User talk:Ward20

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[edit] Bloated Morgellons

I think the edits you are making to Morgellons are bloating the article, and making it very difficult to read. While the edits themselves might make sense individually, the cumulative effect is to create a mishmash of disconnected statements and quotes.

I almost feel it's such a mess that it might be better to start over, and follow the guidelines of Wikipedia:How_to_write_a_great_article. However that's obviously not acceptable. The best approach is to gradually refine the article over time, in a collaborative manner, focusing on Wikipedia:NPOV, representing views fairly, proportionately and without bias.

The goal should be to make the subject accessible to a first time reader in a clear manner. The goal is not to persuade the reader of one viewpoint or another. Where facts are in dispute, we should report those facts plainly. Where they are in dispute, we should explain the nature of the dispute, who the various parties in the dispute are, and what the various viewpoints are. The point is to describe the situation from a neutral point of view.

I urge you to take a step back, read some other articles, and then come back and read the Morgellons article from a fresh perspective.

Herd of Swine 20:47, 2 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Morgellons

I added that the article needed attention because of the neutrality tag on the article itself. It's kind of a standard procedure to tag any article that has a tag like that on it so that, with luck, the article can get the attention it needs to get the tag removed. I realize that many of the Rational Skepticism articles will have such tags, but haven't yet learned to not add the "attention" tag in all such cases. John Carter 17:43, 12 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Morgellons

Some people would say your prior version of the article wasn't NPOV you know.:) It still isn't now, IMHO, but I'm glad you've summarised the introduction a bit, I still think you could summarise the CDC statement listing the symptoms a bit, maybe get it down to a sentence or two. And if you want the Mayo quote then fine, I just thought it was long winded, plus it is only one source, so it's undue weight to rely on it alone for medical professional's views. I'm sure you care deeply about this article and I'm glad you've kept the lead summarised a bit. But please remember no-one owns an article on wikipedia.Merkinsmum 12:03, 26 July 2007 (UTC)

replies to your message:

The Mayo clinic "All statements are reviewed by our experts for medical accuracy. Before producing this health topic, the product development team collected and reacted to ideas over a period of multiple months using a number of sources."

-But there's plenty of peer-reviewed journals, I think they probably have articles on this, which are reviewed by different articles, not just one facility. I suspect the Mayo clinic might be more pro-alternative medicine/currently unrecognised theories than some doctors- but I could be wrong.:)

"I also see how a few editors have taken liberties with this article."

Yes but compared to other articles, look how few contributors have contributed, and once they do, they don't often come back. I expect because you 'jump on' them on the article, its talkpage, or their talkpage. Also, no other editors can get a word in, you have edited the article probably hundreds of times. Neutral Point of View comes from lots of different editors contributing.

" Wikipedia must be right concerning living persons. This article affects tens of thousands of living persons."

Yes but it's not a BLP article, as no specific sufferers are mentioned, unless it's the mum of the family. I do feel for those with morgellons (though most of the people who've registered, have completely forgotten they did so.) I feel for the sufferers, because I wish they were getting the psychiatric help they need. That's not an insult, and I don't mean it as such, but as a statement of fact/prevailing opinion.

The questions:

1) You wrote, "Most scientists and medical professionals do not see Morgellons as a separate new condition, but a psychiatric one which is usually referred to as Delusions of Parasitosis(DP)." Why did you believe this and do you still have that position?

-Why wouldn't I still hold it? I believe it due to common sense/everything I've read that is by doctors and psychologists who aren't personally known to be fans of alternative medicine/similar theories.

Why do you believe in morgellons? If you believe you have it, have you seen a general practitioner in medicine who wasn't already a believer in alternative medicine, Multiple Chemical Sensitivity and so forth, and got them to examine you, and if so what did they say? Have you seen a psychiatrist/psychologist in the mainstream and got them to look at your symptoms? If not, why not?:)

2) You wrote, "other areas have thoroughly investigated Morgellons and found it to be identical to DP." Same question as above.

Oh I meant the bit in the article "In February 2005, a report on a Fox affiliate in Duval County, Florida, prompted the Duval County Health Department (DCHD) to investigate. Their report concluded:

"An in-depth literature search was initiated and a bibliography is attached for reference; it was determined after extensive reviewing of these articles that Morgellons Disease is synonymous with delusional parasitosis (CDC, 1999). DCHD Epidemiology consulted a pediatric dermatologist within the health department for his professional opinion. It was concluded that this is a psychological condition that has been mentioned in literature for hundreds of years. Additionally, further investigation would be very costly to perform skin scrapings and laboratory testing."[28]

The DCHD report noted there was a significant spike in reported cases after the news report." -(see my comment further down for my views on the telly coverage)

Now I suppose you will say the area above didn't actually bother running a study on morgellons, but from saying they reviewed the articles it looks like they performed a meta-review.

You can tell by the CDC not doing anything about for years about starting the actual fieldwork of their investigation, that they don't think it is infectious/serious, or they would have moved fast.

One might think the CDC report (when they get round to it) will be conclusive, but when it concludes that Morgellons believers have minor skin diseases such as exzema combined with psychosomatic symptoms, the believers will just say it wasn't conducted properly or something like that, and hold on to those few affirmative comments by doctors who already believe in similar theories/illnesses.

3) Why do you write as if you don't like the MRF?

I just don't want the article to be an advert for the MRF. The numbers of self-regs mentioned, in the first sentence of the article, and a link to the self-reg page in the reference section, seems a bit promotional.

I also think that the MRF have fostered this belief by their self-publicising/media stuff about the disease. Hence the spike in people reporting they have it, following it being on telly.

I think the MRF have effectively created the disease, the mum admits she revived the name, started publicising it, etc. She just wouldn't accept a trained doctor telling her what her son had, eczema.

I think they're spreading a disturbing, neurotic belief that is actually what's making people ill, plus it's stopping people getting help for their real problems, which are psychiatric/psychological.

This was in the BBC news articles the other day, I think it's relevant to Morgellons and similar beliefs [1] it's effectively a study that's proven that people can believe things, such as that they are ill/allergic etc, and it can destroy their lives and make them physically ill. Their pain is real, but it's their belief that caused it, no real allergy. I think MRF are spreading a belief which is like this, when combined with people's existing problems/vulnerabilities. Hope this helps. Merkinsmum 23:10, 27 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Enigmatode

I moved your nonsense tag of this to the main article page, which is where these tags go, unless you come across a talk page that doesn't have a matching article page. I did not delete it because it's technical in an area I know nothing about and it's not patent nonsense in the way one I deleted yesterday was that said so-and-so was born with a radio attached to their head.Rlevse 11:56, 19 August 2007 (UTC)

Assuming this isn't patent nonsense and has at least some plausibility of truth, create a section in the Morgellons article, perhaps a paragraph that summarizes it and at the end put a citation needed tag, which you do by typing the word "fact" inside two curly braces.Rlevse 13:10, 19 August 2007 (UTC)
you may be interested in this. See Wikipedia:Redirects_for_discussion#Enigmatode_.E2.86.92_MorgellonsRlevse 01:13, 23 August 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Using a navbox

Having your own personal navbox is a-okay. I took the liberty of editing it to remove the link that was causing your user page to be listed in the category for medical navigation boxes. --Una Smith 19:14, 11 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] MRF

Sorry Ward20, there are two "Ward"s on the MRF board members page, so I just assumed you were one of them. My apologies. Herd of Swine 15:22, 12 September 2007 (UTC)

[edit] received your note

No worries - I didn't take it personally when my edit was undone; I've replied further on the article talk page. All is cool - thanks for your positive note and explanation. --Jack-A-Roe 08:33, 2 December 2007 (UTC)

  • RE: Kutter and Yancy's Fancy: I occasionally buy cheese at Kutter's and was unaware of the buy-out until I saw the article. I had wondered why the other brand was on the shelf there, but, since it had a higher price, I always continued to buy Kutter's. My only contribution to the article was to insert the address. I passed the place yesterday, and it still says Kutter's. Feel free to elaborate on this article. In the past, I noticed that Kutter's operation was cited as environmentally friendly, and they have helped set up cheese operations in other countries. Stepp-Wulf (talk) 02:44, 27 December 2007 (UTC).
    • The article regarding environmental practices appeared years ago, it might have been in "Audubon" magazine, can't recall. The Ext Link has some material. If you are from the area, maybe you can beef up some of the articles, particularly Indian Falls. The Akron and Newstead articles are continually subject to stupid vandalism, Good Luck.Stepp-Wulf (talk) 03:38, 28 December 2007 (UTC).

[edit] CFS

Thank you for your efforts to bring some neutrality to a very POV editors changes of recent times. At a time when it has been very noticable that there has been the lack of neutral support from other primary editors. Unfortunately over the recent period my access to the internet/Wiki/CFS has been frustratingly intermittent due to monsoon weather patterns and disruptive weather. I have still learnt from you and hope you will return to edit more regularily on the CFS article. Regards Jagra (talk) 02:58, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Abiogenesis

I am also in an intense discussion on the Abiogenesis talk page if you want to contribute to that.--JEF (talk) 04:13, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Dark Energy

I wasn't looking for help with the content knowledge. There are two sentences on Christian's opinion of Dark Energy that I attempted to put on there and that was removed and probably won't ever be included, and the headings, paragraphing, and overall organization is something else you can comment about on the talk page.--JEF (talk) 15:36, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Float upstream

Yup.[2] Raymond Arritt (talk) 04:48, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

You did an amazing job on that. Well done.Ward20 (talk) 04:50, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Gone quackers

This really quacked me up! Dreadstar † 09:15, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

I sometimes have my moments. If you can use any part of it fine, if not revert it.Ward20 (talk) 09:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Orthomolecular medicine lead

Hi there, thanks for the edits, I reworded the second part slightly to emphasise that the word "Myth" was the word chosen by the AMA, rather than any editorialising in the lead. Other than that I think your change is great. Tim Vickers (talk) 19:50, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Fringe

Yeah, I told him he was right, on both counts. I'll leave it to you, as I don't want to edit war with him, tho he seems to be wrong about the template. But I've been wrong before tonight (: Look forward to hearing your thoughts on the possible contradictions. ——Martinphi ☎ Ψ Φ—— 02:07, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Vereniging Basisinkomen

Hi Ward, I'd like to see you comment at Vereniging Basisinkomen. Since I have a COI, there is not much more that I can do there, and I would hate to see a good article go because a user dislikes me. Guido den Broeder (talk) 12:53, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

You get another chance, see: [3]. Apparently this user was not satisfied with the outcome. Guido den Broeder (talk) 13:39, 30 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Wikipedia:Requests for comment/TheNautilus

I'd appreciate your input on this, since you are familiar with this user. Tim Vickers (talk) 22:20, 21 May 2008 (UTC)