User talk:WLU/Generic sandbox

Ha, discussion!

I noticed you don't make much difference between Policy and Guidelines. I think it might be an important thing to be right about the distinction, even if you don't put much emphasis on it. Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 22:22, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Noted, thanks! And thanks to FisherQueen for her spelling corrections. WLU (talk) 23:17, 28 November 2007 (UTC)

Agreed... you should probably differentiate more between policy and guidelines. Confusing the two can lead new editors into problems. To paraphrase something I wrote earlier today, guidelines were not delivered from the mount by Jimbo on two stone tablets. Mingling them with the concept of policy could lead to confusion because policy is rather non-negotiable; it should never be ignored or overridden (even via WP:IAR). Policy should be able to over-ride consensus. Guidelines can not override consensus; they can and should be freely ignored if they go against common sense. I'd have to trawl through my edit history to find it, but I can think of at least a couple of AFD's where the subject failed the letter of WP:BIO, but a very compelling case was made to keep the article regardless... and it was kept.--Isotope23 ^talk 17:11, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Note 1 does deal with policy and guidelines to a certain extent, perhaps somewhat superficially. I've never actually distinguished between the two myself until reading Martijn's comment yesterday (perhaps a reason why I've run into problems, and why I see my interpretation of rules as very rigid). Given my lack of knowledge and comprehension, could someone else draft, or modify what I've got regards the two? I am apparently very, very unqualified in this regard. WLU (talk) 18:46, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Taking your comment here as permission to be BOLD to make some grammar edits of my own to your very helpful newbie page. :) Aunt Entropy (talk) 19:12, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Certainly, but that's no excuse to not post in chronological order. Read more closely! POX! POX!!

I noted your improvements (and am quite embarassed to have mixed up your and you're), I'm very pleased to have further copyediting so have at thee. WLU (talk) 19:23, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

Grr..

Thanks for stealing my thunder man. I was just about to do that! WLU (talk) 00:01, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Too late! (ha!) Martijn Hoekstra (talk) 00:03, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Jimbo (with whom I am now bestest Cabal Buddy), has drawn upon his powers as Illustrious 37th-and-a-quarterth-degree-Grand Marshall to curse you. It's such a powerful curse, he actually lost one-quarter of a degree. Take that fhtagn! WLU (talk) 02:05, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

Any other contributions?

Does anyone have any suggestions for the essay? Have I missed anything? Is it too high or too low a level? Are there any incredibly useful tools I'm missing? Thanks to Martijn for the point about policies by the way, this demonstrates another flaw in my understanding - I myself didn't realize there was a difference between the two. And I may have similar flaws elsewhere. So feedback appreciated. WLU (talk) 14:08, 29 November 2007 (UTC)

From where I sit, you might want to reduce the use of shortcuts as link text. I think they're used far too much around here - "WP:RS" is just alphabet soup while "reliable sources" actually means something. Graham87 09:32, 7 February 2008 (UTC)

There's only a couple places that I noted on the re-read that use the TLA's a lot, but your point is taken. Thanks for the suggestion, there's value in having both methinks. WLU (talk) 17:04, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Done, though I think there's value in presenting the WP: forms because it's necessary to be familiar with them as they're omnipresent. I've tried to do both. WLU (talk) 17:25, 8 February 2008 (UTC)

Sounds good here. I agree that new editors will need to be familiar with the shortcut lingo because it is so widely used. Graham87 05:05, 9 February 2008 (UTC)

Stuff to add

For an idea about how not to approach and AFD debate, this was one I was involved in. Here's some don'ts:

1. Don't nominate something for deletion because you don't like the user who created the page
2. Don't treat it like a vote
3. Don't be sarcastic in your replies
4. Don't forget to have an explicit, bold typeface opinion on the deletion
5. Don't be a douchebag and treat it like a conversation
6. Don't forget to fully follow the AFD process
7. Don't forget to cite policy
8. Don't forget to use bullet points and sub-points
9. Don't feel like you have to keep your old votes. Change it and strike-through your old vote
10. If someone does change their vote, don't be a douchebag and kiss their ass
11. Don't forget to sign

Here is a good AFD (in my opinion). If you learn from my mistakes you won't have to look back and regret being an idiot a year later. WLU (talk) 21:54, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

good stuff

Very well done. I like your work, and added it to my links ;) Ched (talk) 20:09, 30 January 2009 (UTC)

One minor nitpick

Wikipedia's guideline help page discussing talk page indentation has become more complex since Talking to others point 8 was written (are we incapable of keeping anything simple??).

Awesome essay, though. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 13:36, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks, I do enjoy my own work. I didn't know about the TPG change - is it basically "always indent one space for subsequent comments" rather than "indent one colon or adopt a unique indent level"? I know the practice has changed, but I've been using conversation threading as my ref rather than the TPG.

Feel free to link and spam if you think it's worthwhile. WLU (t) (c) Wikipedia's rules:^simple/_complex 23:06, 17 June 2010 (UTC)

Heck, who knows. I've always liked the system where each participant in a thread sticks to a unique indentation level, like I'm doing here, but I see that's no longer mentioned in the Wikipedia:Talk page guidelines, or at Wikipedia:Talk page layout, or Wikipedia:Indentation, or Help:Using talk pages (good lord, has no-one else heard of instruction creep?) Anyway, I remember something in the signpost about a whole new system of using talk pages being in the pipeline, so I guess it's not worth getting too hung-up over. Adrian J. Hunter^{(talk•contribs)} 01:40, 18 June 2010 (UTC)

Gonzalez regimen

Gonzalez's treatment methods, which he's been using since 1987, are developed from unsubstantiated claims of former dentist William Donald Kelley and based on the belief that cancer is caused by inappropriate diet, pollution and stress. According to the National Cancer Institute, which co-sponsored with the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine a clinical trial on Gonzalez's treatments, current clinical data are "limited and inconclusive" regarding the efficacy of the Gonzalez Regimen as a treatment for cancer. Calling his approach the "Gonzalez Protocol/Regimen", it proposes as a treatment the use of oral pancreatic enzymes, large numbers of dietary supplements (up to 150 pills per day) and twice daily coffee enemas. Like Kelley, Gonzalez's treatment method has been rejected by mainstream practitioners and researchers, and Gonzalez himself has been called a quack and fraud by other doctors and health fraud watchdog groups. In 1994 he was reprimanded and placed on two years' probation by the New York state medical board for "departing from accepted practice". Forced to submit to psychological examinations and undergo retraining, Gonzalez was given two years of probation with a stipulation that he undergo retraining and do 200 hours of community service, which he completed satisfactorily. He is currently fully licensed to practice in New York.

Legal cases

Gonzalez has lost two malpractice lawsuits. In 1997, a New York court found Gonzalez "negligent" for his cancer treatment; according to news reports, Gonzalez "had to pay $2.5 million in damages to a patient he wrongly claimed to have cured" of cancer. The former patient had been diagnosed with uterine cancer but "Gonzalez discouraged her from following through on her cancer specialist's advice, instead recommending dietary supplements and frequent coffee enemas". The patient had refused both standard treatment and an experimental protocol, but after the cancer spread to her spine, she discontinued Gonzalez's treatment and received chemotherapy and external beam radiation. Sometime in this period, she began having problems with her eyesight, back and hip, and she eventually became blind. In 2000, Gonzalez was found partly liable (49%) in the death of a patient with Hodgkin's disease and ordered to pay $282,000 in damages, due to his use of an unproven cancer screening method instead of standard cancer testing.

In August 2009 the regimen was reported to be ineffective compared to chemotherapy; in fact, patients receiving the Gonzalez protocol did worse than patients on conventional chemotherapy, dying three times faster than those receiving conventional chemotherapy and reporting significantly worse quality of life.

The American Cancer Society notes that there is "no convincing scientific evidence that [the Gonzalez treatment] is effective in treating cancer" and that some portions of the treatment may be harmful. A review article from the Journal of Clinical Gastroenterology is cited that notes the clinical efficacy of coffee enemas has not been proven and the therapy is associated with severe adverse effects previously described in a few case reports. Gonzalez's study published in Nutrition and Cancer in 1999 was criticized by an expert in integrative oncology research methods for its small sample size, selection bias, and failure to account for confounds.

Support for research efforts

Gonzalez "has never explicitly rejected the more orthodox precepts of his profession", insisting that he wants his research evaluated by independent scientists.

Research supporting Gonzalez's treatment methods—performed with the help of Dr. Ernst Wynder, funded by Nestle, and supported by Procter & Gamble—was published in 1999 in the peer-reviewed journal Nutrition and Cancer. The study measured survival rates for 11 patients with pancreatic cancer. In the study, patients on the Gonzalez's regimen lived an average of 17.5 months, approximately three times longer than patients treated with chemotherapy. The study was too small for definitive conclusions to be drawn, but was of enough interest to the National Cancer Institute that they provided funds for a larger study. A 2004 study using pancreatic enzymes in a mouse model of pancreatic cancer showed positive results. Gonzalez claims that this treatment was the first therapy that ever yielded positive results in the model used.

A randomized phase III clinical trial for the possible treatment of pancreatic cancer with the Gonzalez Regimen was funded by a $1.4 million grant from the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine, and co-sponsored by the National Cancer Institute, awarded in 1999 to Columbia University's Rosenthal Center for Alternative Medicine. The trial was designed to compare the efficacy of pancreatic enzyme therapy plus specialized diet with gemcitabine for stage II, stage III, or stage IV pancreatic cancer. However, the study had difficulty attracting patients, and most eligible patients refused random assignment, so the trial was changed in 2001 to a controlled, observational study. The study closed early to new enrollment in October 2005. The results of the study showed that patients undergoing conventional gemcitabine-based chemotherapy lived three times longer and had better quality of life scores and lower pain scores than those undergoing the Gonzalez Regimen and those receiving the pancreatic enzyme therapy had a shorter median survival than patients with similarly staged pancreatic cancer. The results demonstrated that the Gonzalez Regimen was significantly worse for cancer patients than conventional treatment. An accompanying editorial criticizes the trial design, stating: "Can it be concluded that their study proves that enzyme therapy is markedly inferior? On the basis of the study design, my answer is no. It is not possible to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear. Given the scarcity of resources for cancer research, there are many more important questions to address."

This trial had been criticized for its implausible and unsupported theoretical model of cancer development which bears no resemblance to the scientific understanding of neoplasia, and because of Dr. Gonzalez's history of malpractice.