Talk:Tongue cleaner

Old comments
A tag has been placed on Tongue cleaner, requesting that it be speedily deleted from Wikipedia. This has been done under the criteria for speedy deletion, because it is a very short article providing little or no context to the reader. Please see Wikipedia:Stub for our minimum information standards for short articles. Also please note that articles must be on notable subjects and should provide references to reliable sources that verify their content.

Please do not remove the speedy deletion tag yourself. If you plan to expand the article, you can request that administrators wait a while for you to add contextual material. To do this, affix the template   to the article and state your intention on the article's talk page. Feel free to leave a note on my talk page if you have any questions about this. Edikraft (talk) 22:34, 12 January 2008 (UTC) Edikraft (talk) 22:30, 12 January 2008 (UTC) Edikraft (talk) 22:19, 12 January 2008 (UTC) This is new page about a well known dental product named "tongue cleaner". In the past years it has become increasingly popular, as an essential oral hygiene instrument, near the toothbrush, toothpaste and dental floss. There are several different models available, each of them shaped differently. This page intends to discuss and document the importance of tongue cleaning, and how the shape of a tongue cleaner influences its efficiency during use. Tongue cleaning is meant to clean millions of bacteria (up to 500 different types), decaying food debris, fungi (such as Candida), and dead cells, off the surface of the tongue, mainly from its rear area. There are claims that tongue cleaning is a recommended solution against bad breath, also called halitosis (for which there is already a page here) There are many scientific researches of which results talk about the importance of tongue cleaning: It is estimated that approximately 70% of the bacteria in the oral cavity thrives on the surface of the human tongue. Also that in a majority of approximately 85-95% the bad breath is originated in the mouth, due to the coating of the tongue.

Merge / redirect
This should probably be merged with Tongue scraper. They are the same instrument. -- Versa geek  23:26, 12 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Definitely merge/redirect --ukexpat (talk) 23:51, 12 January 2008 (UTC)


 * Is it just me, or is this article sounding a lot like an advertisement? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.160.237.186 (talk) 02:12, 28 May 2010 (UTC)

Edikraft (talk) 00:07, 14 January 2008 (UTC) Dear friends, I appreciate your suggestion. I am quite new here and a dental hygiene freak. So how do you recommend to do that merging? I have the impression that the most used name for this dental instrument is actually "Tongue Cleaner". Would like to add more relevant information on that page. Also feel that the image is also very relevant to the field and a good contribution to this page. There may be more images of how the product actually works that would be useful for understanding the concept of tongue cleaning.
 * I would merge this article into Tongue scraper. They are obviously the same thing, and I believe the instrument is more frequently referred to as a tongue scraper. - Dozenist talk  11:58, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

I would actually opt for a merged page called Tongue cleaner. Following my arguments... I agree that we associate the two names, Tongue cleaner and Tongue scraper, to the same instrument and possibly the same operation. In my experience, most references in the leading dental organisations, such as ADA and BDA, are to an instrument called a "tongue cleaner", and in their articles they refer to "cleaning the tongue" rather than "scraping the tongue". The semantics of the two words are quite different. I think that people associate "tongue cleaning" with the healthy and benefic effect of having a clean tongue, with no bacteria, food debris, fungi, dead cells, and eventually a clean mouth, cleaned of plaque and infectious germs. On the other hand, one would associate scraping with a possibly painful operation, taking in account the available different scraping tools are mainly sharp objects and in use against hard surfaces, but none of them against human organs (tissue), see page Scrape (e.g. bottle scraper, kitchen scraper, ice scraper, archaeological scraper, wheel tractor scraper). If I would be a new patient with no background at the dentist, and he would suggest to either "clean" my tongue OR "scrape" my tongue, I would definitely choose the first option, since I could easily associate the second operation with a tongue removal, or at least a painful thing and for an unclear purpose. Last but not the least, if we do a search on google for both terms, there are over 11 times more results for the "Tongue cleaner" rather than for a "Tongue scraper", a fact that speaks for itself when talking about what people say when they refer to a such device. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22tongue+cleaner%22&btnG=Search Results 1 - 10 of about 530,000 for "tongue cleaner". (0.20 seconds) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22tongue+scraper%22 Results 1 - 10 of about 46,600 for "tongue scraper". (0.19 seconds) Thank you Edikraft (talk) 16:42, 19 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I agree with Edikraft. The merge makes sense. Tongue cleaner sounds like the better name. If it needs to be changed later, that is easy. Redirects should help readers find the article. Walter Siegmund (talk) 15:49, 21 January 2008 (UTC)

Sigmund, should I consider begining to merge the two pages in the one Tongue Cleaner version that would contain all relevant info? thanks Edikraft (talk) 22:33, 21 January 2008 (UTC)
 * I would allow at least a week since some editors don't edit every day and some may be on vacation. To proceed, put a note at the bottom of this discussion with a tally of the opinions and the decision. Indicate that the discussion is closed. Perform the merge and delete the merge tags from the beginning of both pages. Please see WP:MERGE for a detailed discussion of the process. Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)

Will read through the merge instructions. Not sure regarding the week to wait... Meaning I should do the merging in a week from now? Thanks, Edikraft (talk) 23:12, 24 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Waiting a week from the time that the merge tags were added to the articles is a good interval in my opinion. I'm not sure there is a consensus for the move to Tongue cleaner, but I didn't see any vigorous objections to it. Your search with google was helpful. Walter Siegmund (talk) 06:46, 25 January 2008 (UTC)

Siegmund, I have performed the merging and structured the Tongue Cleaner article. More arguments and links to scientific articles to be added. Still have to replace the ergonomic tongue cleaner image with a photos of mine. Soon it will be ready. BestEdikraft (talk) 23:27, 27 January 2008 (UTC)
 * Hi Edikraft; it is a pleasure to see the progress on the article. One small problem I noticed is the presence of inline external links. Those should be footnotes instead. When a reader selects a link within the article, the destination should be another WP article, not an external site. External links should appear only in the "External links" or "References" sections. Please review WP:GTL. I think single-paragraph sections are discouraged, but I may be mistaken. I see abbreviations and jargon that is not defined in the article, e.g., VSC. Spell out the first occurrences with the abbreviation given parenthetically. You may find the WP:MOS helpful. Best wishes, Walter Siegmund (talk) 05:33, 1 February 2008 (UTC)

Siegmund thanks. I understand what you say. Will go through the necesarry edits the following days. Did not forget about the image. Many thanks, Edikraft (talk) 07:30, 4 February 2008 (UTC)

"Article written like an advertisement" tag
Dear Stefan, Happy New Year! I would like to propose to remove the complaint showing on top of the article stating that is written as an advertisment. I have modified all claims that seemed to be inapropriate and have so far kept only statements supported by published officical studies. If there is any issue that still needs attention, please help recommend specifically what to fix. Best regards, Edikraft (talk) 10:32, 3 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I have not examined the article in detail, but it seems to be shaping up well. However, it reads too much like a how to (see WP:NOTHOWTO), and seems slanted towards convincing the reader that they need to use the techniques (that is how this kind of material would normally be presented on a health-issues website, but it is not the encyclopedic style wanted here). For example, the heading "Importance of tongue cleaning" might perhaps be "Health effects"; also, the subsection headings might be omitted, and some of the details perhaps removed. The "Tongue cleaning in the attention of professionals" section should probably be removed (what is its purpose other than to hold references to various papers?). See WP:NOTDIRECTORY: it is not our role to link to every related piece of information. Has no one ever written anything negative about this topic (like suggesting it was a waste of time, or a person might damage something)? I have no idea on whether such opinions exist, but if reliable sources have mentioned negative views, they should be in the article. Johnuniq (talk) 04:05, 4 January 2011 (UTC)

Dear Johnuniq, I have followed your outlines and addressed all your recommendations; if there are additional comments, please let me know so I can fix them. I hope the page looks better now, and worthy of removing the "advertisment" tag. Some time ago there was a sugestion to have this page, when completed in a comprehensive way and according to the Wiki standards, as a feature on the home page of Wikipedia. Is this offer still available? Thank you, best regards, Edikraft (talk) 23:09, 5 January 2011 (UTC)
 * I think you have done some good work, and I removed the advert tag (however, someone might disagree and restore it). I also did some cleaning which you will see in the article history. There are probably too many references (which might be seen as over-gilding the story), and the article is still a little similar to a gushing website, rather than a dispassionate encyclopedic article.
 * The competition to get on the main page is fierce and this article would need a lot of work, and more participation from other editors. If interested, have a look at WP:TFA, but my guess is that it is out of reach. You might want to ask for assistance with the article at WP:WikiProject Dentistry (add a new section to the talk page). Johnuniq (talk) 01:51, 6 January 2011 (UTC)

Edikraft, I request that you include an image of the TUNG Brush since this article clearly favors the Orabrush and looks like an advertisement. You could also add that the TUNG Brush was the original tongue brush and started this type of tongue cleaner back in 1995. http://tungbrush.com 7thart (talk) 13:16, 5 March 2012 (UTC)7thart


 * There's still some work to be done here in my opinion. I hadn't read this article until now and I feel it's a little too positive about tongue cleaning to be objective. Even when there is some negative raised (example gag reflex mention) it's immediately written off. I'm not surprised it used to be criticised for reading like an advertisement. Bandanamerchant (talk) 19:14, 3 November 2012 (UTC)
 * The article still reads like an advert. As far as I'm aware the medical arguments for tongue cleaning are highly dubious. The contents of the upper tongue are completely natural in healthy individuals and tongue cleaning has no benefit. Very few people clean their tongues on a regular basis even in the developed world, and they don't seem to suffer by it. I'm 60 years old and have never been told by any dentist or doctor to clean my tongue. --Ef80 (talk) 21:28, 16 September 2015 (UTC)

Causes of halitosis
I would expect that most cases of halitosis have multiple causes, with one or two being predominant. Is it therefore correct to say that "these molecules account for 80 to 95 percent of all cases of halitosis (bad breath)"? Would it not be more accurate to say that "these molecules account for 80 to 95 percent of the bacterial which results in halitosis (bad breath)".Royalcourtier (talk) 19:47, 10 September 2014 (UTC)