Doc James

Archive 1 Please check out our medical translation project here [1]. We would love to have your help. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:11, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Creating medical content in simple English

Thank you for your announcement on WP:Simple talk. There are one or two issues which could benefit from your input. Macdonald-ross (talk) 06:21, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Thanks --Jmh649 (talk) 06:45, 18 January 2012 (UTC)

Thank you for your note. The problem is that a lot of scientific writing uses the passive voice. When I simplify science articles, I add explicit subjects of the sentences, such as "Scientists study..." or "Chemists test..." or "Doctors examine..." Rather than X was studied, X was tested or X was examined. Simple English favors simple one sylable words. For example, say "drugs" instead of "drugs and medications." "Doctors" is better than "health care professionals" although I understand that doctors have delegated a lot of procedures to other professionals. I am still learning how to write in Simple English, so please consult with others on this as well. Thanks, Racepacket (talk) 19:13, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Yes it is a balance of simple English verses writing for a general audience. I am not sure how to best balance the two.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:16, 20 January 2012 (UTC)

Basic English for science

No-one is limited to the 850 words. There are extensions of Basic English, as follows:

• Basic English alphabetical wordlist
• Basic English ordered wordlist
  • Basic English picture wordlist - 200 Picturable words
• Basic English international wordlist
• Basic English compound wordlist
• "BE 1500" - Basic English combined wordlist
• Not on Simple, but ought to be, is Ogden's work on words for science:

1. The Basic Science Dictionary
   1. Long discussion of the principles and examples, under the various sciences.
   2. The Basic science words, with their senses
   3. The list of international science words.

These lists are not yet on our wiki, but they are justified in the same way as the wordlists above. My source for these is:

• Ogden C.K. 1942. Basic for science. Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, London.

I have to say that the words for biology are almost useless, because they were formulated before the advent of molecular biology, cell biology, modern genetics, the modern evolutionary synthesis, and so on. I'm sure you'll find it lacking in medical terms. That leads me to think that one of the aims for your Simple medicine project should be to do your own medical 850 words. Properly presented, I have no doubt that would be acceptable to our wiki. Perhaps you will want to look at some of Ogden's original publications and get an idea of his methods. For myself, as I supervise, quite unofficially, the whole of modern biology, I can't offer you direct help on medicine. That doesn't mean I am indifferent. It just means I have more 'patients' in the waiting room that anyone can imagine! Macdonald-ross (talk) 10:45, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

I have created a page with comments on Basic for science: User:Macdonald-ross/Basic for science Macdonald-ross (talk) 14:58, 6 February 2012 (UTC)

Quick deletion of Urinary tract infection

The page you wrote, Urinary tract infection, has been selected for quick deletion. This is because the page is a copy of the article on the English Wikipedia. Most articles on English Wikipedia are too complex to be copied here directly. If you think this page should be kept, please add {{wait}} below the line {{QD}} and say why on the talk page. If the page is already gone, but you think this was an error, you can ask for it to be undeleted. --Auntof6 (talk) 09:20, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

Which one of the QD criteria apply here? [Wikipedia:Deletion_policy#Quick_deletion] Thanks --Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:08, 12 February 2012 (UTC)

WP:QD#A3.  Hazard-SJ  ㋡  02:52, 14 February 2012 (UTC)

Hello, Doc James. You have new messages at Auntof6's talk page.
You can remove this notice at any time by removing the {{Talkback}} or {{Tb}} template.

Same problems in Common cold--Old problems still not addressed

Jmh649, I understand your goals in the medical translation project, but this is Simple English Wikipedia. The articles you are copying and pasting in here are just not simple. At the most basic level, we discussed one easy way for your project to improve--creating a style guide and making sure not to use that same complex vocabulary again and again. See Talk:Streptococcal_pharyngitis where you agreed one month ago that this was a good idea and would get started on it. The previous articles still need a lot of work. I would strongly urge you to move the recent copy of the Common cold to your userspace for simplification and revert to the earlier version. Regards, Gotanda (talk) 06:17, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

It is significantly simpler than the main English version and it definitely more comprehensive than what was there before. I have asked Content Rules to look at your suggestions at Talk:Streptococcal_pharyngitis. I am not sure what term you are hoping to see used other than medication.--Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 06:44, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

It may be Simpler than En, but it is far from Simple. I replied to your comments on my Talk page. Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 09:48, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Thankfully there is no time limit on Wikipedia and people are free to make further improvements. Would love it if you would be interested in joining this project as described here [2]. Everyone involved btw is a volunteer. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 13:34, 19 March 2012 (UTC)

Lack of simplification of medical articles

I notice that in your most recent medical article Stomach flu another editor undid your large pasted in article from Content Rules and asked you to simplify it. You then undid Auntof6's change. That simplification should be done before copying and pasting it here. None of the previous articles have been adequately simplified either. I have several suggestions for how to proceed, but first I would like to ask you to slow down and simplify the existing articles before adding more.

Please consider the following, you have stated that "there is no time limit" on Wikipedia, but actually there is. How long would an article in French be allowed to stay on English Wikipedia? These articles are in medical English not Simple English. They are not in the language of this Wiki. They all need to be simplified. I have tried to help simplify, but there is just too much to do at this point.

I have returned the article to the earlier version. Please simplify before copying. Simplified articles should be shorter, include less detail (especially extraneous detail), and in simple vocabulary and grammar. This wiki serves beginning readers, readers who want simpler content, and second language learners--not medical service providers.

I understand that you have a plan:

1. EnWiki to 2. Content Rules to 3. Simple English Wikipedia then 4. to many other languages.

I suggest that a better direction would be:

1. EnWiki to 2. Content Rules then to 3. many other languages (including Simple English Wikipedia as one of them). I don't see the reason to force all of this content through SEWP first before retranslation. It may actually make the translation task harder rather than easier. In any event, it doesn't seem to be working since none of the articles have been simplified yet.

Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 07:26, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

James, why don't you just use your user space? Osiris (talk) 07:56, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

They have been extensively simplified from the main English version already. If you mean that you wish the ideas within the articles to be simplified as well (per Junior Wikipedia) I guess that is a different matter. But I assumed that was a different project. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:19, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

This is the difference. I don't think any of us would call that extensive. Translating content from elsewhere into simple English is difficult enough. Trying to translate a whole article at once is obviously going to take time. I've never tried to translate a whole article, but I've seen other editors do a fairly good job by taking their time on it in their userspace. Osiris (talk) 21:22, 7 August 2012 (UTC)

Thanks Osiris. You are indeed correct there was not that much of a change. We will end our efforts on simple English unless we can get greater simplifications. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:36, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Doc James, straw man arguments such as "If you mean that you wish the ideas within the articles to be simplified as well (per Junior Wikipedia)" do not help. Please read my above comment and others elsewhere on the complex medical articles. I have not asked for the ideas to be simplified. The language must be simplified. That is the purpose of this wiki. In some cases, reducing the amount of detail may also help. The lead for your version of Stomach flu has a Flesch reading ease score of 35.7 and a Gunning fog index of 15.9. These scores are not the be-all-and-end-all but they clearly show that the article is nowhere near simple. I have asked the you follow the guidelines in the Help section, especially writing style. I would again ask you to reconsider the overall design of your plan. Is it really necessary to force all of the content through Simple English first, before translation into other languages. That adds a highly restricted additional retranslation which seems to be causing problems for your project. Perhaps Content Rules or another site is a more appropriate workspace than Simple English Wikipedia. Please help us reserve this space for articles written in Simple English that our readers need. Thanks, Gotanda (talk) 00:42, 8 August 2012 (UTC)

Tuberculosis

Hello Doc James, thank you for bringing over the article about Tuberculosis. I know that the article on the English Wikipedia has the status of "good article". Following the comment of User:Macdonald-ross on the talk page of the article, I simplified the introduction of your article, adding the references where necessary, but I removed the rest. An article here even if it is medically accurate and complete is next to useless, if our target audience does not understand it. So, when you bring over articles, please keep your audience in mind: Your perspective should be that of explaining to an interested patient, or a general audience, and not that of publishing in a peer-reviewed medical journal. Medical terminology is fine, provided there are linked articles that explain the term. I think getting a medically accurate article on TB is a worthwile task, but given the amount of work needed for simplification (adapting to the audience), this should be done in stages... --Eptalon (talk) 11:17, 14 October 2012 (UTC)

No worries. Will leave this to others who are interested. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 14:33, 14 October 2012 (UTC)