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Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Coeliac disease

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted 16:41, 26 March 2007.

Coeliac disease

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Previously nominated 2005-10-08 (old nom). Over the last few months there's been a lot of work on this article, initially from myself but later with the help of Samir and Pdeitiker, amongst others. It now has a lot of supporting content, bags of references, and is fairly well organised. When I'd one a lot of editing, I asked for external expert review by Prof Paul Ciclitira of King's College, London (the author of the UK guidelines on the disease and also principal contributor to the American/AGA guidelines); it was reviewed by one of his researchers and found to be in good form. I think it's ready for featured status. JFW | T@lk 23:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]

  • Support from nominator. JFW | T@lk 23:28, 6 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment Appears excellent, after a cursory look (I will read it more thoroughly later). I am, however, slightly troubled by the seven unsourced statements I counted (tagged with {{fact}}). I'd also like to see more of the redlinks go, such as avenin, zonulin, radiation enteritis (is that a distinct entity? If so we should have an article on it :) and prolyl endopeptidase, even if just stubs. The prose in the third paragraph of the "Genetics" subsection could also use a bit of polishing IMHO. Fvasconcellos 00:02, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • Most of those articles are on subjects I personally don't know a lot about. I'll have a look at the genetics bit. Generally, this tends to be technical stuff that is exceptionally hard to explain in layperson's terms. JFW | T@lk 01:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
      • Thank you for the quick stubs, you don't have to create them yourself if you're not familiar! I'm more concerned about the unsourced statements, and I get that the Genetics bit is difficult to explain—it's not bad at all, I just felt it could be better. :) Fvasconcellos 02:22, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    •  Done Stubs were easy. I'd just been lazy. Any help with the unsourced statements and the genetics stuff is appreciated. JFW | T@lk 02:29, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment - it's a great article, congrat for the writers. Only some suggestions:
  • Comment It is a very comprehensive article, and well referenced. It is, however, a bit dry to read. There's a lot of detail but perhaps not enough sentences that summarise or conclude. So the reader has to work hard to extract the information and may miss things. Some of the "Blood tests" section may be too detailed for a general reader. The 2nd bullet-point in particular is eye-glazing and overlong. The "Pathophysiology" section is tough going and may put readers off reading the later sections, which are easier and important (could it be moved). It would be helpful to have an intro paragraph in "Genetics" for the lay reader that avoids the long strings of letter/number codes, which just make you want to skim. I suspect the information in the third paragraph is beyond and of little interest to those without specialist medical genetics training – and therefore should be greatly simplified and/or some detail dropped. Most readers won't persevere with this section and so come away with nothing, whereas I'm sure there are many points they could grasp. Some of the linked refs (and eMedicine articles) are easier to read in places, despite being aimed at professionals. Perhaps a copyeditor can make the language more engaging and expand the audience. Colin°Talk 23:30, 7 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    1. Your help is appreciated. Perhaps you could identify the worst examples of dry prose and lack of summary. It always remains hard to gauge exactly how much we can expect from the general readership.
      The driest prose is generally found where bullet-point-lists are used rather than paragraphs, and where there are single-sentence paragraphs. It reaches PowerPoint terseness occasionally. For example: "Miscarriage and infertility", which isn't a sentence. This teases the reader with a hint of information but is unsatisfying. I'd want to know how common and serious those problems are, and whether they go away on the diet. I think almost all of these bullet lists could be changed to prose (an exception is the Marsh classification, which is an ordered list). Merely eliding the bullets to form one paragraph won't fix it, though. The style needs to change from just listing facts.
      An example of inadequate summary is Diagnosis. It currently says "There are several tests that can be used to assist diagnosis." This is too vague. From reading the whole article, and some of the refs, there are some main points to get across:
      • Blood tests are cheap, easy, sensitive and specific. This is often done first (I haven't manage to find why the "order of the tests" might be different. Perhaps if there is little doubt, it is only required for establishing baseline levels).
      • A small intestinal biopsy is widely considered mandatory to confirm the diagnosis. (Clearly this is an unpleasant procedure)
      • There are several blood tests. More than one kind may be required. Older tests were not as reliable.
      • The tests must be done while the person is on a gluten diet (as currently noted).
      • Both the blood tests and the biopsy may be repeated after starting the GFD to confirm its effect.
      (If I've got some of those wrong, it is not important for this discussion.) I think it would help to look at each section (e.g. Genetics) and consider what key points you want to get across. Explain these points, rather than expecting the reader to collate and weigh the individual micro-facts. Colin°Talk 17:26, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    2. Most of the serology content is not adequately sourced. I will work on this. That will also be a good opportunity to make the prose more digestable.
      Follow-up: I've emailed Dr Dieterich, first author of the study that identified tTG as epitope. She recommended PMID 12959764, of which I will order the fulltext as soon as possible. JFW | T@lk 21:00, 10 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    3. Pathophysiology should remain where it is. I agree the genetics material is technical (Pdeitiker seems to have a research interest here), but the "treatment" section makes no sense without it. JFW | T@lk 01:01, 8 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • Comment. I see a lot of work still needed, some which can be guided by WP:MEDMOS (for example, there's no prognosis section). Some of the sections are unnecessarily inaccessible to laypersons. Attention to Wikilinking is needed (the first I noticed was IgG—the first occurrence isn't linked, although it is linked later). An independent copyedit may help; for example, the and clause doesn't flow well here in the lead—Symptoms may include diarrhoea, failure to thrive (in children) and fatigue, but these may be absent and associated symptoms in all other organ systems have been described.) It would be helpful if a section heading other than "Miscellaneous" could be found. Prose problems in this sentence: However, the variety of gastrointestinal symptoms that may be present in patients with coeliac disease is great, and even constipation is seen, in some series comprising up to a third of patients. Several sections are listy and could be converted to prose. > could be replaced with greater than. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 04:39, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    • I'd appreciate some help in putting through relatively simple fixes (wording, stylistic, links). I could prosaify lists only if the items were conceptually related. At the moment the lists are not in the majority and I feel no changes should be made. I have revised the constipation sentence because I was unable to source it. JFW | T@lk 16:40, 15 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
    •  Done Most recommendations adopted. I wish to defend the use of "miscelaneous"; the article states quite clearly that these symptoms have an unclear causative relationship with villous atrophy. JFW | T@lk 00:02, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • One more comment I've had another read, and the article has improved quite a bit—I especially like the complete absence of {{fact}} tags :). I would have no problem supporting it, if it weren't for the "Genetics" section, which is still cumbersome and makes for very dry, "clinical" (obviously, no pun intended) reading. I realize there's probably not much that can be done about this, but I'd like to see someone have a go at it. Fvasconcellos 15:39, 16 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
  • OK, looking better. There is still room for improvement in the "Genetics" section in my humble opinion, but the prose is cleaner, and the section is (to me at least) entirely comprehensible, although I don't know how it would read to someone with no biomedical "background" whatsoever. "Tissue transglutaminase" could also use some more wikification. I like the recent fleshing out of "History", by the way, and am leaning ever closer to a Support :) Fvasconcellos 22:56, 21 March 2007 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.
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