User talk:ZayZayEM/Proposal:Distinguish disease from infectious organisms

This would be best proposed at WT:MEDMOS. In general principiles and description seem good. However for very short stubs of articles might be best to have single article covering both, which is then split as soon as expands into a "start" of an article (if nothing else the disease article more likely get nominated for deletion if sparse of anything and likewise the microbiological article if lacks the human clinical significance)... so perhaps wording of "in general... " gives the nudge of a guideline, but without enforcement of a policy that might be felt to override an editor's better specific-case judgement. David Ruben ^Talk 13:18, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Relevant:Wikipedia_talk:MEDMOS#The_pathogen_vs._the_disease (Thank you David, I knew someone would direct me somewhere that specifically dealt with this.--ZayZayEM (talk) 00:04, 30 October 2008 (UTC)

• Hesitant but excited support. I love this idea. For example, if I wanted to read about Lyme disease, I would look up Lyme disease, not deer tick. Perhaps the best way to go about this is to list a section that displays one or more links to the most common diseases/infections/conditions caused by the organism and vice versa with links to its most common carriers. The only reason I'm hesitant is because I'm standing in quicksand right now after having created a mess attempting to execute a project, and I see a bit of resistance coming from others about this topic. Good luck with this! Bob the Wikipedian ^{(talk • contribs)} 06:45, 8 January 2009 (UTC)

Plant Pathology

Do you think this also counts for plant pathology? Million_Moments (talk) 15:26, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure there. I'm not very good with my botanical things. But I think the principle is still the same. A disease is not an organism. The two concepts need to have capacity to be described and classified in different terms. Doing this on one page can be confusing.--ZayZayEM (talk) 23:08, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

It also would apply to animal (ie. non-human animals) pathology.--ZayZayEM (talk) 23:55, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Opposed

I am opposed to a dictum on this; it depends on the aetiological agent. For some, separate articles make sense, but for many other articles it will create much overlapping text. I think we have to consider each disease/organism article(s) carefully to decide whether one or two articles are best for our readers. I prefer articles that give the full picture and particularly ones that put the more esoteric stuff at the end. But, WhatamIdoing has my support in saying, there are times when a unified article makes the most sense, and times when a split makes the most sense. Graham. Graham Colm ^Talk 22:01, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Could you give me an example where you feel two seperate articles would not be necessary. I came up with this idea while working on Ross River fever and Ross River virus. I thought a rare isolated not-well studied disease/virus like this would be an ultimate candidate for "it only needs one article". But when the article is combined it becomes unclear and confusing. Two different classification schemes are applied to two separate but related concepts - and then as the body grows, it becomes hard to distinguish which one is actually under discussion.--ZayZayEM (talk) 23:11, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Rotavirus. --Una Smith (talk) 23:16, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This article appears divide in two. First it mostly describes the disease, rotaviral gastroenteritis, and then at the end, the "Virology" section describes rotavirus itself. The "Virology" is already broken into sub-sections. Even with Summary style a seperate article would be eventual. My proposed guideline I suppose is a way of pre-empting that, and having clearer guidelines on how to set up your original article. Could you explain further why two articles not be appropriate in this instance?--ZayZayEM (talk) 23:47, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

Feature Creep

Taken from Wikipedia Talk:WikiProject Medicine:

It is feature creep. --Una Smith (talk) 23:15, 29 October 2008 (UTC)

This I can understand as the biggest barrier. I want to avoid this as much as possible. I would prefer it to be more of a summary of existing guidelines between WP:MEDMOS, WP:TOL's naming conventions, and Summary style. I want to introduce as few *new* concepts as possible.--ZayZayEM (talk) 23:53, 29 October 2008 (UTC)