Talk:Kidney

Requested move 22 June 2022

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: no consensus. Discussion led to an irreconciliable split on whether kidneys in general or the human kidney is the primary topic. (closed by non-admin page mover) — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 15:42, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Kidney → Human kidney – The Kidney article describes human kidneys with little bias to mammalian kidneys. A new article about vertebrate kidneys has been created to describe kidneys carefully without any bias towards human or mammals. Human anatomy must be split from other animals because combined articles are highly biased towards human and create misunderstandings or even give wrong information like bean-shaped kidneys in all vertebrates (fishes are vertebrates too). D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:19, 22 June 2022 (UTC) — Relisting. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 21:16, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * What do you propose should be done with the "main" kidney page? Should kidney (vertebrates) be moved to "kidney"? Should a disambiguation page be created there? Natg 19 (talk) 23:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Main page must be transformed to describe human kidney. In fact, most of the article is just about human kidneys. Human kidney is well described with a lot of good quality sources. But information about human kidney cannot be used to describe vertebrate kidneys. For example mesonephric kidneys of fish are not bean-shaped, their nephrons doesn't have the loop of Henle and even some marine marine fish species have aglomerular nephrons. Some nephrons of fish have non-integrated nephrons. In amniotes metanephric kidneys are also quite different in structure, form and function. Of course, all kidneys are made of nephrons which filter blood, but kidney tissues and structure can differ. Some facts must be correctly attributes to human or other animal classes. For example if the article says that kidneys help to produce vitamin D, then it must be correctly attributed to human according to the source that was used for this information. To say so about amniotes another reliable source is needed because their kidneys can have no such function. Produced hormones can also vary between classes. If we say about erythropoietin than we must attribute information to appropriate animals accordingly to the used source. Renin function is also different in fish compared to mammals. Also mammals are the only class of animals that doesn't have renal portal system in kidneys.  Separate articles about the human kidneys, mammalian kidneys, vertebrate kidneys and nephron must be made. Separate article about human kidneys is very important because kidney is vital organ in human and is related to medicine too. --D6194c-1cc (talk) 05:03, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * My question is more of what should be done with "Kidney"? Should it be a page with links to "human kidney" and "kidney (vertebrates)"? Natg 19 (talk) 17:04, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * We should probably provide a list of possible names to discuss it. Those are:
 * Kidney with about-distinguish template, Kidney (vertebrates)
 * Human kidney, Kidney (vertebrates), Kidney as disambiguation page
 * Human kidney, Kidney with about-distinguish template
 * I prefer the Human kidney and Kidney variant because it would be enough to place about-distinguish template to the Kidney article and in some future I'll write an article about mammalian kidneys which would have section about human kidneys with the link to the main page. So those article could form a tree with Kidney -> Mammalian kidney -> Human kidney branch. --D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:38, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * But if a separated article about kidneys as food would be created then Human kidney, Kidney (vertebrates), Kidney as disambiguation page variant would be better. --D6194c-1cc (talk) 21:34, 23 June 2022 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:ASTONISH and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. When you think of (a) kidney, most people would assume you mean the human kidney, and the extra dab is not needed.  Lugnuts  Fire Walk with Me 07:26, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Support in general for these discussions I think the main page has to satisfy two conditions - (1) the primary topic is what readers expect, and (2) there is enough content to justify a split. I think this meets both criteria. The use of kidneys as a food in particular throughout society in addition to the kidney as an anatomical structure means, I think, that readers would not be astonished to see the primary page of this topic being the general structure. Regardless of the outcome I think we should also acknowledge the great contribution by the nominator writing this article. Tom (LT) (talk) 11:00, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * I agree think that information about kidneys as food should also be moved to a separate article (something like Kidney (food)). It has no relation to the kidneys in biology context. It's just about nutrition and cooking. Moreover, it is very strange to see the section about kidneys as food in an article that is about human kidneys, even if it doesn't says directly that it is about human. --D6194c-1cc (talk) 21:17, 23 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Support per Tom. We need to be specific in this instance that this page is about human kidneys. Also, move the vertebrate kidney page to "kidney". — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spekkios (talk • contribs) 00:11, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose. Yes, this article really is the kidney article; it is not a "human kidney" article pretending to be a kidney article. The main article should cover the broad range of subtopics. This includes humans and other animals (and yes, history and culture, including food, to some degree), as this article does. The organization of content should follow principles such as Summary style and Broad-concept article. (It should not be based on principles of trying to mirror taxonomic hierarchies such as vertebrate > mammal > human. It should also not use Template:about-distinguish as if it were a substitute for a broad-concept article.) What may not be obvious, though, is that appropriately broad coverage will often result in giving more attention in total to subtopics specific to humans (e.g. human medicine), or to human-oriented coverage of subtopics not technically unique to humans. This is not improper bias toward humans, but in fact is as WP:NPOV requires: treating aspects of the subject with weight proportional to the attention given to them in the aggregate body of sources. An approach pervasively taking care to emphasize comparisons between animals and scrupulously avoiding "bias" toward humans is, in the bigger picture, a narrow point of view of the topic. The general organization I've described is also consistent with articles such as Lung or Heart. It is true that other differently-organized articles exist, and at some point there may be such long detail that the way to achieve summary style is to spin off a separate "human kidney" article, but we are not at that point. The current kidney article does not perfectly achieve the principles I've mentioned (and for that matter, certainly doesn't achieve the difficult ideal of making technical articles understandable), but it's the article with the right general idea. For these reasons I oppose the move.
 * I also would discourage a full merge, since Kidney (vertebrates) goes into detail which is appropriate for itself, but greater detail than the broader-scoped main article should have. This is not a general opposition to editing how this article summarizes animals, and not an opposition to partial transfer of content from one article to the other. (As a small example, I think having the first sentence describe the function of the kidney, as Kidney (vertebrates) currently does, is more helpful than starting with the shape and color.) Lastly, I applaud the nominator's work on Kidney (vertebrates), and I look forward to your continued contributions in this and other areas. Adumbrativus (talk) 13:28, 29 June 2022 (UTC)
 * As said below the article has the "Other animals" section which means per the anatomy guidance that this article is about human kidney which pretends to be a kidney article (as we see from the basic definition). The example of an article around human anatomy is Human leg in oppose to Leg as more common article. --D6194c-1cc (talk) 16:09, 1 July 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Oppose, per Lugnuts. Often, per the anatomy guidance, there's an "other animals" section. But Kidney (vertebrates) is its own article right now. GBFEE (talk) 22:24, 30 June 2022 (UTC)
 * WP:MEDTITLE: "The word human is usually omitted in titles, but it may occasionally be helpful if non-human references to the structure are common. For example, compare the articles at Leg (including insect legs, robotic legs, etc.) and Human leg. However, if the article is about humans and the reader will expect to find information about humans under that title, e.g., Arm and Pregnancy, then pre-disambiguation of the title is inappropriate." Links to the Kidney page: Special:WhatLinksHere/Kidney. Many of them are from articles on non-human or common topics. — Preceding unsigned comment added by D6194c-1cc (talk • contribs) 15:59, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
 * D6194c-1cc, do you mind explaining what you mean by quoting WP:MEDTITLE? The kidney article is about humans and the reader will expect to find information about humans under this title. That's what Lugnuts is arguing. And Adumbrativus highlights this as well, by saying, for example, "What may not be obvious, though, is that appropriately broad coverage will often result in giving more attention in total to subtopics specific to humans (e.g. human medicine), or to human-oriented coverage of subtopics not technically unique to humans. This is not improper bias toward humans, but in fact is as WP:NPOV requires: treating aspects of the subject with weight proportional to the attention given to them in the aggregate body of sources." So my oppose is also "per Adumbrativus" to a degree. I didn't notice before, but I've noticed now that there is an "other animals" section in the article. The existence of that section doesn't mean that the kidney article is not an article that is about humans. Per the anatomy guidance, it's common for articles that are predominantly about humans to have such sections. If there's a dedicated article for other animals and an "other animals" section in the article, then we link to that in that section as "main article" for more information. GBFEE (talk) 21:16, 1 July 2022 (UTC)
 * As per WP:MEDTITLE some articles about animals or general anatomy articles refer to the Kidney page and those articles do not expect that the reader will go to the human kidney page. In my previous reply I provided the link to a list of articles that refer to the Kidney page (Special:WhatLinksHere/Kidney). They include Organ (biology), Amphibian, Reptile, Dinosaur, Bird, Common ostrich, Rat, Camel, etc. --D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:55, 2 July 2022 (UTC)
 * Oppose although I understand the reasoning. From a physiology point of view, what is currently at Kidney (vertebrates) is "the kidney article" and this here is an in-depth treatment of a subtopic. However we do have a site-wide habit (spottily observed) of having such search terms land on the human physiology version rather than the generic one, so I don't think there's a call to break from that in this instance. I think the current setup, with a nice long summary of Kidney (vertebrates) and a  link there works well. - Elmidae (talk · contribs) 13:22, 4 July 2022 (UTC)

Two links to renal?
The lead to this article has two links to the word renal, which is itself a redirect to this page. That seems unnecessary, and I can't think of why it would need to be linked at all, unless it's meant to be the Wiktionary link for etymology. I'm hesitant to remove it in case there was some specific reason, though. Thoughts? - Procyonidae (talk) 10:18, 24 July 2022 (UTC)

Proposed merge of Kidney (vertebrates) into Kidney
I find it hard to see if either is a subset of the other. -MPGuy2824 (talk) 09:15, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * The Kidney article is about human kidneys with some little bias to mammals. The Kidney (vertebrates) is about kidneys of other animals without any bias to human kidneys. Those are separate articles like Pregnancy and Pregnancy (mammals). They cannot be merged together. The kidney article made wrong so it looks like it describes vertebrate kidneys, but it doesn't. It would be better to split Kidney into the Human kidney and Mammalian kidney or to rename the Kidney article into the Human kidney. My current work is an article about mammalian kidneys. D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:06, 22 June 2022 (UTC)
 * Support the idea of moving Kidney to Human kidney, and keeping Kidney (vertebrates) as it is. Note that mammalian kidney wouldn't cover the scope of the content already in Kidney (vertebrates). The two pages could then be linked with hatnotes. Alternatively, we could just add hatnotes to define the scope without moving the articles. Klbrain (talk) 14:31, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
 * I've already written an article about mammalian kidney, so I'll translate it into English after I finish some Lua modules. D6194c-1cc (talk) 15:40, 6 November 2022 (UTC)
 * As I said I've translated my article about mammalian kidney into English. So this article can be focused on human kidney now. As for renaming into human kidney, it can't be done in a simple way since this article probably have been translated into other languages and those articles might have URL attribution in their edit history. There are some solutions like copying the article with its full edit history and only then merging Kidney (vertebrates) into this article. But if this discussion will lead to the merge, then let me do it myself in a few steps. Currently this merge is impossible, because no separate Human kidney article exists (currently its a redirect). D6194c-1cc (talk) 17:50, 21 March 2023 (UTC)
 * One can merge to a redirect (involves removing the redirect code as part of the merge); you're right that a move isn't possible (without a technical request). Klbrain (talk) 08:27, 3 April 2023 (UTC)
 * Support moving Kidney to Human Kidney, and adding any unique content about nonhuman kidneys to Kidney (vertebrates). IAmNitpicking (talk) 01:34, 4 April 2023 (UTC)

Requested move 3 July 2023

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus. (closed by non-admin page mover) EggRoll97 (talk) 07:58, 18 July 2023 (UTC)

Kidney → Human kidney – Since the last RM, the content has move ever more in the direction of covering humans only, with other articles on both mammals and vertebrates. The 'occasionally helpful' inclusion of human seems relevant here (WP:MEDTITLE); see also the June 2022 merge proposal outcome. Klbrain (talk) 19:58, 3 July 2023 (UTC) — Relisting. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 21:33, 10 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Support…? Looking at Mammalian kidney and Kidney (vertebrates) as Klbrain points to, I personally like the idea of this move. In the last RM though, most of the oppose !votes appear to be based on the idea that when people search "kidney" they typically expect to read about the human kidney, and I don't think that position is ruled out by this article being more exclusively human-focused. I have no idea how we're supposed to honestly evaluate the truth of that position, though, or weigh the "occasionally helpful" standard of WP:MEDTITLE, beyond just wild guessing (it seems really odd to me that Leg is general but Arm is human-specific for example). Like, do we have any way of really knowing how many users who search for "kidney" are genuinely trying to find information on the human kidney specifically as opposed to the material in Kidney (vertebrates)? I'd rather end up at what is currently Kidney (vertebrates) but I might be in a small minority there for all I know. 🍉◜◞ↂ🄜e𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚊r🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 03:04, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose - Per similar discussions like Talk:Menstruation (mammal) which point to precedent that when there are articles on analogous human and non-human medical topics, the human topic is primary. -- Netoholic @ 10:10, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think "kidney" is more than just medical though, it's biology in general—and there are other parts of the body where the main article is the general version, such as Leg, Hand, or Heart. I think with menstruation the choice to have the main article be the human version is obvious, but I'm not so sure about kidneys. 🍉◜◞ↂ🄜e𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚊r🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 13:36, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Oh, now that I think of it, I guess Leg is the only relevant example there since the other two don't have separate human articles. This certainly is confusing! 🍉◜◞ↂ🄜e𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚊r🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 13:43, 4 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I have now taken the time to find a few others that do fit this pattern: Penis (no tittering now :P), Head, and Nose. All of these, like Leg, have separate human articles with the "default" article covering the general case. Why not Kidney? 🍉◜◞ↂ🄜e𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚊r🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 04:53, 5 July 2023 (UTC)
 * There's definitely a mixed-bag if you look at the Category:Human anatomy and subcategories, so I'm not going to cherry-pick counter-examples. Our standard should be that the human anatomy article be primary when there are separate/analogous articles, since this is an encyclopedia for humans (see WP:MEDTITLE for language already to that effect "The word human is usually omitted in titles..."). Far more often than not, readers are seeking information on their own anatomy and so making them jump through hoops to find it is not acceptable. That standard should be applied to the articles that you listed that don't conform, this way meets more of the WP:CRITERIA. Having non-human articles at primary leads to WP:ASTONISHment. -- Netoholic @ 03:40, 6 July 2023 (UTC)
 * I think you and Klbrain have clashing interpretations of WP:MEDTITLE, as I think do many participants in these sorts of debates. They're emphasizing the "occasionally helpful" clause here while you're emphasizing the "usually omitted" clause—but I'd say we should all remember that neither "occasionally" nor "usually" make an absolute rule either way. What I think is that (a) "kidney" is not exclusively a medical topic but rather touches on vertebrate biology in general, so we shouldn't overemphasize WP:MEDTITLE, and (b) even if we do look to WP:MEDTITLE here, by using language like "occasionally" and "usually" it gives us some wiggle room that lets us weigh "kidney" in particular regardless. You seem to be making the case that any article which touches on human anatomy should always foreground the human article when there is a separate one, which I don't think is really supported by WP:MEDTITLE even if this page was exclusively medical in nature.
 * Beyond this, I don't see what means we have to truly know that "far more often than not, readers are seeking information on their own anatomy," especially as a blanket statement about any anatomical article. If someone came here concerned about their kidneys, I think it's at least as likely that they would search for e.g. Kidney failure. I also know that when I type "kidney" into the search bar, I want to read Kidney (vertebrates) (which does shine a light on my own anatomy, after all, just not in the same way as a Human kidney article would). I'm sure there are other people out there like me. But all of us are engaged in what I called "wild guessing" above when we make these kinds of arguments—without some kind of hard evidence about traffic patterns it just comes down to everyone's variant gut feelings, and I don't see how we could ever come to a consensus that way. 🍉◜◞ↂ🄜e𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚊r🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 04:14, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * While my background (bias) is from medicine, my view is that the Kidney article should indeed cover all species, and not just one. That's why I'd rather have one article to have kidneys in general (perhaps a merge of Mammalian kidney and Kidney (vertebrates)), then a subarticle to discuss the special case in one species (such as Human kidney). Note that I don't feel strongly about the proposal; I was actually just closing the earlier merge proposal, with cascading consequences. Klbrain (talk) 08:49, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * @Klbrain Thanks for clarifying. I'll strike the opening of my post there since it sounds like it misrepresents your position somewhat, although it does sound like we would both prefer that the "Kidney" article be general in any case. Do you personally feel this move proposal is something of an unfortunate necessity, seeing as you only started it following from the earlier proposed merge? From the debates around other articles like this it does strike me that the desire to separate the "human" and "general" versions of these sorts of articles does seem to generate a lot of discord. 🍉◜◞ↂ🄜e𝚜𝚘𝚌𝚊r🅟ම𛱘‎🥑《 𔑪‎talk〗⇤ 09:05, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * My personal view is indeed that the proposal is an unfortunate necessity. I'd prefer a world where, say, the contents of Mammalian kidney were at Kidney, then (because the topic is large and important), relevant subtopics from it. The current contents of Kidney are unduly human and hence don't match the title. Klbrain (talk) 09:17, 9 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Anatomy has been notified of this discussion. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 21:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Note: WikiProject Animal anatomy has been notified of this discussion. Captain Jack Sparrow (talk) 21:34, 10 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Neutral. Providing some context. There is a long history of debates on this topic and my personal opinion is that the general WP principles of least astonishment and having enough content to justify a split are relevant. The amount of non human content is generally the problem when discussing a split; because of these and other reasons, the human/non human split/merge does tend to differ article by article. Regarding this topic, I contributed to the earlier discussion and you can see my thoughts above. Contributors to these discussions need to remember that the actual problem of a human centric medical and anatomic space on wikipedia, which is definitely a problem that we face, needs to be solved be editors working in those areas; sadly, long debates about titles (which have previously occurred in many spaces) generally don't result in much if any new content being added :(. In my ideal world we'd have these discussions because there's heaps of well sourced information written about the topics in general that's been added, thereby justifying a split. Tom (LT) (talk) 06:19, 11 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Probably, there is almost nothing to split in the current article. Mammalian kidney covers all about anatomy and function, evolution is covered by the kidney (vertebrates) article. Information about genes is written human-specific by human-specific sources. Diseases and diagnosis are described in human context. Culture section is human-specific, too, as I understand. The only thing that surely must be removed from current article is the kidneys as food. Kidneys in context of culinary has nothing to do with biology, but I can't find reliable sources describing kidneys as food that don't describe specific region of the world. D6194c-1cc (talk) 07:17, 11 July 2023 (UTC)


 * Oppose per WP:CONCISE. This move seems completely unnecessary to me. Rreagan007 (talk) 00:01, 13 July 2023 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Just reminding that in case of move, it should be done safely by forking and making this article a redirect, because many articles in other languages may have link to this article in edit history as attribution. Just moving and creating redirect will break attribution in case if other article will be moved here afterwards. D6194c-1cc (talk) 06:34, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Or forking by moving and copying the contents here with attribution in the edit history, and then replacing them by a redirect. D6194c-1cc (talk) 06:41, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Oppose per Lugnuts in the last RM as well as per WP:ASTONISH and WP:PRIMARYTOPIC. – Davey 2010 Talk 20:02, 13 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, since many think that there is no need to move the page, I changed main definition to be human-specific. Previous definition was misleading, since it attempted to describe human kidneys in vertebrate context. D6194c-1cc (talk) 20:45, 13 July 2023 (UTC)