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Suggested sections

We list suggested sections for disease and medication related article. Should we list suggested sections for article related to pathogens (viruses, bacteria, parasites, etc.)? Some could include:

  • Classification
  • Structure
  • Genome
  • Tropism
  • Replication cycle
  • Genetic variability
  • Clinical syndrome ( just a brief paragraph or two)
  • History

Comments? Have posted a note over at WP:VIRUS Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 10:25, 8 June 2012 (UTC)

This is complicated.
Classification: The classification of more than a few pathogens has a annoying habit of changing. Think of Shigella becoming a type of E coli. Or of the reduction in Salmonella species. That's before the problems arise with the fungi and their double genus name. And as to the classification of protozoa - particularly the higher order of classification there are several existing competing schemes. The viruses are probable fairly stable thanks to the work of the ICTV's work.
Genome: The genome of many of important pathogens has yet to be sequenced.
Genetic variability. The extent to which this is known depends entirely on the number of people studying the organism in question. The variability of HIV is well known: but that of (say) Acanthamoeba much less so. Yet both avoid the same immune system.
Replication cycle: This may be better in the higher classification section. There are exceptions: Hepatitis C is the only well studied example in its genus.
Tissue trophism: An interesting idea. Sadly a huge number of pathogens don't show much tissue trophism. All the bacteria cause disease in any organ they can access. Ophthalmitis due to a foreign body can be due to almost any known - and some unknown bacteria. Invasive parasites like bacteria go anywhere they can access. Some fungi do show a trophism - the dermatophytes spring to mind - but in the immunosupressed that rule does not apply. Viruses alone of the major pathogens do show some evidence of tissue trophism but this seems to be due to their requirements for replication. But even then their trophism may be (and often is) less than one might initially expect.
History: always worth including. Mind you some of the older refs can be very difficult to track down particularly with the parasites.
Overall the idea is good but I'm not convinced that a fixed format would work or might even be a good idea. These formats can be a bit proscriptive and the an attempt at including material that doesn't fit such a predefined format might well start an edit war which is probably best avoided where possible. If it came to a vote on this I for one would say no for the reasons given above. DrMicro (talk) 20:44, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
Hi. For what it's worth, I don't think that this is the best breakdown that Wikipedia could have due to reasons including those already mentioned. The logic behind this and the order of sections should be considered; frankly, I think that history should be towards the front end of an article, as is often the case with articles, and that some of the sections that have been mentioned such as genome and genetic variability could perhaps be contained in one section only. The terms "tropism" and "clinical syndrome" are much too medical and/or specific; what of "pathogenesis" and "pathology"? I mightn't be making too much sense; I'm sleep-deprived at the moment, so forgive me for that. --Qwerty Binary (talk) 21:55, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
The older I get the more I become a fan of history also, both in science and medicine. Probably that's an age-related phenomenon. But from my point of view, Wikipedia (which by and large is written by males in their twenties) gives very short shrift to history.
In the articles on chemical elements, for example, I've waged a lonely war (sometimes successful, other times not) to keep the history sections from being put dead last, as per official recommendation of the chem elements task force (much like the above). But I think that often it's quite difficult to understand a thing unless there is at least cursory attention paid to how we got to this understanding. How do we understand "here" without some idea of how we got here? And is there nothing to learn about where we might be going, by examining how we arrived?
To me, it's fairly natural to start with a short history section right after the introduction/lede of nearly any subject. How else to get your bearings? "Start at the beginning" usually has to do with chronology. One can leave detailed history till last, or hive it off in a subarticle as per WP:SS. But some historical discussion needs to come before dead-last.
Take a look at the article on the United States, for example, which is probably the most widely-read general article on en.wiki. After the introduction, there's etymology, then history. That would do well for just about anything. SBHarris 22:35, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
Hi, I've spaced your comment a wee bit. I hope no one minds. Cheers.
My comment on this is that, by and large, I find myself agreeing with you, though history, in the present, isn't of utmost relevance. --Qwerty Binary (talk) 11:00, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
Support for history sections early on in many types of articles! --Hordaland (talk) 23:46, 4 August 2012 (UTC)
I am easy either way. Mainly wish to see consistency across this subject area. No strong feeling on what that consistency should be.Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 23:58, 4 August 2012 (UTC)

"A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." [1] I don't really see why this all needs to be in exactly the same format for all. Older topics will naturally have more history than younger topics. And occasionally history is not terribly important, or even detracts if the field has been full of mistaken ideas. So put it farther up than last-place (usually) but season-as-needed on a topic-by-topic basis. Goodness, this is just like arguing over how many illustrations we should have, or even how long articles should be. Which is to say, it's a silly argument that need not happen. Need it? Clearly as regards length, there's some kind of maximum that triggers WP:SS, but other than that, we editors must trust in our own judgement and knowledge. The same is true of illustration, which is topic-dependent as much as history is. Some is good, and generally up-front as well, but how much-- who can say in general? SBHarris 00:41, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

I guess the key here is if this is a foolish idea or not. Many encyclopedia's have guidelines regarding the ordering of sections. Not only do these make it easier to look content up but also easier to edit. Remember we have only had consistency in spelling in the English language for a few hundred years and most would consider this (and dictionaries) a good thing. Why reinvent the wheel for every article we write. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 01:38, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
I can only reply that at some (low) level standardization is a good thing, like whether or not your nuts and bolts are metric, and at some other level it isn't, like whether or not we all have to drive the exact same model cars made of those metric gizmos, with all the parts in those cars in the same places. What is a WP article most like, a nut and bolt or a car? Consistency is helpful when it's helpful, but consistency-for-the-sake-of-consistency reminds me of ritual and OCD and the assertion that WP is probably written by nerds with a hint of Asperger's who will start rocking and flapping and screaming if they don't find the history section in the we-all-agreed-to-be proper place.

I learned about these problems in part by editing chemical element articles, and noticing what I had to do with the biology sections. It was quite different for C, H, O and N than it was for dietary minerals, and different again for major toxins, and different again for elements for which we know almost nothing of the biology, and don't much care, like holmium. Nothing about the biology of holmium belongs in the lede. And so on. You just can't standardize what nature makes different. You do what you can with guidelines that aren't hard and fast, and at some point, you WP:IAR for the sake of quality. See also discussion here and here SBHarris 02:05, 5 August 2012 (UTC)

The section on suggested sections already says that they are suggestions, not hard-and-fast rules to be mindlessly followed. I think we an make a suggestion for a typical article without worrying too much about mindless implementations when there is a good reason to diverge from the typical situation. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:37, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
Sorry; I've read through comments since my own but I'm not understanding all of them.
As for these suggested sections, which are what they are, but approximate guides, it would be unwise if they were overly prescriptive and not for some pragmatic purpose.
All right, so generally what sections currently appear in pathogen-related articles? What sections are "worth" having? In what order, if any, should these sections be listed? --Qwerty Binary (talk) 10:50, 5 August 2012 (UTC)
Well, before we can answer that question, we have to figure out what is a pathogen-related article, because we actually have two significant types: the kind of article that has to cover both pathogen and disease, and the kind of article that covers just the pathogen, because there is a separate article for the disease it produces. I think that the goal here is to produce a list of suggested topics (in some reasonably sensible order) for the just-the-pathogen articles, but perhaps someone with a better familiarity with the articles could confirm that this makes sense to them, too, because if 90% of the articles have to cover both, then we should probably provide advice for the "hybrid" article. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:52, 8 August 2012 (UTC)
I for one am all in favour of separating the pathogens from the disease. For many diseases there are many pathogens: for many pathogens there are many diseases. Since creating pathogen-disease pages leads to the Cartesian product problem this does not seem sensible. Concerning "advice" - the use of such terms concerns me. Such "advice" can rapidly suffer from 'mission creep' and become The One True Way which IMHO is a tad against the spirit of WP. There is also the problem which was commented on above - "You just can't standardize what nature makes different."
Standardized formats work reasonably well for disease articles. Medical textbooks have a generally agreed format for these which WP more or less follows. In contrast even a passing familiarity with the literature on pathogens would aquaint anyone with the fact that there is NO standard format for the discussion of what is known and unknown about an organism. Some organisms have books devoted to them: others have barely a mention. Given the disparities in the available knowledge concerning these organisms I would strongly advise against this idea. DrMicro (talk) 00:10, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

We have a number of disease pathogen pairs of article including:

This textbook does order the content somewhat Regenmortel, edited by Brian Mahy, Marc Van (2009). Desk encyclopedia of human and medical virology. London: Academic. ISBN 9780123751478. {{cite book}}: |first= has generic name (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:43, 10 August 2012 (UTC)

I for one prefer the separation of the clinical disease from the pathogen. Think of (say) Staphylococcus aureus. This particular pathogen can cause quite a number of diseases. There are a number of diseases that are believed to be caused by a single pathogen for these a single page may be a good idea. However this assumption may be wrong: Babesiosis was thought to be due to infection with Babesia. It now has emerged that Babesia microti is not a member of the genus Babesia but instead requires a new genus as it has a number of characteristics (including a circular mitochondrial genome) that seperate it from the Babesia genus. As a suggestion for 'future proofing' a separation of pathogen and disease is to be recommended.
A second reason for recommending a separation is that quite a number of pathogens also cause disease in animals. The disease in animals may be similar to or quite different from that in humans.
Concerning suggestions for 'ordering' given the obvious overlap with veterinary medicine, botany, genetics, microbiology, biochemistry, molecular biology and other areas it seems sensible (to me anyway) that consultation on such topics should also be sought on the discussion fora for these areas also. WP is not after all merely a textbook of medical virology. DrMicro (talk) 19:08, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
Of course there are more complex pathogen life cycles too, which complicate pairings, such as for Malaria, Onchocerciasis or Rickettsia. It isn't always clear which is the pathogen and which is just a vector or reservoir. Fly/flea/mosquito? Nematode? Bacteria/virus/fungus? Rat/cat/deer/cow? Human? Autoimmune response to infection? Then too, one agent infecting different sites or at different times can have wildly different effects, such as for Strep A. As a general rule, I'd suggest we keep agent and disease articles seperate but linked, unless the agent is known to only cause one disease and to be the only cause of that disease. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:19, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
Agree further input is good. WP:VetMed is not really active anymore. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 19:47, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
"[u]nless the agent is known to only cause one disease and to be the only cause of that disease." In the great scheme of things assuming 'one pathogen == one disease' is a rare occurrence. If there is one firm recommendation I would make it is to keep these separate. There may be some overlap using two pages but knowing what I do about the rate of discovery of new associations the risk of having to do entire rewrites if only a single page is used is considerable. For example there are some serious suggestions doing the rounds that at least some cases of colon cancer are caused by a transmissible agent. This possibility remains only theoretical at present. The amount of information on colon cancer is already HUGE. If a transmissible agent does cause at least some of these cases then vast amounts of data on it are likely to be generated extremely rapidly. A single page covering both the disease and the pathogen (assuming there is one) is likely to become enormous placing an unnecessary load on the WP servers. Multiple smaller pages - within reason - are likely to place a smaller load on the servers. DrMicro (talk) 21:59, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
Yes I think nearly everyone is in agreement that articles on pathogens and diseases should be keep separate. We have a recommended ordering of sections for disease related articles. Should we consider a recommended ordering / possible sections for pathogen related articles. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 22:24, 10 August 2012 (UTC)
For what its worth I would suggest that there be no special distinction made for pathogen related disease material. Consider the 'fun' it will be rewriting hepatitis, pneunonia, endocarditis, dengue fever not to mention a host of others if 'new and improved' sections are introduced. My suggestions are as before: (1) separate the disease from the pathogen (this leaves it open for non medical diseases caused by the same pathogen) (2) leave the disease related material under the existing medicine style (3) leave the pathogens themselves under the auspices of the broad heading of 'microbiology'. The 'microbiology' projects (here I include bacteriology, virology, protists, parasites, fungi and algae as all these cause disease in humans) have very different guidance - where it exists - as to recommended section headings. That is even before the other projects - biochemistry, molecular biology, genetics, tree of life and others - are even considered. All these projects may have views on this matter. DrMicro (talk) 10:14, 11 August 2012 (UTC)
There is a consideration, even under that schema, that certain diseases will need to discuss one or many pathogens, and certain pathogens will need to discuss one or many diseases. For example HHV 6 seems to be implicated or involved in a number of diseases. Therefore (and quite rightly) a full separation of pathogen form disease cannot be achieved. And to make things more complex, there are, of course, vectors, themselves sometimes subject to or causing disease, helper viruses, symbionts and so on. Rich Farmbrough, 23:37, 10 September 2012 (UTC).

Section Names Have Been Changed To Harmonize With WP:HEAD

I made 3 changes to the suggested section headings where I quoted WP:HEAD in the edit summary. I made these changes because they were contradicting the wider guideline and saw no reason why this guideline should contradict it.Curb Chain (talk) 00:19, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Presumably the relevant item is not in HEAD, but above it: "Titles should normally be nouns or noun phrases: Early life, not In early life." I'm not sure that this item is actually meant to apply to section headings. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:41, 21 September 2012 (UTC)
No. The section states:

The provisions in Article titles (above) generally apply to section headings as well (for example, headings are in sentence case, not title case). The following points apply specifically to section headings:

*Headings should not refer redundantly to the subject of the article, or to higher-level headings, unless doing so is shorter or clearer. (Early life is preferable to His early life when his refers to the subject of the article; headings can be assumed to be about the subject unless otherwise indicated.

It patently applies to section headings.Curb Chain (talk) 01:10, 21 September 2012 (UTC)

Update

This set of changes is what this is about.

The question of whether was meant to be applied to ==Section headings== was discussed at WT:MOS. The discussion can be read in the archives. The overall feeling was that this particular rule at Wikipedia:Manual of Style#Article titles was not meant to be applied to section headings.

As a result of this, I propose that we go back to the previous version, since it makes more sense. Headache#Children (What does this mean? Children are headaches? They cause headaches?) or Fever#Pregnancy makes less sense that Headache#In children or Fever#During pregnancy. Does anyone object? WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:23, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Excellent - no concerns. -- Scray (talk) 00:43, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Merging the articles Applied behavior analysis and Behavior modification

ABA is a new term for Behavior modification.
See here: [2].
It states as follows: "A New Science? [section] Perhaps there is a tendency to draw pejorative contrasts between PBS and ABA in order to bolster claims about the status of PBS as a new and distinct science or discipline (e.g., Bambara et al., 1994; E. Carr, 1997; E. Carr et al., 2002; Knoster et al., 2003; Sisson, 1992). There may be disagreement among PBS leaders on this point. On the one hand, for example, Horner (2000) stated that 'Positive behavior support is not a new approach. … [It is] the application of behavior analysis to the social problems created by such behaviors as self-injury' (p. 97). He further stated, 'There is no difference in theory or science between positive behavior support and behavior modification. These are the same approach with different names. If any difference exists, it is in the acceptance [by PBS] of much larger outcomes and the need to deliver the global technology that will deliver these outcomes' (p. 99). Other writers have referred to PBS as an 'extension' of applied behavior analysis (e.g., Turnbull et al., 2002, p. 377).
I wanted to put the article information describing Behavior modification in the history section of the ABA article. However, some problems occur. Most people know it as behavior modification so I thought it would be better to change the ABA article title to behavior modification with Applied behavior analysis redirecting to it. Yet another problem will emerge. People typically refer to ABA when searching for the Lovaas/UCLA model (also known as Early intensive behavior intervention or EIBI). So this may be difficult. But I clearly have proof that ABA is a new and generic term for behavior modification. Yet, another problem has also emerged (which I almost forgot to mention). Many journals say Cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT, a form of behavior/psychotherapy) is a "behavior modification program". And, while it was being developed, it was called "Cognitive-behavior modification" yet it is denied that CBT is behavior analytical. What should we do to address these issues as we merge these articles into one? ATC . Talk 22:37, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Oops, ATC may have misunderstood on my talk page when I told her to add some new info she found to the WT:MED post on this topic. So, now we have this request and information in three places, and ATC is valiantly trying to figure this one out. We need consensus on figuring out the best name. See

I had the pleasure of mentoring ATC when she was a brand new and struggling editor; she is a good faith editor attempting to understand under what name to place text about behavior mod, and I'm afraid I'm not the most qualified to answer. Best, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 22:50, 7 December 2012 (UTC)

Other animals

I have added "other animals" to our anatomy sections to be similar to diseases. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 04:53, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

And I combined the Comparative anatomy listing with the Other animals listing, since both are dealing with other animals, and made a few other changes to the Anatomy section.[3][4][5][6] Flyer22 (talk) 05:27, 26 December 2012 (UTC)
I reverted myself on the Location and structure listing, though, for the reasons stated in that edit summary. It seems more important for the Vulva article, for example, to have a section on the structure before a section on the development of the structure (which is what that article already does). Flyer22 (talk) 05:45, 26 December 2012 (UTC)

WP:MEDORDER?

A shortcut to WP:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles#Sections would be very handy as it is not always easy to memorise the sections' order in medicine-related articles. I suggest to create it and name "WP:MEDORDER" (just like we have WP:ORDER). Any suggestions? Is this the right forum to propose this? kashmiri TALK 15:02, 10 June 2013 (UTC)

That's a great idea. I'll add it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:37, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
It is a good idea. Here is the link that WhatamIdoing made - WP:MEDORDER. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:03, 10 June 2013 (UTC)
Cheers :) kashmiri TALK 22:59, 13 June 2013 (UTC)

Writing style section

Right now is a long list of random recommendations, that gets longer over time. Maybe recommendations could be somehow reordered into subsections of related content. --Garrondo (talk) 07:10, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I think this is a good idea. Be bold! WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:34, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
I second this. You are entirely welcome. You understand WikiProject Medicine's audience and the typical problems which people face when learning to edit health articles. Whatever you recommend will be as insightful as any modifications that anyone can make. Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:44, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
I was hoping somebody went for it instead of me... Nevertheless I have given it a fast try reordering into subsections the random comments and creating some introductory sentences for some of the subsections. --Garrondo (talk) 21:06, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Declining to decline

There was a big discussion at WT:MED recently about a user who would like to "correct" the Latin grammar in our English articles and their titles. The overall consensus was against him, because English does not follow the Latin rules of declining nouns. I have added this:

Because we are writing in English, terms that originated in Latin, Greek, German, or another foreign language are not declined as if the sentence were written in that language.

to record that consensus. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:14, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

I think the consensus was that we follow what spelling the majority of sources are using, rather than anything that specific... Lesion (talk) 00:55, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
Scray has made that improvement. This was also discussed at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Neuroscience#Nucleus raphe versus nucleus raphes with the conclusion to use the terms as they appear in the English literature, regardless of what the "proper" Latin would be. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:38, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
As I am that particular user...An important difference between the discussion regarding nucleus raphes versus "nucleus raphe and the curremt discussion I have with WhatamIdoing about nucleus tractus solitarii versus nucleus tractus solitarius, is that a large majority of the sources used the incorrect form nucleus raphe according to the number of hits on Pubmed, while smaller differences exist between nucleus tractus solitarii and nucleus tractus solitarius'". I still think that Latin grammar and the recommendations of official lists like the Terminologia Anatomica have to be taken into account when choosing the correct expression, but when common usage is your main criterion, people can decide to use the grammatical incorrect form. For the nucleus tractus solitarii'" the criterion common usage'" is a little more complicated, as nucleus tractus solitarii has 1176 hits on Pubmed and nucleus tractius solitarius has 1816 hits. In this case, you can not condemn the correct form with solitarii as uncommon and the incorrect form with solitarius as the form that is used by almost all neuroscientists. You have to use additional critera to find out to which form to prefer. You could use official llist like the Termimologia Anatomica, you could use dictionaries like Dorland's that oddly enough only mentions the plural nuclei tractus solitarii. Or you could try to find out why such a form like nucleus tractus solitarii or nucleus tractus solitarius is from a linguistic point of view more preferable. The first can be explained by pointing to the fact that the English expression, i.e. nucleus of the solitary tract, contains the part of the solitary tract, a construction rendered in Latin by the genitive case tractus solitarii, therefore nucleus tractus solitarii. The form nucleus tractus solitarius can only be explained by the possibility that people thimk that solitarius might be the nominative case belonging to nucleus. What tractus in that case is doing in the middle might be more difficult to explain. You need to make use of Latin grammar rules to decide which form is more preferable. I think in each single case, but otherwise, it could be handy to make use of these grammar rules when common usage is not so clear at all. Just like cavum septi pellucidi and cavum septum pellucidum. Both are part of common usage, the correct form has 192 hits on Pubmed and the incorrect form 139. In this case additional criteria are needed. But the statement user WhatamIdoimg almost puts a ban on arguments based on Latin grammar. But that makes it very difficult to discuss these issues properly. By the way, WhatamIdoing, do you have any elementary knowledge of Latin declension and conjugation? With kind regards, Wimpus (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 21:28, 12 June 2013 (UTC)
Knowledge of Latin is not a prerequisite for editing the encyclopedia. We simply need to represent common usage in reliable sources. If there are specific instances where common usage is not represented by an article, that should be discussed at the Talk page there (with, if desired, a notice at WT:MED to draw a broader group of editors interested in medically-related articles). For this page (regarding MEDMOS), the relevant principle - that common usage in reliable sources trumps linguistics every time - needed to be explicit, and it is now. -- Scray (talk) 00:10, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
I don't think there is any need for more criteria. The naming conventions in the MEDMOS are already clear on the issue: follow what the majority of recent high quality medical sources are saying, if that is disputed, try to seek an international standard from sources like ICD-10. Like I said before Wimpus, no-one would object to you adding a sourced section about why a commonly used phrase or term is technically incorrect. This would probably follow the etymology. Lesion (talk) 02:06, 13 June 2013 (UTC)
Even if it is true the line added to MEDMOS probably further clarifies the specific issue. I think it is a good idea to have it. --Garrondo (talk) 07:06, 14 June 2013 (UTC)

Vcite templates

The vcite templates are covered quite extensively here, yet they are rarely used. I just checked, and vcite journal is used in less than 200 of all wikipedia articles. Although they might be a viable option for editors, I think it is better to remove all text about them here as it makes things more complicated and confusing rather than clear. Any objections if I remove that part? --WS (talk) 13:54, 30 July 2013 (UTC)

Best to keep it in ... they were used, for example, in autism (FA) articles (by User:Eubulides) because they shorten the load time on articles with extremely long/numerous citations. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:07, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
I think that most of the performance issues have been resolved since, see Module_talk:Citation/CS1/Updates. --WS (talk) 14:16, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
Just did (a rather unscientific test) using preview changes on editing autism after using both the vcite and the cite template for all refs, and using cite actually seems faster now (loading the full article in 11.1 vs 13.5 seconds). --WS (talk) 14:30, 30 July 2013 (UTC)
If the speed issues have been fixed than yes KISS. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 00:47, 31 July 2013 (UTC)

Headings

Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style_(medicine-related_articles)#Anatomy:

  • Location and structure, including size, whether it's a paired structure, attachments/insertions/"parents", subclinical variation
  • Development for discussing developmental biology, i.e. embryological/fetal, associated with structure
  • Function
  • Clinical relevance for discussing diseases and other medical associations with the structure
  • Society and culture (may include Etymology)
  • Other animals (may include comparative anatomy for discussing non-human anatomy in articles that are predominantly human-based)
  • Additional images in a gallery format

Wikipedia:WikiProject_Anatomy/Guidelines#Subsections:

  • Comparative anatomy (for discussing non-human anatomy in articles that are predominantly human-based).
  • Clinical relevance (for discussing diseases and other medical associations with the structure).
  • Etymology (see 'Etymology' below)
  • Development (for discussing developmental biology, i.e. embryological/fetal, associated with structure).


These guidelines appear to give different advice. Should they be standardized in terms of order and wording of headings? Lesion (talk) 18:34, 17 September 2013 (UTC)


End of this article

I removed the paragraph beginning "The end of this article . . . " because the wording was totally confusing and there is no reason to keep piling on advice to a writer or editor if he or she has to go elsewhere to read it. GeorgeLouis (talk) 01:35, 10 October 2013 (UTC)

Collapsible galleries concerning content of difficult nature in medicine

I have a suggestion concerning collapsible galleries of images which by some may be deemed as very graphic or which retract from the average users ability to read an article, especially medical articles which can be considered rough by a large group of non medical professionals. WP:NOTCENSORED states:

Controversial images should follow the principle of 'least astonishment': we should choose images that respect the conventional expectations of readers for a given topic as much as is possible without sacrificing the quality of the article.

This I interpret as stating that images that convey the subject matter in a way that is comprehensible without disgusting the curious user is the best choice. This in no way means that these images always can explain all aspects of the article. So as not to scare off the regular reader pages such as Anencephaly may profit from a collapsible image gallery, such as:

This removes risk of censorship while at the same time keeping the possibility for vulnerable users to avoid seeing the images, while being able to take part of the textual information. This may apply to quite a few medical articles. Common practice at most European and American medical schools is to have ethical discussions and to offer counseling for students before entering difficult subjects such as anatomy and pathology. A naïve user stumbling upon these subjects does not have the support given to many medical and dentist etc. students, and as such may be deterred from Wikipedia after seeing these images. CFCF (talk) 23:04, 6 November 2013 (UTC)

The suggestion also respects already present:

Shock value: Some images of medical conditions or procedures disturb some readers, e.g., because of visible deformities or the presence of blood. Potentially disturbing images should be not be used for their shock value, for decoration, or merely to add an image. A detailed caption that identifies specific features may simultaneously increase the educational value of the image and reduce the likelihood of disturbing readers. Placement in a highly relevant section, rather than in the introduction, is also likely to reduce the shock value to readers. Wikipedia:Offensive material offers additional advice.

-- CFCF (talk) 23:38, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
No disclaimers in articles. Also, your proposed interpretation of POLA has been argued, unsuccessfully, in the past. There is nothing astonishing about the use of examples of Anencephaly in that article. Likewise, such images are not used for shock value, so that line of reasoning is similarly invalid. Resolute 23:46, 6 November 2013 (UTC)
Looking through images I have found quite suitable images that do not cause such a strong reaction among readers. There is the clear possibility of completely removing the concerned images from Wikipedia and only hosting them on the commons, but I feel this would retract too much from the article - and goes against WP:NOTCENSORED.
Your own judgement says that the images are not astonishing, but the entire Talk:Anencephaly page mentions almost nothing but objections to the images as being of questionable value.
No disclaimers in articles is not either a rule set in stone as per Wikipedia:Ignore all rules etc. etc.
I would like to challenge the rule, and believe I have a strong case in doing so. CFCF (talk) 00:20, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
And you are more than welcome to do so, though the proper forum to challenge something like WP:NDA would be a village pump, not here. I can predict, however, that it is unlikely to gain community support. Particularly given slippery slope implications. Resolute 00:26, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
I oppose the hiding of images. We do not hide the Rorschach ink blots, we do not hide images of a sexual nature, we do not and should not hide images of diseases just because some people find them disturbing. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 09:48, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Placing these images in collapsible galleries is quite different than the Rorschach ink blots. The reasoning against censorship on Wikipedia is that we do not remove things certain cultures or religions etc. etc. may find insulting.
The case for hiding medical (especially autopsy and dissection images) is quite different. The response against these images is nearly universal, and the disgust response does not follow culture etc. in the same way. I have written a short argument for the suggestion:
-- CFCF (talk) 10:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

I wish to make a case for the use of collapsible galleries or images on Wikipedia for use in articles of medical nature, especially that of images showing faces, children, excessive blood and death in a life-like photographic fashion - of which images under Anencephaly#Signs and symptoms do (these images have been heavily debated on said articles talk page). This does not apply to journalistic or artistic images which are not in the same way meant to convey raw medical imagery, but instead emotional content in a way that is meaningful to the general public.

A summary of arguments for allowing collapsible galleries is:

  • 1.

Strictly descriptive medical images are often without value for the general public. The general public may not be capable of understanding the full implication behind such images. A user researching Gluteus maximus is most likely not interested in imagery concerning dissections of the gluteus maximus. A collapsible gallery may prevent the need for a new article Dissection of gluteus maximus. While this clearly applies to many images on Wikipedia, such as a great many images in articles concerning physics and mathematics the following points are not at play in these cases:

  • 2.

Pathology is at large considered a field of medicine involving difficult imagery and scenes which the general public may find objectionable in a manner which undermines amassing knowledge in the subject.

  • 3.

Even pathologists find certain forms of imagery and certain cases very distressing even after years of practice in normal pathology. For example pediatric pathology is performed at select universities by only certain practitioners because it is considered too emotionally distressing for the average pathologist. The average Wikipedia user can most likely be deemed less hardened by experience than the average pathologist who needs first 5-6 years of medical school, after which at least 5 years of pathological training is undergone.

  • 4.

Anatomy is at large considered a science concerning subjects which are hard to access without proper prerequisite knowledge. As opposed to pathology, anatomical subjects are often embalmed and may show signs of rot, mildue and other decaying apart from normal pathological findings. Anatomical subjects are also due to embalming discolored which may make them with less obvious value in explaining the subject than the much more prolific drawn images. Muscles are not always shown in the same detail as most images. Again collapsible galleries would allow these images without the need of a new article solely on dissections.

  • 5.

Dissections for medical students are normally preceded by ethical discussion as well as the availability of counseling. This is not readily available for a curious Wikipedia user stumbling far into unknown terrain.

  • 6.

Otherwise objectionable content may be very useful for a medical professional, not so much so for non-professionals. Dissection images do not by large give any meaningful help on anatomical articles for understanding of the subject matter. A large argument for dissections is normally the 3D advantage they give, this is absent in images. They may on the other hand give meaningful content to the medical professional or the anatomist who consults the article. It may be very difficult to find images on Wikimedia commons in the same way that they can be presented under a closed collapsible gallery of images.

  • 6.

There is a very clear distinction of what is an image with sole purpose of conveying medical knowledge and what is not. Guidelines proposed can dismantle the slippery slope argument and may be: Broad and clear as to cover many cases so as to offer large room to display images without a collapsible gallery but still allowing for the covering of the most gruesome images. Examples of guidelines, of which several or all may need to be fulfilled can be:

These are merely proposed criteria

The image is not deemed to have artistic or journalistic value - as such is only of value showing a medical concept.
The image is not deemed to be relevant to a non-professional member of the general public.
The image contains deformed or damaged faces or other recognizable normally visible body parts, children and excessive blood or dead individuals.
The image is a photograph.
Non-photographic images are unable to convey the subject matter in a manner sufficient for the general public.

These guidelines quite clearly discount images not normally seen as very objectionable such as those of the Heart.

  • 7.

Wikipedia’s aim to be a source of knowledge is furthered by the possibility of articles containing imagery which may be of utmost relevance but may still be objectionable as per WP:NOTCENSORED

Shock value: Some images of medical conditions or procedures disturb some readers, e.g., because of visible deformities or the presence of blood. Potentially disturbing images should be not be used for their shock value, for decoration, or merely to add an image. A detailed caption that identifies specific features may simultaneously increase the educational value of the image and reduce the likelihood of disturbing readers. Placement in a highly relevant section, rather than in the introduction, is also likely to reduce the shock value to readers. Wikipedia:Offensive material offers additional advice.

This allows for a broader availability of these images by not tempting the average user to remove them from articles instead of moving them to an appropriate section.

  • 8

The suggestion addresses the apparent issue of Help:Options to hide an image, where the user is asked to have access to the knowledge of how to hide images before using Wikipedia. This suggestion would simplify new users getting to grips with medical articles on Wikipedia, and may very well serve to increase contributions to this part of Wikipedia.

I would like to point out that this suggestion has the goal of increasing the availability of medical images on Wikipedia, and not in making them less available. It would also alleviate the need to make individual dissection articles for every subject. 

--CFCF (talk) 10:04, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
Try a RfC. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 10:17, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

RfC could medical images be enclosed in collapsible galleries

Is it possible to follow the above suggestion on medical images, especially those concerning imagery of a anatomical or pathological nature to be placed in collapsible galleries? See suggestion:

CFCF (talk) 10:32, 7 November 2013 (UTC)

  • Oppose-- for 2 general reasons:
    • Ineffective-- Human nature being what it is, when presented with a button which says "click to show something shocking" (or words to that effect), what are most people going to do? Either images are suitable for an encyclopedia article or they are not. I think it is over-complication to bring in degrees of image suitability.
    • Work involved-- This proposal potentially represents a lot of work, precious editor time which could be much more better spent building the encyclopedia. Lesion (talk) 10:47, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
      • What about the work involved creating dissection articles, I can tell you that is more than what is necessary to add images under the correct section.
      • And for the ineffective claim, it may be ineffective the first time a user sees the button. If the user is shocked he/she could simply avoid it in the future, instead of being bombarded with more such images. CFCF (talk) 11:05, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose And who gets to decide what content is hidden and what content is not hidden? We have a long practice of not hiding content in collapsible boxes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 12:23, 7 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose this impacts on readability and the conciseness of articles. If something isn't included as visible it shouldn't be included. An alternative that already exists is the feature that allows links to images stored on commons. LT910001 (talk) 04:40, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Oppose - wp:NOTCENSORED etc. Readers who don't want images can turn them off by several means already. It would though be more accessible to have the loading of large images delayed until the page text is fully loaded (possible exemption for lede section images). That, though, is not the thrust of this discussion. LeadSongDog come howl! 14:25, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Comment-- so far everyone who has commented is linked with WPMED. Suggest to CFCF that it might be good to get some other opinions? (without WP:CANVASS) Lesion (talk) 14:34, 8 November 2013 (UTC)
Honestly, I have no clue as to how I can do that, I don't suppose I could just randomly pick out active editors and write on their talk pages. Need help to move the discussion forward.CFCF (talk) 13:04, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
Sometimes I see proposals advertised on top of the watchlist. That might draw a more representative slice of wikipedia users. Not sure where you apply to get a message posted like that however. Lesion (talk) 13:14, 10 November 2013 (UTC)
  • Closed Seems to me that there is consensus that this should not be implemented, and the discussion is taking up to much of my time for me to push it further.CFCF (talk) 13:50, 14 November 2013 (UTC)

Have CITEMED call for at least one linked identifier

I'd propose that the wp:CITEMED guidance should be strengthened somewhat, to call for all MEDRS citations to include at least one of PMID, DOI, ISBN+page, OCLC+page, or URL. To my thinking, this at minimum should be required for GA status. If such linkages cannot be readily found, it is quite possible that the publication has been retracted, or was never even published. In either of those cases, the source's reliability must be questioned. Further, without such linkages, the odds are quite high that the remaining citation metadata contains errors. In effect the links should provide verifiability for the citation data, just as the cited work provides verifiability for the article text. — Preceding unsigned comment added by LeadSongDog (talk • contribs) 04:13, November 21, 2013‎

Oh dear. I've just looked at CITEMED for the first time in eons, and it is so impenetrable that I don't see how anything we add might even be noticed. We are repeating way too much info here that should be covered elsewhere. But, yes, I agree with you generally. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 21:56, 21 November 2013 (UTC)
Amended, looked at the page (that is now more readable), compared it to WP:CITEHOW, added a post below (which I now see has already been stated by WAID as well). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:46, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
@SandyGeorgia: Ok, I took a Bold stab at restructuring that section. See if it makes any more sense now. LeadSongDog come howl! 03:55, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
I tired. Been fighting the student editing mess all day. Will not be able to make any sense of it now. If I forget in the next few days, please ping me again? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:05, 22 November 2013 (UTC)
Basically, we can't do that. It would directly contradict the main guideline at WP:CITE. However, we could "encourage" it or "suggest" it or even say that everyone else is doing it (which might be more effective than even a direct order). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:22, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
I support Lead's suggestion. We need checking refs to be easy. This is one of the way User:DrMicro got away with copy and pasting for so long. He refused to format his refs in a way that made them easily verifiable. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 18:30, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
This edit was more recommendation than mandate. Wikipedia:CITE#Links_and_ID_numbers says "A citation ideally includes a link or ID number to help editors locate the source....", so it's not like we're making it up ab initio ourselves. These are, after all, articles on medicine, not Pikachu. There's a bit more at stake in getting them right. LeadSongDog come howl! 19:07, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
I've got no problem with suggesting it. We just can't set it as anything like a requirement (and certainly not for GA, because citation formatting is not even mentioned in the criteria, and therefore cannot be considered). Our advice here must conform to CITE's decision to permit the main authors to create whatever citation system they want, including one that does not include links to anything. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:20, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
Well, that was a merry chase! Looking at wp:WIAGA lead me to fixing some problems here which provide a wonderful illustration of why these identifiers are needed! Anyhow, the point of it is that a misidentified source can't verify anything. At best it wastes a reviewers time, while at worst it creates false security that the statement is supported. If verification of sources isn't in GAC now, it ought to be. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:37, 27 November 2013 (UTC)
A GA reviewer is required to verify that the cited source supports the text. However, there are no requirements for the formatting of the citation, beyond the purely practical one: if the reviewer can't figure out what the source is, then the reviewer is unable to verify that the cited source contains that material. So "Red cookbook on the third shelf in my kitchen" is invalid in GA terms, but "Alice Expert's Chemistry for Cooking" is fine as far as GA is concerned, even though the reviewer might have to go to the trouble of pasting that information into a search engine or even going to a library to find the source. GA criteria are not written with the reviewer's personal convenience in mind. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:30, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
In an alternate universe where we had an unlimited supply of reviewers, that might matter, but in this one, a difficult review simply may not be done or may take a long time to complete. Asking them to seek out all the editions of Chemistry for Cooking and read them cover to cover in search for something that is backed by a rough citation is simply rude to the reviewers, even if it does squeek past wp:ATTR. I regard this as more than that though, sloppy citation of med content is a serious business. Like it or not, there are real-life health consequences to letting bogus content through, given the number of hucksters, woo-pushers, and vaccination fearmongers that we have to deal with. LeadSongDog come howl! 21:54, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
I think that a practicality-minded reviewer, if faced with dozens of editions or the necessity of reading them cover to cover to see whether some statement is contained in it, would simply say that he was unable to figure out which of the dozens of editions is the source that is actually being cited. Since many books have only one edition, it is not unreasonable to expect the reviewer to make an effort to see whether that's enough. If it's not, then he can refuse to list the article over it.
And the fact remains that we're talking about what is and isn't in the GA criteria, not about what's a good idea. That's a highly specialized process with very specific rules. There are many things that are not listed in the GA criteria that I'd like to see articles conform to, even if they have no aspirations to GA status, let alone to FA (where perfection in citations is ultimately required). The main MOS page and the external links guideline spring to mind, for example: a reviewer may not fail a GA nom over non-conformance to those guidelines, even though nobody approves of bad formatting and spammy links. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:18, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
  • I am not sure about forcing GA reviewers to do anything but I would support this being explicitly stated here. If any GA reviewer wanted to suggest that someone format their citations in that way at the suggestion of the community maintaining this page then I would not expect that anyone would challenge them as unreasonable. It is an entirely reasonable guideline for any citation, but for medicine, I see no reason not to emphasize it. Blue Rasberry (talk) 15:25, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Problem. While this is a most helpful proposal and concept, whenever this guideline page gets ahead or out of sync with the general guideline pages, we've got a problem (of the type I've mentioned in other discussions, that affects the credibility and broad community acceptance of these pages). MEDMOS and MEDRS should how general guidelines apply to medical content and are used for medical content. The general guidelines at WP:CITEHOW say:

  • DOI and/or other identifiers are optional

If we want that to change for medical content, the discussion has to be held over there. We can request or suggest them here (and we should, I think we do?) but we can't go beyond general guidelines. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:45, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Full citations versus citation templates

This is a discussion about multiple technical ways to generate nearly identical citations. This would likely only be relevant to people who use citation generation tools to put a single citation on multiple Wikipedia articles or who put citations on multiple Wikimedia projects. It would not likely have relevance to others!

There is perennial discussion in WikiProject Medicine and elsewhere about formatting citations. Many people think there are problems to having multiple practices for presenting citations. The variation is not intentional and some of it arises because of differences in tools for generating citations.

Contributors to medical articles often cite research papers which have DOIs or PMIDs. There are tools which allow persons to automatically generate a citation based on either one of these identifiers. The tools give different results which have different qualities. Because it is so likely that contributors to health articles will use a tool to generate their citations, there are more discussions about automated citations in medicine than elsewhere. What follows is a review of the differences between these and discussions of best practices.

An example citation template -

{{cite doi|10.1002.2F14651858.CD007209.pub2}}

Sampson, E. L.; Candy, B.; Jones, L. (2009). Sampson, Elizabeth L (ed.). "Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia". The Cochrane Library (2): CD007209. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2. PMID 19370678.edit

An example full citation -

{{Cite journal | last1 = Sampson | first1 = E. L. | last2 = Candy | first2 = B. | last3 = Jones | first3 = L. | editor1-last = Sampson | editor1-first = Elizabeth L | chapter = Enteral tube feeding for older people with advanced dementia | doi = 10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2 | title = Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews | journal = The Cochrane database of systematic reviews | issue = 2 | pages = CD007209 | year = 2009 | pmid = 19370678 | pmc = }}

Sampson, E. L.; Candy, B.; Jones, L. (2009). Sampson, Elizabeth L (ed.). "Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews". The Cochrane database of systematic reviews (2): CD007209. doi:10.1002/14651858.CD007209.pub2. PMID 19370678. {{cite journal}}: |chapter= ignored (help)

The only visible difference is the link to manually change the template when a template is used.

Background on citation options

Autofilling from the RefToolbar
the RefToolbar's autofilling function

The RefToolbar is a tool available through the edit box which guides the user to either manually fill in a citation or, more commonly on medicine, to generate a citation automatically when given a PMID or a DOI. It is great, but the citation it gives cannot be altered at its source by users whereas Citation bot templates can be. Also, its citations omit things which Citation bot includes, like for example, links to a PubMed Central papers.

Citations from Citation bot

Citation bot completes citations for Template:Cite doi and Template:Cite PMID. When Citation bot does this, it makes a special template only for the doi of the paper and puts all citation information into that template. The idea is that when that citation is used, anyone can call that specific template for use only for that citation. Also, if the metadata in the original source is incorrect and thus presented incorrectly when it is called, any user may fix it in that citation template so that whenever anyone else uses it, it will be corrected.

It is conceivable that to make these templates give full citations, they could be substituted into the article. However, only experienced users would know how to do this, and doing this would eliminate the ease for anyone to fix citations if they wished.

A future advantage of having citations stored in templates is that eventually they will be migrated to Wikidata, so that if anyone needs to use the same citation in multiple Wikimedia projects then they can pull it from Wikidata rather than replicate it for each Wikimedia project. Example problems which this would fix are Wikimedia Commons' current inability to automatically generate citations from DOIs/PMIDs and the perceived superfluousness of establishing its own citation structure; and the problem of translating cited text between languages which is going to be problematic if citations do not have their formatting translated through transclusion.

Diberri's tool

Very cool tool with a lot of support. It is supposed to take identifiers and then turn them into citations. As of December 2013 it is tagged as nonfunctional but it still works. Using this tool requires the user to go to some external page, give an identifier, then get code to paste in return. Because of the extra steps this is more problematic than the RefToolbar's autofill or the Citation bot templates.

Manually created citations

Anyone may manually complete a citation if they like, for example by using Template:Cite journal. Whenever a DOI or ISBN exists this is never the best option because it is more work, more prone to user mistakes, and would likely have variations every time someone used it. Manually created citations are not preferred by anyone who knows other options unless they special reasons to use them.

Issues to be considered

In wikitext, citations may appear as templates or as full citations. The major perspectives on this are probably as follows:

  • For reasons of neatness and clarity, some people argue that any of these styles are better than the others. Most people probably say that full citations are better than citation templates, although some people prefer templates for their brevity.
  • Different people find it simpler and easier to use one of these formats over the others
  • The way to make a Citation bot template generate a full citation is with subst:, but this has the problems of removing the edit option from the template and only experienced users would think to use subst: so this is a process which is not obvious and would have to be explained
  • Everyone would like for all automatic citation generators to give equivalent output. Right now perhaps the Diberri tool, Citation bot, and the Autofill function are all giving different output. Some other tools give still other output.
  • Probably only citation templates can be used if there is any hope of doing translation or migrating content between Wikimedia projects, and I think most people at WikiProject Medicine hope for sharing of information in this way.

Cause for this post

Jmh649 lightly suggested that I Bluerasberry use full citations rather than Template:cite doi templates when I do citations. I agree with him that this seems best but if possible, I would like to follow best practices for this, and those are not clearly stated now.

Proposed best practice for maximum reference stability

The ideal solution for this in my mind would be if the RefToolbar, Citation bot, and Diberri would all use the same process to generate identical citations within a citation template which anyone can manually modify by following a link. If this ever happened, there would need to be a community discussion leading to consensus for how citations should appear. After that, some coder would need to implement this consensus into all citation-generating tools. These things are possible.

I have no idea what kind of referencing system is best. My own needs are that I need my citations to be the same wherever they are used, and if there is support for having full citations and not just templates and less support for only having the templates, then I would like to substitute from templates. Here is what I propose to use for myself, but this is complicated and I would not recommend it to others.

I will

  1. Use Citation bot to create citation templates for PMIDs and DOIs
  2. Instead of using citation templates to transclude citations into Wikipedia articles, I will substitute them into the article.
  3. I will make no effort to alert anyone to the fact that I have inserted any reference with a citation template, as this notice is lost in the substitution process and perhaps not important.
  4. I will not consider other citation formats or how they different from that of Citation bot.

I understand why other people would do citations in other ways. This might matter to other Wikipedians because I do a lot of outreach and tell a lot of others how to do citations, so whatever I do will likely be replicated by others. If anyone has comments to me please share. I am not expecting any of this to be controversial but it does solidify some concepts which have never been formalized.

Thoughts? Blue Rasberry (talk) 17:24, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

SG response

Before adding thoughts, let's address some statements in your preamble.
  1. No idea what is meant by "full citation vs. citation templates" Most citation templates generate full citations; conversely, full citations don't require citation templates.
  2. Diberri's took works, Boghog redid it.[8]
  3. ON cite doi and cite pmid, in addition to the errors and inconsistencies they generate (Featured articles require citation consistency), you have not mentioned the editing difficulty they create. Because in edit mode they only reveal the PMID, one has to have another window open to determine if the source is primary or secondary, so editing around them when cleaning up primary sources is very difficult.
  4. You have misstated what a manual citation format is in "Anyone may manually complete a citation if they like, for example by using Template:Cite journal". See Tourette syndrome for manual citations (because I refuse to be subjected to the vagaries of ever-changing citation templates). "Manually created citations are not preferred by anyone who knows other options unless they special reasons to use them." Excuse me ????
With those clarifications, Doc James is right. Adding cite doi or cite pmid templates creates extra work for other editors, is likely to yield inconsistencies, and will most often preclude Featured article status. Have you really made this whole huge long post because Doc James asked you to use grown-up methods of citing? Seriously, are we not all busy? No, we aren't going to standardize citation methods to one style, that is a perennial failing proposal; see WP:CITEVAR. If you want to continue to use cite pmid or cite doi or if anyone wants to add citations to an article that breaches CITEVAR, well, don't expect others not to be irritated when you create extra work for them. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:09, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Sandy.
  1. I clarified - I am talking about multiple technical ways to generate a nearly identical citation.
  2. I have no idea about Diberri's tool, but Boghog's last note is that it is not completely functional.
  3. True, thanks, that is probably why some people prefer full citations.
  4. Sorry. I am unable to express myself. Please excuse me. Change my text if you like.
CITEVAR has nothing to do with any of this. CITEVAR concerns the final appearance of citations, and I am concerned about the products of automated tools. I made this post not for James' sake, but because I teach a lot of people Wikipedia best practices and I wanted to document what I tell others. I am not sure that the automated tools were thoughtfully designed to give different output, but it could be so. If you feel too busy for this then you must be, and it was not my intent to place any obligation on you. I apologize for whatever I did that made you feel this way and I generally regret that my actions get stressed out responses from you. What I wrote matters to my work and the work of my peers and colleagues. Thank you for giving me space to do share something relevant to my work and which was important to me and my community. I always appreciate your feedback. Happy new year. Blue Rasberry (talk) 20:34, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
CITEVAR is relevant, because people generally hold that it does apply to the method used to produce the visible result (e.g., whether formatting is handled by a template or through manual formatting). WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:17, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

Anatomy guidelines

We have sparse Anatomy guidelines and it seems like there is consensus that the guidelines be maintained here as opposed to separately under WP:ANATOMY. As users may know, there are in fact no GA and sparse B-class anatomy articles which follow these guidelines. This to me implies that the guidelines may be inadequate, and this I believe is one factor hampering the development of quality Anatomy articles. Additionally, having editing anatomy articles, it is clear the guidelines are not always suitable for the many different types of Anatomy articles, and seem to have been developed before the era of useful infoboxes. I propose a change to the following: --LT910001 (talk) 02:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

Mark 1

Anatomical articles:

  • Lead, which should begin by stating in the most general form the location and purpose of the structure. For example, The toe is a bone found in the human foot
  • Structure including a brief description of location and size, course, insertions and attachments. Possible subsections for blood supply, lymphatic drainage and innervation if these are complex enough. There is no need to duplicate information provided in the infobox.
    • Variations, describing variations.
    • Other animals (may include comparative anatomy for discussing non-human anatomy in articles that are predominantly human-based)
  • Development, discussing the embryological/foetal and early-life development of the structure. May be included as a subsection in 'structure' for minor anatomical structures
  • Function
  • Clinical significance, discussing related diseases, medical associations with the structure, and use in surgery.
  • History, describing the structure and the etymology of the word
  • Society and culture, which may be excluded in minor anatomical structures.
  • Other animals (may include comparative anatomy for discussing non-human anatomy in rticles that are predominantly human-based)
  • Additional images provided in a gallery format.
  • See also, providing a link to the common's image category for images. If article makes use of anatomical terminology, please add {{Anatomy-terms}} as the first link in the 'see also' section.
  • References Please add tags such as {{Gray's}} as the first link in the references section.

Ping to Lesion who has noted this above, and CFCF. I have posted messages notifying WP:MED and WP:ANATOMY about this proposed change. --LT910001 (talk) 02:27, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The Other animals section should always come after all of the human material (just before the Additional images or See also section, of course), as far as I'm concerned; it should be that way not only because these articles will generally be human-focused, but because we need readers to know that up until the Other animals section, everything above that is about humans. Otherwise, we'd have complicated sectioning that is pointing out what sections are about humans and what sections are not. This is the very reason that WP:MED articles almost always have the Other animals section come after all of the human material. And as shown in this discussion, when the Other animals section was added to the anatomy layout in 2012, it was placed last; I moved it just above the Additional images listing because of course the gallery should come last.
As for the rest, structure is a part of development and vice versa. Variations is also a part of structure. So is function. But all of that is beside the point since we already have those listings as separate. Speaking of separate, I also have never liked that WP:MEDMOS generally separates "History" from "Society and culture"; history is a part of society and culture. I'd rather the anatomy layout only be changed somewhat if it must be changed at all. But either way, I won't always strictly follow the layout and I might object to someone trying to impose their preference on an article. The same goes for citation style, per WP:CITEVAR. Like I recently relayed at the Human penis article, Wikipedia:MEDMOS#Sections states: "Changing an established article simply to fit these guidelines might not be welcomed by other editors. The given order of sections is also encouraged but may be varied, particularly if that helps your article progressively develop concepts and avoid repetition." There have also been discussions here at WP:MEDMOS about not strictly following its layout recommendations; see here and here, for examples. There are times when those recommendations are not best followed. And like I also stated in that aforementioned Human penis discussion, I agree that galleries are generally discouraged on Wikipedia, and a WP:Good article (WP:GA) or WP:Featured article (WP:FA) reviewer would likely request that the section be removed from...if the article were under such a review; therefore, I or someone else should have long ago removed "Additional images in a gallery format" from the WP:MEDMOS Anatomy layout. Flyer22 (talk) 03:07, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Agree other animals should go at the end. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 05:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Another thing: As also seen in the 2012 discussion about the Other animals listing, I'm confused about whether the Location and structure section should come before the Development section; that is a case-by-case matter, but I think that I generally prefer including the information about how the structure developed before we otherwise describe the structure. I also don't think that "Location" is needed as part of the heading. When we are discussing the structure, it will naturally address the location of those structures. Flyer22 (talk) 05:30, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree that 'location' is not needed, as it is implied by structure and may be covered there, and, viz, is usually readily addressed in the lead. --LT910001 (talk) 05:43, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Have made the change as suggested above to the 'other animals', although I acknowledge with the simultaneous RfC this may change. For articles with minor information available for 'other animals', it may be practical to incorporate it under 'structure', although otherwise this layout may be preserved. --LT910001 (talk) 05:43, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Please give due consideration to the scope of anatomy. It includes all animals, and allowing for the full range of additional non-human material that may legitimately be included at some time at this stage could avoid conflict later. • • • Peter (Southwood) (talk): 10:39, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Thank you, I have noted this below and opened an RfC on this matter. --LT910001 (talk) 06:41, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Re the gallery comment, I think this is because we generally tend to have a surplus of anatomy images. Rather than randomly distribute them in the article, additional images (i.e. any images not in the infobox) were supposed to go into the gallery to keep the article tidy. I have no strong feelings on this particular issue. Lesion (talk) 15:59, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Rather than adding galleries, we have commons cats. I don't think that the argument that we have too many anatomy images is a good reason to chunk up article space with the surplus. Do you remember the infamous issue with plastic surgery images? Why should we extend something that is not in MEDMOS currently to anatomy? We have commons for that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:11, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I would be happy for people to pick a handful of our best images and leave the rest on commons, but it might be worth noting that many anatomy articles already have such galleries at the end. But here, we are discussing the guideline format. @CFCF: for opinion re. anatomy images. Lesion (talk) 16:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, many articles have these galleries and I think for the moment we will need to acknowledge their existence. One reason these are proliferating is the short size of many anatomy articles. I personally believe that the majority of the content in these galleries does not benefit readers, or could be included within the article bodies if the articles were longer. I have included in the 'mark 2' draft stronger language regarding this issue. --LT910001 (talk) 06:41, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I'd go as far as to say that almost all the articles currently have these galleries. Anatomy is a very visual science and will require a number of images. The best way is to add these at the end of the article as I see it, and any other way of doing it would result in momentous extra work. On the other hand there may be a real need to put a limit on how many images can be linked. Those linking over 15-20 are merely taking up space, and there is seldom need for that many, or even a fraction as many. CFCF (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd also get rid of the Function listing; the function of the organ/other matter is discussed in the Structure section, and sometimes in the Development section. That stated, it might be needed for certain articles, but I can't think of any anatomy article where we'd need a section titled "Function" when we have the Structure and Development sections. I'd also likely usually have the Development section as a subsection of the Structure section, but I now see that LT910001 mentions that editing choice as part of the layout proposal. Flyer22 (talk) 16:10, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict)Function is the physiology ... I think it is reasonable to have a dedicated physiology section? Lesion (talk) 16:21, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
Lesion, like I stated, I can't see the need for the Function section; the physiology is discussed in the Structure and Development sections. The Function listing is an unnecessary and confusing listing (unnecessary and confusing to me at least). Flyer22 (talk) 16:31, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
If by "physiology," we mean the study of the organs, which is what the first line of the Physiology article basically states, I am fine with that...but we should use a more precise heading because the development of the organ and the resulting structure concern the function/physiology of that organ. However, I don't think we should imply that it is ideal that a section on how anatomists/other researchers study the organ is necessary. Flyer22 (talk) 16:37, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
The structure is how it looks, what it is made of, how it is arranged etc, and I would define function/physiology as what it does, and how it does this. We could lump structure and function together, indeed evolution dictates that the structure is adapted to better achieve its intended function; but they are potentially distinguishable topics. For articles about organs, I anticipate that we already have extensive physiology content... in fact, maybe we should not consider these articles to be purely about anatomy... Lesion (talk) 16:51, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
We still disagree on the arrangement with regard to material about how the organ works; if I included a Function heading, it would be a subsection of the Structure section. But to me, "function" is redundant, per my above view on the matter. I do understand how you are distinguishing the terms, but, unless simply listing the parts, I don't see how one can describe the structure without describing that structure's function; even in the case of vestigiality, we still describe whether or not the structure has a function and how it used to function. If someone wants to design the article in the way proposed in the layout/the way you propose it, I don't object as long as they are not coming to an article and imposing that layout on the article that already has an established layout, but I'd prefer that it is not presented as ideal. And by "impose," I obviously mean without discussion and against editors' wishes. Flyer22 (talk) 17:31, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Lesion and believe there is real need for a physiology section, with function being subordinate. Not all organs/structures have as clear connections between function and anatomy, as for example muscles do. Not all articles are going to require distinct sections, but a number do. CFCF (talk) 18:51, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
This is a case-by-case matter if a separate "Function" section is needed for some articles but not for others; we should clarify that in the layout with a parenthetical note, like we have clarified other matters in the layout with a parenthetical note. I still don't see that listing as needed, however; I welcome an example on that matter. Flyer22 (talk) 19:04, 14 December 2013 (UTC)
I agree with Lesion above. I feel that 'structure' does not convey the idea of the functional purpose of an anatomical item to the lay reader, and I feel it is helpful to separate the structure of an anatomical article to its function. I feel that the term 'physiology' conveys the idea of a process, which is not appropriate for many anatomical articles (eg a muscle extends at A and abducts at B, or rotates at A and flexes at B), and additionally its meaning may not be readily apparent to many readers. I feel one of the most compelling arguments to retain the title 'function', in addition to arguments about clarity, is that the structure/function distinction is one found in the language of almost every anatomy textbook. However, I recognise that this is quite different depending on the type of anatomical article we are talking about (major organ systems and systems articles vs. small articles), and have included language to reflect this in the second draft. --LT910001 (talk) 06:48, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I believe that when a lay reader reads a section titled Structure, one of the things they are also expecting to read in that section is how that structure functions; I still can't see this "Structure/Function" differentiation as needed or as making great sense; the Muscle article is one article that tries it, and poorly in my view (diff of how that article currently looks). But I appear to be in the minority on this matter in this discussion at this time. Flyer22 (talk) 07:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

Guidelines mark 2

  • Lead, which should begin by stating in the most general form the location and purpose of the structure. For example, The toe is a bone found in the human foot  apparent consensus
  • Structure including a brief description of location and size, course, insertions and attachments. Possible subsections for blood supply, lymphatic drainage and innervation if these are complex enough. There is no need to duplicate information provided in the infobox.  apparent consensus
    • Variations, describing variations.
    • Development, discussing the embryological/foetal and early-life development of the structure. May be included as a subsection in 'structure' for minor anatomical structures.  apparent consensus
  • Function or Physiology as appropriate
  • Clinical significance, discussing related diseases, medical associations with the structure, and use in surgery.  apparent consensus
  • History, describing the structure and the etymology of the word.  apparent consensus
  • Society and culture, which may be excluded in minor anatomical structures.  apparent consensus
  • Other animals
  • Additional images to store additional high-quality images. These images should be kept to a minimum and provided in gallery format. Additional images may be stored in Wikicommons.
  • See also, providing a link to the common's image category for images. If article makes use of anatomical terminology, please add {{Anatomy-terms}} or {{AT}} as the first link in the 'see also' section.
  • References Please add tags such as {{Gray's}} as the first link in the references section.  apparent consensus

I have updated the draft and marked the sections that appear to have consensus. I have made the following changes:

  • Updated the language in the 'additional images' section
  • Updated the language in 'function or physiology' to allow for organ variation (see my above comments)
  • I am at a loss as to what to do with 'comparative anatomy', so I have retained the current formatting, and have opened an RfC on this matter here Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Anatomy#RfC:_Use_of_.22Human.22_in_Anatomy_article_titles, and would ask users to localise debate regarding this particular issue to the RfC, through which changes may be made.
  • Not a change, but I would like to explicitly state that 'development' should be chosen in lieu of 'embryology', as organ systems develop past the embryo stage. --LT910001 (talk) 06:28, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Other animals covers "comparative anatomy," and that is the title we use (it explicitly informs readers that we are speaking of non-human animals), per the commentary above; I don't understand your change there. As for choosing "Development" instead of "Embryology," that depends. If the section is only about embryology, then titling the section "Embryology" is certainly fine. "Embryology" might also be a subsection of "Development." Flyer22 (talk) 06:51, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Accidental. Have rectified. --LT910001 (talk) 07:05, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks. Any thoughts on the Variations listing? I view it as complicated. More than one aspect of an organ can have variations, and it will likely be best to discuss those variations in the appropriate sections instead of trying to lump them all in one section. So I don't see the Variations listing as needed. Flyer22 (talk) 07:11, 15 December 2013 (UTC)::::Also, I prefer that we are more open with regard to placement of the Etymology section (which usually comes first in articles, though usually not in WP:MED articles). The current layout has "which may include etymology" for the Society and culture listing, and I feel that it is best that we have this type of wording for the History listing for the above proposal, since there can be cases where the Etymology section might fit better first or, more rarely, in the middle of an article. That stated, I still disagree with having the History section as separate from the Society and culture section; I can't help but view it as unnecessary separation, since history is a part of society and culture. Flyer22 (talk) 07:43, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Often concerning smaller structures, their name is quite central, and there may be many names with many etymologies, mashing this together with society and culture isn't preferable. On the other hand this isn't relevant for all articles, maybe have the split as voluntary for each article? CFCF (talk) 10:48, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Have copied your signature above to split this into two separate threads. Etymology is important, however it is intertwined with history and, for a majority of articles, may boil down (at least in the conceivable future) to one-two sentences explaining the meaning of the terms in Latin or Greek. This is partly a result of the Latin and Greek roots of the words which have remained relatively stable since the structures have been identified (excluding the bastardisation of the grammar). I feel it's more useful to integrate this into the history section than have a 1-2 sentence section, distinct from history, that explains this. --LT910001 (talk) 13:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, but the placement of it should still be emphasized in the layout as a choice, especially given how editors sometimes take WP:MEDMOS as gospel and go around imposing that layout exactly as is on articles with an established layout. Flyer22 (talk) 14:22, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
It's for this reason that I really don't think etymology deserves a standalone section or subsection. For the vast majority of articles, etymology boils down to a single sentence, that is best reflected in the history section as part of a discussion of why it is so-named, and how this integrates with the development of understanding of the organ. Often the etymology is intertwined with the history (See eg Suspensory muscle of duodenum) that it would be strange to separate them into two sections or a subsection. That said, "History" is broader and may include more information than mere etymology. I am advocating for no separate section because I feel that this impacts on quality, do not want any GA review to be interrupted by a user requesting I include a standalone section (especially for minor articles, which will reduce any information contained in the 'history' section but not applicable to an 'etymology' section to a very small amount), this is not consistent with other areas of MEDMOS, none of which advocate for a standalone section, and some areas of which this may be very applicable (eg disease names, specialities). I completely agree that this information should be included, just not as a separate section. I have however changed the draft 3 guidelines to what I hope is a more consensus position. I might also just take a second out of this discussion to thank the users who are participating here and helping create some better guidelines, I hope these result in a better class of anatomy articles. --LT910001 (talk) 16:49, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
From what I have seen, it actually is not the vast majority of articles that don't need a standalone etymology section; articles outside of WP:MEDMOS tend to have healthy etymology material that is presented as a standalone etymology section. Either way, anatomy articles generally not deserving a standalone etymology section does not mean that they never do. So your compromise addition of "Etymology may be included as a separate subsection, if sufficient information exists." is a good compromise. I was not suggesting that a sentence or short paragraph be a standalone section; I am aware of MOS:PARAGRAPHS. On a side note: The way that you see it as strange to separate the Etymology section from the History section is similar to how I see it as strange to separate the History section from the Society and culture section. Flyer22 (talk) 04:17, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Concerning variations this isn't either relevant for all articles, but you can go as far as to say that pretty much each and every part of an organ/structure can vary. Variation should include the most common variations, which are most of the time variations of large sections of the organ, or the entire organ. Having a subdivision is a very easy way to find info on variations that is hard to find otherwise. Normally anatomy text-books, atlases etc. have individual sections on variations, and I believe Wikipedia should as well. The problem is not just one for Wikipedia, but its very hard to define many variations at all. For example the two main articles: Pectoralis major, Rectus abdominis & the variation Sternalis, looking in the literature it leaves a bit to discuss. CFCF (talk) 10:48, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Agree. One of the more frustrating things I had found initially when using Wikipedia is that it had no information on variation, which is one of the most interesting aspects of Anatomy. Almost every anatomical item is sure to have a degree of variation, and it's important to record it. --LT910001 (talk) 13:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
CFCF and LT910001, what we have stated on this matter is exactly why we should not be suggesting in our layout that an editor should create a Variations section. It's too complicated, because so many aspects can have variations and those are arguably better covered in the sections about those parts if a need is seen to cover them. Who is to say what are the most important variations that should be covered? We don't need all the variations packed into one section. And having more than one section titled Variations wouldn't be helpful, especially since editing that will automatically take the editor to the first section with the identical heading after pressing "Save page." Wikipedia is not supposed to mimic an anatomy book; it's supposed to summarize the anatomy information in a WP:Summary style manner. If we are to keep "Variations" in the layout, it should be stressed in the layout as an optional matter. Flyer22 (talk) 14:22, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
If we are to treat Wikipedia as a serious resources for anatomy, we must at least attempt to reflect the field itself. Almost any anatomy resource consulted, to which I refer you to any textbook or journal article, covers the following four areas: structure, function, variation, and history. To not cover one of these areas is deliberately ignoring an important area of the field. I fail to see how discussing variation is any more "complicated" than, for example, selectively describing what complications may ensue from a disease. I do however agree with your point that this section should be optional, as there may indeed not be sufficient information available on many structures for this section to occur. --LT910001 (talk) 16:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
We (referring to our use of WP:MEDMOS) don't selectively describe what complications may ensue from a disease, not generally anyway; we describe, or at least mention, all of the diseases and their complications. "Generally" comes in with regard to the fact that we are not likely to mention complications that are not significant. And there usually are not too many complications to name. Comparing the "complications from a disease" matter and the vague, ever-possible variations matter is like comparing apples and oranges. I am not saying that we should not cover variations (I clearly stated that variations should be covered in the appropriate sections); I am saying that there is no need for a section titled Variations. And I don't know what else to state to explain my feelings on that matter. However, thanks for at least compromising on that. Flyer22 (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Re. including anatomical terms of location in the see also any article that contains anatomic terms, I oppose this facet. Firstly, we should not include see also wikilinks when they are already linked in the body of the article, and ideally the first instance of any anatomic term will already be wiklinked. Secondly, I do not think we should blanket this kind o see also. Any vaguely dermatology related stub contains the see also link List of cutaneous conditions. It seems to me that such a link was more for the benefit of people writing the stubs than readers. It is not really encyclopedic imo. Lesion (talk) 11:10, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
I feel Anatomy articles are fundamentally different from other articles in this respect. Specific terminology is used to indicate relationships between terms that is not immediately apparent to a lay reader. This terminology may have a 'lay' meaning that is readily apparent or guessed at (such as medial/lateral), but such readers may not understand that these terms have a specific meaning, and I think it's important to provide a link to clarify this. I feel this is different from other articles which also use jargon, as unlike jargon, which is readily identified, Anatomy terms lurk within an article disguised as normal words but with unique meanings. --LT910001 (talk) 13:52, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
None of the other WP:MEDMOS fields make mention of "See also" and "References," and I don't feel that Anatomy should either; that is a WP:LAYOUT matter. And we have the "Standard appendices" section of WP:MEDMOS to take care of that for all the fields. Flyer22 (talk) 14:27, 15 December 2013 (UTC)
Fair enough. Thanks for pointing this out. I have amended this in the third draft below. --LT910001 (talk) 16:24, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

Guidelines mark 3

There is apparent consensus on: lead, the description of structure, description of function/physiology title, description of society and culture, and inclusion of the advisory note on 'additional images'. I have made changes to the MOS in this regard. I have also updated the description in 'clinical significance' and 'development'. If there is an objection that I have overlooked, I apologise and please mention this below. If there are any silent watchers who wish to fly-by revert, please comment below. The following changes are proposed: --LT910001 (talk) 16:38, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Lead, which should begin by stating in the most general form the location and purpose of the structure. For example, The toe is a bone found in the human foot
  • Structure including a brief description of location and size, course, insertions and attachments. Possible subsections for blood supply, lymphatic drainage and innervation if these are complex enough. There is no need to duplicate information provided in the infobox.
    • Variations, describing variations, where these are documented.
  • Development, discussing the embryological/foetal and early-life development of the structure. May be included as a subsection in 'structure' for minor anatomical structures.
  • Function or Physiology as appropriate
  • Clinical significance, discussing related diseases, medical associations with the structure, and use in surgery.
  • History, describing the structure and the etymology of the word. Etymology may be included as a separate subsection, if sufficient information exists.
  • Society and culture, which may be excluded in minor anatomical structures.
  • Other animals
  • Additional images to store additional high-quality images. These images should be kept to a minimum and provided in gallery format. Additional images may be stored in Wikicommons.
  • A link to the common's image category for images may be provided in the 'see also' section. If article makes use of anatomical terminology, please add {{Anatomy-terms}} or {{AT}} as the first link in the 'see also' section.
  • If the article uses text from public domain source, please add tags such as {{Gray's}} as the first link in the section relating to references.

I have updated these proposed changes as followed: --LT910001 (talk) 16:38, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Have added "where these are documented." to highlight the 'variations' section as being contingent on published evidence of variations.
  • Have made no change to the 'history' section per the above discussion.
  • Made clear that there are no set titles for 'see also' and 'references', but provided guidance as to where to place the tag for Gray's (which occurs in many articles) and the link to commons images
Why do we need to mention the lead? Like the "See also" and "References" listings, this is something that none of the other WP:MEDMOS fields make mention of and is a WP:LAYOUT matter; it's also a WP:LEAD matter (WP:LEAD already tells us how an article should be summarized). I also still disagree with the separation of the History section from the Society and culture section, per my statements above about that. As a compromise, at least consider mentioning that the History section may be a part of the Society and culture section. Flyer22 (talk) 17:12, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
It is a WP:LEAD matter but having seen many anatomy articles, I think the guideline and articles would benefit from explicitly reminding editors that the articles should start in the most broad fashion. My suggested wording isn't relating to other aspects of the lead, just that the location and type of the anatomical item should be described, in order to give the reader some context (which is often lacking in many articles, which launch straight into describing the entity). Society and culture and history are two separate entities on all the other MEDMOS sections, and if possible I hope we can compromise to agree to disagree on this one. --LT910001 (talk) 02:46, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I can't see the Lead listing as needed at all. Having it makes it seem like there is something so much more special about the lead with regard to anatomy articles than there is with regard to the more hardcore medical fields. There isn't. It also makes it seem like anatomy article editors aren't smart enough to know what should and should not go in the lead. What should and should not go in the lead is based on WP:LEAD, not on any one editor's preference here. And "Society and culture and history are two separate entities on all the other MEDMOS sections" simply because of the headings; there is no getting around the fact that history is a part of society and culture, which is exactly why that separation has never made a bit of sense to me. It is not as though we cannot deviate from that layout, considering that we have deviated from other ways that WP:MEDMOS is set up for the other fields, including your preference that we keep a Lead listing. So, yes, we will have to agree to disagree on this one because if I have a Society and culture section, such as at the Vagina article that I will be extensively working on, the History heading will be a part of that section or the material that comes with it will be a part of that section without the History heading, and I will oppose any change to that layout to fit the artificial History and Society and culture distinction. Flyer22 (talk) 03:40, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
What we're usually looking for under ==History== is something like "This obscure body part was first formally described by Alice Expert in 1824, which explains why it's called Expert's Thingamajig in older works." Under ==Society and culture==, we're usually expecting to find something like, "This is the finger that some Westerners wave around to advertise their lack of manners". Basic facts about what-happened-when are not really "social" or "cultural" issues; things about modern society are not history. That said, there are times in which combining the two makes a lot of sense, or simply to omit the history section entirely. For example, I doubt that there's anything to be said under ==History== for an article about an obvious body part. (What would you put under ==History== for an article like Arm? "Experts suspect that people noticed that humans usually have arms rather before historical records were kept, but nobody can be sure"?) WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:25, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I disagree that "[b]asic facts about what-happened-when are not really 'social' or 'cultural' issues"; they were social and cultural issues at that time. I didn't state that every social or cultural matter is a history matter. I stated that history is a part of society and culture, and it is. If we have a Society and culture section, then history information should be under that section instead of presented as a standalone section...as far as I'm concerned. There are a variety of subsections that can be under a Society and culture section; nothing convinces me that History should not be one of those subsections. We obviously agree on the latter part of your comment on this matter. Flyer22 (talk) 04:39, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
One reason for my arguing against the division between "History" and "Society and culture" is that I considered something similar to that division when bringing the Clitoris article to WP:GA status last year (there are even currently hidden notes in the article about it), and that division (or those divisions) simply did not work well, at least in my view, and this is because history, society and culture, and medical aspects are so intertwined with regard to that topic (the clitoris). Anyone not thoroughly familiar with that topic can take a look at the material in that article and see what I mean on this matter. I figure that there are likely other cases where the division is not easily employed or does not make good or great sense to employ, similar or not-so-similar to your arm example. Flyer22 (talk) 03:30, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
  • Personally, I'm pretty happy with this. After reading the rationale, agree "development" is more accurate than "embryology". Have I missed why "development" is now a subsection of structure rather than a stand alone section? Lesion (talk) 11:09, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
De-indented. I want to make this clear that this may be included as a subheading for smaller articles. --LT910001 (talk) 12:22, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
It's not just a "may be included as a subheading for smaller articles" matter. Lesion, this was covered in the Guidelines mark 1 section and at the beginning of the Guidelines mark 2 section; in the first one, I stated "structure is a part of development and vice versa." No one disagreed with that because embryology clearly concerns the organ's structure. I also stated that I "generally prefer including the information about how the structure developed before we otherwise describe the structure." and that "I'd also likely usually have the Development section as a subsection of the Structure section, but I now see that LT910001 mentions that editing choice as part of the layout proposal." That option was already in LT910001's proposal before I mentioned it (even though LT910001 restricted it, and still currently restricts it, by stating "for minor anatomical structures"). The anatomy debate that was actually gotten into was about including a Function listing when the function of the organ/other matter is going to be discussed in the Structure section, and sometimes additionally in the Development section. In the Guidelines mark 2 phase, after making the Development section a subsection of the Structure section in the proposal, it was LT910001 who conflated "Development" and "Embryology," relaying, "I would like to explicitly state that 'development' should be chosen in lieu of 'embryology', as organ systems develop past the embryo stage." But like I stated, that matter depends. "If the section is only about embryology, then titling the section 'Embryology' is certainly fine. 'Embryology' might also be a subsection of 'Development." Look at what the description for the Development section states; it states "discussing the embryological/foetal and early-life development of the structure. May be included as a subsection in 'structure' for minor anatomical structures." So, clearly, that is a structure matter and we emphasize that it doesn't necessarily have to be a subsection of Structure. Still, it might be better to not present it as a subsection of Structure in the layout since we already clarify that it may be a subsection of that. Flyer22 (talk) 13:14, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)I think development is better as a stand alone section with the qualifier that it may be a subsection of structure. This is what the WP:MEDMOS#Diseases_or_disorders_or_syndromes does with classification:
  • Classification: If relevant. May also be placed as a subheading of diagnosis
  • Signs and symptoms
  • Causes
  • etc
But, it's not greatly important either way imo. Like you say, depends on the article.
Another reason for calling that section "development" and not "embryology" is more practical: some readers may not understand the term embryology. This same argument also extends to calling the section/subsection "function" and not "physiology". Lesion (talk) 13:38, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Yes, I acknowledged at the end of my "13:14, 17 December 2013 (UTC)" response above that it may be best to present the Development section as a standalone section in the layout. I also agree with not restricting the "may be included as a subsection in 'structure'" part to "minor anatomical structures." And again, "Development" and "Embryology" are not always the same thing with regard to anatomy. Flyer22 (talk) 13:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Revert

WhatamIdoing, Colin, Jmh649, Mikael Häggström, LeadSongDog
Posted to WT:MOS SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:13, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

And I have reverted. There is no "apparent consensus" on anything after two days of discussion. This page has enjoyed long-standing consensus and stability, it's the holiday season when many people are typically away from Wikipedia, and several of the major "architects" of this page haven't even weighed in yet. There's no hurry; guidelines can change after sufficient discussion.

Further, it would be helpful if "relative" newcomers to this guideline page would be cognizant of the years of careful consensus building that went into developing the credibility and acceptance that MEDRS now enjoys; it didn't happen by promoting statements to guideline status after two days of discussion among a few local users.

This page has always carefully reflected broader guidelines by staying within those guidelines and merely showing how those guidelines apply to health content.

By going beyond current guidelines on something as frankly silly as image galleries, editors pushing for change based on local consensus risk damaging the credibility of the entire page.

WP:MOS#Images says:

* Link to more images on Wikimedia Commons when appropriate; see Wikipedia:Wikimedia sister projects for advice and methods. The use of galleries should be in keeping with Wikipedia's image use policy.

WP:GALLERY says:

However, Wikipedia is not an image repository. A gallery is not a tool to shoehorn images into an article, and a gallery consisting of an indiscriminate collection of images of the article subject should generally either be improved in accordance with the above paragraph or moved to Wikimedia Commons. Links to the Commons categories can be added to the Wikipedia article using the {{Commons}}, {{Commons-inline}}, or {{Commons category}} templates. One rule of thumb to consider: if, due to its content, such a gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons.

If editors here intend for this page to override guideline pages that enjoy wider consensus than this page, they should first go to the broader pages to develop that consensus. Please do not undermine the credibility that this page has carefully cultivated over years in order to push images into articles. The content this guideline defends is more important than providing pictures that can be found on Commons; guidelines are not developed in two days. Please do not shoot in the foot the careful construction that has gone into this page for many years. I have not seen a single good reason for a gallery on anatomy articles, indicating any more value than can be provided via a commons link. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:13, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't believe LT's proposed section on additional images was intended to change previous consensus, but rather simply following the apparent consensus which is implied from the fact that "most anatomy articles already have an image gallery" (paraphrase CFCF). Lesion (talk) 18:14, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
If you will also look at the MEDMOS as it currently stands, Wikipedia:MEDMOS#Anatomy tells us to have a section called "Additional images" "in a gallery format"... Lesion (talk) 18:16, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Just to be clear, I am not really for or against anatomy image galleries, I just am trying to convey that this aspect is not a new proposal, it is already in place. Lesion (talk) 18:18, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Excellent, thank you. Perhaps WhatamIdoing can tell us where she got broad consensus for that. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:01, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Given the extent to which anatomy articles currently contain image galleries, I don't think we can attribute this to any individual editor. Lesion (talk) 19:19, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
That text was added to the guideline by WhatamIdoing. Perhaps editors are chunking up anatomy articles with unnecessary images because our guideline told them to. I'd like to know where the broad consensus to overrule general guidelines came from. The discussion seems to be at Wikipedia talk:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles/Archive 4#Anatomy; I don't see discussion of galleries. Nor did the page from which the text was taken mention galleries. It appears as if WAID just added them; I would like to know where the broad consensus to overrule MOS came from. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 19:44, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
That diff is from 2008 ... I think we can assume that since no-one has questioned it since there was implied consensus? Lesion (talk) 19:48, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
Not only can we assume WP:EDITCONSENSUS for a suggestion that is five years old, we can also assume that since literally hundreds of articles follow that model, and did so before I documented that practice here, then it is the actual practice of the community. Most articles do not benefit from a gallery of images. Some do. Apparently, the clear majority of editors who work on anatomy articles believe that anatomy articles are one of the few types of articles that do benefit from providing more than one or two images.
Also, if you look at the anatomy articles, one of the reasons for using a gallery is space: many of them are mere stubs with just a few sentences of text. Half a dozen images is not at all unreasonable (e.g., two or three photographs from different angles and two or three drawings showing different aspects). It's not possible to do idealized left-right image placement of six images when you have two vertical inches of text, unless you want to leave an enormous amount of white space in the middle. And I've never bought the story that says more text must be added before you've earned the right to add the images that everyone agrees would be present in a finished article. If the images belong in the article, then the images belong in the article, no matter how much text is present. WhatamIdoing (talk) 20:21, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

WP:GALLERY says:

Images are typically interspersed individually throughout an article near the relevant text (see WP:MOSIMAGES). However, the use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images. The images in the gallery collectively must have encyclopedic value and add to the reader's understanding of the subject. Images in a gallery should be suitably captioned to explain their relevance both to the article subject and to the theme of the gallery, and the gallery should be appropriately titled (unless the theme of the gallery is clear from the context of the article). Images in a gallery should be carefully selected, avoiding similar or repetitive images, unless a point of contrast or comparison is being made. Just as we seek to ensure that the prose of an article is clear, precise and engaging, galleries should be similarly well-crafted. See 1750–75 in Western fashion for an example of a good use of galleries.

The relatively concise wording the use of a gallery section may be appropriate in some Wikipedia articles if a collection of images can illustrate aspects of a subject that cannot be easily or adequately described by text or individual images seems to say it all for me, and we are nowhere straying from larger guidelines. Anatomy is exactly the type of subject that can not adequately be described using only words. There is reason for the vast extent of anatomy atlases used by medical students all around the world. That said there is no need to rush this process, and there is definitely room to limit the amount of images in the galleries at times, especially those where there are multiple images with only slight variations of angle (mostly dissection images). CFCF (talk) 22:42, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

See [9] to see what I am referring to concerning flooding articles. CFCF (talk) 22:49, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
I think everyone would agree that is too many images. It is an extreme example. Lesion (talk) 22:57, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
We certainly are straying from guidelines; the current wording at WP:MEDMOS#Anatomy is basically prescribing that images are added to an image gallery at the end of the article, and we are giving no additional guidance to indicate that they are rarely necessary or useful. We are prescribing something that is not in accordance with general guidelines, and it's no wonder then that editors are adding this cruft or that we encounter Anatomy articles chunked up with unnecessary images. It is a very rare instance when a gallery would be needed-- I've not seen one yet. Can anyone explain to me a single reason why the MEDMOS guideline on Anatomy should not be identical to our general guideline at WP:GALLERY and explain why we are instructing editors to add cruft when our general guidelines are clear? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:11, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I think in this instance "repository" is not meant in the sense of where the images files are actually stored, but rather how many images need to be shown in wikipedia articles. Lesion (talk) 22:55, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
There was extensive discussion Dec 2008 to Feb 2009 leading up to these edits to WP:IG. Still doesn't make sense to me. Way back when, many images were on WP that were not on Commons, but now its rare to have free images reposing on WP, just the non-free ones that would be deleted from Commons but are wanted on WP. Since those are excluded from galleries anyhow, they don't enter the discussion. It seems to me that it's just a historical anomaly that ought to be cleared up. LeadSongDog come howl! 23:43, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

On the question of this reversion: SandyGeorgia, was there anything in there that you didn't object to, or is your concern entirely about the image-related item? WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:27, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

My only concern (expressed originally above) is the image galleries. WAID, if you did not gain broad consensus for that addition on the MOS pages, I will open a discussion there now. If even I didn't know we were recommending that, you can be sure others may have missed it. I am most alarmed that one of our pages is causing people to chunk images into galleries in articles, and alarmed that we have a guideline that is encouraging that, against general MOS guidelines. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:54, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
If your only concern was with the contents of a single bullet point out of the entire list, then I recommend that you restore all of the text that you had no objection to and therefore no reason to revert. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

To answer the multiple questions above, someone show me an article where a gallery adds understanding that cannot be gained by the normal placement of a few images within the article. We don't need to chunk every image that we have into a gallery at the bottom of an article, when a link to commons will suffice. Most folks (I'd wager) come to Wikipedia to read an article, and not even that-- to read the lead of an article. They don't need their load time slowed down by images at the bottom they aren't even going to look at. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:57, 17 December 2013 (UTC)

Thank you, I value this clarification. I attempted to make edits on the guidelines so that the entire modification doesn't get held up by a single issue, which appears to have eventuated. Unless you open an RfC, I don't see how this discussion doesn't substitute for consensus regarding image galleries, if other users contribute. With regard to image galleries, as mentioned by WhatamIdoing above, are very frequent occurences on Anatomy pages, often due to the small size of the text and surplus of images. In response to your comment, users coming to Anatomy articles for the purpose of reading text will be for the most part sorely disappointed, the image galleries helping to substitute for the sparsity of text. Additionally it is true that a picture may convey a thousand words, and it is often much easier for readers to understand a structure via several images than mentally reconstruct an image from the text.
I do not feel we should be relying on historical discussions, one reason being that it is hard for newer editors (such as myself) to participate in past discussions. I think it is wise to acknowledge that galleries exist in these articles and provide some explicit advice in order to minimize the proliferation of these images. Galleries have been supported enthusiastically by Anatomist90, are supported by myself and CFCF above, and I do recall Jmh649 stating on the talk page of Anatomist90 that he is happy with "10-15 images" in a gallery. Additionally galleries have been used in GA-class articles within med (eg Birth control) and I do not see a reason that they shouldn't be included in articles if they are provided as a tool on the WP editing interface. If they are going to be used, I would like to acknowledge that reality and provide a statement in the guideline to minimise the images included in them. If the guideline does not make this statement, there will be numerous users who continue to upload images of varying quality. With the guideline making the statement, editors will be able to refer to MEDMOS to ensure only several high-quality images are included, rather than every image on commons. --LT910001 (talk) 03:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
Well, SandyGeorgia, you're sort of right: We now make no effort to discourage extensive galleries because you reverted the first-ever attempt to explicitly discourage extensive galleries. You removed the text that said "These images should be kept to a minimum and provided in gallery format. Additional images may be stored in Wikicommons", and now you are here complaining that the text you removed is not present. Of course, ==Sections== begins with a plain statement that you should adapt what's here to fit your needs, so we never have "prescribed" the inclusion of a gallery at all, but if you're trying to discourage them, then your reversion does not serve your stated goal.
I don't know if it's possible to explain it to you, since your mind seems to be pretty well made up already. But look at Flexor carpi ulnaris muscle, a randomly selected anatomy article. The whole page contains five images—a number that is not generally considered excessive for any article—and every one of them is directly relevant. They are:
  • A drawing from Gray's Anatomy showing this arm muscle
  • A drawing of the arm bones it attaches to, showing the attachment point
  • A drawing of the wrist/hand bones it attaches to, showing the attachment point
  • A cross-section drawing of the arm showing this muscle
  • A photograph of a dissection showing this muscle.
None of these images could be called excessive or unnecessary. In fact, it is probably the bare minimum for this subject, and it is possible that ought to be expanded by one (specifically, one showing the associated nerve). This is an absolutely typical number and type of images for anatomy articles. If the article were longer, then most of the images might simply be placed in the relevant section. But it's not, and what you're proposing is basically to add four images to a section that (correctly) contains only four sentences and whose ability to display normal images is severely hampered by the presence of the infobox. If we don't put these images in a gallery, then this is what you get. Go look at that, and then tell me whether you honestly think that it's better to have that much blank screen, just to avoid having "a gallery". WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:53, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
As someone who has written a few anatomy articles from scratch to about class C, I can confirm that if there are about 4 images, it is just untidy not to have one in the infobox and the rest in a gallery at the end. Part of the problem is the typical length of the anatomy infoboxes. A lot of whitespace. You can try to alternate the images L R but this also looks untidy in shorter articles. So we have a situation where most anatomy articles are fairly short, and contain an above average amount of images. Galleries might not be needed once the article has grown to a more substantial length, but as LT pointed out, we have no anatomy articles at GA. Currently, it would require a lot of work to remove galleries from anatomy articles, and I question the benefits of doing this. Lesion (talk) 11:09, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
I'm not sure that LT910001 stated that we have no WP:GA anatomy articles or was implying above that we don't have any, but we currently have one -- the Clitoris article that I brought to WP:GA status last year. I will also be aiming to bring the Vagina article to WP:GA status. Flyer22 (talk) 03:30, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
The Anatomy article is also at WP:GA status. And Wikipedia:Vital articles/Expanded/Biology and health sciences#Anatomy and morphology, 101 currently lists the GA article Camouflage under Basic anatomy, 4. Flyer22 (talk) 15:40, 30 December 2013 (UTC)
Ah, I had some trouble locating what statement you refer to in this sprawling thread. Sorry Flyer22, I don't mean to undermine the effort you must have put in to nominate and succeed. My meaning when I stated "As users may know, there are in fact no GA and sparse B-class anatomy articles which follow these guidelines" was that as there are no articles that actually follow the anatomy guidelines of GA or FA class, the guidelines may not be adequately comprehensive or optimally arranged. --LT910001 (talk) 09:45, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I didn't know you stated that. I thought Lesion was responding to your "03:12, 17 December 2013 (UTC)" comment above. As for following the Wikipedia anatomy layout, as noted above (in the Guidelines mark 3 section), I followed it as much as I felt was appropriate for the Clitoris article. Again, WP:MEDMOS notes that we have leeway to design the articles somewhat differently than the way it suggests when we feel it makes sense to do so. I feel the same way about that article's design with regard to this new anatomy layout. And the Anatomy article of course can't follow the anatomy layout much because it's about the anatomy topic as a whole, but you got that article to WP:GA status and that's a plus. Flyer22 (talk) 17:27, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Restored with specifiers

There's a whole lotta typing going on above (and I appreciate the efforts and the dialogue) that doesn't address the issue. First, we don't change guideline pages on two days' discussion.

Second, Both MEDRS and MEDMOS have long enjoyed acceptance within the community and goodwill not enjoyed by other local Project guideline pages because the MED project pages have not gone beyond broader consensus established in general guidelines. In 2008, WhatamIdoing, based on no discussion found anywhere-- and not based on the previous guideline merged here-- added a statement which extends beyond the general MOS guidelines, by prescribing and encouraging image galleries in a subset of medical articles in a way that extends beyond WP:GALLERY (a policy page). No wonder I keep encountering student editors chunking in ridiculous amounts of images in a gallery.

Next, folks here claim that consensus/acceptance was implied by the fact that this stood for five years. I refute that. I'm an active medical editor, even I didn't realize that cruft was creeping into our articles because that had been added to our guideline, I never noticed it, and I have been merrily deleting image galleries found in medical articles for five years. I doubt that the broader community is aware that we were prescribing something beyond WP:GALLERY. And I hope the broader community never realizes we did this, so these pages don't lose the credibility they've enjoyed.

I have restored my revert with specifiers;[10] I still have seen not a single good argument for why we are saying anything beyond what is in general guideline pages (in fact, GALLERY is on a POLICY page)-- the success of this page and MEDRS has historically been based on respect for broader consensus. I think any mention of image galleries should be removed here. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 09:55, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I think Whatamidoing and Lesion above make a clear argument for using image galleries in short articles where single images would quickly stack up, when the images are clearly illustrative and relevant to the subject. WP:GALLERY specifically allows for this situation: the first suggestion is to queue images on the talk page for later inclusion, but "if a contributor believes such a queued image to be essential to the article, despite the lack of text, he or she may decide to put it back in. However, he or she should not simply revert the article to its previous state, but make an attempt to re-size the images or create some sort of gallery section in order to deal with the original problem.". In my opinion, most (underdeveloped) anatomy articles are great cases for applying this rule (although a careful selection of images should still be made). --WS (talk) 14:31, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
(edit conflict)To summarize the points made in favor of image galleries in the above discussion
  • Anatomy articles tend to have an above average number of images because it is not a subject that easily lends itself to non visual description.
  • Anatomy articles tend to be short in length, meaning that placing images in the standard way leads to ugly layout problems.
So we have 2 choices if we want to get rid of image galleries on anatomy articles:
  1. Systematically remove the image galleries on principle, ignoring the ugly layout issues this will create.
  2. Significantly reduce the number of images so we no longer need a gallery anyway. For most anatomy articles, you are going to get away with a maximum of 3 non gallery images before you start getting layout problems.
Personally, I do not think either of these choices are helpful for the encyclopedia, and I am not going to volunteer my time to carry them out. A compromise, I think having an anatomy guideline which advises about how many and what nature of images are suitable for anatomy articles, as well as when image galleries might be appropriate (i.e. in short articles) and when they are not needed (e.g. a anatomy article of greater length) is a positive thing. Lesion (talk) 14:35, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
It seems fairly clear that the problem is not MOSMED, it's GALLERY. The language there needs to be cleaned up to avoid these problems, which are in no way specific to anatomy articles. Indeed the Western fashion example given at GALLERY is pretty clearly just an assembly of images on Commons with next to no textual aids to comprehension. That sort of use has its place, but the wording of GALLERY needs to better explain what that place is and how to draw the distinction between valid and invalid uses. Accordingly, the discussion here is largely misplaced. It needs to go to wt:Image use policy where it can lead to a useful improvement for all subject areas, not just anatomy. LeadSongDog come howl! 17:00, 18 December 2013 (UTC)

I think Whatamidoing and Lesion above make a clear argument for using image galleries in short articles where single images would quickly stack up, when the images are clearly illustrative and relevant to the subject. WP:GALLERY specifically allows for this situation

So, again, how does this differ from the general guidance at WP:GALLERY, so why are we saying anything? I don't think there is any problem with the wording of WP:GALLERY. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:20, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
If it doesn't differ from GALLERY, then you can't object to it on the grounds that it is in conflict with GALLERY (e.g., "extends beyond the general MOS guidelines, by prescribing and encouraging image galleries in a subset of medical articles in a way that extends beyond WP:GALLERY (a policy page)"). If it does, then we need to figure out what, exactly, the conflict is, and figure out which page needs to be changed to reconcile the two. But the first step is that you need to pick one or the other. Either it was added against community consensus and in conflict with GALLERY five years ago, or it wasn't. If you've got a real problem with this, then we need to actually know what your real problem is. Right now, it looks like you're throwing spaghetti at the wall to see which arguments might stick. That's not going to produce anything except frustration for everyone.
As for why we mention things that are already described elsewhere: We intentionally duplicate some information so that people who are honestly looking for the community's guidance will actually find it even if they don't already know about the other pages. In this case, the previous version provided nothing more than a suggestion (not a "prescription") for a section heading, if you were going to add images that didn't fit elsewhere.
And, finally, this is not a WP:WikiProject advice page. This is part of the whole community's Manual of Style. Unlike, say, Wikipedia:WikiProject_Composers#Article_structure, which is just a collection of advice by self-selected members, this page went through a formal community-wide WP:PROPOSAL and was adopted by everyone. It has the same standing as WP:LAYOUT and other subpages of the MOS, and should be treated with the same care as any of them. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:02, 18 December 2013 (UTC)
The problem is that you unilaterally added a prescription to use galleries (which student editors have liberally done), and then use that as justification for the fact that ... galleries were added. There is never a reason for us to extend beyond general guidelines. And now we have probably tons of Anatomy articles with unhelpful galleries. That should be removed.

The bigger point is: stop doing this. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:01, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

At the time, I'm sure this was a good faith attempt by WhatamIdoing to impose what may have seemed like a relatively non-controversial change that acknowledged a reality. I'm not sure what basis you have for blaming 'student editors', as it does not appear the majority of images originate from university or college-led courses. I recognise that me making such early changes to the guidelines was a mistake, as consensus has clearly not been reached on some areas. On the other hand, now that you have spontaneously added a "specifier" I would ask that all users involved in this discussion (this includes myself) hold back from unilaterally making any more changes while we are discussing this guideline without first proposing them here. --LT910001 (talk) 02:49, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
If we've got student editors working on anatomy articles, then we should send them all barnstars for trying to do anything about that elderly collection of mass-created stubs. Usually student editors are working on psychology and sociology articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:28, 31 December 2013 (UTC)
The underlying problem

The main argument in favor of having galleries in anatomy articles seems to be that anatomy articles are too short. Unencyclopedicly short, perhaps? I think many anatomy editors forget that our purpose here is to build an encyclopedia, and that encyclopedic articles have enough prose that images can be interspersed. I think the fundamental problem is that we have an article on every single muscle, bone, nerve, etc, which is impractical for an encyclopedia. These have sat as stubs for years, and likely will stay that way for a very long time. The solution is not to say this is OK and to put the images in a gallery. The solution is to merge groups of articles, as I attempted to do at Extrinsic extensor muscles of the hand. Not only does this increase the amount of prose to a more reasonable (encyclopedic?) level, but it also eliminates a great deal of redundancy with the images, as many related anatomy articles share the same or very similar images.--Taylornate (talk) 09:43, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughts. As you can see, we've had an extensive discussion above, as it was an issue of some contention. The consensus is that it is currently a reality, for several reasons, for our articles to have image galleries, although several editors are doing our best to keep a lid on that. See the WP:ANATOMY talk page for that. Thanks also for your efforts at merging. Currently we have no way of seeing all the merges proposed (also working on getting that online), if you would like any help / comments on proposed merges, feel free to leave a note at the talk page for WP:ANATOMY, which we are putting a lot of effort into revitalising. With regard to image galleries, I feel that any further discussion would be rehashing what has been said in our discussion above, and will leave it at that. . --LT910001 (talk) 10:04, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I agree, Taylornate; there are so many anatomy articles that need to be merged. I've often thought that when coming across extremely short stub anatomy articles that would be better covered in the main article, or are redundantly mentioned there -- meaning the main article mentions it and the stub article mentions it almost the same way without any elaboration on the topic. Flyer22 (talk) 17:27, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
The only time I support splitting an article is when the split is clearly needed, per WP:SPLIT. Flyer22 (talk) 17:55, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I'm OK with not launching back into the gallery discussion, but please see my comment in the next section about how well the current wording reflects the consensus of that discussion.
I don't think I'll consider putting any more effort into anatomy merges until there is an explicit consensus on this particular situation. Extrinsic extensor muscles of the hand was quite contentious between me and a few editors who thought Wikipedia should be an anatomy quick reference rather than an encyclopedia. It got so heated that one of these editors blatantly abused his admin powers to block me.--Taylornate (talk) 19:56, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
I don't think that "encyclopedic articles have enough prose that images can be interspersed" is true. Go look at random articles in s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica. How many images can you "intersperse" in the single paragraph about s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Mumps s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Adenoids, one of the very few articles about an individual anatomical structure rather than major organ systems (here at the English Wikipedia, we are trying to have articles a little more specific that "Digestive organs", which is populated by single-paragraph descriptions of each major digestive organ and more paragraphs about their diseases), is also a single paragraph. s:1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Constipation gets two sentences. Unless you are willing to say that the most famous, professionally written encyclopedias in the history of the world are not "encyclopedic", then short anatomy articles seems to be normal. WhatamIdoing (talk) 01:59, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, thing is...Wikipedia is far different than the typical encyclopedia. For example, how many times do we see someone pointing to WP:Not paper? I can't remember at the moment which discussion it was, but you once stated that you are more so for consolidating topics instead of having small spinoff articles, especially unnecessary spinoff articles. What makes the anatomy field any different in that regard? Flyer22 (talk) 02:22, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Oh, I'm definitely a mergeist. But I don't pretend that unmerged articles are inappropriate or unencyclopedic by virtue of being WP:Perfect stubs instead of long gray blurs of text. I only think that most of the time, narrower subjects are best presented in larger contexts.
As for what makes anatomy different: The rationale (here; not the only possible one) for merging is that the articles are image-heavy. Merging them really won't fix that problem. In some cases, you'll take 24 sentences and 4 infoboxes and 24 images... and merge them into an article that contains 12 sentences, one enormous infobox, and 12 images. It doesn't actually create new sentences (although it will often make slightly longer sentences, since you'll say "The foo muscle and the bar both attach to this knobby thing", whereas previously you just said "The foo muscle attaches to this knobby thing" in one article, and "The bar muscle attaches to this knobby thing" in the other.)
Also, when you get down to fiddly anatomical bits, then the audience is pretty much medical students, and the fact is that those readers might actually be better served by short, very narrow, image-heavy articles. At least, this appears to have been the consensus of the med students who actually wrote most of them in the first place, and I've got no reason to believe that I, or any other non-med-student editor, know more about their needs as readers than they did. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:59, 3 January 2014 (UTC)
Thanks. I support many mergers, as it not only fragments the articles' content, but also our ability to effectively edit them. Consequently we end up with several articles with exactly the same content, but owing to the fragmentation, none of them will have that content presented in a comprehensive, readable way. On the other hand, many articles do relate to tiny subjects. One reason that compelled me to alter these guidelines was the 'small and complete' idea; such articles are not complete until they include some information on how the structure varies (often significantly); what its clinical use is; and how/when/who first documented it. Additionally, having these information in subheadings makes reading the articles a lot easier. That said, this scaffold is not binding and serves as a guideline only. --LT910001 (talk) 23:26, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
LT910001, do you mean you don't support many merges? I ask because your post on that is not very clear to me. You stated "as it not only fragments the articles' content," but merging doesn't fragment the article's content; splitting does. Merging consolidates the topics, and is, to me, the most effective way to present/edit that material. Despite what WhatamIdoing stated above, I see no benefit in tiny stub articles that will likely never be significantly expanded. Nor do I think we should be writing such articles mostly for medical students. If these articles were mostly for them, WP:Technical would not exist. Flyer22 (talk) 23:39, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
Have responded on your talk page. --LT910001 (talk) 23:41, 6 January 2014 (UTC)
Linking to your response here so that others can readily see it. Flyer22 (talk) 00:03, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Guidelines mark 4

Right, it appears this is where we are at:

  • Structure including a brief description of location and size, course, insertions and attachments. Possible subsections for blood supply, lymphatic drainage and innervation if these are complex enough. There is no need to duplicate information provided in the infobox.  apparent consensus If covered on the same page, subsections may be devoted to individual substructures.  in discussion...
    • Variations, describing variations, if information exists  in discussion...
    • Histology, where appropriate  apparent consensus?
    • Development, discussing the embryological/foetal and early-life development of the structure.  apparent consensus
  • Function or Physiology as appropriate  implemented
  • Clinical significance, discussing related diseases, medical associations with the structure, and use in surgery.  implemented
  • History, describing the structure and the etymology of the word. Etymology may be included as a separate subsection, if sufficient information exists.  apparent consensus
  • Society and culture, which may be excluded in minor anatomical structures.  implemented
  • Other animals  RfC ongoing...
  • Additional images to store high-quality images. These images should be kept to a minimum and provided in gallery format when consistent with Wikipedia's Image Use policy on galleries. Additional images should be stored in Wikicommons. compromise position reached
  • The lead should begin by stating in the most general form the location and purpose of the structure. For example, The toe is a bone found in the human foot  apparent consensus
  • A link to the common's image category for images may be provided in the 'see also' section. If article makes use of anatomical terminology, please add {{Anatomy-terms}} or {{AT}} as the first link in the 'see also' section.  apparent consensus
  • If the article uses text from public domain source, please add tags such as {{Gray's}} as the first link in the section relating to references.  apparent consensus

I have made the following changes to the fourth draft:--LT910001 (talk) 02:35, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Moved the statement on the lead from a specific subsection to the end. I believe it is important to state this at some point, as this subsection reflects the entirety of WP:ANATOMY's stylistic input, and this simple requirement is often ignored by a surprising amount of Anatomy articles.
  • Added the 'histology' section and 'substructures' subsections, which were previously missing.
  • Marked entries with tags reflecting what I believe the consensus positions to be. If I am mistaken, please note this below.

I also agree that, in my eagerness to see these guidelines implemented, two days is not sufficient time to achieve consensus or elicit sufficient feedback. --LT910001 (talk) 02:35, 19 December 2013 (UTC)

I have no opinion on the rest, but if the qualifiers I added on Image gallery stay in, I'll accept that compromise (although I continue to wonder why we say anything other than, comply with WP:GALLERY). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:39, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
How about this wording:

Additional images: 1-2 of the most relevant images for the topic may be placed in the infobox. Large numbers of images should be avoided, but any additional high quality images which provide valuable detail may be retained. These may be displayed in a gallery format if their display would otherwise cause layout problems (e.g. in short articles).

I felt the wording "These images should be [...] and provided in gallery" was too strongly advising image galleries. Really the only reason we do not space them out as in other article is that most anatomy articles are short with too many images. Therefore, an image gallery may be used if it would solve layout issues, otherwise we just display the images as normal. Lesion (talk) 02:58, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
Have reflected the wording as per Sandy's last edit on the MOS. I am happy with the current wording and feel the wording as it is quite strongly pro-moderation of gallery use, as per our above discussion. --LT910001 (talk) 03:33, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
With regard to this fourth proposal, "apparent consensus" should also be tagged to the Structure section (as we know, that section is implemented and has been for a long time). And on that note, I don't see why we need a "Substructures" listing; substructure material should be taken care of in the Structure section, and we shouldn't imply that a "Substructures" heading is ideal. I will never see the need for the headings that I have basically categorized as redundant above. My objections to your proposals still stand. However, I can be better onboard with your proposals if you change the following two things: "where these are documented" to "as appropriate" for the Variations listing. and remove "for minor anatomical structures." from the Development listing. As noted above, having a Variations section is not necessary because that material is likely better covered in the section about whatever aspect of the organ that is being discussed. And saying "where these are documented" makes it sound like there should be more than one section titled Variations. As for the Development section, as discussed above, making that material a subsection of the Structure section is not only a matter for minor anatomical structures; it's very valid to have the Development section be a subsection of the Structure section in a variety of cases; in fact, I can't think of a case where it's not valid. Even if there is one, it is few and far between. Flyer22 (talk) 03:30, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
(1) Marked as apparent consensus. (2) Thanks for your comment on substructures; this is intended as a note to explain that substructures (such as each of the ossicles, or components of a system) should be covered as subsections of the structure section, and I have changed the wording accordingly. (3) As for development, I would like to keep the 'for minor anatomical structures' note, as there is a large divide between Anatomical articles which receive the most views and edits, yet are the minority of articles, and the large amount of poorly-edited Anatomical articles which constitute the majority of the Anatomical molass. The embryological development of larger structures can be quite extensive, and it may be better to have it as a separate section in larger articles. (4) Thanks for your comment on variations, that is indeed ambiguous, and I have changed the wording. Variations should be noted, however there may not actually be any information in literature about them recorded. --LT910001 (talk) 01:28, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
While I appreciate you removing the Substructures listing and adding "if information exists" in place of "where these are documented" for the Variations listing, my objections still stand with regard to the Variations listing and the other above matters that I have objected to. The word choice "if information exists" is hardly any better/different. Of course information regarding variations is very likely to exist. And I cannot at all agree to retaining "for minor anatomical structures" with regard to the Development listing; I've already addressed why above, so to state more on that matter would be redundant. However, I will state this: Making the development material a subsection of the Structure section has nothing to do with how great or poor the article is; it has to do with, like I stated, it making a lot of sense, in a variety of cases, to present the material that way. Your insistence that we indicate to our editors that the Development section, if it is to be a subsection, should only be a subsection of the Structure section "for minor anatomical structures" does not make sense to me. Nor will I ever. Adding "especially" so that it reads "especially for minor anatomical structures" would be an improvement and not so narrow-sounding. But either way, WP:MEDMOS at least makes it clear that the format guidelines are suggestions and that editors do not have to format articles exactly the way that WP:MEDMOS does (besides that other stuff it states about imposing such formats on articles). Flyer22 (talk) 02:08, 23 December 2013 (UTC)
Thanks Flyer22, on reflection I agree that 'development' would be more useful as a subsection.--LT910001 (talk) 02:15, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

Right. Consensus appears to have been achieved on a number of items. I have marked this above. Where consensus exists, I will make changes to the guideline on the 30th. If I have marked something that is not a matter of consensus, please make this clear below, and I will not include these in the changes I make. For items that are still in discussion, we can have a more focused discussion on these below. --LT910001 (talk) 02:15, 28 December 2013 (UTC)

I'm new to this discussion and I think there may be a problem with how the image gallery bit is worded. It seems to imply that most or many anatomy articles should or could have a gallery, but only the number of images in each gallery should be kept to a minimum. From skimming the lengthy discussion on this topic, it seems to me that the consensus is that most articles should not have a gallery. Also note that I added my opinion on the matter to the previous section. It was a bit confusing to decide where to jump in at this point.--Taylornate (talk) 09:52, 2 January 2014 (UTC)
It's never said that they "should" or "must", only that they "could". The fact that they "could" has occasionally surprised a few people, especially people who were around for the "all galleries are always bad" theme a couple of years ago.
In practice, basically since Gray's was originally scanned and imported, many of these articles not only "could" but "actually did" have a small gallery of carefully selected images (most contain three to five images).
This is really only a problem when people have decided that the presence of a small gallery is a good excuse to stuff in their own favorite images as well. (What's wrong with having one more cow on the commons?) It can and has gotten out of control in a small minority of articles. (Unfortunately, these are usually higher-traffic and/or sex-related articles, so these problems are more visible than the hundreds of uncontested and appropriate uses.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:08, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Guidelines mark 5

Right. I have made changes. If there are any problems, please note them below. I have not made changes on these two issues, in case there are any additional comments (which have been made in full above): --LT910001 (talk) 23:32, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

  • Structure add sentence "If covered on the same page, subsections may be devoted to individual substructures."
    • Variations, describing variations, if information exists

I would also like to ask other users what their opinions would be regarding the title "Clinical significance". I personally feel this title is a strange title to have in an encyclopaedia, as it essentially consigns every organ to something that is or isn't useful clinically in medicine. On the other hand, it's useful to have a standard title, and I'm not sure what else we can use to lump together diseases, imaging, surgery, examination of, and other medical-related issues. Perhaps something like "In Medicine" as the title. Are these titles satisfactory? --LT910001 (talk) 23:32, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

I've got nothing new to add with regard to my objections to a substructures heading and variations heading (I obviously don't object to information about substructures and variations being included, though).
As for a "Clinical significance" heading, I find similar problems with it that I find with having a Variations heading...at least with regard to anatomy. That problem is that "diseases, imaging, surgery, examination of, and other medical-related issues" may not all fit best in one section, even if divided as subsections. One aspect might fit better in the History section or Society and culture section, for example. As for an "In Medicine" heading, that is too generic; too many things, things that may be better placed in other sections, could fit under that heading. And looking at the other fields for WP:MEDMOS, you can see that it doesn't have all such clinical significance information stored under one heading; but then again, those fields are more of a medical matter than anatomy is. Flyer22 (talk) 23:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)
"Clinical significance" for a disease would be everything except the history section (and sometimes the society and culture section, although that frequently has clinical significance, e.g., the worried well asking about the medical condition they saw on TV last night, or a description of major depressive disorder presented according to a culturally relevant and culturally appropriate script).
I like ==Clinical significance==. I think that ==In medicine== might attract trivia like "It's a bone, so it could get broken" or "It's a muscle, so it could get strained" when there really isn't anything significant about this particular structure. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:34, 31 December 2013 (UTC)

I have implemented the changes above (regarding variations and the sentence, not clinical significance). With that said, I consider this discussion closed. Thank you everyone for contributing to this discussion; I wish you all a happy new year. If there are any issues with these guidelines, please propose the change in a separate thread. I hope through these revised guidelines we can improve the quality of Anatomy articles; some articles awaiting a GA review have already been created (see Stapes, Suspensory muscle of the duodenum; foramen spinosum). Thanks again for your contributions. Kind regards, --LT910001 (talk) 23:39, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

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