but not to the point of being completely useless IMO. Although, I can understand your skepticism about them. It does seem like at this point Wikipedia suffers from throwing to many things at the wall and I'd agree that to many options reduces the effectiveness of any single option. Also, I wasn't trying to blame anyone for them per say, but for some reason I assumed banners were a part of the original back end. And generally "software" problems like that aren't dealt with well by individuals being pitted against each other. If it's true that the banners aren't effective (I'm not sure how to show it, but I'm willing to buy the premise), then the people who think so should lobby to whoever decides those things to get them sunsetted. I'd have zero problem with not using them anymore if there was efforts in that direction, by the people doing the reverts. At least it would show a willingness on their parts to actually deal with the issue. Although, then the question is what to do instead. I don't think the answer is nothing. I'd be fine adding better sourcing myself and I do sometimes, but mostly I don't have the brain power or time to. Adding banners is an easy way to feel like I contributed. So, I don't know. It's all a shell game anyway and there probably isn't an answer to it. Except maybe to just accept the abuse by people like Walter and just chalk the whole thing up to a broken system. --Adamant1 (talk) 02:10, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

Adamant1, unfortunately, there's lots of brokenness. So let me drag you back a bit, for just a minute, to say that even "the original back end" isn't the back end. The original was UseModWiki. We invented things like templates and namespaces when a (then-)volunteer dev was creating MediaWiki. In 2004 (which was before my time), everyone was very excited because templates were so wildly popular that 10% of articles at the English Wikipedia had a template in them. If you're interested in knowing some history, then mw:Talk pages consultation 2019/Discussion tools in the past might be fun to read.

There has been no proper research on the efficacy of maintenance templates, but let me tell you some of the possibilities, so you can see where the current state of thinking stands. The range of ideas is something like this:

• Maintenance templates are useful because they trigger improvements by the main author, e.g.,
  • the main author is currently working on the page and might be more likely to see a banner than a note on the talk page (the "new page patrol" idea), or
  • the main author is embarrassed by the banners and will make changes now to justify getting the banner off the page (the "pretty page" concept; might apply to paid editors somewhat more than the rest of us).
  • Both of these stories suggest that the utility of a maintenance template is time-limited, so they should auto-expire/be removed by bot after, say, a month or two.
• Maintenance templates are useful because they bring in existing, outside editors, who look in the categories or search for the banner transclusions or see the tags when they're reading articles.
  • In this story, they would be equally or almost equally useful if the same categories were on talk pages or recorded through some other means (imagine, maybe, a built-in ratings form that let editors rate any article on various qualities: no, few, some, enough refs; too little, just enough, complete, too much content; poor, okay, good, brilliant writing; etc., and anyone who wanted to work on articles with a "no refs" status could get a list from this system and get started).
  • The main evidence against this story is that when discussions about tags happen, nobody jumps in to say they frequently look for tagged articles and improve them. It probably happens occasionally, but it might not happen much.
• Maintenance templates are useful because they warn the reader about the article.
  • In this story, some templates (such as {{hoax}} might be very useful, some templates (such as {{orphan}}) are worthless, and some templates (such as {{unref}}) tell the reader something that's obvious to the reader (Template: There are no blue clicky numbers on this page! Readers: Yeah, we can see that, but we frankly don't care.)
  • A variant of this story is that maintenance templates let editors engage in social signaling: "This article isn't up to my standards, and even though there's nothing seriously dangerous here, I just wanted you to know that I'm dissatisfied." See User:Ikip/someoneelse for a sarcastic/humorous take on this.
• Maintenance templates are useful because they turn readers into new editors.
  • This might have been true 15 years ago, but I'm fairly doubtful about it now. I'd love to be proved wrong. (Complicating any research into this: the mw:Growth team is running an experiment at some mid-sized Wikipedias [not here] that uses one of the maintenance categories – and therefore, indirectly, the presence of the banners – to encourage newly registered editors to copyedit the tagged articles. So we might be able to make some of them useful, even if the banner part isn't inherently useful.)
  • Another way to measure this would be comparing mobile vs desktop behaviors, because many of these templates are hidden on the mobile site.

IMO it is usually more useful to remove years-old maintenance banners that no longer apply than to add new ones. (Editor in 2010: There are no blue clicky numbers on this page! Readers in 2020, looking at a page with a dozen refs: You idiots.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:08, 23 April 2020 (UTC)

You are a highly experienced WP editor. I thought you, or someone you select, could intercede to help adjudicate a disagreement another WP contributor and I have been having regarding the industrial and organizational psychology entry. The nature of the disagreement is laid out on the talk page. In a nutshell, I want to mention that i/o psychology is one of the parent disciplines of occupational health psychology and my interlocutor, a contributor named sportstir, does not. I believe a WP editor who is not part of the disagreement, someone like yourself, could help break the logjam one way or another. Thank you. Iss246 (talk) 14:19, 14 April 2020 (UTC)

I have provided a "Third opinion" on the talk page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 07:11, 16 April 2020 (UTC)

thanks for your contributions

Haikoman (talk) 14:33, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, Haikoman. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:53, 18 April 2020 (UTC)

Hello, Thank you for your message. As a non-member of WikiProject Medicine I usually do the minimum of assessment (or none) on such articles. Doing a thorough assessment on every article would mean that many fewer articles would get assessments.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 07:19, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

That's fine, Johnsoniensis. The rules are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment, if you ever want to look them up, but as I said, if you don't happen to feel like it, then someone else will come along and finish up later. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:50, 24 April 2020 (UTC)

Thank you for your advice; in earlier years I did contribute to a few articles on the history of medicine (e.g. Manchester Medical School); this was mostly before I adopted the present username.--Johnsoniensis (talk) 10:12, 25 April 2020 (UTC)

	Barnstar of Emergency Article Creation
	Re: Thank you for re-writing Childhood interstitial lung disease on short notice. It was fun to work with you. WhatamIdoing You deserve this one more than me. If you look at the logs, you actually beat me to it! :) Dr. Vogel (talk) 20:22, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

You had much broader content coverage, and cited more sources. You'll just have to learn to take a compliment. ;-) I love the fact that the two versions were so easily combined. What do you think is the next step for expanding it? I don't know enough about it to know whether a ==Treatment== section makes sense. Are they similar enough, or is every condition different? WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:58, 26 April 2020 (UTC)

Just saying hi, hi Santino grillo (talk) 01:23, 29 April 2020 (UTC)

Hello WhatamIdoing. I started the page on International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities, and someone else has tagged it with a lot of complaints. I'm concerned that it might be deleted, and I feel that would be a mistake. Can you help to spruce it up? Thanks in advance, Magnovvig (talk) 13:16, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

Draft:Walid Ammar is an important figure, not only for his national-level efforts, but also because he is on the IAOC of the Health Emergencies Programme (WHO). As I found out today, his page has had some difficulty being established: Creating Walid Ammar. I am rubbish at these administrative issues, and by all accounts you have more experience, so I humbly ask you to have a look-see and possibly to promote his wiki page to full mainline status. Full disclosure: I have absolutely no prior involvement in his regard. Thanks in advance, Magnovvig (talk) 13:27, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

User:Magnovvig, I have my doubts about the AFC process for things like this. I think the goal should be to get notable subjects out of draftspace as rapidly as possible, but others think that they should all be left there until they're polished up and "good" articles. So I'd just WP:MOVE it to the article space, but others might not. If you want someone who has a chance of knowing something about the subject, then you might look at the active editors in this list: Wikipedia:WikiProject Directory/Description/WikiProject Lebanon WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:00, 30 April 2020 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, please contribute to the resolution of a dispute I have with User:Sportstir. The dispute is currently on the Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard. I would appreciate your input. Thank you. Iss246 (talk) 23:29, 2 May 2020 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, yesterday I offered another compromise to Sportstir, however, he did not respond to my offer. He and I are still at odds. I wonder if you could comment on the compromise I proposed on the Noticeboard (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Dispute_resolution_noticeboard#Summary_of_dispute_by_Psyc12). The compromise involves the i/o psychology and occupational stress entries because we have disagreements regarding those two entries. Perhaps you can help broker a peace. Here is the compromise:

"User:Sportstir, I propose another compromise. It is in two parts. One part is in the i/o psychology entry and the other part is in the occupational stress entry. 1. In the i/o psychology entry, I propose to modify this sentence: "With the development of Karasek's demand-control model and the University of Michigan's person–environment fit model in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new discipline, occupational health psychology, emerged out of i/o psychology and both health psychology, and occupational medicine.[45][46]"

       I would rewrite that sentence as follows: "In the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new discipline, occupational health psychology, emerged out of i/o psychology and both health psychology, and occupational medicine.[45][46]"

2. You wanted to place "particularly" in before "industrial and organizational psychology" in the following sentence: "A number of disciplines within psychology are concerned with occupational stress including clinical psychology, occupational health psychology, [1] human factors and ergonomics, and industrial and organizational psychology."

       I wanted to avoid naming one discipline above all the others, which the word "particularly" would imply. Because I do not want readers to think that i/o psychology was the one preeminent field in research on job stress, I would leave the sentence without the word "particularly."
       And then I turn to the opening sentence of the occupational stress entry: "Occupational stress is psychological stress related to one's job."
       As you know, I tried to change the expression "psychological stress" to "psychological distress." I would not make the change."
       The compromise allows both of us to get some of what we want. Iss246 (talk) 19:07, 5 May 2020 (UTC) 

Iss246 (talk) 19:40, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, I write to ask you to weigh in on the Noticeboard on the proposal I made with reference to the disagreement Sportstir and I have. I am not asking you to take my side. Just to weigh in. You can find my proposal toward the bottom of the Industrial and organizational psychology notice on the Noticeboard. Iss246 (talk) 01:35, 27 May 2020 (UTC)

User:WhatamIdoing, regarding the Noticeboard, I write to ask you to comment on the three points I made in the eighth statement by the editors. I don't ask you to agree or disagree with me. Because you are a sensible editor, please comment and, perhaps, make a suggestion to help clear away the logjam. Thank you. Iss246 (talk) 01:04, 2 June 2020 (UTC)

im here--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 17:07, 12 May 2020 (UTC)

I tried to reply to you and it shows the edit but I don’t know what I messed up - it’s not in the section. I’m definitely still learning how to use the talk pages correctly so if you can either fix it or let me know what I did wrong I’d appreciate it! Sorry for the inconvenience!! bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 01:41, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Hello, User:Berchanhimez. It ended up in the wrong section. I see you're editing from a mobile device. Talk pages can be complicated there. Did it look normal while you were typing the comment? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:31, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes it was through the mobile reply feature. I guess I’ll just try to avoid that in the future (aside from this reply) if it messes up. bɜ:ʳkənhɪmez (User/say hi!) 03:21, 14 May 2020 (UTC)

The Medicine proposed decision was posted --Guerillero | Parlez Moi 14:29, 26 May 2020 (UTC)

Waid, I'm trying to work on the COVID-19 pandemic article, presently the South America section, but I am at my wit's end with how to figure out how to manage the type of editing method they are using at that article nor do I understand why it is assumed that editors must use a different editing method for that particular article. Even as I look back in an attempt to try to figure it out it does not make sense to me. See here for example. This is from May 16 and yet when one looks at the South America section one sees copy that was added later (by me) and Ozzie's ref needed tag which sits there for no reason was actually added when a later edit by Doc left a paragraph without connection to the former ref... Even looking back into my edit record when I pull up my edits to the S.A. section they are not actually accurate. Could you please read the TP section I opened "Deletions in the South America section" and advise me? Gandydancer (talk) 13:55, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

This is one of the problems we have been talking about....the problem we have with transclution. We have talked about when things settle down we will fix the lazy and non friendly editing format. It's definitely a detriment to improving the articles. Perhaps time to look at the lazy editing and try to fix the problem.--Moxy 🍁 14:04, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

agree w/ Moxy, for my part I'll support you Gandydancer on the talk(as I have) and will watch the history of the article more closely going forward, SA is VERY important now--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 14:11, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

User:Gandydancer, the reason it stuck that tag in a separate "paragraph" is because the excerpt-transclusion system creates a dedicated "block" for the excerpted contents. Nothing you do can be inside its protected block. The fastest way to solve the problem is to just stop using that system. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:30, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Well...you never were one to beat around the bush, were you?...which is why there have been plenty of times that I wanted to kiss the ground that you walk on. Gandydancer (talk) 15:43, 30 May 2020 (UTC)

Gandydancer, if you want to remove the line break after an excerpt, you can just use |tag=span with the excerpt template. But if a citation needed tag is needed, then it's also needed at the source article, so just click through and add it there. I sympathize that it's a new system that takes a bit to get used to and still has some kinks to be worked out, but on the whole it's a really useful feature for conserving editor resources. {{u|Sdkb}} ^talk 01:32, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

Huh? If you had wanted to treat me like a fellow Wikipedia editor you would have replied to Waid's note at the article rather than to say you would clean some things up that were related to my deleted edits and then do nothing till coming here with some sort of reply many days later. At my first edit in your article you first did not respond to my TP note and then when I did go ahead and edit the U.S. section you left a note to say that you had quickly reviewed my edit and it seemed OK but then left advise about any further edits I might make. I like to collaborate with my fellow editors and I like to enjoy the time I spend here. Your article does not seem to fit with what I like to do here and I am busy at work on other articles that I enjoy, and working with other editors that I enjoy. Gandydancer (talk) 17:13, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

User:Sdkb, I don't think that it's true that "if a citation needed tag is needed, then it's also needed at the source article". WP:LEADCITE has not been revoked.

I do wonder whether the excerpt system is actually conserving editor's time (the most important resource) right now. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:05, 5 June 2020 (UTC)

An arbitration case Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine has now closed and the final decision is viewable at the link above. The following remedies have been enacted:

• Standard discretionary sanctions are authorized for all discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles. Any uninvolved administrator may apply sanctions as an arbitration enforcement action to users editing in this topic area, after an initial warning.
• CFCF is reminded to avoid casting aspersions and similar conduct in the future.
• Doc James is prohibited from making any edits relating to pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing in the article namespace.
• QuackGuru is indefinitely topic-banned from articles relating to medicine, broadly construed.

For the Arbitration Committee, Dreamy Jazz ^{talk to me | my contributions} 15:12, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

Discuss this at: Wikipedia talk:Arbitration Committee/Noticeboard#Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Medicine closed

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in . Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

I am formally alerting anyone who was originally named as a party in the case. Barkeep49 (talk) 02:48, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Thank you, User:Barkeep49. There seems to be an incomplete sentence towards the top: "You have shown interest in ." Should there maybe be a link or something there? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:49, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

WhatamIdoing, hmm. I think the shortcode got changed. How about:

This is a standard message to notify contributors about an administrative ruling in effect. It does not imply that there are any issues with your contributions to date.

You have shown interest in discussions about pharmaceutical drug prices and pricing and for edits adding, changing, or removing pharmaceutical drug prices or pricing from articles. Due to past disruption in this topic area, a more stringent set of rules called discretionary sanctions is in effect. Any administrator may impose sanctions on editors who do not strictly follow Wikipedia's policies, or the page-specific restrictions, when making edits related to the topic.

For additional information, please see the guidance on discretionary sanctions and the Arbitration Committee's decision here. If you have any questions, or any doubts regarding what edits are appropriate, you are welcome to discuss them with me or any other editor.

Barkeep49 (talk) 02:53, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

That looks better. Thanks. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:56, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

On my talk page, you said: I think that you should self-revert this blanking. WP:TPO says to stop if anyone objects to you removing their comments, and it appears that there has been an objection. Removing is a much bigger step, with more potential to annoy editors, than boxing up or rapidly archiving a discussion, so it is meant to be avoided.

If you want to solve the underlying reason why the discussion is on that page, then perhaps you could create very low-carbohydrate ketogenic diet and redirect "keto diet" there, or suggest that they move that discussion to Talk:Type 3 diabetes, where a discussion about the ideal contents of Type 3 diabetes#Diet (which does not mention high-fat diets) would be obviously relevant. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:38, 3 June 2020 (UTC)

The talk page participant, David spector, admitted being an advocate and practitioner of the KD, and was soapboxing further - as he had extensively in a previous talk discussion - about its use to prevent Alzheimer's disease, citing a physics magazine and other questionable sources. My impression was that he was throwing up a vague topic to see what else might stick, falling into the WP:TALKNO category above TPO, where it says "Do not use the talk page as a forum or soapbox for discussing the topic. The talk page is for discussing how to improve the article, not vent your feelings about it." Respectfully, I still feel this applies. I am not interested in advising a different topic for the two editors (I did suggest they talk by email) or in taking the discussion to another article. Thanks for your polite feedback. Zefr (talk) 02:06, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

When the participants object to having their comments blanked, e.g., by restoring their conversation, then you need to stop blanking their comments. One editor's conviction that the discussion is off-topic is not enough to justify re-blanking their discussion. If it really needs to be blanked again, then someone else will do it for you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:12, 4 June 2020 (UTC)

Should I do an RFC, or post to WT:MED ? TS inherited this unnecessary mess and clutter as a result of the DJ apostrophe issue at Down’s, after which they came to TS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:05, 21 June 2020 (UTC)