Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Collaboration of the Month

What sorts of articles we are looking for?

If you have any suggestions for this new project, please bring them up. I'm planning to run this similar to the other collaborations. For now, I think a fortnight is better until we know how much participation we will have.

One question to answer is what sorts of articles we are looking for. I see four categories:

1. Nonexistent articles
2. Very short articles/stubs
3. Longer articles that need expansion or are disorganized
4. Well-developed articles

The short articles and longer articles, I think, are good candidates—we can expand them and/or reorganize them. But do we want to also take on article requests? I'm inclined to say that articles should be at least stubs before we take them on. And finally, what about well-developed articles? I know I've written some pretty complete articles that I nevertheless would appreciate some peer review on. Should we try to tackle those too or should we wait for now? — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:42, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

suggestions

hey, glad to see you've been hard at work doing this page! I think this is a great entry subject into preclinical medicine. If you could maybe create a COTW tag for the actual pages that are nominated so that people browsing it would be able to come to this page?

Also, one of my main concerns is still the organisation of the medical pages. With your agreement I think I'm going to start a preclinical project which links to this COTW. It will mainly be sorting the organisational problems and highlight the work we do here and be an anchor for discussing structural problems. I would love for some crosslinking between this page, organisational page and the original wikidoc page... what do you think? PhatRita 14:25, 26 July 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for joining up! Actually, I did create a tag: it's {{MCOTFnom}}. I added it for you. Feel free to edit the directions if you can make it more clear. Starting a preclinical project sounds like a great idea if you're up to the task of organizing it. Count me in (in a limited manner, though, due to unfortunate time constraints). — Knowledge Seeker দ 20:26, July 26, 2005 (UTC)

-

Suggestion: You might want to consider listing unsuccessful nominations on Wikipedia:Pages needing attention/Health science. It might get the word out to those not aware of MCOTF that those articles need work, too. Edwardian 05:27, 30 July 2005 (UTC)

That's a great idea, Edwardian. That might also be a good source of articles to nominate here. By the way, your participation in this project would be welcome as well! — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:03, July 30, 2005 (UTC)

Fortnight or week?

Originally, I set this up as a Collaboration of the Fortnight because I was unsure how much participation there would be. But given the quick improvement in Human physiology (due, in large part, to User:Alteripse's great effort). If this keeps up, should we switch to a weekly collaboration instead of a fortnightly? On a related note, remember that you can vote for as many proposals as you like. if there is enough interest, we can go up on the vote requirements so that too many nominations don't clutter the page. — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:04, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

First of all, I warmly greet this project and will surely contribute (as much as time permits ;)). If there is much interest, we could begin by picking up two topics per fortnight, as it allows one to contribute to the one he prefers/knows better. --Eleassar my talk 11:48, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

That sounds like a good idea, Eleassar. Perhaps we can pick a new one each week, but let each collaboration run for two weeks, so there will always be two projects running? — Knowledge Seeker দ 19:33, July 27, 2005 (UTC)

I think we have enough interest to switch this to a weekly project. Besides, I think interest will probably die down towards the end of the week (considering the editing may often start on nominated articles); previous collaborations can always be renominated later on. I hope the interest level stays high; at some point, maybe we could do two articles during the week. — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:23, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

I think, also, that I will move this to Wikipedia:Medicine Collaboration of the Week. The current name (Wikipedia:WikiProject Clinical medicine/MCOTF) is a bit unwieldy (and we tackle both clinical and preclinical articles here). I'll update all links, of course. — Knowledge Seeker দ 01:27, July 31, 2005 (UTC)

Name sounds much better! The candidates category still needs to be updated btw. --WS 02:22, 31 July 2005 (UTC)

Veto power

I propose granting three people (perhaps Knowledge Seeker, JFW, and PhatRita) the power to veto a nomination by a 3-0 or 2-1 vote. Obviously, editors are free to edit any article when and where they see fit, but I'm concerned that the Collaboration could be "hijacked" for others' pet-projects. (See my comments under the Psychotherapy discussion.) Edwardian 04:13, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Edwardian - I think that might be a bit drastic. I left some comments on Psychotherapy on the main page. I think your language was very strong - perhaps there's a more diplomatic way to go about this? Mr.Bip 05:44, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not clear to me what reason you have to assume bad faith in this proposal. The collaboration is not a sandbox, it cannot be "hijacked"-- nothing prevents anyone from simply not participating. The belief that psychotherapy is not appropriate for this collaboration is mistaken; if anything what the article needs is a more medical and scientific angle than it currently represents. Regardless, if you personally do not approve, I would reccomend, instead of attempting to create a means to remove articles from the list and prevent a small group from being overridden, simply not voting for the article. siafu 06:18, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

I apologize if you think I have assummed bad faith, however, I believe I am allowed to make suggestions that might help this Project run more smoothly. This Project is in its infancy and I think it needs some mechanism to ensure that nominations qualify for its stated purpose: To collaborate on "topics that may either relate to medical basic sciences (anatomy, biochemistry, and so on), or clinical medicine (illnesses, surgical procedures, and so on)". I do not think the Psychotherapy and Mental illness articles are in line with the stated goals of this Project and I made comment of such in the appropriate Comment section. Am I not allowed to do that? Is the Comment section reserved for only those who agree with the nomination? Edwardian 06:43, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

You are certainly allowed to make suggestions and comments and whatever you choose, but the reason I think you have assumed bad faith is because that's exactly what you presented in your commentary. In short: "These are outsiders, they haven't contributed before, we can't trust them to take part in the project, we need to be able to just veto this before it gets a chance to succeed or fail on its own merits". If that's not what you meant, perhaps an apology would be in order, given that that is what you said (e.g, instead of trying to remind participants that it's important to collaborate on all projects instead of just the one they've suggested, you simply assumed it wouldn't happen). As to whether Psychotherapy merits inclusion in the MCOTW, you may be unfamiliar with the topic, but such psychiatrists still do carry MDs, and psychotherapy involves such medically irrelevant areas as pharmacology, alzheimer's disease, narcolepsy, and neuroscience. If clinical psychology is not clinical, and mental illness is not illness, where exactly would you suggest this would be more appropriate? siafu 16:41, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

Your summary of my comments is not accurate. There are at least three separate issues here. 1) I've commented at least twice, this being the third, that I think there needs to be some mechanism to ensure that nomination qualify for the stated goals of the Project. My suggestion has nothing to do with anyone being an "outsider" or whether than have contributed previously or whether they can be "trusted" to contribute to future articles, If my suggestion is not a good one to deal with that potential problem, or others do not even see it as being a potential problem, so be it. I have voiced my concern and I think a few others are now aware of it. 2) I've commented at least as many times that I do not think the general topic of Psychotherapy qualifies for the stated goal of the Project, and acknowledge that others think it does. I agree that psychotherapy involves such medically relevant (your sarcasm in the use of "irrelevant" is noted but not necessary) "areas as pharmacology, alzheimer's disease, narcolepsy, and neuroscience", but those were not the specific articles that were nominated. Nor did I suggest that "clinical psychology is not clinical, and mental illness is not illness". In my opinion, the key word in "clinic medicine", referring to the stated goal of the Project, is "medicine" not "clinical". Specific topics such as "the medical management of mental illness" or "the biochemical foundations of mental illness" are probably better tackled by this Project than the vast topic of "mental illness". 3) I voiced concern, and my reason for that concern, why I do not think you will stick around to help with the Project long-term. Although time will tell if my concern was warranted, I will remove those comments from the Project page in that they certainly do project "bad faith" on my part. I again apologize. Edwardian 18:17, 7 August 2005 (UTC)

It's not so inaccurate as you imply to read "others", "hijacked", and "pet project" as taking an "us and them" outlook. Moreover the "mechanism to ensure that nomination qualify" is the vote process itself. I was rather insulted by the assumption of bad faith that was the reception when a bunch of new users come to a new collaboration with a new idea; I may have responded in something other than the most productive fashion. Apologies for that. Nonetheless this interaction has managed to kill my enthusiasm for collaborating here; there's plenty to do without having to pull teeth to contribute, and I've withdrawn my support for Psychotherapy in order to satiate fears of the project being "hijacked". siafu 15:37, 8 August 2005 (UTC)

Although I believe you have inferred things from my comments that I did not imply, I'm sorry that you feel insulted and do not wish to help out here. I hope you will reconsider. My opinion is still that the Psychotherapy and Mental illness articles are to broad to be tackled by this project, however, I think there are plenty of related topics as you earlier suggested that could be addressed here. It would be great if they were nominated so we could work together on them. Cheers. Edwardian 03:08, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Hi there. I think you are well-intentioned, Edward, and don't doubt your good faith. It does appear to me that veto powers are entirely unnecessary, however; a candidate article that did not have the support of editors who work regularly on medical articles simply wouldn't attain the MCOW for that week. An article which many contributors felt was in need of immediate work (or sustained heavy-lifting) on the other hand probably would. You, and every other editor, is free to voice their opinions on the suitability or desirability of an article for MCOW status. As democratic impulses are unlikely to be constrained by this simple arrangement, and as the MCOW decisions are unlikely to suffer as a result, I feel regulations granting veto powers, et cetera will be unhelpful at best, detrimental at worst. It's the libertarian in me, I guess.→Encephalon | Ϟ | ζ 07:06:01, 2005-08-07 (UTC)

Thanks everyone for bringing up some good points. Edwardian's concern about the potential for hijacking a collaboration is a very real issue, and one I thought about when setting up project. Similar to what happened with the Psychotherapy nomination, an editor could get several other editors together and they could all support a given nomination. With a small, new project like this one, the influx of new voters could easily overwhelm the previous participants—witness the seven supporting votes in this case, a few shy of the 10 people on the "participant" list, and none of whom have participated in the collaboration before. As matter currently stand, it will be next week's MCOTW. Now in this case I feel that psychotherapy is an appropriate nomination. If it had been a nomination, say, for Spork, I would probably have simply removed the nomination myself. For borderline cases, bringing up objections in the comments section, as Edwardian did, would be appropriate. Without setting up formal rules, I would imagine that in a controversial case, the opinions of some of the longer-active participants would carry some more weight, as it is throughout Wikipedia. Of course, in obvious cases, anyone can remove the nomination—we don't have to wait for a nomination to expire before removing it. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:48, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

I will modify the instructions to state that if one has concerns about a topic falling within the scope of this project, one may bring them up in the comments section. — Knowledge Seeker দ 07:52, August 7, 2005 (UTC)

Votes required

Knowledge seeker, thanks for your comment over at SIRS talk. If it's not too much trouble, would you mind explaining how the number of votes that must be met before a certain date for a given COW is determined? I'm rather new to all the COWs and Improvements of the week. Am I right in thinking that the article with highest vote gets the COW on the fixed COW day (which in the case of MCOW I think is Wed?), and all "losers" get to stay on for a certain period of time if they can garner a certain number of votes more? Who decides these numbers? Much thanks.—Encephalon | ζ | Σ 15:50:30, 2005-08-08 (UTC)

Hi, Encephalon; it's no trouble at all. I tried to explain it at Wikipedia:Medicine Collaboration of the Week#Voting, but it is a bit complicated. When setting up this collaboration, I basically patterned it after the other collaborations—their method of voting seemed better than anything else I could think of. So yes, nominations and voting go on continuously. Then, on Wednesday, whichever nomination has the most votes is selected for that week. If there is a tie, I take the one that was nominated first. The choice of Wednesday was more or less arbitrary; most of the collaborations use Sunday, but I like the idea of being able to work on an article through the weekend. Of course, this, like any of the parameters, is open to discussion.

Of course, there has to be a way to remove nominations, too, or else the page would quickly fill up. One possibility would be to remove all the "losers" each week, but that wouldn't be as good as the current method, in my opinion. Basically, each nomination has an expiry time: it starts out with an expiry time of one week. In other words, if it is not selected for that week's collaboration by then, it will be removed. This has happened once so far: my nomination for Connective tissue disease (see expired nominations). For every two votes a nomination earns, its expiry time is extended by one week. For instance, take the nomination for Pneumonia by Alex.tan. It was nominated on August 4th, with expiry on August 11th. When Quadell added his vote (the second vote), it got extended until August 18th; that is, it had until the 18th to be selected or it would be removed. Mr.Bip and I added our support and its expiry was pushed to August 25th. David Ruben and you supported and the expiry was moved to September 1st. Kpjas also supported; if another user supports, the expiry will move to September 8th. Make sense? Finally, as to who decides these numbers, the answer is that I do—only because no one else has been interested in the mechanics of the collaboration (at least not until the current controversy). I started out with 2 votes required for the first week, and 1 for each week thereafter, because I had no idea how popular this collaboration might turn out and wanted to start low. But it's had a good turnout, and I soon increased the requirement to 2 a week. And it may have to be adjusted again; basically, we want to keep a reasonable amount of nominations here. If it's too low, or if people make a large number of nominations, the number of nominations on the page will become unwieldy. If it's too high; too many nominations will expire before getting selected and there won't be anything from which to pick. (For comparison, WP:COTW requires five votes per week, versus our two.) If you have any suggestions regarding changing these numbers or any other modifications, I'd love to hear them. — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:51, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

Got it. Thanks, KS. Re: Wednesday and the details of the voting system, I've no problem with these at all; the process seems to be working pretty well. You've done a fantastic job organizing this, if I may say so. Incidentally, one aspect of the COW system that I've noticed is how it forces editors to prioritize. I think every one of us, if we had limitless time and resources, would probably answer "support" to almost every nominated article: most still have room for some improvement. But I find myself deliberating as follows: "Of course Carcinogenesis deserves more than one miserable line, but surely it's not more important than SIRS? If I support Carcinogenesis now, will it mean relegating one more deserving article to history's compost heap? Although if you think about it, isn't it more important for WP to have a good article on Carcinogens than on SIRS? Who the hell consults WP for SIRS anyway — it's not the sort of thing about which you lounge around at home carefully considering your treatment options. But if you think about it, many shock-related articles are kind of f***ked at the moment, whereas at least Carcinogenesis has the company of a decent Cancer. Of course, the real question is, what are the implications of all this for Biochemistry? And miserable H5N1? And gawdawful personal life, which, as you can see, is pretty limited right now?"—Encephalon | ζ | Σ 06:43:33, 2005-08-09 (UTC)

Encephalon - Ha! I think I can sympathize with that thought process ;) Mr.Bip 06:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

Yeah. It's the old story. So much to do, so little time to do it. I've been meaning to tell you by the way, kudos on the Asthma work. I didn't participate in it because, having been sufficiently mortified at the state of H5N1, I've been personally working on a complete top-down bottom-up rewrite of the thing. But Asthma has been in good hands — and of course Dr. DR knows exactly what he's talking about. I haven't read it completely, but I'd wager it's much improved.—Encephalon | ζ | Σ 07:07:40, 2005-08-09 (UTC)

Same for me as well. My list of articles to fix was growing far too fast, and some needed much more work than I could handle on my own. Prioritizing which articles need work first was the primary reason I wanted to set this up. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:34, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Infection

OK - I made three nominations already today, so I'll ask you guys if you think this deserves a nomination: Infection. The one paragraph written for this article is quite good, but I would expect a term like infection to be a much longer article outlining the various kinds of infections possible, with lots of redirects. So, for the doctors out there: do you think this article is fine the way it is, or does it need a lot more work to include a more clinical perspective? Mr.Bip 05:14, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

I think Infection could definitely use our help. But I'd suggest holding off on nominating it for now. As you mention, you've been making a lot of nominations: there are currently eight active nominations, and in the absence of further voting, only three will ultimately be selected as collaborations. Of course, perhaps we'll always have a lot of nominations, and there will never be a "dry spell". So ultimately it's up to your judgment. And finally, another possibility is that if there is enough participation on this collaboration, we can increase to two articles a week, so that people may work on one if they're uninterested in the other. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:43, August 9, 2005 (UTC)

KS - I can get a little over-zealous when I get rolling :) I've been trying to find important articles that desperately need improvement, and there are quite a few. I think we have our work cut out for us. Even if some of these articles don't get picked, we should keep them in a list of stuff to get done one day, or even re-nominate them in a dry spell. Important question: is there an easy way of seeing how many articles link to a certain article? I think we should definitely prioritize according to the most-linked-to articles. Mr.Bip 06:53, 9 August 2005 (UTC)

No worries—overzealousness is good. And yes, the expired nominations will definitely be a source for renomination if the project page is looking a little dry (although that probably won't happen for quite a while). And of course even if my nominations don't ultimately get selected, I still plan to work on them on my own. To see what links to an article, just click on the "What links here" link in the toolbox on the left. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:39, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Asthma — peer review?

First of all, let me say that I am extremely proud of the work this collaboration is doing. I am very impressed with how much the articles are improving each week. I only regret that I haven't been able to put as much time in as I'd like—as an intern on my general medicine rotation, my Wikipedia participation has dropped to its all-time low. (I updated the collaboration to Pneumonia last night while on call at the hospital, after working up my patients and before taking a short nap.) Asthma really improved last week; I plan to perhaps work on it a bit more and then I was considering nominating it for peer review. Even if it's not ready to be featured yet, we will get some experience as to what is needed for future articles, and I think that (ultimately), featured status is the desired goal of our collaborations. I'm sure previous collaborations are on your watchlists; perhaps once we get fully established, we could nominated articles for peer review once the week has finished, and keep working on them to bring them to featured status. Anyway, just some thoughts—thanks again; it's great to see the medical community (and friends) coming together to help out like this! — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:47, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

The nomination has been made: Wikipedia:Peer review/Asthma. Hopefully we'll get some good feedback. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:44, August 11, 2005 (UTC)

Avocado has left a useful layperson's criticism of the article here.—Encephalon | ζ | Σ 04:41:41, 2005-08-14 (UTC)

One user has also left feedback on Peer Review. I'll work on incorporating both their suggestions. — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:45, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Mergers and coordinated writing

There are some articles that may need to be tackled in a coordinated fashion, because the topic on Wikipedia involves several articles. I am not sure if KS or the group believe this sort of task is suitable for the MCOW, so I thought I'd just post here so everyone can discuss it if they like. Two examples:

1. Residency

Currently the subject of two different articles, Medical residency and Residency (medicine). Merger tag was placed about 5 weeks ago, no discussion or move since. Also, JFW noted in edit summary that it is USA focused (actually, US and Canada, who both share the same type of system). Should the merged article also talk about GME in the UK, Europe, Japan, Australia etc?

• Yes it should include other countries models of Medical Training, partly for breadth, but also so comparisons can be made (no point having separate articles for US/Canada Resident, UK SHO/Registrars and whatever in other countries). Would suggest general term we can all agree upon and then a series of redirects to this (for UK: House Officer, HO, Preregistration house officer, PRHO, SHO, Senior house officer, Registrar, Specialised registrar). As a GP in teh community, somewhat out of touch with hospital training, which has just undergone major reorganisation in the UK, leaving, so the media reports, junior doctors without jobs. David Ruben 19:10, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

2. Immunosuppression, immunosuppressive drug

The first article concerns therapeutic suppression of the immune system. It is very brief. Can be expanded enormously (if this is felt to be appropriate). The second article is on the drugs. It is quite long. Eleassar has taken the lead in editing it, and placed both Attention & Clean up tags on it in May. Should the two remain separate? Should the first be expanded? The second made briefer? Should they be combined in one article that discusses the whole issue of immunosuppression? Regards—Encephalon | ζ | Σ 04:41:41, 2005-08-14 (UTC)

I'd like to hear if anyone else has an opinion. I think they both are suitable for the MCOTW, and of course voting will determine when/if we actually tackle them. However, I think that both have a couple issues to be worked out first. Regarding residency, all we need do first is decide if they should be merged (I think so) and what the actual title should be. In the second case, it would be prudent to discuss the scope/merging of the two articles first, because it seems a waste to me to use up part of the week in discussions. I'm not sure where the discussion should take place: on the article discussion pages, or perhaps at the Doctors' Mess? — Knowledge Seeker দ 04:54, August 15, 2005 (UTC)

Collaboration on articles

Here's an idea: perhaps there is a way for editors to get together to collaborate on an article without having to put it up for a MCOTW vote. So, say I want some help writing up an article on Notch signaling, but it's not a big enough deal to put it up for a vote. I can post my collaboration request on a subpage of MCOTW and find one, maybe two editors who want to patch the article up with me. Or, just get ideas about how to make it better. This would be distinct from the MCOTW talk page, which I assume is more about MCOTW business than working out the details of articles. Sound like this could be worthwhile? Mr.Bip 07:04, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

• Good idea in principle, but I think needs be on talk:Clinical Medicine not MCOTW.
  • There already is a section for articles we're starting on, but need leaving alone by others until we have had a chance to lay down the initial article entry (wp talk:WikiProject Clin.Med.#Topics we are currently working on This is a list of current projects. Individuals may not want to review them yet, since they may not be complete).
  • At the end of the writing process there is a request to review completed articles (wp talk:WikiProject Clin.Med.#Things up for review).
  • So there is a need for the stage inbetween - ie incomplete articles we are working on and request collaboration with. MCOTW seems wrong place for this, and logically should be between these two sections of Talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine. Perhaps there should be a brief entry in MCOTW pointing out these authoring/collaboration/review sections and so guide people there.

    David Ruben 19:34, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

    • I like your idea, Mr.Bip, but I agree with Dr. Ruben that this idea probably doesn't belong as part of MCOTW itself. Wikipedia:WikiProject Clinical medicine would seem to be the logical place. However, there are two small problems. One, it would be nice to have a central place to go for both clinical and pre-clinical articles. Two, the WikiProject seems somewhat of a mess to me—there is so much information just arranged linearly. I know there was a peer review section there, but I was wondering what people thought about creating a Wikipedia:Medical peer review (or "Medicine peer review")? It could be run similar to Wikipedia:Peer review (although reviewers could just fix up the articles themselves, or leave comments if they liked). I think it would be better as a separate page—I'm not a big fan of the peer review as an earlier part of the talk page. I think it would be easier to access a separate page and I think a central page for both clinical and preclinical medicine. Of course, people could continue to list their projects on the Doctors' Mess; this would serve to complement that project. And of course, I could set it up and maintain it. I know that I have several articles I've worked on that are too obscure and too well-developed for MCOTW, but that I would certainly appreciate feedback/assistance on. Thoughts? — Knowledge Seeker দ 06:37, August 18, 2005 (UTC)
      • KS - I think Wikipedia: Medical peer review is close to what I'm imagining. What I'm thinking of is closer to Wikipedia: Medical article workshop - in essence, a talk page where we ask for help/input on an article, and people get in contact with each other about articles they share an interest in. I think that if the Doctor's Mess on Wikipedia:WikiProject_Clinical_medicine were more active, it would be the same thing I'm thinking about. Who knows, maybe we could do this, and no one would use it. I would just like to see the biological-science-inclined Wikipedians more centralized around a page where people say which articles are in the crucible at the moment. Mr.Bip 17:44, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

• I've implement a major change as the (wp talk:WikiProject Clin.Med.#Topics we are currently working on and wp talk:WikiProject Clin.Med.#Things up for review all got moved into an archive subpage of WikiProject Clinical medicine, yet these are active notices between us of what we are working on or wish peer reviewing (ie active stuff not old archive)!
  • I moved the whole lot from archive to Wikipedia:WikiProject Clinical medicine/Collaboration and added the inbetween stage that I discussed above. Hence there are now 3 stages: 1) articles we are starting on and wish left alone by others whilst a basic structure is created 2) articles we actively would like partipation with and 3) completed articles ready for peer review.
  • Please comment if you think I was rash, but we'd lost all direct access to individual aticles 'work-in-progress' notification between ourselves.

David Ruben 00:42, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

DR - I applaud your boldness :) I should have done something like this, rather than whine about it. I think the page you made is exactly what we need, and added my own articles to it. I'm adding the new page to the navigation box at the Clinical project. Good job! Mr.Bip 02:06, 19 August 2005 (UTC)

• • I thought I commented here yesterday on this but I can't find it here, nor in the other talk page (must be loosing it!). This was very well done, DR. Incidentally, I'm the chap who refactored the doctor's lounge. I did it because it was huge, so much so that it wasn't loading properly. The stuff I moved hadn't been touched in months, in most cases at least a year. So I was hoping no harm was done. We should probably maintain separate pages for keeping extensive lists and for making quick comments, or we'll run into the same problem again. Which is why this move of yours is great. Lastly, as a great fan of simplicty, I tweaked the Nav box. You guys don't mind, right? (You do? Well, I guess that's too bad then. ;) )—Encephalon | ^ζ  17:17:01, 2005-08-20 (UTC)
    • I left some comments on Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine/Collaboration. I think it's a good idea, although it could use some refinement in focus. I'm still thinking about creating Wikipedia:Medical peer review. This would be set up similar to Wikipedia:Peer review, not like the version currently on the other page. New requests would be listed by article. Any thoughts? — Knowledge Seeker দ 21:53, August 20, 2005 (UTC)

Thank you Knowledge Seeker, some good points raised on the article collaboration page (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Clinical medicine/Collaboration)

1. Change name from 'WikiProject Clinical medicine/Collaboration' as too similar to 'Medicine Collaboration of the Week'  ?
2. Get rid the the initial section on articles being worked upon (for which others should allow the individual to work-up) ?
3. Off-puting, to those new to wikipedia, to have to add their name as a heading to the lists, before describing articles they might wish joint working with others on.
4. Many of individual's entries have not been recently updated.

A solution might be to change the current structure from ' ==Individual's name== / *[[Page]] discussion ' to just a simple list of ' *[[Page]] discussion ~~~~ '. The use of signatures ('~~~~') is then both easier for everyone to use, and has the advantage that the entry is clearly date-stamped. However this would loose the multiple sub-sections and the ability to edit just ones own bit.

Please everyone, comment below or on the relevant talk page - David Ruben 20:19, 23 August 2005 (UTC)

Old MCOTWs

I think MCOTW is going really well, with good improvements to the topics so far chosen. The banner for MCOTW obviously only stays with an article for its one week. Is there though, in wipidedia, any system used to then highlight a topic has having undergone a collaborative improvement?

• this is not about a contributor keeping an "eye" on an article ('my watchlist' does this)
• nor is this to suggest "locking" the article (wikipedia allows anyone to edit)

What I wonder though is if any wikiprojects leave a residual banner on articles to help highlight to future readers that there has been a group/peer-review/collaborative input:

1. may give the reader a greater assurance that the article has a depth & breadth to its content (as any encyclopaedia would wish) ?
2. may direct a future reader to directly ask a collaborative group to review a past article if it seems to need updating ?
3. attract people to read the article (will MCOTW have a list of all past articles) ?
4. help people look at the articles and consider nominating for featured article status?

David Ruben 01:00, 18 August 2005 (UTC)

Sounds like a good idea to me. I'll make a template to put on previous collaborations. There already is a history of previous collaborations; I'll see if I can make it more prominent. — Knowledge Seeker দ 02:45, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

It's up: {{MCOTWprev}}. I'm not too thrilled with the wording, so please feel free to edit it. — Knowledge Seeker দ 03:17, August 18, 2005 (UTC)

Proposed change for next week's MCOTW

If you have not already, please see Wikipedia:Medicine Collaboration of the Week#Biochemistry for a discussion of switching the order of the selections for the next two weeks. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:16, August 23, 2005 (UTC)

Asthma is a featured article candidate!

I just nominated Asthma on WP:FAC. Please keep an eye on Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Asthma and help the article meet any objections or suggestions for improvements! Thanks! — Knowledge Seeker দ 08:09, August 24, 2005 (UTC)

I've just finished touch-ups. I must say I'm very proud of what the group has done for that article, in particular Dr. Ruben and Mr. Bip, and of Seeker's leadership. I think it deserves FA status.—Encephalon | ^ζ  08:22:28, 2005-08-24 (UTC)

Systematic covarage of topics

MCOTW is going really well, and brillant that Asthma getting to FAC status. Topics that fail to gain sufficient votes will be forgotton about and risk remaining stubby or of poor quality. Taking a random walk through WP, I came across the WikiProject:Chemistry, they have set up a very daunting list of chemicals and are systematialy adding articles, see the list at Wikipedia:WikiProject Chemicals/Organization. If we had more members, should something similar be on WikiProject:Medicine ? David Ruben 03:23, 25 August 2005 (UTC)

I saw that, David. They're frighteningly efficient. I'd be surprised if they haven't many more members than we do. Still, we should seriously look into setting up something like that for ourselves. We could probably steal their table too—I'm sure they won't mind. :)—Encephalon | ^ζ  01:01:06, 2005-08-29 (UTC)

I think it would be a good idea, provided it were maintained. I would gladly contribute but I wouldn't have time to set it up or play any role aside from peripheral, I'm afraid (how do you all find the time, anyway?). Don't forget that if you're bored, you can take a look at the graveyard and work on any of the articles there (or resubmit them for WP:MCOTW (I still think SIRS would be a good collaboration topic, but I plan to tackle it myself at some point. — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:27, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Wikipedia:WikiProject Anti-war#List of pages covered by the project has a nice format for a table which we could all edit. Would this be better under Wikipedia:WikiProject Clinical medicine or a parent Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine? — Knowledge Seeker দ 05:59, August 29, 2005 (UTC)

Maybe a list of most referenced articles would be a nice start. See the science project, they have a list of articles referenced more than 500 times. [1] Put the 100 most referenced articles in a table and make sure they are all excellent quality.

Time to slow down?

As some have pointed out, we have been working pretty hard, and I am afraid if we keep up this pace we may burn out. In retrospect, nominating Asthma for WP:FAC was a bad idea on my part while we were still active on the MCOTW. I've been thinking about ways to rectify this in the future. I think if we are going to nominate one of our MCOTW articles to be on FAC, we should not have to divide our attention. I am not sure how best to accomplish this; the best I can think of is to renominate them on MCOTW, and if they get selected, we'll work on FAC stuff for that week (and therefore won't have another article to also work on at the same time). The second concern I have is just in general, FAC stuff aside, are we going too fast? I am starting a new rotation and hope to have a little more free time, but I haven't been able to put much effort in the last few collaborations. What do you all think? There are a couple options. One, we could return to the fortnightly approach. Another option is to take off one week per month. Perhaps the first week of each month we would not select a new article, but rather use the time to work on old collaborations or to work on our own projects. Or just to take a break. Would that be a good idea? Of course, any nominations active at that time would automatically be extended by a week. I'm not sure what to call it either. Maybe a week of respite? — Knowledge Seeker দ 15:04, September 3, 2005 (UTC)

KS - I hear you. I think getting an article to FAC is a big effort, and something which I think has distracted us from the other MCOTW projects since asthma was nominated. Honestly, I would rather see this project do a smaller volume of high quality work than a larger volume of shallow work - I think others will agree. Perhaps if we set the bar for each article closer to where asthma is now, we could go back to MCOTF - except that we'd have to have significant support for each nomination or else we'll lose the focus and participation of certain members of the collaboration. Thoughts? Mr.Bip 04:35, 4 September 2005 (UTC)

PS - On this topic, I think there's no way I'm going to be able to do my big biochemistry rewrite this week. I'm so swamped with my new job and school, but I really care about that article. Suggestions? Mr.Bip 04:35, 4 September 2005 (UTC)