User talk:Kosherfrog

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Welcome!

Hello, Kosherfrog, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your name on talk pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically produce your name and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or place {{helpme}} on your talk page and someone will show up shortly to answer your questions. Again, welcome!  Rklawton 15:29, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] Helpme request

What do you need help with? Pleace replace the {{helpme}} and a few sentences describing your problem and question on this page. --ais523 15:51, 29 November 2006 (UTC)

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[edit] April 2008

Hi, the recent edit you made to Participatory Medicine has been reverted, as it appears to be unconstructive. Use the sandbox for testing; if you believe the edit was constructive, ensure that you provide an informative edit summary. You may also wish to read the introduction to editing. Thanks. Loren.wilton (talk) 07:36, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Suggestion

On WT:MEDMOS you effectively threatened to "write some really interesting articles in other venues [about] the mentality of the medical editors of Wikipedia". I think most comments that were made were ultimately constructive, and I therefore hope you'll have the decency to retract that threat as soon as possible. JFW | T@lk 22:00, 14 April 2008 (UTC)

I do not threaten. I tell what I am doing. After the exchanges that have taken place on WT:MEDMOS I am convinced that unfortunately wikipedia, when it comes to medical information is DEFINITELY not the place where people in need for instant information regarding a rare condition should go to, as a reference point. Your personal comments are public and will be given the publicity they deserve, because in your role as the 123rd most active editor you have a special responsibility and ability to model what the medical content in wikipedia is. You absolutely have the right to think that online medical communities are not to your liking and are not providing valuable services but I have equal rights to defend, on the internet, a new medical model where educated patients, in part through high quality exchanges via pee-to-peer patient online communities are improving the quality of care they receive and eventually improving the scientific knowledge of their disease. By blocking any mention of this very important use of the internet you are doing, IMO, a great disservice. I know you think the comments made were constructive, but in my experience, as a group, the editors on WT:MEDMOS have demonstrated a close-mindedness about patient-run medical online communities of a kind I haven't witnessed in the medical world for a few years. And I intend to make sure that people know about it. Kosherfrog (talk) 13:48, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
You did indeed threaten to draw attention to our discussions. Despite our disagreement, I find that very poor form. I do, like all other contributors, have a special responsibility to model the medical content on Wikipedia. I have had numerous difficult conversations about the same subject with many contributors over the years. Usually, they were not interested in improving the content of Wikipedia; rather, they wanted to maximise exposure of their website. I'm not greatly surprised at this, given Wikipedia's phenomenal popularity.
I am not going to take the bait of the inflammatory portion of the last 2 sentences. As usual, I propose to discuss topics based on REAL data. Wikipedia is indeed phenomenally popular. But not every section is! Can you ask what is the traffic generated by the wikipedia page on leiomyosarcoma for example. I will get the traffic generated by leiomyosarcoma.info homepage for the same period. And we could do this for CLL, testicular cancer, renal cell carcinoma and for some pediatric cancers, like Wilm's tumor or Ewing's sarcoma. That should provide some interesting comparisons.Kosherfrog (talk) 16:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
What other contributors have shown is that the links you were suggesting are not going to be accessible to the general readership who are not patients. I think that is a very legitimate point, and I wish you'd address that rather than start with ad hominems. JFW | T@lk 08:48, 16 April 2008 (UTC)
Thought I should let you know that I asked for the opinion of other administrators at the administrators' noticeboard, because I have the feeling we will not come to agreement here.[1] JFW | T@lk 10:37, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

Kosher, I am not requesting a retraction, nor am I sure of how much your statement was a threat. That being said, I am asking you to please remain civil. You have every right to argue your points on WP:MEDMOS, even in the face of a possible consensus of wikipedia editors. I also believe it is fine to characterize wikipedia editors as handling something different than how most do, however any of these characterizations must be civil and not inflammatory. Telling the community you can write about their peculiararities isn't really constructive. If you are going to write something, go ahead, but if you believe this particular wikipedia community is wrong in their handling of something, make that argument on said talk pages. Mentions of off wikipedia essays on how wrong everyone is (whether they are wrong or right) will surely only serve to inflame and won't help your case. Gwynand | Talk•Contribs 12:12, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

I am a very old user of cooperative media on the internet, never looking for a flame war and always remaining civil. That said, I am in very strong disagreement with the groups of editors that I have encountered in WT:MEDMOS and I do not see why I should not express my strongly held opinion in other forums. I have concluded that nothing can convince the mentioned editors/contributors to change their point of view and therefore it will be a completely inefficient use of my time to continue this conversation with them. It is not a question of right or wrong, it is just an issue of allocated energy to fix what I personally see as a problem. My assessment is that, in this instance, the energy needed to possibly effect this particular wikipedia community is just too much. I have seen other scientific communities in wikipedia with much more open and what I consider constructive conversations. That is what I expected here and I was wrong. Kosherfrog (talk) 16:33, 16 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Survey

I am intrigued by your proposed opinion poll. I hope you will consider my suggestion for an additional pair of questions, to be asked after your general one about the perceived audience:

  1. In a general encyclopedia like Encyclopedia Britannica, Wikipedia, or Encarta, do you think that medicine-related articles should be written primarily to help patients?
  2. How many medicine-related encyclopedia articles have you ever read? (Include all encyclopedia articles, whether online or on paper, recently or at any point during your life.)
  3. How many of those articles did you read because they related to your personal health or the health of a loved one?

My own answers, if you will let me be the honorary first respondent are: (2) More than ten thousand. (3) Fewer than 30.

If you can customize questions based on responses, then I'd like to see an optional fourth question, for people who answer yes to the first question:

4. More than 99% [calculated from answers 2 and 3] of the medicine-related articles you've personally read were not related to your family's health. Do you still think that such encyclopedias should be written for patients, instead of being written for readers like yourself?

I think it would generate very interesting results, and help you find the line between the reader who is most likely to read the page (Wikipedia's audience) and the reader who is most interested in reading the page (your audience). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:35, 25 April 2008 (UTC)

Thanks a lot for the response! Give me a few days to provide a half-educated answer. I would like to confer with colleagues about how best to frame the questions, what should be added and probably a few other important aspects of such a survey. We should collectively think about how we should advertise the survey and invite people to answer it. I am sure we would all learn a lot and would learn that many of our pre-conceived ideas are not validated by users. Kosherfrog (talk) 03:17, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
I agree that the results could be interesting. I wouldn't want you to get your hopes up about it promptly changing Wikipedia's choices, but I'd be interested in seeing the results anyway. WhatamIdoing (talk) 15:00, 27 April 2008 (UTC)