Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Genetics

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WikiProject Genetics This page is part of WikiProject Genetics, an attempt to build a comprehensive and detailed guide to genetics on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit this page, or visit the project page to join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Project This page has been rated as Project-Class on the quality scale.
NA This page has been rated as NA-importance.

Contents

[edit] Project Creation

The original proposal for the project can be found here Wikipedia:WikiProject_Council/Proposals#Genetics.

[edit] Getting started

Now that the project has been started, there's plenty of work that needs doing. To get things rolling, I'd like to set up a project banner for tagging articles. I think that some of the articles within our scope – e.g., DNA, Genetic engineering, Human Genome Project – could potentially be included in Wikipedia:Version 1.0, so I'd also like to set up an assessment department (which sounds more formal than it really is) to help the V1.0 Editorial Team keep track of them. Comments welcome. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 02:21, 5 May 2008 (UTC)

Here's a start: Template:Wikiproject Genetics, should show up if you add {{Wikiproject Genetics}} to a talk page. I created it with Template:WPBannerMeta, which you can expand with things like article importance, assessment, etc... -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 00:47, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Okay, I expanded to add assessments, currently redlinked to a hypothetical page within WikiProject Genetics. I've taken the banner for a test run by adding it to Talk:Genetics. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 14:10, 6 May 2008 (UTC)
Looking good! I went and added it to Category:WikiProject banners. – ClockworkSoul 16:28, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

Assessment page is up and running. I'd appreciate some feedback on the importance scheme, but if everyone thinks it's okay, we can start tagging and assessing articles in earnest. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:57, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

  • I don't think this wikiproject should cover people. MCB doesn't cover people. It's really a different class of articles, and there are a lot of them. When someone enters the project wanting to improve genetics articles they're probably not thinking about editing Oswald Avery.
  • I'm glad you've included "lay person" / "recognition" in the ranking! I think page popularity should contribute significantly to the importance ratings. Here's a useful tool you can use to look at pageviews: [1]
article pageviews in 4/08 proposed importance
DNA 302,886 Top
Genetic engineering 93,799 Top
Gregor Mendel 58,190 High
Allele 41,989 High
Epigenetics 30,046 Mid
Kay Davies 303 Mid
Impalefection 198 Low
X hyperactivation 45 Low
Everything looks roughly in line here. It looks like Epigenetics would be more like High and Kay Davies Low ... Mid would be something in the single digit thousands to 500, and Low in the sub 500 range? Alternatively, just start classifying things without worrying to much about it, and later I can make a table comparing page views with importance rankings (I did this earlier, so it's semi-automated). Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:53, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Popularity isn't irrelevant, but I don't think we should be using it as the only or even the main criteria for importance. Sex would be a very popular article too, though I suspect most of the people that go to it are actually looking for sexual intercourse, or perhaps internet pornography. How important it is as part of a network of articles on genetics is the real question, and something like a textbook on genetics would probably be a much better indicator of this.
Regarding biographies, I think they are relevant to genetics if the person contributed seriously to the science. Editors here may not be experts on writing biographies, but then biographers aren't experts on writing about genetics, and you need to know your genetics if you are going to write a good article about a geneticist. Richard001 (talk) 08:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The sex example is a distracting irrelevance, the vast majority of cases do not have this ambiguity. A lot of people are going to genetic engineering (and I'm pretty sure they're interested in "genetic engineering") even though it's not a core genetics subject in a textbook. Because of this, I think Liveste's ranking of it as Top is justified.
With people, I just worry that could get out of hand, there are so many geneticists. Did Kay Davies "contribute seriously" to the science? How are we going to make this call? My google search on "geneticist" finds ~ 1770 matches [2] -- Madeleine ✉ ✍ 19:25, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
This is pretty much why I requested feedback. What underlying purpose do we want for the importance scale for this project? I can see two possibilities:
  • Reader-oriented: The importance scale ranks articles by how likely the average reader will be familiar with or interested in them. Top-importance articles are those that the average reader would be more interested in getting encyclopedic information from, and that these articles are where initial improvement efforts should be directed. Higher-importance articles in this scheme are more likely to be included in a traditional encyclopedia.
  • Topic-oriented: The importance scale ranks articles by how important they are to gaining a comprehensive understanding of the field. Starting from "Genetics" or "DNA", a reader is likely to progress to other top-importance articles, and from there to high-importance articles, with occasional investigation into articles of less importance. This is similar to the way a textbook would be set out, with "Genetics" as the title, and top-importance articles being equivalent to chapter headings, etc.
If anyone can think of other underlying purposes, please outline them here. One way in which the two approaches above differ is their treatment of articles such as human cloning and genetically modified food. These are of relatively minor interest in genetics research, but are well known outside the scientific community; conversely, genomics is vital to the field, but hardly well known to non-scientists (excepting the Human Genome Project). But considering that Wikipedia is trying to emulate a traditional encyclopedia, I would favour a more reader-oriented approach. As for biographies, I don't really mind either way. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 03:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
How about a modification to the template -and option to switch from 'this article is within the scope of the Genetics project' to 'parts of this article are within the scope og the Genetics project' and maybe a subcategory of their own like 'Articles with genetics sections' ? LeeVJ (talk) 15:56, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Do you have any particular article in mind? Usually if an article is only partially related to the subject of a WikiProject, it's considered to fall within the scope of that WikiProject. Nevertheless, if we had enough "partially relevant" articles we could do something different – it wouldn't be difficult. – Liveste (talk • edits) 22:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I was referring to the reference to geneticist biographies, but was also bearing in mind articles on disease and traits which include a genetic predisposition or element like pain tolerance, heart disease, one's where they are mostly out of scope but we might be able to manage keeping relevant sections in order ? LeeVJ (talk) 23:06, 11 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Top level articles

Was thinking of tagging genetic code as top importance - it is one of the few genetics articles included on the Wikipedia:Wikipedia CD Selection, but moving to top importance requires a second opinion ... LeeVJ (talk) 15:50, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Articles included in print, CD or DVD versions of Wikipedia should probably be automatically rated as "Top-importance". If no-one else objects, feel free to change the rating. If wider consensus on the importance scale is reached, we can also amend the importance criteria. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 13:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
'tis done. LeeVJ (talk) 16:32, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Introduction to Genetics

The AfD for an "intro to PCR" article has me thinking about this again. I've been unhappy with the link to Introduction to Genetics placed at the top of Genetics, which now has FA status. The intro article is poor quality (but started when the main article was also poor quality, so understandable). Should we be guiding readers to this article from the main article? Should it even exist? Would anyone like to improve it? What should be done with it? Madeleine ✉ ✍ 22:09, 6 May 2008 (UTC)

My interpretation is that the lead IS the introduction for the casual reader, then if they, wish the body of the article goes into more detail - I think I saw it in the manual of style. In short no, the intro article shouldn't exist, and if it seems to be needed, then genetics article isn't yet perfect and might need a but of gentle tailoring. LeeVJ (talk) 00:15, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
The idea of "introduction to" articles is not to duplicate the lead section (which itself is not an introduction but a summary) of the 'normal' article, but to provide an article that is less technical for readers. There are several such articles (e.g. introduction to evolution, introduction to general relativity, etc). We don't seem to have a page describing such articles though (Wikipedia:Introductory articles or something like that would be good, assuming we wish to keep any reasonable number of such articles). Some subjects require the article to be fairly technical to explain it properly, so the 'intro to' articles are a simplified version for those that can't cope well with this, e.g. those with no real education in biology and chemistry in this case. They are suitable for people with no prior knowledge of the subject and perhaps for younger people, whose command of English may not be very developed either (some people may not admit it, but Wikipedia is hardly very friendly to younger readers).
Having said what I think their role is though, I'm not saying I necessarily agree that the article, or such articles in general, should exist. I think they should be reserved for articles that have reached a virtually perfect state and which are quite difficult to comprehend for the layperson. There certainly needs to be a decent amount of differentiation between the articles, e.g. the introduction should be written in simpler language, be relatively short and be understandable for almost anyone. At this stage the introduction to genetics article is very underdeveloped and what direction it is going is unclear, and seemingly undecided. I wouldn't be strongly opposed to deleting it, but I think it should be discussed first as it will be a fairly important article if we should decide to keep and work on it. Richard001 (talk) 08:02, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
(Sorry for the later response here) I agree on all counts. In some cases an introductory article is justified and gets attention and becomes useful. I brought it up because it'd be nice to get discussion on it. :-)
I don't feel able to write the article... because I tried so hard to make Genetics accessible, I have trouble seeing what further simplifications are needed and how it should be done. But definitely if someone has an idea of how to do it I'd be happy to help. I haven't seen anyone interested though and it may be nobody feels the article is particularly needed. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 06:37, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I write about medicine for a living. I'll go to a meeting and find out about the latest research and write about it. The first question I ask myself when I start to write about it is whether I'm writing for laymen or professionals (MDs, usually). If I'm writing for laymen, there is a lot of good, interesting stuff that I have to throw out because I know from talking to laymen that the overwhelming majority of them won't understand it. (I'm not a teacher so I can't stand up in class and force them to listen.)
Wikipedia, according to the rules, is written for the ordinary reader, not the specialist. That's a rule that we often flout, and I'll go along with flouting it. There are some articles on proteins and genes (the ones that I look up myself when I'm trying to get through the NEJM) that are so technical that the ordinary reader couldn't understand them. I think that's OK because a lot of the users and editors of Wikipedia are biology students (often on the graduate level) who find this very useful. But if we had to follow Wikipedia rules, somebody could force us to rewrite them for the non-specialist, and they would be so simple that they wouldn't be useful for the advanced student any more.
That's what would happen to Genetics. It's a good, thorough article, and I would read it myself to make sure I understand certain basic concepts, but a lot of it is beyond the comprehension of an ordinary lay reader. (Advanced placement or A-level high school science students could understand it, but the science students in the working-class school down the street from me couldn't understand it).
So Introduction to Genetics is a compromise. In Genetics, we're ignoring the Wikipedia rules that require articles to be understandable by the ordinary layman. It's not. (See Talk:Introduction_to_genetics for examples.) In compromise, we created Introduction to Genetics that fully meets the rules about ordinary readers
If we deleted Introduction to Genetics, somebody could correctly demand that you dumb down Genetics to be more understandable to non-specialists. That would be a shame. Nbauman (talk) 14:48, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
I don't personally find the Introduction to genetics article very readable or useful . I can see how User:Madeleine_Price_Ball wouldn't like it being referred to "for a generally accessible and less technical introduction to the topic" on the top of the Genetics article. IMO the article Genetics is accessible to someone of high school education level as terms are wiki linked. I don't see anyone wanting to dumb it down! I'd send Introduction to Genetics to WP:AfD and see what other wikipedians think. Nk.sheridan   Talk 00:45, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
I talk to a lot of cancer patients, and also to a lot of other normal, educated people who don't particularly follow biology, and my sense is that they would have a hard time getting through this. The vocabulary alone would be OK for advanced placement high school students, but not for ordinary high school students. I was just talking to a high school science teacher at a center-city school, and I know his kids couldn't get through this.
What makes you think this Genetics article is accessible to a non-specialist reader with no more than a high school education? Nbauman (talk) 05:04, 11 May 2008 (UTC)
Tho I haven't thought a lot about the question of Introduction to XYZ articles, I have an opinion after reading this thread. We have a sister project called Simple English, and that is where the very "dumbed down", to put it that way, intro should be. If people on Talk pages complain about the level of articles here, they should be gently guided to Simple English. But then people here should feel a responsibility to follow up articles "over there" so that they don't give directly wrong info. --Hordaland (talk) 02:45, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
There's a guideline about "introduction to XYZ" articles at Wikipedia:Make technical articles accessible#"Introduction to..." articles. My quick reaction (based on just a quick glance) is that Genetics is probably not so technical that a separate introduction is needed. But I can see both sides to the argument. Kingdon (talk) 05:40, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I think Simple English is a lot lower than the level you're looking at for 'introduction to' articles. Simple English is for people who don't speak much English or are a bit left of center on the bell curve. 'Introduction to' is more for people that don't have much or any specialist knowledge in the area concerned, so introduction to genetics would be more for an adult who has never studied biology, except perhaps at high school. The way things are at the moment I think an AFD wouldn't be a bad idea, unless someone(s) wants to set out what they want to article to achieve, how it's going to be different from genetics, and actually start doing it. Richard001 (talk) 07:41, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Updates

I revised the project banner and added some project categories. Additionally, I expanded the project page with some headings typical of a WikiProject. Also, you might want to check these pages and these pages to see whether the project banner should be posted on the article talk page (if not already so done). That same list can be used to tag the article page with one or more genetics subcategories (if not already so done), many of which can be seen here and otherwise are subcatetories of Category:Genetics. GregManninLB (talk) 22:00, 7 May 2008 (UTC)

I posted a request here to have a bot tag all the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Genetics stubs with {{WikiProject Genetics|class=Stub|importance=Low|imageneeded=|imagedetails=|unref=|nested=}}. GregManninLB (talk) 02:00, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Thank you for all your help! A lot of this stuff I wouldn't have thought of and/or didn't know how to do. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:59, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Tag Genetics stubs with project template (copied from here)

Discussion at Wikipedia:Bot requests
WikiProject Genetics is a new WikiProject. Would you please have a bot tag the talk pages of all the articles in Category:Genetics stubs with {{WikiProject Genetics|class=Stub|importance=Low|imageneeded=|imagedetails=|unref=|nested=}}. If the bot can determine that the article is unreferenced, please have the bot use |unref=yes as well. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 01:58, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Doing... The tagging with User:John Bot. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 21:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
Y Done mostly. CWii(Talk|Contribs) 00:41, 9 May 2008 (UTC)
Also, if this is allowed, can you have a bot post a notice on the talk pages of Wikipedians interested in genetics to let them know about the new WikiProject Genetics. Thanks. GregManninLB (talk) 02:10, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
It is allowed, but you should specify the message so that a bot owner doesn't have to guess at it. -- John Broughton (♫♫) 19:13, 8 May 2008 (UTC)
I've made a start on an invite template at Wikipedia:WikiProject Genetics/Invite, for which I basically copied the code from the Novels WikiProject invite template. If you like it, feel free to use it – feel free to modify it as well. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 14:00, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
That looks great! I've submitted the request here, as recommended by Greg, Wikipedia:Bot_requests#WikiProject_Genetics_invitation, hope that's okay. Thanks! Madeleine ✉ ✍ 14:51, 10 May 2008 (UTC)
Looks like Addsure has fnished it already! LeeVJ (talk) 13:24, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] A list of categories

Help me ensure these categories are in the one. A-Class Genetics articles A-Class medical genetics articles Applied genetics Automatically assessed Genetics articles B-Class Genetics articles B-Class medical genetics articles Category-Class Genetics pages Classical genetics Computational phylogenetics Cytogenetics Disambig-Class Genetics pages Epigenetics FA-Class Genetics articles FA-Class medical genetics articles FL-Class Genetics articles GA-Class Genetics articles GA-Class medical genetics articles Genetics Genetics articles by importance Genetics articles by quality Genetics articles needing attention Genetics articles needing expert attention Genetics books Genetics experiments Genetics infobox templates Genetics journals Genetics literature Genetics or genomics research institutions Genetics organizations Genetics past collaborations Genetics past selected articles Genetics past selected biographies Genetics past selected pictures Genetics stubs Genetics templates High-importance Genetics articles Human genetics Image-Class Genetics pages List-Class Genetics articles Low-importance Genetics articles Medical genetics Medical genetics articles by quality Medical genetics images Mid-importance Genetics articles Mitochondrial genetics Molecular genetics NA-Class Genetics pages NA-importance Genetics articles Non-article Genetics pages Old requests for Genetics peer review Phylogenetics Population genetics Portal-Class Genetics pages Project-Class Genetics pages Redirect-Class Genetics pages Requests for Genetics peer review Start-Class Genetics articles Start-Class medical genetics articles Statistical genetics Stub-Class Genetics articles Stub-Class medical genetics articles Template-Class Genetics pages Top-importance Genetics articles Unassessed-Class Genetics articles Unassessed-importance Genetics articles Unassessed medical genetics articles Unreferenced Genetics articles WikiProject Genetics WikiProject Genetics articles WikiProject Genetics participants WikiProject Medical Genetics participants WikiProject Medical genetics Wikipedians interested in genetics —Preceding unsigned comment added by Intelligent9876522 (talk • contribs) 16:41, 10 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Removing Elric of Melnibone

Elric of Melniboné got bot-tagged as a genetics article. He's a fictional albino, albeit a very notable one, and the article doesn't really go into the genetic nature of his disorder. I'm removing the tag, but feel free to readd if anyone disagrees. Jclemens (talk) 23:02, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

Monsieur Zenith too. Jclemens (talk) 23:42, 14 May 2008 (UTC)
Ugh, it looks like everyone in Category:Fictional people with albinism got tagged. We shouldn't even have nonfictional people with albinism. How'd this happen... Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Reviewing unassessed articles & pageview stats

Now that we have a lot of unassessed Genetics articles to classify, I've put together this table of pageviews together (using cumulative pageviews from 2/01/08 to 2/23/08) so we can see relative importance: User:Madeleine_Price_Ball/Genetics_counts The table has some colors assigning "top" to the top 6.7%, "high" to the next 13.3%, "mid" to the next 26.7%, and "low" to the last 53.3%—this hasn't actually been done, it was just so I could visualize which articles were where...

Here's some articles that jump out at me as maybe shouldn't be tagged Genetics...

  • Asperger syndrome - there's a genetic component, but it's not a classical Mendelian inheritance. Everything about us is genetic, I think we need to limit the scope of the Genetics wikiproject to things that have a single-gene inheritance pattern.
  • Breast cancer - are we including all cancers? Or just this because of BRCA1 & BRCA2? Or because we say "cancer is a genetic disease"? Is Alzheimer's disease in wikiproject genetics because in some cases it is familial?
  • Arab,Basque people - Should we have racial/ethnic groups?
  • Alaskan husky,Axolotl,Boysenberry - I'm gonna throw these organisms out.
  • Atavism - kind of weird... not really genetics I think

Well I'm a little bored of going through it, I'll leave you all to vote on these questions. Please vote and sign right below each question, try to keep it short so we can all read it.Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:53, 14 May 2008 (UTC)

It looks like a lot of these pages were the result of an overenthusiastic bot digging into all subcategories within Category:Genetics. I've removed my questions because they seem a bit moot in light of the massive revert we'll do on this. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 01:02, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
One page which was tagged and untagged is PAX9. It might be worthwhile to make an explicit statement about whether you want to tag articles for individual genes (I would lean towards no, as they are mostly already in the scope of Wikipedia:WikiProject Molecular and Cell Biology but I would leave the call on that to people more involved in the genetics and MCB projects). Kingdon (talk) 05:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Well, genes are really the subject of genetics just as much as (probably more than) they are of molecular and/or cell biology. Richard001 (talk) 07:43, 15 May 2008 (UTC)
Fine with me either way. They are in Category:Genes (and its many subcategories), and the ones I randomly looked at were not (yet) tagged. Kingdon (talk)

[edit] Let's improve an important article...

Can we please improve heredity? That page is necessary, but sort of incoherent in places and a bit odd.

Lunakeet 14:30, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

I guess we need to figure out what the scope of the article should be. It looks like right now it's a history article, akin to History of genetics? This could be condensed into a history section. Maybe make this into a simpler article than genetics, with more of a focus on human heredity? What should the main sections be? Madeleine ✉ ✍ 15:58, 15 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Bot tagging

It looks like one of the bots started tagging general virus articles (RNA virus, Double-stranded RNA viruses). I'm not sure if these should really be classified as "genetics" articles or not. What are your thoughts? Schu1321 (talk) 00:48, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

It probably tagged things with DNA or RNA in the word? I agree these shouldn't fall into the Genetics wikiproject. Please go ahead and remove the wikiproject banner from bot-tagged articles that look questionable. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 04:27, 19 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Possible vandalism to a Genetics related article

[edit] May 2008

Over the last month or so there have been several edits and reversions to the article Nucleotide, especially to the "Structure" section, so much so that it is difficult to determine exactly what that section should contain. It would probably be a good idea for someone with the appropriate background to have a look at the article to confirm that the current version in correct. Thanks! --Hennap (talk) 02:34, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

I don't know as though "vandalism" is the right term for it, but I'll do a little work on it over the next few days. If anyone would like to work on it with me, leave me a message and we can look at doing a larger re-write. Schu1321 (talk) 02:47, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Asperger syndrome

Asperger syndrome got tagged into this wikiproject, and I see it was already labeled as being within Medical Genetics wikiproject. (If this hadn't been the case I would have gone ahead and removed the tag without posting here.) Are we going to include all human conditions affected by genotype, or will we limit ourselves to conditions for which a significant fraction are caused by a particular mutation (ie they have a Mendelian inheritance pattern)? With all the bot tagging, we need to guard against making the coverage of this project too broad. Madeleine ✉ ✍ 22:52, 21 May 2008 (UTC)

And there's Tourette syndrome, although that's more strongly genetic. I think the fact that Wikiproject Medical Genetics has these actually makes it more reasonable to remove Genetics Wikiproject, because the genetics aspect has already been covered. In other words, we wouldn't go around tagging every MCB article with "Wikiproject:Biology", since MCB is more specific and already has it covered—neither should we go about tagging every Medical Genetics article with Genetics. So maybe we should leave the genetic diseases to Medical Genetics? Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:29, 21 May 2008 (UTC)
I would agree with that thought. They're already covered by a "genetics" wikiproject, no need to duplicate the work. If we end up running out of articles to update, then we can rethink it =) Schu1321 (talk) 03:01, 22 May 2008 (UTC)
Although a number of specific genetic condition articles could use a thorough going over, I have found that the basic genetics articles these are based on not entirely clear - so focusing on more general articles will be more effective use of time and their quality should trickle upwards in time. LeeVJ (talk) 23:35, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] image needed

While I'm removing the Genetics wikiproject from Asperger Syndrome, I'll note that there's an image request for it: Need an image of loci implicated in autism. See, for example, Figure 1 in Abrahams & Geschwind 2008 (PMID 18414403). Madeleine ✉ ✍ 23:12, 22 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Race and intelligence article

The Race and intelligence article is in need of help with genetics, especially population genetics. --Jagz (talk) 17:57, 26 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Handbook of Genetic Counseling

I found this book in Wikibooks: Handbook of Genetic Counseling. Could we use some of those articles? What do you think? NCurse work 19:49, 27 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Personal favor

I do a lot of article assessments for WPMED. Most of the genetic conditions are unfamiliar to me, which makes it difficult to place them on the priority-for-improvement ("importance") scale. What I've found most helpful is when the lead has a couple of words about the prevalence of a condition. So -- purely as a personal plea from me -- if you are working on an article about a medical condition and happen to know whether it is "uncommon", "rare", "very rare", or whatever else seems appropriate, could you please add a keyword or two for me? I'd really appreciate it. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:48, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

What are the percentages/ratios for the groupings? I removed 'rare' from the HD article after finding a link to rare being less than 5 in a 100,000, MEDMOS might need the definitions added too ? LeeVJ (talk) 12:34, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
WhatamIdoing, please let us know which articles you have problems with. NCurse work 19:52, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
I'm not sure if anyone in this project is planning on doing a primary article assessment, but I can start work on some of them and help WhatamIdoing with article overlap on WPMED. Also, does anyone have any ideas or preferences for making a custom importance scale for the project? Schu1321 (talk) 20:53, 2 June 2008 (UTC)
That would be perfect. It may help you. And let us know if you have any kind of problems. NCurse work 08:45, 3 June 2008 (UTC)
Several importance schemes have been discussed at #Getting started above; we should probably reach a consensus about them before starting any systematic assessment drives. There's a tentative consensus that medical conditions with a genetic element fall within the scope of WP:MEDGEN rather than this project, so overlap shouldn't be a problem. Unfortunately, MEDGEN doesn't have an importance scale, although they may be able to help you with determining the prevalence of particular medical conditions. Cheers. – Liveste (talk • edits) 13:33, 3 June 2008 (UTC)

Thanks for your replies. I've forgotten which couple of articles prompted this note, but I'll post here (or at MEDGEN) when I run into complicated articles in the future.

LeeV, I don't actually care what standard you choose for designating the epidemiology: there are several perfectly reasonable definitions. It's just that if you can give some sort of indication about prevalence (or anything else that helps establish the context), it's really helpful to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:27, 4 June 2008 (UTC)