Talk:Warburg's tincture

Originator of Article & Principle Contributor

User:Roland Sparkes I originated this article in early January 2010. I have the article in my watchlist and I intend to monitor this article's content over the long-term. --Roland Sparkes (talk) 17:38, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

Just to add that I fully appreciate that I do not have 'ownership' of the Wikipedia article. Please don't infer this from the above. Thanks --Roland Sparkes (talk) 17:51, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

ADVICE WANTED PLEASE

I would welcome any advice on this article which I have originated, especially in regard to: structure and headings; the name of headings; and the type of content. Please add comments on this talk page. Thanks--Roland Sparkes (talk) 03:07, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

PLUS - Should this article have some kind of chembox or drugbox? I do not come from a scientific, medical or chemistry background, so I am unsure what would appropriate in the case of this article on Warburg's Tincture. --Roland Sparkes (talk) 10:09, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

I suggest that you fix the formatting around the references per MoS: no spacing between refs or between refs and punctuation, and the ref always comes immediately after the punctuation. Otherwise congrats on the article. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

Another suggestion. Notify Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine about this article. They may have some good input. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:45, 12 January 2010 (UTC)

New Article

Over the last few days I have created an article entry for Warburg's Tincture on Wikipedia and made refinements and improvements, and included references. I have also added a 'See Also' section. --Roland Sparkes (talk) 02:47, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

I can see from the website you reference that you have done considerable research on historic figures and topics related to Belmont. I'm sorry to have to say that the website doesn't meet the requirements of reliable sources. It's probably what wikipedia would consider a self-published source. Would you please examine those two guidelines. The problem editors here face is not that we don't believe what is written is true; but we have established a consensus that we don't include information that cannot be supported by a source that is beyond suspicion – and we have no way of distinguishing between your site and a site which may be a complete hoax. So we take the only course available: we require sources to meet the standards laid out at WP:RS. I hope you will accept that I'm offering no criticism of your contributions – I'm just trying to explain to you the dilemma wikipedia faces in considering self-published sources. I see on your website that you list the sources you used in writing that page; could you go back to those sources and use them directly as citations for this article? --RexxS (talk) 18:58, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi. Please be advised that my much of my research sources for articles I have written elsewhere about Warburg's Tincture are archival material and, as such, tend to be unpublished, primary sources. This causes difficulty in regard to how I should reference these sources to help improve this article in respect of Wikipedia standards - please advise/assist? Thanks.--Roland Sparkes (talk) 19:38, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

A lot of archival material should, by definition, be published. Even if they are primary sources, they should be usable in this article. Can you give an example of one of your research sources that you think might be unpublished and I'll see how I can help? Remember, the purpose of citations is to establish the verifiability of what you write. So if you've used the Sutton Local Studies Centre and National Archives, say what you used in those archives precisely enough for anyone with access to those records to check that they support the article text.

The other thing I would suggest is to distinguish between sources (the documents you have used to write the article) and Further reading (which should be a list of materials relevant to the topic, but not used as sources – see WP:Guide to layout#Further reading). For example, when you give The Times as Further reading, you are suggesting to the reader that The Times will contain information relevant to Warburg's Tincture – but that's not really helpful to them as it's a vast bulk of information, and without further qualification isn't relevant to this article. On the other hand, if you can give the date of an edition of The Times where an article or letter was published about Warburg's Tincture, then that would be helpful. If you want, instead, to use these sources as citations, supporting the text, then remove them from Further reading and make an in-line citation in the text, giving as much detail as you can.

As a concrete example, look at the edit I just made to Carl Warburg here. It doesn't matter for now about using a cite template, but you can see that I was able to supply – using the information you supplied on your website – a date, title and author to help someone find the relevant letter in The Chemist and Druggist. Strictly speaking, you should have done that, not me (since I didn't see the original, but you did). However the citation is improved sufficiently to allow verification, whereas before, simply referring to The Chemist and Druggist isn't much help to anyone trying to see where the text of the article came from.

Try to see these articles from the point-of-view of an inquisitive reader. Our job is to not just to summarise information and present it to them; but also to point them to what we summarised or reported, so they could (in theory) see the original data for themselves – and to make that as easy for them as we can. Hope that helps. --RexxS (talk) 21:56, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for this this. I have amended the article on Carl Warburg to make it consistent with what you have suggested above. I will address the Warburg's Tincture article next. Some of the sources may be difficult to cite however, I shall see... Thanks --Roland Sparkes (talk) 22:57, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

N.B. I have recently edited the article on Warburg's Tincture re: improving the references. I have made wholesale changes in this regard. I trust this aspect of the article is satisfactory now? I have also amended the 'further reading' section. --Roland Sparkes (talk) 14:04, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

It's looking good - thanks for so scrupulously taking on my suggestions. A couple of minor points: we don't link to the same article multiple times as it devalues the links the we do make, so unless an article is huge, I'd only expect Carl Warburg (for example) to be linked once – at its first occurrence; we normally place in-line citations immediately after punctuation, so occasionally it's better to insert a serial comma before a citation in the middle of a sentence, or move all the refs to the end of the sentence. --RexxS (talk) 18:15, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, RexxS. Thanks for keeping an eye on this article and giving me pointers. I'm continuing to add new material and references to the Warburg's Tincture article. I've been able to leave out my own external article as a reference; and instead rely exclusively on old journals like The Lancet and the BJM, etc. I've left my external article under Further reading though. It's mostly sources I already had from previous research, so its not been too onerous to add all the references. The unpublished sources I mentioned before relate much more to the Carl Warburg article, so that aspect hasn't been problematic; however, if I flesh out the CW bio article, then it might get more difficult.... If you have any suggestions for improving and expanding content on either article, do let me know. Thanks--Roland Sparkes (talk) 20:06, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

In recent days I've made further improvements to text and content, and restructured the article.--Roland Sparkes (talk) 11:39, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

Assessment

As normal for 'historical medicines', this subject has been rated low-importance relative to WPMED's scope. This doesn't mean that it's low-importance on an absolute scale -- simply that WPMED members have prioritized developing articles about diseases and modern treatments ahead of investing time in historical articles. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:24, 5 January 2010 (UTC)

Sources

I'm just recording here the uri's for a couple of searches related to Warburg and the tincture. Some may be useful in expanding the article, particularly with respect to Indications and History, per WP:MEDMOS#Drugs.

• http://www.spottext.com/wikimed.cfm?url=Warburg (be patient!)
• http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22Warburg%27s+Tincture%22 (2,260 ghits )
• http://scholar.google.co.uk/scholar?q=Warburg%27s%20Tincture (205 gschol hits)
• http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez (PubMed search for Warburg's Tincture gives 63 results)

--RexxS (talk) 00:01, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for this, but I have already been there and got the t-shirt on this before now. ;) I can't get the spottext to work though..it comes up all odd - is it supposed to be like that?--Roland Sparkes (talk) 19:46, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Hehe - remember other editors may want to contribute and those resources were aimed at a general audience. The spottext actually does work – the result is a text file that contains the top 50 results from PubMed already formatted into wikipedia citation style. It was created by Nerdseeksblonde (talk · contribs) and is really aimed at editors familiar with the articles who just want the work of creating cites made easy - a kind of parallel of Diberri's tool but working 50 refs at a time.

Merging

Carl Warburg is only really notable for one thing, Warburg's Tincture and thus should be merged to this article. Please comment. LibStar (talk) 02:10, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I think that there exist sufficient sources for both Carl Warburg and Warburg's Tincture to pass WP:BIO and WP:N respectively. I suspect that you are proposing WP:BIO1E as a reason to merge, but my opinion is that Warburg's invention of the Tincture, his subsequent protection of the formula, followed by his article in BMJ disclosing the preparation, and his later impoverishment is an interesting story in itself, and amounts to rather more than "one event". I'd recommend letting the article contributors develop these two new articles separately for a while, and re-visit this proposal at a later date, when they have had a chance to flesh out the articles and incorporate more sources. --RexxS (talk) 05:35, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Unsuprisingly, I agree with RexxS. I feel Carl Warburg does warrant a separate article. If a pornstar or a sportsperson does, then he certainly does. Having them as separate also helps the reader engage with the articles, I feel. Also, because Warburg's Tincture is a medicinal drug, it probably would not be consistent with comparable articles to include biographical details about its inventor. Take a similar situation with Alexander Fleming and Penicillin: they have separate article. To the 'man in the street', is Fleming known for anything else than discovering Penicillin? --Roland Sparkes (talk) 07:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestion/query: could or should the Carl Warburg article be made a sub-category to the Warburg's Tincture? I am not familiar with category/page structure on Wikipiedia to judge or have a firm opinion on this. Views/advice please?--Roland Sparkes (talk) 07:21, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

No, there are no sub-pages; article space is quite 'flat' in that respect. However, hyperlinks and categorisation provide a more flexible system of associating related topics. --RexxS (talk) 18:19, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Can the 'merge' banner be removed now?--Roland Sparkes (talk) 19:44, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

I'd strongly recommend leaving the banner on for at least seven days to give others a chance to comment. Consensus is a really important part of building the encyclopedia and it's always better to err on the side of allowing more time than less. --RexxS (talk) 21:08, 6 January 2010 (UTC)

Do not merge. I believe these articles should NOT be merged. Carl Warburg is sufficiently noteworthy to warrant his own article, and the current article has sufficient material to warrant it. Also note his Jewish connections and his 'early-modern' immigration to Britain. I shall wait to see if anyone else contributes to this discussion in the next few days before removing the merge query tags from both articles.--Roland Sparkes (talk) 14:08, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Suggestions

Now that the article has some significant content, you might like to read WP:LEAD. A couple of summary paragraphs at the top are very helpful to readers, especially in articles about technical subjects.

Also, the many, many block quotes are both unnecessary and unencyclopedic. Encyclopedia articles don't usually quote the sentences that support claims. Wikipedia normally provides just a summary, and a bibliographic citation to the original. (We assume you're getting it right, so the quotations aren't necessary, and in most cases make the article harder to read.) WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:56, 8 January 2010 (UTC)

Hi, many thank for your suggestions. I've recently added 'lead' paragraphs to the article. I had something similar in earlier drafts but I removed them because I was concerned about the duplication of content. I have now reintroduced a summary introduction to the article. I looked at [WP:LEAD]], it was helpful. I've written something new; I've kept it 'short and snappy'. What do you think about the 'lead' paragraphs?--Roland Sparkes (talk) 02:03, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

I've restructured text and sections somewhat. I've taken your advise and removed most of the text blocks of quotations, but left the related references in.--Roland Sparkes (talk) 02:03, 9 January 2010 (UTC)

agree with whatamIdoing. excessive quotation is not standard practice in WP articles. suggest editor look at various good articles and edit a wider range of articles to get a better of idea of article formatting. LibStar (talk) 13:02, 9 January 2010 (UTC)