I've removed the following content; although it was in the draft that was announced a week ago at every place where this RFC was being discussed,[1] [2] [3] two editors have now objected, so I removed the text rather than having the RFC mucked up. Now, changing an RFC after launch when the draft was put up a week ago is not a good thing; if you have any other issues, please bring them forward on talk. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:17, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Local discussions As of mid-December, local discussions showed approximately 60% in favor of a disclaimer on medical content, and approximately 20% against, with the remainder open to a trial or expressing no opinion. Opposing editors cite Wikipedia's content guideline against disclaimers in articles and say that other websites offering medical information do not have disclaimers at the top.

Yes should have used this talk page not your user page, apologies. It is not a numerical vote. The fist sentence is a bit subjective and such derived figures would vary according to the reader of the previous discussion. Many did not express clear opinions one way or the other. The second sentence does not fully cover all of the reasons not to use disclaimers as brought forward by all commentatorsn in the previous discussion. For example, neither of these 2 cited reasons are the main reasons in my opinion, which are (i) we already have a disclaimer, there is no evidence of either (ii) harm caused by wikipedia medical articles or (iii) benefit of a disclaimer, (iv) work involved, (v) more clutter in the lead of the article. Lesion (talk) 17:48, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My point is not where you raised it but when; I announced this draft a week ago, specifically pinged you, and worked to notify everyone involved so that we would have a clean RFC. Objecting to wording after launch, when there was a week to review before launch, is messy. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:56, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I wasn't aware that you pinged me, but I do recall you mentioning this RfC before, but I never visited this page until today. Lesion (talk) 18:20, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The editors who weighed in on preliminary discussions were:

Here's the math for Lesion (yes, I know consensus is not determined via tally, but Lesion questioned the numbers). My initial count of 28 editors (17 in favor, 6 against, 5 iffy to no opinion) did not include LeadSongDog (who only weighed in with a question at the end) and Benlisquare, who weighed in only to say an RFC would be needed. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:42, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This proposal will affect some tens of thousands of Wikipedia articles (based on the counts of categorized medical articles shown at WP:MED) and represents a pretty significant departure from standard Wikipedia practice (as described at Wikipedia:No disclaimers in articles).

If the outcome of this discussion is to be expected to carry weight with the Wikipedia community, there's going to have to be a bit more effort to publicize it. I don't know what the policy and practice are around adding a watchlist header notice, but at a minimum there should be neutral notifications at WP:CENT, the Village Pump, and probably WT:MOS. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 17:37, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It is at the Central Notifications template,[4] that template is linked at the VP and at AN and ANI, and it is not that much of a wide deviation from norm, since we do currently have disclaimers on current events. I'm not sure it is a MOS issue? I'm not a fan of watchlist notifications; if you want to work on that, cool. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 17:58, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Agree with TenOfAllTrades. The matter seems (to me) to have popped up very suddenly. If there has been discussion of the content/wording of proposals A and B, I've missed it / can't find it. That should come first, IMO. Hordaland (talk) 18:05, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It has not popped up suddenly; it has been under discussion since at least early November, and links to the earlier discussions are clearly in the first paragraph. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:13, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Found, and read, discussions. Thanks. Hordaland (talk) 20:05, 27 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Is it possible we can only have one copy of this text: "All signed comments and talk not related to an endorsement of a view should be directed to this page's discussion page. Threaded discussion should not be added below; it should be posted on the talk page. Threaded replies to another user's !vote, endorsement, response, or comment should be posted to the talk page, and may be moved there."? It's quite hard to read with the text jutting out constantly. --LT910001 (talk) 00:54, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sorry, I just saw this. This seems to always become a problem on RFCs, but if you find them troubling, for now I will comment them out, and then only add them back in should a problem with threaded discussions take hold. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:19, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

To mark this article for RfC using the RfC process (WP:RFC), add {{rfc|sci|rfcid=3FB1144}} to the article. --LT910001 (talk) 00:56, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I think those are for topics only-- this is already at WP:CENT. I've never seen one of those tags on a global RFC, but I could be wrong. I'll put them here, and if I am wrong, someone will hopefully fix it. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 02:17, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This section has the complete list. About a third of them are specifically non-article categories (a list that seems to be longer every time I look at it). You can choose as many as apply, but I think the current two are just fine. I've added a date stamp for the RFC bot (you can change it to any date you want, but the bot needs a date to calculate it's 30-day I-bet-this-has-been-abandoned timer). WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:27, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Something about the way this was set up is causing the RFC page to point to this talk page instead of the main page. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:26, 28 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The template directs readers to this page, but the RFC is at Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/RFC on medical disclaimer. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:35, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Threaded discussion moved from main page: SandyGeorgia (Talk) 13:34, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

At wikipedia a single driven person can dominate and control an article or even vandalize it for a brief period. It is dangerous to allow this to happen in medical pages without an obvious disclaimer. Any argument that people know the nature of wikipedia ignores all the studies to the contrary, and a person who wants no disclaimer may have a suspect motive like wanting to manipulate people's health decisions in this way. IWannaPeterPumpkinEaterPeterParker (talk) 06:33, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

User of course is arguing that because I am not allowing him to refute the position of the Cochrane collaboration with their own person opinion at cough medicine that 1) I want to manipulate people 2) Wikipedia needs a disclaimer Doc James (talk · contribs · email) (if I write on your page reply on mine) 08:53, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you mean this situation where you were also edit warring? [5] Yes it is one good example but it does not make what I say less true in general. If someone does not have a valid argument they usually attach the messager and not the message, like you did. You obviously have more support on this site than I do because you know more people and know how to bring them to a discussion so you probably win any conflict you get in to. Like completely ignoring my RFC[6] and everyone discussing it at Cough Medicine during the time I was blocked to create your own consensus a few threads down quickly[7]. Your talk page is full of people who have issues with how you do things, and if they did not all get quickly discouraged it would be noticed more. IWannaPeterPumpkinEaterPeterParker (talk) 17:40, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

1. Many other sites have content worse than that of Wikipedia and do not contain a warning.
   1. This says "other sites are poor so wikipedia does not need to be better than them".
2. A disclaimer will clutter the top of the article (how will this mesh with the new text messaging option for getting access to Wikipedia content?).
   1. This is simple to deal with.
3. The warning is already at the end of the article.
   1. Dispute like point 1.
4. There are mistakes in other sites including the Lancet and the Mayo Clinic (which people expect to be accurate).
   1. This is the same as point 1 again.
5. People do not expect Wikipedia to be accurate. I have asked many students if they use Wikipedia and all respond with hesitance as they have all heard from profs how bad it is.
   1. This is untrue and has been proven untrue in studies.
6. If these notices drive away editors and have no effect on readership / usage then it could potentially result in overall harm.
   1. Conjecture.

IWannaPeterPumpkinEaterPeterParker (talk) 17:44, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

• Agree with all of this. Also regarding #3, "the warning is already at the end of the article" is a colossal exaggeration. What we have is the word "Disclaimers" in tiny, tiny type, along with some other links in tiny, tiny type. Virtually nobody will click that. Ever. It is misguided at best to suggest that we have any kind of noticeable disclaimer on medical articles. — Scott • talk 23:10, 29 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • I've expanded the above comment to an opinion section on the RFC. — Scott • talk 16:33, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Virtually nobody" means less than 100 per day for the medical disclaimer, and about 25 times that number for the general disclaimer. I'm not sure what the overall site traffic is, but this is a tiny fraction of users each day. To give one potentially relevant comparison, both "Wikipedia:About" and "Contact Wikipedia" (which are on the same line and in the same font size) get about 12,000 page views per day. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

NeilN, re "What should be done is move the current disclaimer link to the top and make it more prominent", would you like to propose a version in a section of your own so others can endorse? I'm assuming this would be a starting point for what you have in mind?

Larger? Colored text? On all articles? I don't really know how to fuss with the font etc in this sample, but thought you'd want to propose something. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 14:54, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I do that in the Discussion section? I thought that was specifically for commenting on the two proposed options but I will propose a third if that's acceptable. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:01, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

It's always possible to present a new view to see if others endorse; the idea is for any RFC to have a good outcome. If you can develop here on talk a version that you like, I could add it to the lead of the RFC as Version C. If you want to do that, I'd first suggest getting it pretty well nailed down here, though-- the other versions were subject to a good deal of discussion. I envision something like the above, but am thinking you want it larger, or colored, or with a background, or something to make it more prominent. I'm also unclear if it would then apply on all articles (which would be a good thing, IMO). SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:19, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

I don't know if it's technically possible but here's what I would like:

1. A simple General Disclaimer link appearing above the Article/Talk tabs on all articles.
2. A bolded Medical Disclaimer link appearing beside it if a setting is switched on in an article (set by editors).

Thoughts? --NeilN ^{talk to me} 15:54, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

My thoughts are that some of the opposition is precisely to the idea that we would flag only medical articles, so if your version were to be all of the above on every article, it might get less opposition. Some people say that doing "only" medical articles creates a problem, so your proposal would have strength if it included the whole thingie above on every article. Also, in some of the earlier discussions, people pointed out that there were also legal, financial, other risks and that all articles should have the prominent disclaimer. More importantly, I don't know how to design this beast to bring it forward. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:03, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, okay. Option 3) Have what you have above on all articles, above any tabs, which should minimize some opposition. Option 3 a) The same as option 3 but allow editors to bold certain links on certain articles. --NeilN ^{talk to me} 16:18, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Do you want to write a view on that, and I'll add this as Version C? SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:36, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment#Quality scale

Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Assessment#Importance scale

As of December 30, 2013, of the 25,241 articles and lists tagged by WP:MED (that is, excluding images, cats, dab pages, etc):

• 77% are Start or Stub class
• 20% are B or C class
• 1% are GA or FA
• 2% are other lists.

On articles rated as Top or High Importance, the articles tagged by WikiProject Medicine do much better. Of those 1,010 articles and lists:

• 25% are Start or Stub class
• 65% are B or C class
• 8% are GA or FA
• 2% are other lists.

SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:18, 30 December 2013 (UTC)[reply]