Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/List of rare diseases


 * The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review).  No further edits should be made to this page.  

The result of the debate was - No consensus, keep by default. - Richardcavell 00:54, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

List of rare diseases
Del. What the heck is "rare disease"? The criterion is not specified. The list is neither definitive nor complete (as it says itself). The originating external link is dead. To have two huge lists (this one and the complete List of diseases) is pointless and useless IMO. A better solution would be to annotate the List of diseases, which is pretty much useless as well, besides showing 'red links' `'mikka (t) 23:59, 5 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom. Listcruft. KleenupKrew 00:27, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete; not to mention that it appears pretty indiscriminate. I wouldn't consider Alzheimer's rare. Peyna 02:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete. Per Peyna.  Lack of established criteria. &mdash; WCityMike (T  &dArr; plz reply HERE  (why?) &dArr;  03:41, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete - most of these diseases are far from rare anyway (most forms of cancer seem to be there); assuming that rare has its ordinary meaning of a limited manifestation in a given population, this is not a sufficiently defined criterion for inclusion. In short, listcruft. SM247 05:51, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Speedy keep - Rare disease is a technical term. The article on rare diseases notes that organisations exist that are dedicated to rare diseases. And cruft? Are you joking??? Andjam 11:22, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * I nominate you to go through and remove every disease from the list with a prevalence higher than 5 per 10,000. There's a lot of them in there. Peyna 12:11, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * The definition in "rare disease" is American. Hence at best the title should be List of rare diseasesas defined in the United States. How other countires define this term? Is there an internationally recognized definition? In other words, the article rare disease sucks. Someone was just happy to throw in many external links leaving the article itself basically useless. `'mikka (t) 15:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Delete, unfortunately. The list is huge, and unverified, in the sense that it is impractical to check whether an entry belongs on it or not, especially given there is no stated criteria. It therefore has gotten filled with things blatantly do not deserve to be on it. (Alcoholic liver cirrhosis? The article on it says it's the 12th leading cause of death in the US, for goodness sakes!) The List of Pokémon by National Pokédex number is much smaller, and more easily verifiable - just check the number. Per Peyna, though, I will change my vote to a Strong Keep if anyone (Andjam being a strong candidate) were to go through the list and mark just how rare each disease is next to the entry according to some standard people can look up, and say - yup, this source says it's pretty rare. It would then be maintainable and verifiable. AnonEMouse (squeak) 14:04, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * But again, such information may be addded to the full List of diseases. The often-repeated argument arising each time when someone proposed to delete some list because a category exist &mdash; is that a list can contain annotations. In our case annotations are most definitely lacking. For example these disease lists contain a big number of synonyms. To mark them would be a good idea as well. To add some to-level classification ("infectous"/"mental disorder"/"unknown") wold be useful as well. `'mikka (t) 15:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Keep per Andjam.  Grue   14:53, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Speedy Keep Invaluable list of diseases many know exist. Lord_Hawk 17:04, 7 June 2006 (UTC-8)

rare disease: "Eurordis (European Organisation for rare Diseases) estimates that there exist between 5,000 and 8,000 distinct rare diseases, affecting between 6% and 8% of the population." So this list is kinda 6% of possible size. Severe maintainability problem because of huge duplication with List of diseases. By common sense the List of rare diseases is expected to constitute a VERY significang part of List of diseases. It is not,like, there are two dozens of "rare" diseases. Thefore these two lists essentially duplicate information. It is always maintenance nightmare, especially keeping in mind their enormous sizes.

To put my keyboard where my mouth is, I vouch to start marking "rare diseases" in the List of diseases. See, e.g., how I did it in the (missing until now) sublist List of diseases starting with a non-letter (and suggest a better name, if possible). By the way, if I try to put more than two inline named references (syntax:  ), the referencing breaks. If anyone knows what happens, please advise. Is it a bug or my ignorance? `'mikka (t) 15:26, 6 June 2006 (UTC)
 * There is still the problem of definition. "Rare diseases" is defined differently depending on where you live.  A disease may be vary rare in some populations, but very common in others.  Until those questions can be answered, there isn't much point in developing such lists further. Peyna 22:17, 6 June 2006 (UTC)


 * Merge all linked pages into Category:Rare diseases at least. I think http://rarediseases.info.nih.gov/ could be used as the baseline reference, since I would hope the National Institute of Health is a pretty solid source. Other sources could be included, of course, if they are deemed equally reliable. &mdash; RJH (talk) 21:13, 7 June 2006 (UTC)
 * Delete per nom and WP:LC. Stifle (talk) 23:05, 9 June 2006 (UTC)
 * keep please this is important and not cruft Yuckfoo 22:16, 13 June 2006 (UTC)


 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.