Talk:Sermo

Requested move 29 October 2015

 * 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. No further edits should be made to this section. 

The result of the move request was: Not moved. Natg 19 (talk) 00:36, 6 November 2015 (UTC)

Sermo → SERMO – Sermo the social network was established by one entity in 2006. In 2012, the social network was purchased. In 2014, the social network was relaunched. The article Sermo is incredibly outdated, and although that information should be retained in its entirety in the History section of the new page, the company is an entirely new entity, and most importantly is branded as SERMO, not Sermo. ref:http://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2015/08/11/docs-divided-on-influence-of-scorecards-in-accepting-medicare-patients/ Vanderdoc (talk) 19:12, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

— Vanderdoc (talk&#32;• contribs) has made few or no other edits outside this topic.
 *  Leaning toward Oppose per MOS:TM / MOS:ALLCAPS ("avoid: TIME, KISS, ASUS"): Lots of organizations and brand names like to use all-caps name styling to try to make themselves stand out from the crowd and appear more important. It's an annoying practice that Wikipedia should generally not follow – especially if the usage in reliable sources is not uniformly in all-caps. This appears to be something pronounced as a word, not spelled out as letters, and most of the third-party unaffiliated sources cited in the article seem to use "Sermo". The fact that one recent nominator-selected source uses the all-caps is not persuasive. The lack of other edit history by the nominator and the problems evident in the nominator's prior editing are also not encouraging. —BarrelProof (talk) 05:06, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Changed to simply "Oppose" after discovering that it does not appear to be an acronym, or at least is not presented as such in the site's FAQ. —BarrelProof (talk) 06:56, 30 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment is this an acronym? -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 05:26, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Apparently not. I found an FAQ that responds to "What does SERMO mean?" with "It's Latin for 'conversation, discussion, diction, speech, talk, the word. —BarrelProof (talk) 06:54, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Then Oppose move MOS:TM not an acronym -- 70.51.44.60 (talk) 18:19, 30 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Comment it is not an acronym. There is a clear standard of other websites with Wiki articles that are in all caps: JIRA (stylized from Gojira). All articles since the re-branding of the social network include ALL CAPS. A conveinient list of articles on their media-facing site: -Vanderdoc (talk) 14:03, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
 * I think you are mistaken about there being a convention on Wikipedia to render website articles in all-caps when a site does that. I do confirm that JIRA is currently in all-caps on Wikipedia, but I saw no prior formal move request for the discussion of the wisdom of that, so I submitted a move request to suggest changing it. In fact I do see that some other people previously suggested renaming the article to avoid the all-caps (see Talk:JIRA), but that was not followed up with a formal discussion until now. I don't think that example is representative of an overall general convention to be followed. Each case should be decided on its merits, and the fact that some other stuff exists should not stop us from following the general guideline described in MOS:TM / MOS:ALLCAPS here. —BarrelProof (talk) 02:57, 31 October 2015 (UTC)


 * Oppose. As others have pointed out, rendering Sermo in all caps would be contrary to the Manual of Style. The company's own FAQ indicates it is a word and not an acronym, which would have been one of the few exceptions to the preference against all-caps article titles. I appreciate that you're trying to make the article more accurate,, but unfortunately this suggestion probably isn't going to win much if any support. — GrammarFascist  contribs talk 20:44, 31 October 2015 (UTC)
 * Comment OK, I guess that seems fair. If the policy is legitimate and upheld. I noticed TIME is Time so that seems to prove the rule. To the point of my contextual changes, is there any opposition to me separating the About section into an About and a History section? I have the changes saved. -Vanderdoc (talk) 08:09, 1 November 2015 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

6 Tweaks (COI)
Hello Wikipedians, Sermo has hired me to submit a variety of updates to its Wikipedia page. I’ve disclosed my conflict on the "Talk" pages for both Sermo and myself, and I've narrowed down these updates to those that I think will most benefit our readers. Here's the 1st of 2 batches. Thank you for your consideration.

1. Breaking Up the “History” Section
The bulk of the page consists of the "history" section, which consists of one long paragraph. For easier reading, can we split this paragraph in half? Maybe start a new paragraph with the sentence that begins, "Following this"?

Thus, we’d change this:

The community was founded by physician Daniel Palestrant in 2005 as an adverse effect reporting system, in response to what Palestrant considered failures in the reporting systems failed the US healthcare system during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall. In 2007 Sermo raised $26.7 million and in 2011 it raised an additional $3.5 million. The site developed into a discussion board covering a variety of non-clinical and clinical topics. The physician founders sold the business in 2012 to WorldOne Then in July 2012 the community was acquired by WorldOne, Inc. and rebranded to "SERMO" in 2014. Following this the community expanded from the US into 6 additional English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. In September, 2014 the community was also expanded to Spain and Mexico. Sermo is both a social networking site and medical crowdsourcing entity for physicians to receive aid on the medical problems of their patients from other physicians.

to this:

The community was founded by physician Daniel Palestrant in 2005 as an adverse effect reporting system, in response to what Palestrant considered failures in the reporting systems failed the US healthcare system during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall. In 2007 Sermo raised $26.7 million and in 2011 it raised an additional $3.5 million. The site developed into a discussion board covering a variety of non-clinical and clinical topics. The physician founders sold the business in 2012 to WorldOne Then in July 2012 the community was acquired by WorldOne, Inc. and rebranded to "SERMO" in 2014.

Following this the community expanded from the US into 6 additional English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom. In September, 2014 the community was also expanded to Spain and Mexico. Sermo is both a social networking site and medical crowdsourcing entity for physicians to receive aid on the medical problems of their patients from other physicians.

2. Updating a Footnote and Adding a Comma
The "history" section says this:

Following this the community expanded from the US into 6 additional English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

The footnote for this sentence says only, "Major medical crowdsourcing site opens in Canada". And because the original link is dead, it’s difficult to corroborate these claims.

Happily, the Wayback Machine provides the missing details.

We may also want to add a comma after "following this." Here's a revised sentence:

Following this, the community expanded from the US into 6 additional English-speaking countries, including Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa, and the United Kingdom.

3. Correcting a Typo
The "history" section begins as follows:

The community was founded by physician Daniel Palestrant in 2005 as an adverse effect reporting system, in response to what Palestrant considered failures in the reporting systems failed the US healthcare system during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall.

The problematic part of this sentence is the following redundancy:

failures in the reporting systems failed the US healthcare system

Here’s a suggested tweak:

failures in the US healthcare system

We may also want to change "the community," at the beginning of the sentence, to just "Sermo" (or "the company"). Thus:

Sermo was founded by physician Daniel Palestrant in 2005 as an adverse effect reporting system, in response to what Palestrant considered failures in the US healthcare system during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall.

4. Clarifying the Sale to WorldOne
The "history" section says this:

The physician founders sold the business in 2012 to WorldOne Then in July 2012 the community was acquired by WorldOne, Inc.

These two sentences (which, unfortunately, are not separated by a period) actually refer to the same thing — WorldOne bought Sermo. Also, the source is an article from a Forbes contributor. Here’s a suggested rewrite, which is simpler and is sourced to two news outlets:

In 2012, WorldOne, a data-collection company, bought Sermo.

5. Clarifying "M.D.s and D.O.s"
The first sentence says that Sermo is "open to licensed M.D.s and D.O.s."

a. I’m not sure that most readers know the difference between an "M.D." and a "D.O."

b. Per WP:LEAD, this level of detail seems excessive for the lead section.

c. Most media describe Sermo as open to "physicians."

Would it therefore be more helpful to our readers to just say that Sermo is "open to licensed physicians"?

6. Adding HQ to the Infobox
Should we add Sermo’s headquarters to the "infobox"?

Headquarters: Cambridge, Massachusetts

According to a 2007 article in the New York Times ("Doctors' online forum offers tips to Wall Street"), "Sermo, a company based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, set up the [web]site nine months ago."

Signed, BlueRoses13 (talk) 16:16, 18 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, I have reviewed your entire request and you are approved to edit the page to update each of your proposed changes. I have marked this as reviewed, please reply here with additional questions or add request edit for any new proposed changes. Best,  Spencer T• C 00:18, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Hi, Thank you very much for reviewing these requests. As you suggested, I’ve incorporated them directly (one by one, with a “COI” note in each “edit summary”). Best, BlueRoses13 (talk) 15:20, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

6 More Tweaks (COI)
Hello again, As I mentioned on Jan. 18, I’d now like to submit a second set of requests. These tweaks will make the article more accurate and simpler. I’m tagging Spencer in light of their response to my first request. Thank you all.

1. Founding
The “history” section says that Sermo was founded “in response to what Palestrant considered failures in the US healthcare system during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall.”

There’s no source for this claim, so I tracked down https://medicalrepublic.com.au/sermo-can-trust/2717, which says the following:

“Set up in 2005 by US physician Daniel Palestrant, SERMO (Latin for discussion) started life as an adverse effect reporting system after perceived failures in the system at the time before Merck’s 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall.”

Since the Medical Republic isn’t a reliable source, I tracked down a 2006 article in CNN (“A MySpace for physicians”), which says this:

Palestrant “noticed that many doctors saw the red flags for Merck's flawed painkiller Vioxx ... long before they turned into major scandals in the mainstream press.”

Thus, we may want to add, to the existing sentence, a footnote to the CNN article:

Sermo was founded by physician Daniel Palestrant in 2005 as an adverse effect reporting system, in response to what Palestrant considered failures in the US healthcare system during Merck's 2004 Vioxx (Rofecoxib) recall.

2. Continents and Countries
The first sentence says that Sermo is “open to licensed physicians in the United States and 149 other countries across Europe, North and South America, Africa, and English-speaking Oceania.”

Per WP:LEAD, specifying 5 continents in the lead section seems excessive. It also seems unusual to say the U.S. plus 149 other countries — and to call out Oceania, let-alone English-speaking Oceania.

Would it be more helpful to our readers to just say, Sermo is “open to licensed physicians in 150 countries”?

I don’t think an additional citation is necessary — the U.S. + 149 other countries = 150 countries — but if you’d like a source for 150, how’s this? In October 2022, Sermo’s CEO told Everyday Health, “We hit over a million doctors this year, in 150 countries.”

3. Opinion Polls
The “community” section says this:

Sermo also has twice weekly opinion polls on topics related to physicians issues.

This claim is sourced to an article from 2016. But there’s no mention of the polls’ frequency in this article, and Sermo tells me the polls aren’t conducted on a set schedule, so can we remove “twice weekly”?

Here’s a revised sentence:

Sermo also conducts opinion polls on topics related to physician issues.

Note: For grammar, I also changed “has” to “conducts” and “physicians” to “physician.”

For additional background info, see these articles from Time, Forbes, and Fierce Healthcare, each of which references a specific Semo poll.

4. Company Name (“SERMO”)
We’d like to remove the line, in the first sentence, that Sermo is “stylized as SERMO.” This used to be true (see, for example, this news release from 2015 and this news article from 2016), but Sermo no longer uses all caps. An article from October 2022, “‘I Am Not The Doctor For You’: Physicians’ Attitudes About Caring For People With Disabilities,” in the academic journal Health Affairs, confirms the new spelling: “We used a professional social networking site for physicians (Sermo) to recruit 8-10 physicians for each focus group.” Similarly, an article from October 2022, “Health Makers: Peter Kirk, 51, CEO of Sermo,” in the publication Everyday Health, refers to “Sermo,” not “SERMO.”

5. Company Name (“Sermo”)
The “history” section says that “‘Sermo’ was rebranded to ‘SERMO’ in 2014.” Right after this, can we add the following sentence, which is sourced to Politico?

By 2019, “SERMO” had been changed back to “Sermo.”

6. Origin of Name
Can we add the origin of Sermo’s name to the first sentence?

Sermo’s website says that Sermo is “named after the Latin word for conversation.” This fact is corroborated in a 2015 article from American City Business Journals, “SERMO: The #1 Social Network for Doctors is Going International,” which says, “In Latin, Sermo means ‘conversation’ or ‘discussion.’”

Thus, here’s a revised first sentence:

Sermo (which is named after the Latin word for “conversation”) ...

Signed, BlueRoses13 (talk) 14:11, 9 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 15:36, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes check.svg Done Johannes (Talk) (Contribs) (Articles) 15:38, 13 May 2023 (UTC)
 * Thank you very much! Signed, BlueRoses13 (talk) 01:22, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

150 Countries(COI)
Hi there,

On April 19, 2023, User:Little Professor (rightly) added a "failed verification" tag to the following claim: That Sermo is active in 150 countries.

That claim is currently sourced to an article from 2016, which puts the number of countries at 24.

Here's a better source: In October 2022, Sermo’s CEO told Everyday Health, "We hit over a million doctors this year, in 150 countries."

Will this new source suffice to remove the tag?

Thank you very much for your consideration.

Signed, BlueRoses13 (talk) 00:44, 6 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Hello Per WP:INTERVIEWS The general rule is that any statements made by interviewees about themselves, their activities, or anything they are connected to is considered to have come from a primary source and is also non-independent material. DreamRimmer (talk) 08:03, 11 June 2023 (UTC)
 * Fair point! Thanks, @DreamRimmer. Signed, BlueRoses13 (talk) 12:20, 11 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Yellow check.svg Partly done: I moved it down and attributed it to Sermo as a claim. Actualcpscm (talk) 09:23, 11 June 2023 (UTC)


 * Thanks so much, @Actualcpscm, for finding a way to make this request work! Great solution. All the best, BlueRoses13 (talk) 12:21, 11 June 2023 (UTC)