Talk:Glossary of alternative medicine/Archive 1

Comment
This article will be modeled after Buddhist terms and concepts which is a required part of the WikiProject on Buddhism menu navigation system. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 14:10, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Terms and concepts was not my original idea, but was adapted straight from the Buddhism project. This article will in effect be one huge glossary of CAM terms. We would differ from the Buddhism project by restricting it just to the English language. The beauty of this glossary concept is that CAM developers will now be able to define hundreds of CAM terms in one paragraph without actually creating a new stub article. And, all the stub articles now in CAM could be physically deleted and moved to Terms and concepts.

The first thing that I will define in Terms and concepts will be all the terms used in the CAM Classifications section of our project's infobox. So, when operational the CAM Classifications section would all be hyperlinked to Terms and concepts. Concepts that can be developed into full blown CAM articles would also be in the Philosophy of series.

Thus, the CAM development process would be first to define the concept in Terms and concepts with a short paragraph or bulleted list. Next, a full blown article could be developed privately in the editors sandbox. Once the official article is created the link would be added to the Philosophy of series simple list article. And, a link to the actual CAM article would also be added to Terms and concepts definition. Finally, a link would be also added to the Index of Topics simple list article. The Index of Topics simple list article might become overwhelming and appear to duplicate other lists, but that is how the Buddhism project has implemented their List of Topics as far as I can figured out. It contains no text and looks like a book index. It is functioning as a master index of topics in Buddhism. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 12:08, 25 Apr 2004 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion:February 15, 2005
Wikipedia:Votes for deletion/List of terms and concepts used in alternative medicine; 

List of terms and concepts used in alternative medicine
Redundant with Index of topics in alternative medicine. This page is just a series of dicdefs of key entries in the index of topics. Content should be merged to index of topics, and this page should be made a redirect. Snowspinner 22:16, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC) I am reasonably persuaded that this should actually be the list to survive, and that Index of topics in alternative medicine should be deleted instead. Snowspinner 21:51, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment. I agree one of the two of them should go, but I kind of like this one more than Index of topics in alternative medicine, and I think it is the latter that I would delete.  For one thing, a category can handle what the Index article is doing, but not what this one is doing. --BM 18:23, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC) (Oops, missed a tilde the last time)
 * Fair enough I was thinking of merging with index, but I can take the other way around. Who are you? Snowspinner 05:47, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * Delete, redundant/duplicate page, no redirect. Megan1967 06:37, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * KEEP -- This is quite an ingenious List that is actually very practical. It happens to be part of a set of 5 Lists called the Core Project Lists and Articles of the Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine. Together these 5 Lists provide a master list of alternative medicine topics. The Wikiproject on Buddhism uses the same kind of article.  Their List is called the Buddhist terms and concepts. Instead of editors writing 100s, if not 1,000s, of stub articles on the various terms and concepts used in alternative medicine all these quick and to the point stub writeups are written in one very long List called the: List of terms and concepts used in alternative medicine. What does this list do?  Quoting Categories, lists, and series boxes: "Lists have a substantial advantage over categories and series boxes in that they can be annotated. A list can include items that do not yet have an article, and can also show series or groups where the items would be completely separate on the category page. A well-annotated list may duplicate a category, but not be redundant with it.". That is precisely what this List does for terms and concepts used in alternative medicine.  As the above quote stated this List is heavily annotated. It is in effect a glossary on alternative medicine. The Index of topics in alternative medicine is NOT annotated. This list shares absolutely nothing in common with the Index of topics in alternative medicine. -- John Gohde 14:18, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Feel free to recreate the content of the miscellaneous article into one of your project subpages, then. The article namespace should be used for articles - not lists of things needing expansion. If an article would stop being useful once its contents all have articles, it should be moved somewhere out of the article namespace. Snowspinner 17:47, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep Its clearly a glossary and should be part of the Glossaries category. It can quite easily co-exist with an index as the two do in many books. Lumos3 16:07, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * That's fine, but ultimately limiting. Ideally, the terms and concepts should all be defined. If the two were merged, it would clearly show areas in which more definitions are needed. Snowspinner 17:47, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Paul August  &#9742; 16:27, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep. Annotated lists are extremely useful. WpZurp 16:47, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Comment: Perhaps a better title for this might be: "Glossary of terms and concepts used in alternative medicine". Paul August &#9742; 18:03, Feb 16, 2005 (UTC)

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 * Delete Merge and redirect with Index of topics in alternative medicine --Lee Hunter 19:02, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * Keep and move to Glossary of alternative medicine. Once other cleanup is done (see my suggestion on Votes for deletion/List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine), Index of topics in alternative medicine could then just be a list of lists. --Zigger 19:27, 2005 Feb 16 (UTC)
 * Comment. Certainly this information should be kept, regardless of whether it's merged with another article or kept separate.  (And regardless of whether the ideas on this page have any medical validity or not; there are, for example, pages on theories in physics that were shown long ago to be erroneous; nobody says that's a reason to delete them.)  I'm inclined to say "list of terms and concepts" is often not the same thing as "list of topics"; that may depend on the subject matter.

Stub articles in alternative medicine
This article is the ideal place to put definitions or other CAM articles that wont ever be developed beyond a stub. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 15:36, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

What does the term 'dangerous' mean
What does the term 'dangerous' mean in the context of CAM? 'The most dangerous form of CAM'? Thanks, Mark Richards 19:26, 3 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I wouldn't be able to answer that question unless you get more specific. Alternative medicine is the most dangerous form of CAM. (See criticisms of alternative medicine for details.)

-- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 05:48, 4 May 2004 (UTC)~

Well, I just found the mention of the fact that it is considered the most dangerous form of CAM kind of confusing - considered by whom? Why? There's not really any context. Mark Richards 15:22, 4 May 2004 (UTC)


 * The scientific community ... -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health

- Yes, "I know some people who know some people who might know some people who might be confused ..." - There is no such thing as scientific community in this context. There are people who believe that alternative medicine is a fraud, and there are people who believe that it helps. Let's leave it for a patient to judge. --User:Vitalika

A definition with a personality
"Alternative medicine is a broad term for any diagnostic method, method of treatment or therapy whose theoretical bases and techniques diverge from generally accepted medical methods."
 * Generally accepted by who? eg in europe homeopathy is a "generally accepted method". the same parallel can be drawn to chinese and ayurvedic medicine in their dominant parts of the world. it's in the eyes of the beholder.

"It is generally considered to be the most dangerous form of CAM by the scientific community because it is used in place of conventional medicine. (See criticisms of alternative medicine for details.)"
 * Considered dangerous by who? Each method of medicine has its own scientific community.
 * What is conventional medicine? By whose convention?
 * "Genrally considered dangerous" - It probably would not be to difficult to put together a similar list citing references to the failures of "conventional medicine."

How about something a little more neutral like: Cambridge dictionary Definition: alternative medicine noun [U] a wide range of treatments for medical conditions that people use instead of or with western medicine: Alternative medicine includes treatments such as acupuncture, homeopathy and hypnotherapy.

--robert_wh 11:57, 2004 May 18 (UTC)

definition for healer
is a bit convoluted isn't it?

real science
what is "real" in real science mean? it's stuff like this that makes this page look very silly. (personal opinion just like the term "real science" :-) --robert_wh 13:48, 2004 Jun 1 (UTC)


 * All of the knowledge classifications will be dropped (including real science) just as soon as iridology can be edited. As of last night, all of the other infoboxes should have dropped their knowledge classications link.  They are being dropped due to the hostile comments / edits of trolls. -- John Gohde 14:55, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Lists
Out of curiosity, how many list articles are there on CAM right now? Snowspinner 18:55, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Cleanup and NPOV problems
To quote Cleanup - "Consider adding a tag to the article's talk page instead of listing it here." There was no discussion in Talk. Surely, if there was actually something wrong, other than sour grapes one or more problem entries could be pointed out. -- John Gohde 08:26, 9 Mar 2005 (UTC)


 * I can say for one that Acupuncture doesn't present a balanced summary of the article, especially the disputed nature of its effectiveness. That's the first one I happened to look at; it seems likely that there are many other such NPOV problems.  (So I added the NPOV tag.)  Usually this kind of list does not include any summary from items that have their own articles.  It might be a useful cleanup task to push out content here back into articles, and shorten the individual items on this list so that it can continue to be expanded.  Unless people think this is a useful format?  (It is a nifty idea.) -- Beland 22:50, 27 August 2005 (UTC)
 * Oh, and BTW, it's no longer recommended to put cleanup tags on talk pages. -- Beland 22:51, 27 August 2005 (UTC)

I am removing the "most dangerous form of CAM" comment after alternative medicine. Alternative medicine is an umbrella term encompassing CAM and other alegedly dangerous forms of medicine. The comment clearly does not have NPOV.

I would suggest removing the entry for Alternative medicine here, since there is an article. Unfortunately the article isn't much better a definition but once it's cleared up, this should point to the article.

Hans Joseph Solbrig 23:19, 28 August 2005 (UTC)

OK, I naturally withdraw my last comment - I'm still learning wikipedian information ordering - summary lists should have entries for each topic as well as the topic having its own page. The two should be kept up to date however.

On the NPOV question, I would claim that having a caveat for each entry in this list is absurd. In my new and improved understanding of wiki organization, each entry should be simply descriptive. There should, however, be an reference to criticism of alternative health at the top of the page. If there are different kind of criticisms to different sorts of medicine, perhaps each of these should have a short reference ("see challenges to the validity of qi").

Hans Joseph Solbrig 20:32, 30 August 2005 (UTC)


 * I've seen doccies on alternative medicine, and doccies on scientific studies on alternative medicine, and I own books, but this article is a tad too huge to edit easily, and to have a criticism at the top of every line is asking too much of anyone.


 * AND I've just noticed one very peculiar thing. Most lists on Wikipedia are lists. Has anyone noticed that this is actually a glossary? Dessydes 13:05, 4 April 2006 (UTC)

Recommendation: rename/move article to glossary - your input is requested
The article goes beyond the scope of a topic list and clearly fits the criteria of a Wikipedia glossary, and therefore it should be renamed (moved) accordingly. A suitable name would be "Glossary of alternative medicine terms", to remain consistent with the naming convention used for other glossaries on Wikipedia. If there are no objections within a week, I'll assume there are none and will execute the move. --Transhumanist 10:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Support - Like User:Dessydes noted above, the article is a glossary, not merely a list. Therefore, it should be moved.  --Transhumanist 10:28, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Support - As above. Dessydes 00:38, 8 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Support - As above. Dieudonne 16:15, 9 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Support - Will make the page more accessible. --apers0n 14:46, 16 August 2006 (UTC)
 * Support. Makes much more sense. -AED 06:19, 22 August 2006 (UTC)

I moved it as per above. (I was Transhumanist, but changed my nym.) --Nexus Seven 06:43, 22 August 2006 (UTC)