Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Anal leakage

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was no consensus to delete, merge or redirect. Please puruse merging and/or redirecting editorially to form consensus if you wish to attempt to do so. Daniel 05:58, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Anal_leakage

Anal_leakage (edit|talk|history|links|watch|logs) – (View log)

Page purports to refer to an officially-recognized medical condition, but is in reality just a neologism. Google shows many hits, but not one from a professional medical source. A variety of medical claims are also made in the article, none of which are cited. Of the two references listed, one is an utterly unusable scatological humor website and the other is from an activist group (which itself uses the term in a neologistic, non-medical sense). Again, neither is written by a medical professional. Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 04:09, 5 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep and expand [1]. Kappa 05:01, 5 July 2007 (UTC)
  • Or merge with fecal incontinence. Kappa 00:09, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• This AfD nomination was incomplete. It is listed now. DumbBOT 07:34, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Keep. Anal leakage is a symptom, not a condition. It can appear regardless of other symptoms of diarrhea or incontinence. Additionally it has a popular culture component due to its origins in the Olestra approval process. TIME (Note that govt. scientists agreed the symptom was not by itself a sign of diarrhea.) 170+ Google News Archive results --Dhartung | Talk 09:27, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

Kill or redirect to fecal incontinence, since that's the actually recognized medical term. I'm well aware of the (ahem) "pop-culture impact" of the topic, but this is an encyclopedia, and that doesn't change the fact that it's not an officially recognized medical term (per the gold-standard, the ICD). Therefore, since the medical community didn't coin it, it has no official status as a symptom or a condition. If someone invents a new term and 500 people post it on their blogs, that doesn't make it legitimate or worthy of inclusion in an encyclopedia until (and unless) an appropriate authority in the field recognizes it. Otherwise, it's simply a neologism, no worse or better than any other term invented by pop-culture. Wikipedia doesn't do neologisms, much less ones that masquerade as real medical terminology and cite poopy websites as their source material... Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 09:57, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• Of course Wikipedia does do neologisms, if they are written about by reliable sources. And a neologism that's been around for ten years is not "newly coined". --Dhartung | Talk 17:36, 6 July 2007 (UTC)

• I think you're mistaken as to how policy falls on this. WP:NEO is crystal-clear. Neologisms are to be avoided like the plague (the title of the policy-page provides a pretty good hint...), and are only acceptable if they are reliably sourced, unquestionably encyclopedic, and of definite benefit to the Project. This page is none of the above. It is a falsely attributed medical term with zero reliable references and a truly minimal benefit to the encyclopedia (if any). Basically, it's precisely the sort of page that WP:NEO was written for. Either squash it completely or merge it ito fecal incontinence, but leaving it as-is would be ridiculous. Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 18:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• First of all, WP:NEO is a guideline rather than a policy, and your attributed language "like the plague" is not, so far as I can tell, part of that guideline. It says Support for article contents, including the use and meaning of neologisms, must come from reliable sources. Reliable sources, perhaps, is a classification which includes the 336 Google Scholar results on the term, or the 55 results from .gov domains including the NIH, CDC, and FDA (unless you assert that these are bodies outside the world of medicine). You seem to be under the impression the term was invented in pop culture, but its most famous use was derived from a medical study conducted by Frito-Lay, and it is found in the medical literature as early as 1956 (abstract). If we are simply to look at its prevalence as a notable term, we find it in 15 current Google News results and 177 historical results. At what point does a term become notable? According to WP:N, also a guideline, when two or more reliable sources write about it. By the standard of WP:N, then, it's clearly a notable term whether or not you consider it the "correct" one. In any case, we are Wikipedia, not Medipedia, and your efforts to turn us into the latter are not supported by any policy that I can see. --Dhartung | Talk 23:17, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Redirect to fecal incontinence, which covers its subject. Anthony Appleyard 10:18, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect per Anthony Appleyard. A "funny" article that pretends to be something more serious. Arkyan • ^(talk) 15:03, 6 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep and don't redirect and rewrite to remove unscientific references to incontinence. If anal leakage was the same as "fecal incontinence" it would appear as that phrase on product inserts and boxed warnings for certain artificial fats, but the FDA created the term as an exact description. "Anal leakage" in the context of artificial fats (Olestra), and in medicines that prevent the adsorption of dietary fats (Xenical), is the fat leaking out the rectum, not fecal matter. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 00:58, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Beg pardon, but this is precisely the problem; everyone and their uncle has heard of "anal leakage", and everybody's sure they read it off a box and heard it from a doctor...of course, nobody here has yet found a single authoritative medical source. I would request that you please produce some reliable evidence that the FDA (or any other medical authority) used or endorsed the term "anal leakage". Thus far, even the people who use the term (including the media) understand it's a clever neologism as opposed to a bona-fide medical term. If the President himself decided that "itch face" was a good new term for acne vulgaris, that wouldn't justify a pseudo-medical page on it any more than this should. Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 19:15, 7 July 2007 (UTC)Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 18:55, 7 July 2007 (UTC)

• Redirect to Mad TV, as it was one of its skits. 70.51.10.130 05:38, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• Note; it seems someone is making a concerted effort to improve the page. This is good, and a step in the right direction. However, I'd like to again point out that, as a medical condition, the references really ought to be either directly from a medical source or a reliable source which directly references a medical source. Part of WP:RS means not expecting laypeople (even otherwise good sources) to be able to independently opine on a subject that isn't in their ken. Example: Vogue magazine would probably be a poor source for an article on xenobiology. Bullzeye^{Complaint Dept./Contribs)} 19:28, 7 July 2007 (UTC)
• The sources cited meet Wikipedia guidelines. The Washington Post and certainly a letter from Proctor and Gamble are sufficient to meet Wikipedia guidelines. There is no requirement that medical terms have to come "from a medical source", just multiple reliable sources. --Richard Arthur Norton (1958- ) 17:29, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
• Redirect to fecal incontinence Jgassens 18:07, 13 July 2007 (UTC)
• Keep per Richard Arthur Norton, distinct enough term that it warrants a separate entry. (jarbarf) 03:28, 14 July 2007 (UTC)
• Delete or merge at best this should be entered into the dictionary; as an article it is mundane and unworthy of note. --Storm Rider ^(talk) 04:30, 14 July 2007 (UTC)

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.