Wikipedia:Featured article review/Chagas disease/archive1


 * The following is an archived discussion of a featured article review. Please do not modify it. Further comments should be made on the article's talk page or at Wikipedia talk:Featured article review. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was kept by Nikkimaria via FACBot (talk) 6:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC).

Chagas disease

 * Notified: WT:MED, WT:WP Brazil, WT:WP Argentina and WT:WP Venezuela

Review section
This FA is a 2005 promotion that has not been kept up to date. The original nominator, is not currently active and has not edited the article since 2005. The top contributor, has not edited it since 2011. The second contributor, has not made any significant edits recently. A list of updates needed was posted a month ago; significant portions of the article are out of date, and there is uncited text. A number of the sources used are quite old, dating to when the article passed FAC in 2005. (see WP:MEDRS). Hopefully the WT:MED notification will result in getting this article cited, updated, and cleaned up. Sandy Georgia (Talk)  20:42, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

Note that I am involved in the current WikiCup, but come here from a notice posted to WP Venezuela as a relevant article.
 * Comments from Kingsif

It may not be an area I know a lot about, but when I read the article after seeing the FAR notice I saw that it is quite short and leaves me wanting for details, though it seems to be a disease about which a lot is known. This may be an issue with accurately expanding on detail, particularly in the latter sections, which have noticeably not been updated in at least 2 years. This seems to be the first issue I can find, before going into medical aspects. A good improvement should probably begin with expansion. I’ll hopefully come back with some MOS for medical articles comments. Kingsif (talk) 23:00, 22 February 2020 (UTC)

No concerns with the FA status being removed if that is what people wish. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:08, 23 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Comments from Doc James

So WP:WikiProject_Medicine are officially abandoning their FAs now? I know more about the parasite than the disease so without input from the said project, I would not feel fully competent helping here. Graham Beards (talk) 16:56, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Comments from Graham Beards
 * I feel like, between us, we could update this article, and are competent to do so, but I'm wondering if the effort is worth it, considering WP:MED does appear to be abandoning its FAs. I am increasingly feeling like I am the only editor left who is watching over and maintaining quite a few of the medical FAs, and I can't keep up. There appears to be little concern that almost all of the FAs (and probably GAs as well) are outdated. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:10, 24 February 2020 (UTC)
 * For what it's worth, I have the time and energy right now to hopefully bring one article up to featured status (deep vein thrombosis [DVT]), and after that I hope to keep another at featured status (dengue fever). While I do have a wish list of of other articles I'd like to massively improve, I agree with you Sandy, I think we have a severe labor shortage when it comes to this task. If somehow expediting the delisting of some medical featured articles and good articles (perhaps by invoking Ignore all rules) more accurately represents our content and helps us know which articles we should keep an eye on to maintain their *actual* quality (and also makes you feel better about this task), I would support it. Thank you for your leadership on this issue. I've long thought that a careful eye towards this issue was deserved. If there's something you'd like some help with (like suggesting I review a featured article to research and see if I think it should be delisted), feel free to ask. Currently though I do want my primary focus to remain on updating the good article DVT, which needs more attention in the treatment, pathophysiology, prevention, and history sections in particular. But yes, I do want the medical articles that are marked as featured or good to be accurately designated. Biosthmors (talk) 17:13, 27 February 2020 (UTC)
 * Happy to hear someone else is watching and concerned :) Thanks, .  Considering the shape of WP:MED's FAs, I shudder to think of the quality of the GAs, but I rarely involve myself at GA, since they amount to little more than one editor's opinion so that assessment isn't very meaningful. (Same applies to B-class.) As to helping on the FAs, I can only nominate one every two weeks, four max on the page at a time.  What would be helpful in speeding things up, considering it is evident no one plans to work on them, is for others to nominate per the FAR instructions any FA that has already been notified on talk.  Those are found at Featured article review/notices given. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:26, 27 February 2020 (UTC)


 * Accessibility comments from RexxS : I've added alt text to the handful of images that were lacking it. Unfortunately, the Template:IPA-pt applies the  tag to the words "Portuguese pronunciation" inside the infobox, which breaches MOS:TEXTSIZE. I'll amend the template in the near future to allow a size parameter, which can then be set to 100% for use in infoboxes. Summary is below. --RexxS (talk) 21:46, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * I fixed the text size problem in the template by adding a size parameter and using it in the article. --RexxS (talk) 22:17, 17 April 2020 (UTC)

FARC section

 * Issues raised in the review section include comprehensiveness and sourcing. Nikkimaria (talk) 13:50, 7 March 2020 (UTC)


 * Holding as we may now have editors willing to help out-- and . Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  20:46, 7 March 2020 (UTC)
 * There is now a third editor, actively updating the article to the most recent high-quality secondary sources. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  15:14, 10 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Improvements ongoing. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  01:27, 16 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Active improvements still happening. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  23:37, 20 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Still progressing; I plan to start indepth review sometime this week. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  19:31, 29 March 2020 (UTC)
 * Weekly checkup, and  still making very good progress. These are trying times and progress is slow-- but steady-- and headed in the right direction.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:01, 5 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Hooray! With substantial effort from  and, all maintenance tags are now gone, and MOS check and a check for prose and flow remain. When SMB and AJ say they are done, I will ask good copyeditors to eyeball the prose. Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  20:56, 13 April 2020 (UTC)


 * Keep, I think we are good enough to go here. I had hoped Outriggr would find time to copyedit, but it doesn't look like that will happen.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  21:38, 17 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Noting that credit for this bronze star goes to and, who can wear it on their user page with Cscr-featured.svg. Thanks for the effort!  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  20:48, 3 May 2020 (UTC)


 * Comment - How do you deal with close paraphrasing in medical FAs? I notice the article is over-reliant on a couple sources, in particular ref 1, 2, 5, 7, 15, 17, 23, 51 (WHO & Lancet + journal articles). I appreciate that this is different from, say, a MILHIST article, where there is more room for stylistic variation. Eisfbnore  (会話) 16:00, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * On the "over-reliant on a couple of sources", take care to check if a) those are in fact the best sources available, and b) other viewpoints or sources are not excluded. It is not unusual to find a high quality source like Lancet used to cite a lot of medical content, since MEDRS prefers the most recent, most high quality sources.  (I personally do not consider WHO to be in that category, feel it is overused in multiple medical FAs and could be replaced in many cases, but do not know if that is the situation here.)  Is WHO public domain (I am not sure)?  And then, double check if your interpretation of close paraphrasing is taking into account that, for many medical concepts, there just aren't other ways to vary the wording, and there is a lot of standard wording that can't be avoided.  And finally, if you have a specific concern, raise it now at article talk, as there are good and diligent editors hard at work there.  Sandy Georgia  (Talk)  17:08, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Re. over-reliance on certain sources, note that the number of citations per source is inflated because the lead is fully cited and each sentence in the body ends with a citation even when consecutive sentences are cited to the same source, e.g. Also common in chronic Chagas disease is damage to the digestive system, particularly enlargement of the esophagus or colon, affecting 10–21% of people.[2] Those with enlarged esophagus often experience pain (odynophagia) or trouble swallowing (dysphagia), acid reflux, cough, and weight loss.[2] Individuals with enlarged colon often experience constipation, which can lead to severe blockage of the intestine or its blood supply.[2] Up to 10% of chronically infected individuals develop nerve damage that can result in numbness and altered reflexes or movement.[2] I find this makes the text and ref list a bit cluttered but I haven't changed it because of WP:CITEVAR concerns.
 * As Sandy points out, there are only so many ways to paraphrase a statistic or a list of symptoms without introducing inaccuracies, but feel free to to point out any examples of close paraphrasing here or on the talk page so they can be discussed. SpicyMilkBoy (talk) 18:17, 20 April 2020 (UTC)
 * Thanks both, those are very satisfying answers. I don't have a specific concern, since I haven't done any spotchecks. I'm not familiar with MED articles, hence my original question. I fully understand that these type of articles are more technical and give less leeway for original phrasing. Cheers! Eisfbnore  (会話) 18:50, 20 April 2020 (UTC)

Nikkimaria (talk) 16:31, 9 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep. Looks good; reads well. Images and sources check out. Thanks everyone! DrKay (talk) 07:38, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * Keep For me, all looks good. Improved all over. Kingsif (talk) 16:17, 3 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.