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Archives June 2008 to ?

This page can be used to gauge support for potential task forces under WikiProject Medicine before starting one.

Contents 1 Proposing a task force 2 Expressing interest 3 Creating a task force 4 Proposed task forces 4.1 Sleep medicine 4.2 Infectious Disease 4.3 Potential quackery 4.4 Endocrinology Task Force 4.5 Health informatics 4.6 Anatomy 4.7 Occupational medicine 4.8 Anesthesia 4.9 Toxicology 4.10 Human body diagrams 5 Other discussions 5.1 Noinclude 5.2 Task force creation criteria 5.3 Updates

[edit] Proposing a task force

To propose a task force, write a brief description (including links to the related Wikipedia articles), and add it along with your name to the list below (in chronological order). Some boilerplate you can use:

 === (Name of task force) === '''Description:'''  [description here] ~~~~  '''Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)''' # ~~~~  '''Discussion:''' * '''Comment''' (or '''Oppose''' or other indicators) 

To attract members from outside WikiProject Medicine, you might also want to post at note at the task force section of the pan-Wiki proposal page. A small number of one-time announcements on the talk pages of key articles and related WikiProjects may also be appropriate.

[edit] Expressing interest

If you are interested in any of the task forces listed here, simply add your name to the appropriate list under Interested Wikipedians and start contributing to the relevant articles. The discussion section of each proposal is designed for expressing support, opposition, or any other comments or concerns, whether or not you intend to join the task force. When adding to a discussion, please provide your rationale for support or opposition; this is not a numerical vote.

 *'''Support''' - [Rationale for support]  *'''Oppose''' - [Rationale for opposition]  *'''Neutral''' - [Concerns or suggestions] 

[edit] Creating a task force

[edit] Proposed task forces

[edit] Sleep medicine

Description:

Sleep Medicine is a field in its infancy. Sleep research comes up with startling discoveries almost weekly. Bits of new information are added to Wikipedia articles haphazardly - understandably. A task force is needed for quality control and coordination within and among articles. A Sleep medicine task force may want to start with a look at Sleep disorder.

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. --Hordaland (talk) 07:02, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
2. Medicellis (talk) 04:04, 17 July 2008 (UTC)

Discussion:

• A selected list of articles in which I'm particularly interested may be found on my sandbox/soapbox page. (Link corrected, March 2009.) "My" topics, primarily regarding Circadian rhythms, are a just a small part, probably the most fast-moving part, of Sleep Medicine. A task force working on the whole will have to identify and work on several hundred articles. --Hordaland (talk) 07:02, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
• A discussion, "Cause -> Bad sleep?", here: Talk:Major_depressive_disorder/Archive_10#Cause -> Bad sleep? (at entirely the wrong place), shows some interest in cleaning up the sleep (medicine) articles. - Hordaland (talk) 12:37, 11 March 2009 (UTC) [fixed link --Hordaland (talk) 22:03, 15 October 2009 (UTC)]
• I would think that sleep medicine would fall under the already created pulmonology task force. All of the sleep specialists that I know of are pulmonologists also. However, I would also think that it could fall under the neurology task force, as the two topics overlap frequently. Either way, I don't think that creating a separate task force is necessary. I would just bring the topic to the attention of the neurology task force and the pulmonology task force. Tyrol5 [Talk] 20:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

• Aware that I risk the wrath of pulmonologists everywhere, we who have circadian rhythm disorders do not recommend "sleep doctors" who are pulmonologists. Psychiatrists, yes. Neurologists, perhaps. Pediatricians, yes. Pulmonologists, no. Those who have the new Sleep Medicine sub-specialty in the USA may be an exception to that. Pulmonologists know all about apnea and can diagnose that as well as restless legs and probably narcolepsy and other disorders, but it is the experience of patients in several countries that they do not know about circadian disorders. </rant>

Here's hoping the neurology task force will be interested! - Hordaland (talk) 22:18, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Now that I see it your way, I would have to agree. As for the neurology task force, it looks like this is up to them, just make sure you let them know. All the best, Tyrol5 [Talk] 01:21, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

Done, Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Neurology task force#Sleep & sleep disorders, thank you. - Hordaland (talk) 18:55, 16 October 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Infectious Disease

Description: [description here, and author to please sign the description with four tildes]

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

Discussion:

• Isn't this already covered by the Pathology task force? Seems redundant. Mmagdalene722 (talk) 16:05, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

No - they are totally different medical specialties. The model of task forces in WPMED is that they are basically split up by medical specialty. While "pathology" can be used to describe anything abnormal, the task force mostly covers entire articles relating to what pathologists do (see {{Pathology}} and Category:Pathology). The pathology of specific diseases is mostly covered by the task force of the medical specialty that would treat a patient with the condition.

In the US, ID is a sub-specialty of internal medicine. ID docs complete an internal medicine residency and then a fellowship in ID. They see patients at the bedside - either as primary care physicians or more commonly as consultants. ID docs may order tests or cultures, but they do not physically perform the tests. Pathology is its own residency. Pathologists typically work in (and are in charge of) hospital labs and look at tissue slides under microscopes to diagnose things. Pathologists do not actually see patients - they interpret slides like radiologists interpret images. In hospitals, I'm not sure who performs the specimen cultures, sensitivities, and Gram stains. It's probably a tech overseen by a physician medical director, but I do not think these types of tests are verified by pathologists. --Scott Alter 03:28, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Potential quackery

Description: This idea needs a more inclusive name, but I'm thinking of something that would cover outdated theories, new-but-not-accepted ideas, all WP:FRINGEy articles, a good deal of alternative medicine, and the like. Re-discovering Wilson's temperature syndrome and the strange changes recently made at Leukemia#Causes_and_risk_factors is what got me thinking about it. Potential categories of interest include:

• Category:Alternative cancer treatments
• Category:Experimental medical treatments
• Category:Medicinal use of cannabis
• Category:AIDS denialism
• Category:Patent medicines

Specific articles probably include anything named Health effects of ____ or ____ and health.

My goal is a cross-disciplinary noticeboard that might interest some people at WP:FTN, WP:SKEPTIC, WP:WPHOS, and perhaps WP:ALTMED; without interest from people outside the WPMED core group, then it's probably not worth starting an extra page for this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:38, 18 February 2009 (UTC)
2. Renaissancee (talk) 05:08, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
3. pustelnik(talk) 9:12, 7 June 2009

Discussion:

• Comment: I don't think a task force here would be the best format for such an endeavor. Everything within the scope of WPMED (tagged with {{WPMED}}) should be strictly within the confines of conventional, accepted medicine. Maybe WPMED could keep a noticeboard page outside of a task force. This page could list all of the questionable articles, without actually including them within the scope of the project. This way, articles can all be easily watched with "related changes". --Scott Alter 00:43, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

What's wrong with preserving history? Renaissancee (talk) 05:08, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Endocrinology Task Force

Description: Endocrinology is a major area of medicine, and it should have its own task force, plus there is allot of articles that need to be cleaned up, expanded and created. Maen. K. A. (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Maen. K. A. (talk) 13:02, 2 March 2009 (UTC)
2. pustelnik(talk) 9:12, 7 June 2009 I'll be happy to look at pediatric endocrine articles
3. Lee, Diana (talk) 18:38, 26 July 2009 (EST)

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)

[edit] Health informatics

Description: Health informatics is the science of applying information science and information technology in health. It is an important field, that is growing, and wikipedia has a number of articles already but that are in need of some more serious attention. Look at Category:Medical informatics and Category:Health informatics - I recently added a category Category:Health informaticians that attempts to gather together some of the informaticians who have profiles but many more bios could and should be created of some of the leaders in this field. Karl.brown (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Karl.brown (talk) 21:16, 24 April 2009 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)

[edit] Anatomy

Description Probably does not need a desctiption. See here Wikipedia:WikiProject Anatomy for a basic layout of how the taskforce page can look like.

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Possibly current WP:Anatomy members.

Discussion:

• Comment: I thought I be a little bit bold and humbly suggest that wikiproject Anatomy be merged as a taskforce under WP:MED. Clearly WP:Anatomy is a daughter project of WP:MED and it will easily fit in within as a task force. This would lead to reduced talk page headders (with the articles of relevance tagged as {{WPMED|class=|importance|anatomy=yes}} and everything else may remain the same (of course all the pages will just be moved under the WP:MED linking but they can be modified/updated as appropriate. The participants of this task force will also be the exact same individuals in the current WP:anatomy participant list. Having said that, I welcome any comments from anyone (including wp:anatomy participants) that they might have in regards to this, i.e. whether we should leave things as they are or go with the entire process.

Furthermore, in terms of article tagging, I believe the main Anatomy talkpage headder can just be modified, perhaps with the help of a bot that will be able to make an easy conversion (I woulf hate for someone to have to change all 2,000 Anatomy tagged articles into med ones. Then there will need to be another bot to automatically remove the duplicate med tags, and keep the most completed ones only. Calaka (talk) 11:38, 25 May 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose: Not to be the meany or anything, but there is already an WikiProject that covers all of this. It doesn't need to be cut down to a task force as there is a lot of room for improvement and expansion over there. For conditions and stuff regarding anatomy, I'd think it'd fall under genetics and internal medicine. Sorry, but I don't think we need task force for it. Renaissancee (talk) 05:00, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Comment:That is fair response but I just wanted to point out that just because a project gets moved over to become a task force, does not mean that it becomes smaller or gets cut down in size (or reduce in level of importance!). It would still have all the same pages and functions as before, minus a talk page tag (since it will be incorporated into the WP:MED tag). Not sure what you mean by your comment re: genetics/internal medicine? Cheers!Calaka (talk) 08:56, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

• Oppose I don't see general anatomy (which includes zootomy and phytotomy) as being a subject entirely within the scope of medicine; yes, medicine has its fingers in the anatomy pie, which means some anatomy articles are in the scope of medicine, but definitely not all. Now, I don't see the harm in something like a surgery task force, which would have considerable overlap with human anatomy subjects. Or maybe even a "medical anatomy" task force, which would focus on the interconnect between medical science and the biology of human anatomy. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 17:04, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment WPMED has no interest in a forcible merger of that project. If the members of that project define their scope as being essentially human anatomy and they want to become a task force of WPMED, then we will accept them. If they define their scope more broadly, or if they prefer to remain separate, then we will not accept them. I see that a note has been left at their talk page about this proposal; I have requested that they clarify their scope internally. We should wait for a response from the members. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
• Weak oppose: When we initially started converting some of the medicine-related WikiProjects to task forces, we intentionally left out Anatomy and Dentistry (see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces/Archive 1#Conversion of medicine-related projects). The thought was that task forces of WPMED should solely encompass strictly medical fields. WikiProject Anatomy is basically inactive, with the exception of some WPMED editors that contribute where medicine-related articles do not fit under the scope of WPMED. Around 1.5 years ago, WP:WikiProject Preclinical Medicine (which was inactive) and WP:WikiProject Clinical medicine (which had significant overlap with WPMED) were merged in to WPMED. (As an aside, maybe we should have a history page to keep records of this project's timeline.) This allowed for a centralized discussion of all medicine-related items. Back then, a WikiProject was just a group of people who got together to independently work on a specific topic. Now, WikiProjects are better defined by the topic they cover, rather than the group of people working on the project. Additionally, there is better organization within each project and better collaboration between projects. Due to these changes, for the most part, all preclinical medicine-topics are no longer covered within WPMED, but rather other more focused projects (such as Wikipedia:WikiProject Microbiology, Wikipedia:WikiProject Cell Signaling, Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cellular Biology, Wikipedia:WikiProject Pharmacology). It is almost as if each pre-clinical topic has its own WikiProject; therefore, there is no need for WPMED to oversee these topics. --Scott Alter 05:10, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

Re all of the above comments: Thank you all for your insight. :) It is a good idea to wait and see what the members from the WP:Anatomy page have to say (hence why I posted a little note on their talk page). As an aside, I like the idea of a history page hehehe. Kind regards! Calaka (talk) 10:09, 4 June 2009 (UTC)

• Support - providing it was called a human anatomy task force. I would support the formation of a task force on "human anatomy". Human anatomy is a basic medical science and I think that it is less likely to be studied outside of medicine than the other basic medical sciences. Snowman (talk) 18:33, 10 July 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Occupational medicine

Description: Occupational medicine is a multidisciplinary field covering traditional medicine, several alternative medicine fields, business practices, insurance policy and many other areas both within and without medicine. Obviously related articles include: physical therapy, tendinitis, lumbar epidural steroid injection, anterior cruciate ligament injury, rotator cuff tear, spinal fusion, radiculopathy, Workers' compensation, Waddell's signs, and an untold number of redlinks. Most of the work associated with this task force would likely have to do with expanding coverage of medical treatment as used in this field. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. My own focus would be from the utilization review side of Occ. med. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:48, 3 June 2009 (UTC)
2. MaenK.A._Talk 07:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)
• Neutral Good idea, but I don't really find OM very interesting. Renaissancee (talk) 00:26, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
• Support there are many articles in this field that need expanding and monitoring MaenK.A._Talk 07:38, 9 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Anesthesia

Description: The Anesthesia page is currently in constant turmoil due to constant edits from political parties adding talking points. My goal is to keep the page from becoming about politics and maintain it. There have been many attempts by moderators to keep the peace without success.Mmackinnon (talk) 03:09, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Mmackinnon (talk) 03:08, 15 June 2009 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Comment (or Oppose or other indicators)
• Comment Do we really need a task force to protectt one article? Renaissancee (talk) 16:05, 18 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment Would it be appropriate to roll this into a greater occupational medicine and pain management (or just pain management in general) TF? —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 01:55, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
• Comment: If this task force is created, its purpose should not be solely to protect one article. There are plenty of articles in Category:Anesthesia for a potential task force to cover. Also, the content relating to anesthesia is not well organized. I think there should be separate articles on Anesthesiology (the field of medicine), Anesthesia (ways to decrease sensation), and Anesthetic (agents used to decrease sensation). The Anesthesia article is currently pretty long, so dividing it into separate articles would make sense. It could also reduce the turmoil, since each article would have a specific focus, instead of covering such a wide spectrum. Currently, there are separate articles for local anesthesia/local anesthetic and general anesthesia/general anesthetic, so I think it would make sense to split anesthesia as well. I do not think this should be combined with occupational medicine, as anesthesia and occupational medicine are unrelated. Pain management is a subspecialty of anesthesia (along with PM&R, neuro, and psych) not the other way around. --Scott Alter 15:30, 20 June 2009 (UTC)
  • Yes, I understand that they aren't strictly related, but combining into an alternative, multidisciplinary TF might get more involvement. Maybe even a general "pain" TF. Just thinking aloud, I suppose. —/Mendaliv/^2¢/_Δ's/ 18:57, 20 June 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Toxicology

Description: This task force would monitor and work on articles related to medical and forensic toxicology, toxicogenomics, and other toxicology articles with a direct link to human health. MMagdalene722^{talk to me} 14:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Mmagdalene722 (talk) 16:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion:

• Comment: It seems like if there's a Pathology (diseases caused by living microbes) task force, then it would make sense to have one for Toxicology (diseases caused by inert substances). It has its own category, so there are plenty of articles to work on. The toxicology article itself needs plenty of work (though that's not a justification for the creation of the task force). This would probably have a lot of overlap with an Occupational Medicine task force, too...something to think about. Mmagdalene722 (talk) 16:04, 3 November 2009 (UTC)

I wouldn't say that pathology is "diseases caused by living microbes" (that's ID), but there is definitely a place for a tox task force. Something you should define is the scope. The current Toxicology article encompasses the sub-fields of: Aquatic toxicology, Chemical toxicology, Ecotoxicology, Environmental toxicology, Forensic toxicology, Medical toxicology, and Toxicogenomics. You'd probably want to exclude aquatic, eco, and environmental from the task force, even though they should be included in the Toxicology article. Also, the task force could commandeer {{Toxic}} and turn it into an expanded navbox. --Scott Alter 03:46, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

Excellent ideas - I've modified the description above to reflect your suggestions. I'm not the expert on commandeering navboxes, but I think it'd be worth doing. Any takers? MMagdalene722^{talk to me} 14:56, 4 November 2009 (UTC)

I'd work on the navbox, but support from a task force (if there is sufficient interest) would be nice before starting. I might just bring it up on the talk page of the template, but I'm in no rush (WP:TIND). --Scott Alter 01:28, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

Hrm. How would one go about determining the level of interest for this? I don't know how often people from WP:MED check this page, and I'm not sure how I feel about spamming people's talk pages... MMagdalene722^{talk to me} 18:31, 5 November 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Human body diagrams

Description: This is a project that so far has had its main page in commons: Commons:Human body diagrams. In short, The main purpose is to provide a way of explaining medical conditions and other phenomena in an easier way, that is, with pictures, helping to get an overview of the involved components. The latest works include diagrams in human anatomy and leukemia. However, it might be more suitable to move the project to a WPmed task force instead of having it far off in Commons. Mikael Häggström (talk) 07:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Interested Wikipedians (please add your name)

1. Mikael Häggström (talk) 07:01, 6 November 2009 (UTC)

Discussion:

[edit] Other discussions

[edit] Noinclude

Scott, can you tell me what the noinclude tags are supposed to do in this instance? WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:06, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Hands up! II think it was a rationalisation of my edit, which was to fix the header levels, i.e as included on the medicine proct page, intro was level 3, list of task forces was 2, so it caused a break when it shouldn't, assumed I'd got it wrong! LeeVJ (talk) 01:11, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

This page is transcluded to the main WPMED page as the task force section. LeeVJ, while your edit made sense, I don't think we need that header on the main page. When this page was expanded with content as to how to create a task force, new headings were added here that need not be displayed on the main WPMED page. Rather than adding the task force list directly to WP:MED, I chose to transclude the list to simplify maintenance. --Scott Alter 02:25, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Understood - and it's fixed now! By the way - Exellent job on all of this task force organisation / reorganisation! LeeVJ (talk) 03:18, 22 January 2009 (UTC)

Thanks, Scott! I know if I asked, I'd learn something interesting. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:20, 23 January 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Task force creation criteria

Should there be any set criteria that should be met before a new task force is created? Although it is nice to have separate task forces for different fields of medicine, most are not really active. And since we are not really limiting task force creation, why not just get it out of the way and create task forces for all the remaining common medical specialties? Besides the proposed hem/onc, endocrinology, and psychiatry, others major ones we've missed so far include surgery, rheumatology, and pediatrics. --Scott Alter 00:25, 13 March 2009 (UTC)

Overall, I'd rather see task forces created when there are at least two or three editors willing to watchlist the pages. I don't expect them to be particularly active pages, especially when task force members themselves don't use them for discussions in their area (posting to WT:MED instead of to the task force page when the question is clearly within the specialty is a good way to end up with an "unused" task force page), but a page that's unwatched is clearly undesirable.

Also, I think that it's natural for a spate of task force creation to be followed by a long lull, while people get used to the idea and figure out what does and doesn't work. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:17, 30 April 2009 (UTC)

[edit] Updates

Not quite sure how to add discussion to this specific topic. Would it be possible, in this space, to provide some regular update on the status of the proposed task force ?

If we know where the task force stood, then it would be a little easier to engage colleagues into participating. --InnocentsAbroad2 (talk) 23:22, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

Hi InnocentsAbroad2,

I've moved your comment down here and hope that you don't mind.

In general, if nothing's happening at this page, then nothing's changed. I think, though, that with the proposed psychiatry taskforce, that we've got five people on board, and perhaps it's reasonable to create the page now. (Perhaps we'll wait until tomorrow, just in case anyone objects.) If you know anyone that might be interested, please encourage them to volunteer here. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:38, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

If a new page is created for the proposed task force, what are the first steps to maintaining the page ? --InnocentsAbroad2 (talk) 01:21, 21 May 2009 (UTC)

This is the page to watchlist to follow task force creation guidelines. The steps to create the page are at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces. We could help you out in creating the task force, if needed. After a place for discussion is created, the first steps would be to possibly notify the interested people that the task force now exists, and direct them to a discussion regarding the goals of the task force. Maybe specific articles would be named as high-priority, and should receive attention, or maybe new articles need to be created to cover missing topics. --Scott Alter 02:41, 21 May 2009 (UTC)