Blood donation
- A script has been used to generate a semi-automated review of the article for issues relating to grammar and house style; it can be found on the automated peer review page for June 2008.
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I've listed this article for peer review because it recently went through a GA review. The primary reviewer for GA had some concerns about the depth and clarity of the article.
I'm trying to determine what level of detail is appropriate for the topic. Blood donation practices are relatively inconsistent even among developed countries, though the underlying principles are similar. A lot of the process is different for the developing world, though there have been some strides made in bringing their practices up to speed with those of wealthier countries.
The other point of concern I have is regarding accessibility. I breathe the industry, technical, and medical lingo without realizing that it's jargon, and this is a medical topic that people with no medical background interact with on a regular basis and the "average reader" probably won't have one either.
Any input is appreciated. I think I've hammered out anything that still needs citing and other technical problems, mostly looking at the language and the scope. Somedumbyankee (talk) 19:48, 19 June 2008 (UTC)
Ruhrfisch comments: Interesting article - I think the GA review was extremely thorough and strongly recommend making sure all of the issues raised in it are addressed. Here are some more suggestions for improvement:
- The lead should be an accessible and inviting overview of the whole article. My rule of thumb is to include every header in the lead in some way, but I do not see Apheresis or time between donations mentioned in the lead. Please see WP:LEAD
- Try to avoid short (one or two sentence) paragraphs by either expanding them or combining them with others. For example the first paragraph in the lead is only two sentences. There are amny more examples.
- The second pragraph of the lead talks about why people donate and then the fourth does it again. Could these be combined? As it is they also seem to almost contradict each other - 2nd para is altruistic donation by volunteers and those helping friends and relatives, while the 4th para is by greedy buzzards for cash and prizes (grossly oversimplifying, of course)
- As currently written, the article seems to need many more references. My rule of thumb is that every quote, every statistic, every extraordinary claim and every paragraph needs a ref. My guess is that ref 1 could apply to the whole first paragraph in "Types of donation" and not just the first sentence, i.e. There are three major kinds of donations.[1]
- References need to be for the whole paragraph though, so in Donors are examined for signs and symptoms of diseases that can be transmitted in a blood transfusion, such as HIV, malaria, and viral hepatitis. Screening may extend to questions about risk factors for various diseases, such as travel to countries at risk for malaria or variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (vCJD). These questions vary from country to country. For example, Québec may defer donors who lived in the United Kingdom for risk of vCJD,[15] but donors in the United Kingdom are only restricted if they have had a blood transfusion in the United Kingdom.[16] Ref 15 is just for Quebec and 16 is just for the UK. There is no ref for the more general statements in the first three sentences, but there sould be.
- Per the MOS, avoid contractions like It isn't usually a problem, but it is important for transfusions to babies[26] and other recipients with weak immune systems.
- Also could this sentence somehow be combined with the preceding one: Cytomegalovirus is a special case in donor testing in that many donors have it. This is not clear to me - why does the fact that many people have a virus make it a special case?
- I would suggest getting a copyedit or at least printing this out and reading it out loud slowly. For example Donors are usually kept at the donation site for 10-15 minutes since most adverse reactions take place during or immediately after the donation.[41] is referring to keeping donors on site after they have finished donating, but this is not made explicit or clear.
- The pictures are nice - especially the lead image. They are a bit bunched up - could some of them be more spread out through the article?
- Refs need to be done consistently and present the same information each time. These two are the same ref (and should be combined), but look how they differ:
- ^ C.K. Lee (October 2002). "Impact of donor arm skin disinfection on the bacterial contamination rate of platelet concentrates". Vox Sang 83: 204–208. doi:10.1046/j.1423-0410.2002.00219.x.
- ^ C.K. Lee et al (October 2002). "Impact of donor arm skin disinfection on the bacterial contamination rate of platelet concentrates". Vox Sanguinis 83: 204–208. doi:10.1046/j.1423-0410.2002.00219.x.
Is it C.K. Lee et al. (and why not list the other authors)? is the full journal name used or just the abbreviation? Use of cite templates such as {{cite journal}} may help here. Hope this helps. If my comments are useful, please consider peer reviewing an article, especially one at Wikipedia:Peer review/backlog (which is how I found this article). Yours, Ruhrfisch ><>°° 18:49, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
- Article seems to over use italicized text - see WP:MOS#Italics
- Thanks for the input. The thing about italics confuses me, since it seems to follow the "words as words" use of italics in the MOS. All of the italicized words (last I checked) are jargon which is being explained. A few points of confusion:
- What of the intro should be cited if it is cited in detail later in the article?
- What is the expectation for citations on topics that have their own wikipedia articles?
- What is the expectation for cites that cover multiple claims of details?
- I've tended to just list the lead author for papers for simplicity, pretty much all of them should be "et al." As for Vox Sang, that's the way other journals tend to cite it and I'm just blindly following their example.
- I'll see what I can do with these. Somedumbyankee (talk) 19:38, 24 June 2008 (UTC)
- Thanks for the input. The thing about italics confuses me, since it seems to follow the "words as words" use of italics in the MOS. All of the italicized words (last I checked) are jargon which is being explained. A few points of confusion:
- OK, but if they are words as words, then I would make it deferred donor, not deferred donor.
- There are two schools of thought on citing the lead. The more common is to only cite direct quotes and perhaps extraordinary claims there, with all of the other cites in the body of the article when the info from the lead is repeated. A few articles cite everything in the lead just like the article.
- The cites are for this article - hopefully the other article is also well-cited, but this one needs the refs (too).
- If a cite covers three or four sentences, put it at the end of those sentences. If a cite is used in four different places, repeat it. You can use the named ref trick: <ref name = "blah">ref details...</ref> the first time and then just <ref name ="blah"/> every other time.
- There is a big difference between listing one author and one author, et al. If there are multiple authors that has to be indicated. My personal preference is to list all authors, but I think you can use et al. if there are more than three.
- I understand Vox Sang is the common abbreviation. My point was the refs need to be consistent. Either always use abbreviations for all refs to journals or spell the tile out in full every time. Don't do it one way sometimes and the other some times (especially for the same journal). Ruhrfisch ><>°° 12:04, 25 June 2008 (UTC)
- Attempting to add some of these things. Still tweaking the whole "deferred" thing. It's a jargon verb, not a jargon noun, which leads to all sorts of strangeness. Somedumbyankee (talk) 18:42, 25 June 2008 (UTC)