Misplaced Pages

Revision as of 22:47, 15 October 2009

Jehochman (proud father of a 8lb 9oz boy newbie) is taking a short wikibreak and will be back on Misplaced Pages soon.

This is Jehochman's talk page, where you can send him messages and comments.

Put new text under old text. Click here to start a new topic. New to Misplaced Pages? Welcome! Learn to edit; get help. Assume good faith Be polite and avoid personal attacks Be welcoming to newcomers Seek dispute resolution if needed

Archives: Index, Index, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24Auto-archiving period: 7 days

Please leave a new message. I generally prefer to keep conversations on the page where they start. Please follow Strunk & White's advice, "Omit needless words!" Unblocks: If I block a user, any administrator is free to refactor the block unless I have specifically requested contacting me first. I may remove comments posted here if no response is needed, or if I respond elsewhere.

Congratulations

Congrats! Majorly talk 01:03, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Indeed; congrats and best of luck. –Juliancolton |  01:08, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations! Until It Sleeps 01:19, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Major congrats! Anti-Nationalist (talk) 02:30, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

I think you get a week of paternity leave. It's in the admin contract. See you back here soon. :P MastCell  02:48, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations! Take as much time as you can with your new addition because the years go by fast. The little tyke will be borrowing your credit card and staying out past curfew before you know it. Short Brigade Harvester Boris (talk) 03:09, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Excellent news, congratulations! Now focus on fun with the family, as Boris wisely says. Time flies! . . dave souza, talk 08:48, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Thank you, all! Jehochman 14:04, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations! 8lb 9oz is a big little guy. All the best to the mom. Finell (Talk) 17:44, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Yes, he's a moose. Jehochman 17:46, 10 October 2009 (UTC)

Big time congratulations! All the best, nothing in the world compares -...Modernist (talk) 22:43, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations! Life will never be the same :) Kafka Liz (talk) 23:10, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

You're in for some fun times. Good luck. :) Lәo_(βǃʘʘɱ) 23:19, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Congratulations from me too. You will be very familar with nappies in the next months, perhalps too familiar. Good luck with it! Ceoil (talk) 00:06, 12 October 2009 (UTC)

(Outdent) Wonderful new, enjoy! I wish you and your family the best in everything. --CrohnieGal 15:53, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

All the best Verbal chat 16:04, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

2009 flu pandemic

Em, congratulations! Please move the following text to the article talk or elsewhere if you think appropriate.

You asked SandyGeorgia for some advice on going to FAC. I've not (yet) written any medical FAs but I'm working on it, and I've reviewed quite a few. I've really struggled with this article because it is unlike any medical article I've read. There are sections that are plain disease-article sections but half of it is current affairs, historical analysis and what-we-think-we-know information. I'll start with some comments on the sources.

The sources include some medical journals but mostly newspapers, CDC reports, WHO press releases and news-wire reports. WP:MEDRS doesn't recommend newspapers for medical facts. In order to meet FAC's "professional standards of ... sourcing", I think the medical facts about influenza (characteristics, symptoms and severity, vaccination, treatment, epidemiology, historical pandemics) should be sourced per WP:MEDRS to professional medical journals and books. The CDC/WHO reports can be considered primary sources on the state of scientific knowledge/advice about pandemic influenza as it happened. Newspapers shouldn't be used if they are just covering the same ground as the official reports, but sometimes they are useful for interviews or government statements not otherwise published. Most of the newspapers look to be quality broadsheets, but I see some local newspapers, FOX News and some TV video clips being used.

Some of the sources will date quickly. For example, the sources of virus characteristics date from May 2009. Some just seem inappropriate. We have the CEO of Smithfield Foods being cited for the "Origin is unknown" statement. I see one blog (virology.blog). Some of the sources aren't static. The "Swine flu latest" on www.nhs.uk is continually updated. The WHO Situation Updates webpage is really just a contents page to a series of weekly updates.

At times the article reads a bit like a US government fact sheet. There's a lot of "the CDC recommends this", "the CDC estimates that", "the CDC reports that". As a UK reader, it leaves me alienated, thinking this is a US article. Is this style encyclopaedic? Sometimes, it is necessary to document what officials said at the time, but other times we should just state facts as facts. For example, in the Virus Characteristics section, why do we say "A study at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, published in May 2009, found " and later "In July 2009, the CDC noted that most infections were ..." Surely an encyclopaedia would just state the virus characteristics, without attributing the research in the body text or dating it?

Back to the FA considerations. I'm not sure that pushing this to FA is either possible or desirable. That's just my current impression and I'm willing to listen to objections. With sourcing, for example, there's a jump between what is acceptable for WP:V and what is considered "professional" for FA. This is the very essence of an article where everyone thinks they can add something. It needs to be bang-up-to-date so can't hang around for some review in the Lancet. This continual insertion of updates means it is more a collection of information, grouped by section, than an article that has been planned and flows through a story. The multi-author aspect is what is great about WP but too many cooks can spoil an FA. If this were to achieve FA, I'd worry that folk would be so determined to maintain the high standards, that new information was rejected because the sourcing was mediocre, it wasn't great prose or that it was tacked on the end of some unrelated paragraph. Perhaps there are some current-affairs FAs that prove me wrong here? I suspect that to maintain FA standards, the article would need a full time WikiDoc with access to the latest information in the BMJ, NEJM, Lancet and other journals.

A quick search on PubMed found the following articles which may be useful. These are just from the first few pages of results going back to September. There are pages and pages of relevant results that could be mined. I haven't looked at the full-text of these articles -- just the PubMed listing.

Sorry this is a bit rambling and negative. I actually think this is a good article and an good example of WP editors working to report a current topic well. I'm just not sure that FA is the appropriate destination. Colin° 21:35, 13 October 2009 (UTC)

• Scalera NM, Mossad SB. The first Pandemic of the 21st Century: A Review of the 2009 Pandemic Variant Influenza A (H1N1) Virus. Postgrad Med. 2009 Sep;121(5):43-47. PMID 19820273.
• Armstrong C. CDC Releases Guidelines on H1N1 Vaccination and Prevention of Seasonal Influenza. Am Fam Physician. 2009 Oct 1;80(7):744. PMID 19817344.
• Keogh-Brown MR, Wren-Lewis S, Edmunds WJ, Beutels P, Smith RD. The possible macroeconomic impact on the UK of an influenza pandemic. Health Econ. 2009 Oct 8. PMID 19816886.
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Update on Influenza A (H1N1) 2009 Monovalent Vaccines. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2009 Oct 9;58(39):1100-1. PMID 19816398.
• Thompson WW, Moore MR, Weintraub E, Cheng PY, Jin X, Bridges CB, Bresee JS, Shay DK. Estimating influenza-associated deaths in the United States. Am J Public Health. 2009 Oct;99 Suppl 2:S225-30. PMID 19797736.
• Gordon SM. Update on 2009 pandemic influenza A (H1N1) virus. Cleve Clin J Med. 2009 Oct;76(10):577-82. PMID 19797457.
• Peiris JS, Tu WW, Yen HL. A novel H1N1 virus causes the first pandemic of the 21(st) Century. Eur J Immunol. 2009 Sep 29. PMID 19790188.
• Pratt RJ. The global swine flu pandemic 1: exploring the background to influenza viruses. Nurs Times. 2009 Sep 1-7;105(34):18-21. PMID 19788110.
• Cordova-Villalobos JA, Sarti E, Arzoz-Padres J, Manuell-Lee G, Romero J, Kuri-Morales PA. The influenza A(H1N1) epidemic in Mexico. Lessons learned. Health Res Policy Syst. 2009 Sep 28;7(1):21. PMID 19785747.
• Kieny MP. WHO supports fair access to influenza A (H1N1) vaccine. Bull World Health Organ. 2009 Sep;87(9):653-4. PMID 19784443.
• Wise J. Children are likely to need two doses of swine flu vaccine. BMJ. 2009 Sep 25;339:b3969. doi: 10.1136/bmj.b3969. PMID 19783577.

Thank you so much. Due to events identified above, I am going to be taking a break, just popping in occasionally for a little maintenance, but nothing too heavy. Perhaps when I have more time the pandemic will be history, and then we can get it up to FA. Your advice makes good sense. Best regards, Jehochman 02:56, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Congrats

Nice job with your new little one. I hope you and your family have a happy and healthy future ahead! Today better then yesterday tomorrow better then today! Hell In A Bucket (talk) 15:37, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Babies are fun (and sleep-depriving)! Good luck with your little one :) Karanacs (talk) 16:06, 14 October 2009 (UTC)

Search Analytics

Thoughts on the page Search Analytics. Not sure what to make of it. Spam? Could be nothing. New pages in this subject matter bring out the skeptic in me. ;) thanks--Hu12 (talk) 18:05, 15 October 2009 (UTC)

Speed of light

I see you've been sucked into the SoL morass, or at least commented on it. There is a lot of confusion there. I don't think it is really so complex: I've just said which attempts to explain what I think is going on.

You said: (14:00, 21 September 2009 measuring the speed of light with a meter stick is a tautology - no, it isn't (well not really), and several people seem to have made this mistake. Hopefully makes it clear, but to belabour it in this context: once you've defined the speed of light, you can measure the metre. If you define the metre, you can measure the speed of light (assuming you know the second, in both cases).

You said: Would it not make sense to add one sentence to speed of light to indicate that as of 1983, the speed of light is known so accurately, and believe to be so invariant (in a vacuum, in an inertial frame) that is it use to define the length of a meter? - that is what I thought. I've done it , maybe it will last.

DT said: I had such a hard job trying to persuade some people on the talk page that the new SI speed of light was in fact a tautology. And it is surely a tautology. He is wrong. But I don't think anyone has made a very good ob of pointing out why (before me, of course :-).

DT is fond of quoting One then does not need to perform any experiment to prove the constancy of the speed of light: it is built into the definition of the units and so has become a tautology. Note that this is *not* the same thing as DT is saying above: this quote does *not* ssay that the definition is a tautology: it says that saying the SoL is constant is a tautology. That is true, but uninteresting, in the same way as saying that the metre was constant before was a tautology.

William M. Connolley (talk) 22:46, 15 October 2009 (UTC)