Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/H5N1

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[edit] H5N1

After a failed featured nomination, this article was marked as a Wikipedia:good article, then nominated for Wikipedia:Good Article Collaboration of the week. Following this, the failings identified in the previous featured nomination (Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/H5N1/archive1) appear to have been corrected. --Barberio 15:48, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

The Avian flu box is cutting into the text... --Osbus 23:06, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

• i fixed the box cutting.(and removed the "current" box, becuase they both served the same purpose. Vulcanstar6 02:19, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
• Weak object. I think the event in fact will be unstable for some time. Brand 18:08, 11 April 2006 (UTC)
• Weak object, for the same reason as above. --Doug (talk) 19:52, 12 April 2006 (UTC)
• Object to title of the article. "H5N1" is rather slangish. A correct title would be H5N1 influenza virus or Influenza A virus H5N1 or Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 or some permutation thereof. Kosebamse 06:50, 13 April 2006 (UTC)
• Object as per above. The article's title is misleading, the name should at least mention that it is a virus. --Ragib 07:31, 13 April 2006 (UTC)

  The objections to the title not being lengthy enough don't seem to make sense in that every other article on a similar virus subtype is named in exactly the same way, as far as I can tell. For example: H1N1, H2N2, H3N2, H7N7, H1N2, H3N8, H5N2, H5N8, H5N9, H7N1, H7N2, H7N3, H7N4, H9N2, H10N7, SV40, HIV, etc. What's "slangish" about a scientific designation like H5N1? -Silence 20:58, 14 April 2006 (UTC)

  If that is so, then they should all be renamed. An article title should make clear what the article is about. These do not. And the proper scientific designation is "Influenza A virus subtype H5N1" or something similar. Kosebamse 14:35, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

  OK, then let's change 'em all. -Silence 15:19, 15 April 2006 (UTC)

  Another unaddressed problem with renaming "H5N1" to "Influenza A virus subtype H5N1" or similar (which I've yet to see a single citation supporting, despite the claim that it's the standard form and "H5N1", the most common term used in the references, is "rather slangish"): what would it mean for the daughter articles of H5N1? Would H5N1 genetic structure be renamed to the nearly-indecipherable (to a layperson) "Influenza A virus subtype H5N1 genetic structure"? Will "Global spread of H5N1" be renamed to "Global spread of Influenza A virus subtype H5N1"? Will "Transmission and infection of H5N1" be renamed to the massive "Transmission and infection of Influenza A virus subtype H5N1"? Until authoritatively-referenced support is provided for the name-change so we can be sure it's not original research (or just plain unnecessary), and until it is specifically explained exactly how all the sister (H10N7, etc.) and daughter (H5N1 genetic structure, etc.) articles will be renamed, this trivial stylistic objection is unactionable. -Silence 02:24, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

  These problems are relevant, but not under discussion here. The discussion is about the qualities of a single article. While "H5N1" is fine as everyday use, and as a redirect, it is not sufficient for an encyclopedia article. If you write an article about lower California and call it Baja, you won't get it promoted until it is moved to Baja California. The same principle applies here. Popular names are, under some conditions, acceptable as article titles, but slang is not. And as for the "original research" matter, that is, excuse me please, quite ridiculous. The correct name of the virus is "Influenzavirus A subtype H5N1" or some variation of that, and there's is nothing to debate about that. If you want authoratively-referenced support for that, look up any virology textbook or scientific journal, ask a physician or biologist, or make yourself familiar with nomenclature in biology and medicine. Kosebamse 06:52, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

  Baja is a false, and highly misleading, example. The sole reason Baja can't be a Featured Article is because it's a disambiguation page. As soon as you find something equally noteworthy that "H5N1" is likely to be confused with, I'll consider the analogy valid. :) A better example would be voting against Vienna because it's not called Vienna, Austria, voting against DNA because it's not called Deoxyribonucleic acid, or voting against HIV because it's not called Human immunodeficiency virus; that level of detail, though perhaps marginally less "slangy", is unnecessarily and unhelpfully elaborate, is not particularly consistent with most other articles of a similar nature, and is too much of a stylistic consideration in any case to be a valid and actionable FAC objection.

  And, if those clearly-related problems are not under discussion here, than neither is this article's title, as it is impossible to rename this article without renaming those; this article is no different from any of the aforementioned ones, and to half-implement a new naming scheme over a certain type of article is worse than to not implement it at all.

  I'm starting to come to the conclusion, though, that this business about renaming the article is nonsense. H5N1 is not "slang", it's just the shortened form of the full, "technically correct" name, used throughout articles much like one would use a human's last name throughout most of the article rather than constantly repeating "George Washington" or "Charles Darwin" in every line ("Washington" or "Darwin", better). And, like most people and other articles, the fully-extended name need not be the title; the name that's most common is used instead, e.g., Mahatma Gandhi rather than the more correct and complete Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi. However, for such articles, while the article title uses the simpler, more widespread title, the beginning of the article has the more technically correct artitle title in bold so it is clearly marked. I see no reason not to put the exact same principle into practice here: keep the article at its useful, simple, efficient title of H5N1, but have the article begin with the fully-extended Influenzavirus A subtype H5N1 (or whatever the technically-correct designation is; noone in this discussion seems very clear about that, despite all the demands for a page-rename), then go on to use simply "H5N1" for the majority of the rest of the article. -Silence 07:07, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

  I was not refering to our article Baja but to the improper and slangish use of, say, geographical, names, and the same principles apply to every science, be it biology, medicine, or whatnot. Your examples are not valid either: "Vienna, Austria" is an Americanism that is not used anywhere outside the U.S., "DNA" is a widely-recognized abbreviation (but should nevertheless be a redirect rather than an article title), and the same goes for "HIV". HIV and DNA are universally recognized, so one does not need to explain that it's a virus or the substance of genetic information, repectively, but H5N1 is not so universally known, and therefore our article should make clear that it is a subtype of a virus.

  My argument is that we should use the most correct and informative form of title that is available without getting totally unwieldy, because it helps our readers to understand what an article is about without having to look into it first, and also that slang should be avoided. There's a fine line between slang and useful abbreviations, and my feeling is that "H5N1" is on the wrong side of the line. But I accept that other views are acceptable here and am retracting my objection. Kosebamse 18:42, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Well, I think H5N1 is acceptable, because this is not exactly a "slang"; you can call it a popular name. The practical inconvenience of making the name Influenzavirus A subtype H5N1 would be the appropriate renaming of the daughter articles. Of course, the proposed name would be more scientific. Take the article "Lion", it would have been much more scientifically correct to have it named Panthera leo instead. But that sounds ridiculous! Most of the viruses do not have any common name, so we have to create article by their scientific names. Just a few virus (like HIV, H5N1) has got a rather "common" name. People (people of non-scientific community) can easily identify the viruses by that name. So, I do not think there is any flaw in retaining the present name of H5N1.Thanks.--Dwaipayanc 15:47, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

• Object Although the article looks quite good, I am sorry to say that I agree with Brand that the issue is a little too unstable at the present time. AmbExThErMaL 02:42, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• Strong Support. The only partially agreeable point of objection here seems "Stability". However, this "unstability" is not due to edit wars, rather as a result of the subject being a current event. With more discoveries, and more spread, if any, one has to update the topic. This cannot be called unstability. Rather it reflects the article's up-to-date-ness. For example, the spread map may have to be changed as H5N1 spreads, but that is NOT unstability. In fact, in that sense, this article is not going to be "stable" in near future. I think the article meets all other criteria of an FA. Thanks.--Dwaipayanc 08:51, 19 April 2006 (UTC)
• Object. WIAFA: "stable" means that an article does not change significantly from day to day. current events have their own "current events" section on the mainpage. that is where this article belongs, along with the other daily-changing pages, not on the featured list. Zzzzz 22:44, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

The article in question, as of April 2006, is An introduction to what was known about the Z genotype of highly pathogenic avian influenza virus of type A of the subtype with the fifth of several known types of the protein hemagglutinin and the first of several known types of the protein neuraminidase, as of April 2006. We could name it that and create a new article for data learned after April 2006. Then the article would meet all your criteria. Ha! I beg for help all over the place and the people with the most critisicm help the least. Silence has been a big help, only I wish he and others would help some more on the related H5N1 and Flu articles. Many people, myself included, don't want an article we are protecting from vandalism to receive a spotlight and receive even more vandalism. Actually the conclusion that this series of articles belongs more in current news rather than FA seems to me to be exactly accurate. Yes, that too will spotlight it, but that can't be helped. I'll just have to accept it. WAS 4.250 22:12, 23 April 2006 (UTC)