Wikipedia:Peer review/Poliomyelitis/archive1

Poliomyelitis

I have recently expanded this article quite a bit (although it was quite good when I came to it). I would like to see the article through to featured status, and would appreciate any suggestions or comments as to content, organization, readability, etc... that will help the article get there. --DO11.10 02:54, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

This is a readable article and together with the related articles, Wikipedia has a lot of info on polio. However, the article is a bit of a mix between a clinical, modern description of polio the disease and all the history/legacy. It is hard to pull out the current info from all the story telling. I suggest you extract a History of poliomyelitis article and leave Poliomyelitis to be a modern description of the disease. That leaves you to structure the History as suits the story-telling flow, and structure this article in a way that probably fits the WP:MEDMOS suggested section headings for diseases. It is a bit radial and you might hate the suggestion (make sure you consult any other regular editors before making such a change). But I think it will lead to two articles that are each better focussed. I think the title "Ancient disease, modern killer" is more appropriate for a Sunday magazine than an encyclopaedia. Your "Famous people" section is largely unreferenced — such a list needs an inline citation per person. The one source given is a geocities page, which doesn't count as a reliable source. WP:MEDMOS has more advice on such people-lists and other aspects of medical articles that you may find useful. Your comments on that guideline are welcome on the talk page. Colin°^Talk 21:27, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

Thank you so much for your thoughtful suggestions. Yes, I admit that I totally hated the idea of splitting the history out, but after some thought, I realize that you have a good point, and I think that splitting out the history section would probably improve the "clinical" side of this article, and allow me to more closely follow the MEDMOS sections. (BTW, I am pretty much the sole regular editor of all of the polio articles, so not really a problem there.) I do have a few questions though:

• I would clearly move parts of the "ancient disease" section to a "History" article, but what about the Treatment and Legacy sections? Should they also, in majority, be moved?
• I think that I will also have to split the 'notable survivors' out on it's own. Although it is (highly) doubtful that the list will expand, I feel that there are currently enough entries to warrant a separate list, and that this would also better facilitate references. Besides I really like the MEDMOS example List of notable brain tumor patients.
• In relation to this, I have read the list guidelines but I am still a bit confused over what a list of polio people should be called. Should it be called "List of polio survivors", or "List of people who had polio", (they clearly no longer have polio) or something else all together...? Further complicating matters, I think that this list should include only people who had the serious form of the disease (experienced temporary or permanent paralysis or the polio had some other profound affect on the person's life), thoughts?

Thanks again!--DO11.10 23:33, 27 April 2007 (UTC)

The Legacy seems to be a good end-section for the History. Not all treatment is historical — the disease hasn't been wiped out yet! This "split into two" is only a suggestion. You might find that it doesn't work when you try to do it. I think it is worth a try. I'm sort of saying you'll just have to try and see how it turns out. Perhaps try it out on a personal scrapbook page and you can post me a message if you want me to have a look. You could also try directly contacting one or two of the reviewers who hang out at FA — they may be more experienced with article structure than I am.

I see the recent CfD on People with polio recommended turning it into a list. You've currently got about 50 polio survivors. A List of polio survivors would be a suitable name. I'm not sure how easy it will be to objectively determine the entry criteria you propose. As you said in the CfD, "if polio is recorded in a biography it generally means that the disease affected their lives in some profound way (usually by causing permanent paralysis or disfigurement)". Sometimes, there is very little information to work on: "XYZ overcame childhood polio to ...". How can we judge how serious that was and what effect it had on their life. Perhaps they had no paralysis, but missed a year of school and that changed their life? It would be simpler if the criteria were simply that the person was notable (i.e. Wikipedia article, or reasonable hope of one) and that a reliable source can be found for the diagnosis. The list format gives us room to expand on the personal impact, if we know the details. Up-to-you — perhaps you have already thought of how to make your criteria work? Colin°^Talk 13:11, 30 April 2007 (UTC)

My suggestions:

• "the United States, and much of the world, experienced a huge increase in the number of polio cases" ( a reference would be welcome)
• "Bulbar polio describes the form of the disease that occurs when poliovirus invades the bulbar region of the brain stem which occurs in approximately 2% of cases of paralytic polio." (reference?)
• "The iron lung saved many thousands of lives" (I think it shouldn't be included iwhtout reference)
• "The first effective polio vaccine was developed in 1952 by Jonas Salk at the University of Pittsburgh. " (reference?)
• You could use even more images from the Commons page.
• Two more external links? Global Polio Eradication Initiative and Kids' Health page

Anyway, a great, well-referenced article which should even be featured. NCurse _work 17:24, 28 April 2007 (UTC)

Sure, those references should be pretty easy to find. Thanks for pointing out these deficiencies.--DO11.10 16:46, 29 April 2007 (UTC)

• Please see automated peer review suggestions here. Thanks, Ruhrfisch 02:01, 6 May 2007 (UTC)