Talk:Virus/Archive 2

Smallpox vaccination
I have moved this interesting comment from the top of the page to here:


 * "i just read this sentence in the weapons paragraph "and smallpox vaccination is no longer practiced.[110] Thus, the modern global human population has almost no established resistance to smallpox". I got out of the US Army about a year ago and every soldier who was deployed to the middle east recieved a smallpox vaccine.  I don't feel educated enough to edit anything myself but that sentence is false and should be edited by someone who is familiar with the smallpox vaccine.  71.61.232.80 (talk) 19:02, 8 January 2008 (UTC) Eli Hathaway"


 * I suggest changing the wording to "universally practiced" for now. When I, or somebody else, finds a reliable reference regarding vaccination of soldiers, the section can be expanded accordingly. Thanks for pointing this out, your comments throw a whole new light on the subject, (well at least for me). Best wishes, Graham Colm Talk 19:13, 8 January 2008 (UTC)

History Correction
I am fairly sure that this statement is incorrect:

"Dimitri Ivanovski used this filter to study an infection of tobacco plants, now known as tobacco mosaic virus. He passed crushed leaf extracts of infected tobacco plants through the filter, then used the filtered extracts to infect other plants, thereby proving that the infectious agent was not a bacterium."

Ivanovski did pass TMV through the filter, however, he stated that he did not doubt the bacterial nature of TMV; Beijerinck was actually the first to assert that TMV was something non-bacterial in nature after performing that experiment. Worth looking into if anyone is interested.

151.160.202.5 (talk) 11:14, 1 February 2008 (UTC) 5:14AM 1 FEB 08

GA Sweeps (Pass)
This article has been reviewed as part of WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. Regards, Corvus coronoides  talk 23:38, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Proposed addition to the 'Origin' section
Hi,

This does fall under as a 'personal theory based on personal observation', but I see the following as useful to add to the 'Origin' section of the Virus wikipedia entry. For reasons I do not know yet, this recent change have been undone by user 'GrahamColm'. I appologize ahead of time if I may have not followed any undertood wikipedia rules. Let me know if there is something I would need to do to be able to add this content to this article, and/or the specific reason for the addition being 'undone'.

Thanks

Origin

..

"John Carneiro states that viruses need to be looked at the inter cell/organism context where they are most different from typical life. He states that by being so alien and different to life around us, viruses are in fact one of the few things other than reproduction that introduces the most cross cell DNA mutation. Viruses have the ability to survive outside a host cell, even in the vacuum of space. It isn't that far fetched to imagine one or more viruses being launched by way of a rocket (knowingly), or comet, meteorite from another world to ours. He proposes a theory that viruses are in fact mechanisms that were introduced from another world or higher order life form that all have the same simple encoded job, introduce DNA and then cause specific/sporatic, DNA mutations over time. These virus mechanisms have introduced the DNA mutation and hence natural selection concept to Earth. In order to keep the natural selection process in constant working order, the perceived general damage viruses cause when forcing DNA mutations upon host cells are in fact necessary when one steps back from that one cell's sacrifice for the common good of natural selection." —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jcfado (talk • contribs) 19:17, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Hi, Wikipedia is not a medium for publishing original theories or original research. It is an encyclopedia. All contestable and controversial statements must be supported by a reference to a reliable source, preferably a review article in an scientific journal or a book by a respected author and published by a respected company. I removed your well-intentioned addition because it does not meet these important criteria. If I had not done this another editor would have very soon. If it is any consolation, your theory is not lost because all previous versions of the article are kept and archived on the server.--Graham Colm Talk 19:26, 16 March 2008 (UTC)

Unrolling citations for ease of editing
I started unrolling some of the many citations in this article, but was notified by an editor who objected to this. I'd like to make my case for doing this.

First of all, for those who are wondering what the hell I'm talking about, it's the difference between this:



and this:



Having seen both styles, having the citations "unrolled" as in the latter example makes articles much easier to edit, in my not-so-humble opinion. Even if there are a lot of references, as there are in this article, it creates very visible "islands" in the editable text, making the references stand out from the text. It does chop up the text a bit, but on balance it facilitates editing.

So what do you think? +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 02:08, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * I'll defer to you Graham on this, since you edit this article much more than I do. Which do you prefer (click "edit" to see difference)?

or

I prefer them "unrolled" (tab delineated?). It makes editing the article, and the references much easier. I would be very grateful to you for making these edits to the article. Graham--Graham Colm Talk 16:52, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Thanks. Rather than use tabs (how do tabs even work in the Wiki-software?), I use a single space at the beginning of each field in the template to offset them (see the first "unrolled" template above). I'll go ahead and start unrolling. +ILike2BeAnonymous (talk) 17:02, 18 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Uh, oh. I've done some of these. I hope our edits don't conflict. Tim Vickers (talk) 17:07, 18 March 2008 (UTC)

Some suggestions
The following suggestions were generated by a semi-automatic javascript program, and might not be applicable for the article in question. You may wish to browse through User:AndyZ/Suggestions for further ideas. Thanks, Arch O. La  Grigory Deepdelver  17:24, 18 March 2008 (UTC)
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