Wikipedia talk:Wikiproject:Alternative Medicine/Announcements/Archive 1

Votes for Deletion
Three VfD's are taking place on key Project of Alternative Medicine articles.

I need you to vote to KEEP the following.

Votes_for_deletion/List_of_terms_and_concepts_used_in_alternative_medicine This article is extremely important to our project.

Votes for deletion/List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine

And, vote to REDIRECT the following.

Votes for deletion/Philosophy of alternative medicine

Please vote in favor of the Project on Alternative Medicine today, before it is too late.
 * -- John Gohde 14:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion
Three VfD's are taking place on key Project of Alternative Medicine articles.

I need you to vote to KEEP the following.

Votes_for_deletion/List_of_terms_and_concepts_used_in_alternative_medicine This article is extremely important to our project.

Votes for deletion/List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine

And, vote to REDIRECT the following.

Votes for deletion/Philosophy of alternative medicine

Please vote in favor of the Project on Alternative Medicine today, before it is too late.
 * -- John Gohde 14:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

The rules are very simple here.
The rules are very simple here. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 15:42, 18 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * 1) If you want to edit this WikiProject, then we are asking for the simple courtesy of registering yourself as a Public Participant in this WikiProject in the main project page. Most WikiProjects follow this same practice.
 * 2) All comments made on our talk pages must be friendly.
 * 3) * Hostile comments and / or personal attacks are subject to being refactored out by any of our public participants.
 * 4) This talk page is reserved exclusively for:
 * 5) * To function as the centralized sounding board watchlist for all CAM / Alternative Medicine related issues on Wikipedia.
 * 6) ** If you need a block of CAM supporters to vote on some issue, then post your announcement here.
 * 7) * Discussions concerning the Official Announcements of this WikiProject.
 * 8) * All Support group activities for the participants of this WikiProject.
 * 9) * A friendly place for people interested in creating Wikipedia articles on CAM to congregate and discuss their concerns amongst like minded people.

Allergy article edits
Please excuse the faux pas if this is not the right place to post this. The allergy article has recently been edited to remove alternative viewpoints. I responded in the discussion page to object. It looks like the same problem we have had over and over here on the Wikipedia, the problem which inspired this project. Hopefully this won't degenerate into an edit war. heidimo 15:42, 3 May 2004 (UTC)


 * I took a look at the article. It looks like you added some stuff in February. Perhaps, your addition was improved upon by a few other editors?  But, today all your stuff was deleted because it was called unscientific.


 * I would not do a revert, but I would simply add back the couple of paragraphs that were deleted.


 * I would put in the edit summary: Adding a clearly existing position which is being advocated by the XYZ community. I would make sure that your addition does not advocate any point of view, but merely identifies a specific group of people who advocates that particular position on allergies.


 * Remember, after that you should be able to do two reverts in one day for any reason. So, stick to your rights to write about existing positions that are being advocated by other people, in any article. If an edit war develops, we will procede to the next step, tomorrow. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 19:38, 3 May 2004 (UTC)


 * John, thanks for the advice. heidimo  22:34, 3 May 2004 (UTC)

This problem appears to have been resolved. So, to get our way in the future, all you have to do is: in similarly types of articles that are related to alternative positions on health, healing, or illness. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health
 * 1) Do not start an edit war with reverts;
 * 2) Post our  custom message on top of the talk page;
 * 3) Politely point out the error of their ways on talk; and
 * 4) Add the alternative point of view to an Alternative views section


 * Yes, this approach worked this time, since all parties involved remained civil. I have also had success so far with the Pericardium article, where I posted a paragraph labeled TCM theory.  I plan to add similar paragraphs in the future to articles which are otherwise from the western medicine point of view.  The allergy stuff was there for months before anyone objected to it.  heidimo  16:54, 4 May 2004 (UTC)

Orphaned articles
I searched the list of orphaned articles for anything CAM-related, and added a few oddities to the list of terms and concepts in order to have them linked somewhere. heidimo 00:51, 7 May 2004 (UTC)

Our infobox is currently being attacked in the Iridology article
Our infobox is currently being attacked in the Iridology article, presumably because Theresa Knott has a long history of personally attacking and harassing anything remotely connected to me. See Talk:Iridology for more details and for more people objecting to it.

This article is somewhat unique. It has a large image of an iris or eye, as well as a number of other graphic images.

My latest solution is to place the image of the iris immediately to the left of the infobox on top of the article.

This is a call for support for the Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine Infobox in the Iridology article. Please post your comments on Talk:Iridology as to how it looks to you and how the situation can be amicably resolved? -- John Gohde 07:42, 18 May 2004 (UTC)

Request for Comments on Theresa Knott
Requests for comment/Theresa Knott has been created as structured way to gather support in the Wikipedian community for action to be taken against Theresa Knott for her consistent use of aggressive editing tactics that are counter productive to the development of high quality encyclopedic articles.

From my perspective, Theresa Knott has gone way out of her way in the last few days to attack the WikiProject on Alternative Medicine Infobox in both Iridology and Alternative medicine. In addition, she has deliberately added controversy and promoted edit wars in both these CAM articles.

In addition she has deliberately disrupted the traditional stable editing process of the Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine by editing our project without registering as a participant.

Now, is your chance to voice your grievances against Theresa Knott. Please take a few minutes of your time to air your comments. Feel free to expand the list of problem areas by adding problems or grievances of your own. -- John Gohde 04:22, 20 May 2004 (UTC)

Project on Alternative Medicine Template Deletion History?
I am interested in finding the deletion history for these Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine templates. Notes on their respective talk pages indicate TfD noitces were posted Aug - Sept 2004, yet the Deletion Log for Sept has no record of anybody voting on these templates. What happened?


 * CamMenu -- TfD notice was posted in Sept 2004.
 * CamBottom -- TfD notice was posted in Aug 2004.
 * Alternative Medicine ( Terms, Philosophy, Branches, People, History, Index )
 * CamFailed
 * CamPassed
 * -- John Gohde 08:23, 31 Jan 2005 (UTC)

Case of Snowspinner Deliberately Destroying An Article
User:Snowspinner on 13 Feb and on 14 Feb 2005 voluntarily decided for no good reason to destroy the Philosophy of alternative medicine article, one of the Core Project Articles of the Wikipedia:Wikiproject:Alternative_Medicine that was created by this project in April 2004. Snowspinner moved this article to List of topics in alternative medicine in a manner that did not maintained the original links to it. In other words, nothing links to this new article. That makes it a case of vandalism committed by User:Snowspinner, an adminstrator, because the work of dozens of editors in Wikipedia have been deliberately orphaned. I have previously attempted to moved the article back both on 13 Feb and on 14 Feb 2005, but Snowspinner has reversed it back to List of topics in alternative medicine sans cross-links. Further, the Philosophy of alternative medicine article is now showing up as a completely different stub article. In other words, there are two articles physically in existence. There is no rational explanation other than vandalism that explains the actions of Snowspinner. John Gohde 23:55, 14 Feb 2005 (UTC)
 * I have responded to this at Talk:Alternative medicine. Snowspinner 00:04, Feb 15, 2005 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion: February 15, 2005
Three VfD's are taking place on key Project of Alternative Medicine articles.

I need you to vote to KEEP the following.

Votes_for_deletion/List_of_terms_and_concepts_used_in_alternative_medicine This article is extremely important to our project.

Votes for deletion/List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine

And, vote to REDIRECT the following.

Votes for deletion/Philosophy of alternative medicine

Please vote in favor of the Project on Alternative Medicine today, before it is too late.
 * -- John Gohde 14:54, 16 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Votes for Deletion: February 16, 2005
Another VfD is taking place on one of our key Project of Alternative Medicine articles.

I need you to vote to KEEP the following.

Votes for deletion/Index of topics in alternative medicine This article is the master index to the articles on alternative medicine in Wikipedia. It was developed by the joint efforts of dozen of editors.

Please vote in favor of the Project on Alternative Medicine today, before it is too late.
 * -- John Gohde 05:27, 18 Feb 2005 (UTC)

April 21, 2004 -- Navigation Aid Menu
The article menu for each CAM article will basically consist of at least two different features.

First, the classifications of the respective CAM article being reviewed table.

And, second, the navigational aid menu. It is undecided at this point whether or not it will be one combined feature, or two separate items. But, I have come across another WikiProject that already has implemented the identical navigation concept that I had in mind using: WikiProject Buddhism. So, check it out. Like Buddhism we will mostly be creating and then using simple lists with some added text to do a lot of our work for us. These simple lists will also function as our master list of articles that need to be written by somebody. The whole concept is clean and simple. And, as Buddhism has already implemented their system we should receive absolutely no opposition to the creation of these required simple lists of articles on CAM. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 05:15, 21 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * This phase of our project is 100% completed. John Gohde 04:21, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

April 22, 2004 -- Finalization of Standards of Quality Guidelines
I believe that our Standards of Quality Guidelines'' have been finalized. We need to discuss in Talk:Standards of Quality what we need to change so that we can move on with this project.

What we need is: -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 17:01, 22 Apr 2004 (UTC)
 * Key Wikipedia guidelines and policies that we might have overlooked.
 * A list of key questions to be asked when reviewing an article.


 * This phase of our project is 100% completed. John Gohde 04:22, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

April 24, 2004 -- Status update on our Infoboxes
Infoboxes has developed to the point where I need some feedback on what everybody thinks about them. We need to discuss this in Talk:Infoboxes.

Since Homeopathy seems to be the favorite target of criticism in alternative medicine, you should especially take a very close look at how I have set the infobox on Homeopathy up. Do you find this approach acceptable? Or, do you strongly object?

Anybody can add these infoboxes to CAM articles without changing any other content or formatting of these articles.

This project is the first of its kind in that we are planning on rating CAM articles for their compliance with our Standards of Quality Guidelines. How do you like my proposed system for doing this? Or, do you strongly object?

Also of importance is receiving YOUR approval on the proposed navigational system for CAM articles. I proposed that it should be adapted from the WikiProject on Buddhism. So, check out the infobox in Buddhism. Do you like how you can navigate in their system? Or, do you strongly object?

More work needs to done, here. So, I need some kind of comment before I spend more of my time on this project. So, please respond to this announcement. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 15:32, 24 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * This phase of our project is 100% completed. John Gohde 04:23, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

April 29, 2004 -- We are now Officially Operational
The Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine first started on the night of 15 Apr 2004. On the morning of 29 Apr 2004, our project officially became active. So, in approximately two weeks this project has gone from I wonder if ... to this actually works great!!! Both our custom message and infobox are now on display and operational in the following articles.
 * Natural Health
 * Natural therapy
 * Lifestyle diseases

I still need to do some testing and write up some instructions on how to customize our infobox. The article on the History of Alternative Medicine has yet to be created because currently, we do not have any history articles (as far as I know). And, of course, we need to wait a while to see if there is going to be some type of negative community reaction before we proceed to Phase I of our project. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 06:24, 29 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * This phase of our project is 100% completed. John Gohde 04:25, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

April 30, 2004 -- Open tasks that need to be done.
First, I firmly believe that there are literally 100's of lost or orphaned articles, especially in the area of famous persons, that could be linked to CAM and alternative medicine.

Our Wikiproject is in need of any editor willing to track down these missing articles and add them to the following key articles of our Wikiproject.


 * Terms and concepts in alternative medicine
 * Any term or concept that wont be developed beyond a stub.
 * This glossary is ideal for defining any term that has a unique meaning in the context of alternative medicine.
 * You can, also, add small paragraphs that introduce a fully developed article.
 * Philosophy of alternative medicine
 * Please add articles that have been written which can actually be used to support an alternative position on health, healing, and illness.
 * Branches of alternative medicine
 * What branches, or forms, of alternative medicine articles have we overlooked or have been orphaned?
 * Famous people in alternative medicine
 * Somebody needs to read through our articles hyperlinks several layers deep in order to locate all the people that are associated with alternative medicine.
 * Who are the modern spokespersons for alternative medicine?
 * History of alternative medicine
 * Any historical event that can be reasonably be associated with alternative medicine, should be added here.
 * Index of topics in alternative medicine
 * The Index will be our master list of what has actually been written on the subject of CAM in Wikipedia. Any existing article, added to the above links should also be added to our Index.

Second, we need editors to add plenty of links to the above articles (except for our Index) on yet to be written articles as an informal to do list for any editor to write articles on.
 * Especially, we need ideas for articles to be written for our Philosophy of series of articles.

Third, our project needs editors familiar with alternative medicine as practiced in the Eastern cultures. We are in real need of many additions from the Eastern cultures, such as the Vedic and Chinese cultures. I am sure that the development of alternative medicine in Australia, Africa, Central America, and South America would prove interesting, too; if we could find editors either living in or familiar with the history of these vast areas of alternative medicine.
 * We, especially, need Eastern contributions to the articles on Famous people in and History of articles.

-- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 21:27, 30 Apr 2004 (UTC)

May 2, 2004 -- Phase I of our WikiProject has officially begun.
Phase I of the WikiProject on alternative medicine is where we add our customized infobox to all the branches of alternative medicine articles that are exclusively about CAM. Each added infobox, must be individually customized. Please read our instructions on how to do this before you attempt to add an infobox.

All we will be doing, in Phase I, is simply classifying all the fully developed CAM, without making any other changes to the article whatsoever. These classifications are used in our project to deflect any controversy from taking place in the future. People educated in the basic sciences take these issues very seriously, so an accurate classification of each CAM article would help to prevent controversy and edit wars.

From what I have seen, there are quite a few of these articles to be classified. Please note that this addition has already been done in a few of the articles. Further, all of these articles should already have our custom message added to their respective talk pages.

Discussions and comments about customizing our infoboxes should take place on Talk:Infoboxes. Criticisms and comments about Phase I, itself, should take place on Future Proposed Goals & Tasks. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health


 * This phase of our project is 100% completed. John Gohde 04:27, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

May 24, 2004 -- Where is the rally of support from the science people?
I would like to know where is the rally of support for the Wikiproject on Alternative Medicine?

Quite a few people are very unhappy about our inclusion of the knowledge classification in our infobox. The only reason I have insisted upon putting the knowledge classification within our infobox is to make the science people happy. And, the only real incentive we have for putting citations of research in the CAM articles is to raise these classifications to the level of a protoscience.

So far the project has received only harassment for our efforts from the science people in Iridology. I have seen absolutely no indication what so ever that our infobox is making the science people happy in Iridology. Or, that our drive to include evidence of effectiveness in the CAM articles has been the least bit appreciated by the so-called science people in Iridology.

So, I am giving the science people exactly two weeks notice. Either, we are going to receive support for our efforts from the science people in Wikipedia or the following will happen.
 * 1) We will drop the knowledge classification from our infobox as part of the debugging process.
 * 2) We will drop the requirement for adding citations to research in the CAM articles as part of the debugging process.
 * 3) The persons inflecting this harassment upon our project in Iridology and elsewhere will personally be held responsible for the above in our project pages.
 * And, our drive to remove all forms of controversy from the introduction of all CAM articles will continue unchanged indefinitely.

It is your choice. What will it be? Do you want the knowledge classification in our Infobox or not? -- John Gohde 07:44, 24 May 2004 (UTC)


 * This phase of our project is 100% completed. John Gohde 04:29, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

June 1, 2004 -- Phase II of our WikiProject has officially begun.
Participants may now start auditing the major branches of alternative medicine articles that have been developed beyond a stub. We will only be auditing articles with a history of controversy. And, that would include mostly just the branches of alternative medicine.

Orthomolecular medicine was audited this morning by me and passed. See the top of Talk:Orthomolecular medicine and check out how I set it up.

To audit an article simply read through the article a couple of times. Then print off one copy of Wikipedia:Wikiproject:Alternative Medicine/Checklist on your printer. Next, fill out this form by answering the questions. -- John Gohde 06:07, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)

February 4, 2005 -- The Next Phase of our WikiProject has officially begun.
The Project on Alternative Medicine is active. Our project's infobox designs have been updated, yet again. The new designs place greater emphasis on Category:Alternative medicine. The current phase of our project is to update our infoboxes in their respective articles, as well as Category: Alternative medicine and categories.

In some cases, the original infobox must be restored first before the update can be made. Do not feel bad about adding back our informative and beautiful infoboxes. Projects are an accepted part of Wikipedia.

The implementation of categories, at least in the area of alternative medicine, is a total mess. Category: Alternative medicine is woefully incomplete. Major articles are missing. Subcategories of alternative medicine like Category:Manipulative therapy and TCM have not been added to category: alternative medicine. In short, categories require a major effort at making them complete in both directions. John Gohde 08:11, 4 Feb 2005 (UTC)


 * According to Wikipedia guidelines no CAM article belongs in Category: Alternative medicine because they all, with a few exceptions, should be put into a sub-category. -- John Gohde 04:38, 20 Feb 2005 (UTC)

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