Wikipedia:Transcluded content/Let's get rid of the NHL

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[edit] Let's get rid of NHL

Quick opinion survey. How many here would support the downgrading/demotion of the "non-Hodgkin lymphoma" concept and nomenclature, limiting it to paragraphs discussing the Working Formulation? This implies shortening the long, obsolete but surprisingly active Non-Hodgkin lymphoma article, redirecting the readers to Lymphoma. Your opinion? (please be clear)

• I agree to downgrade the NHL concept, limiting it to historical discussions. Emmanuelm (talk) 17:30, 14 April 2008 (UTC)
• Weak disagreement. Average readers use NHL. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)
• Disagree. I entirely sympathise with Emmanuelm's point, but WhatamIdoing is correct: virtually everyone uses NHL as a term, and it will be confusing to get rid of this. Using the same logic, one would get rid of "Cancer" as a single page. Better to keep the collective NHL page and educate from within.Jellytussle (talk) 21:19, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] comments

Please read my straw-poll vote as very weak disagreement, based entirely on the notion that Wikipedia reflects the world instead of leading it. Actually, Emmanuelm, the world's bad habit of talking about "NHL" as if it were a single disease is one of my pet peeves. You are entirely in the right of it. However, I think we need to reform the world before we change Wikipedia.

Having said that, if you want to (for example) substitute more precise language here and there, and if it "just happens" that the term NHL gets removed in the process, then I will support that effort. For example, I see no reason why ==Diagnosis, etiology, staging, prognosis, and treatment== couldn't point to more than two pages. I also see no reason why any information that is in the NHL page but is specific to (for example) T cell lymphomas couldn't be moved to the relevant article, even if that process happens to shorten the NHL article. (I favor moving the information to specific types of lymphomas instead of trying to unify it here: surely if you have Diffuse large B cell lymphoma, then you don't much care about the prognosis for "lymphomas in general" any more than you care about "lymphomas in general, except for Hodgkins".)

If, several years from now, NHL ends up as a redirect to Lymphoma, then you will get no complaint from me. However, if we do this now, and especially if we do this all at once, then (given the state of the world's stubborn and underinformed use of NHL) I think we'll have a whole lot of people unhappy with us. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:44, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

WIAD, you are right but you are also forgetting the primary function of an encyclopedia, including WP, which is to educate. Emmanuelm (talk) 12:57, 18 April 2008 (UTC)

JellyTussle, currently the article states under "Causes": Age/sex. The likelihood of getting non-Hodgkin's lymphoma increases with age. Burkitt's lymphoma is NHL; need I say more? As it stands, the article is misleading and it is our responsibility to correct this. Emmanuelm (talk) 14:09, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

I think that NHL needs to discuss only the fact that lymphomas were previously divided between Hodgkin's and NHL on the basis of histological features (Reed-Sternberg cells). Now that immunohistochemistry allows us to subtype cells to a great level of detail, the old classification is not only unnecessary but also mixes high- and low-grade diseases with utterly different epidemiologies, risk factors and prognoses. JFW | T@lk 21:31, 11 May 2008 (UTC)