http://www.wikihow.com/Discussion:Fake-a-Migraine-Successfully
On the discussion page, a lot of commenters have pointed out that the article makes light of migraines. Other than adding a warning, is there anything we can do to fix this article? Right now it is up for NFD.
Someone (possibly the original author(s)?) keeps removing the NFT notices on the article too. Someone with some authority might want to know that migraine patient advocates are working on an online advocacy campaign about this article and wikiHow not being response to the concerns.
system
3
@Elocina
Was http://www.wikihow.com/index.php?title=Fake-a-Headache&diff=15083532&oldid=13351721
this reviewed? Entire article seems to be botched between the time that Anna reviewed it throughout the vandalism process. Then again, the left hand side one could possibly be a dup merge amongst all the other faking sickness articles.
This begs the question: Why does wikiHow need fake how to be sick articles? Shouldn’t wikiHow focus on practical how-to tips such as how to fix or repair something or perhaps cook something?
It looks like most of the content was removed but I added it back. I think maybe there should just be on master How to Fake Sick article with different methods. I am not thrilled with the fake sick articles. It’s one of those gray areas that comes with working on a resource that anyone can edit. I am wondering if we could just consolidate, even though a headache article might be considered similar but distinct.
system
7
@Elocina
For the amount of reverts going on, the page is protected for a week, so feel free to highlight the discussion page and everything else in between.
ANY article on faking an illness is a waste of time and insulting to anyone who’s ill. How can you think it could possibly have any value? Stop and think about all the truly good topics you could write on that would earn writers and the site both appreciation and respect. Every know anyone who took their own life because they couldn’t stand all the accusations of faking, all the stigma that comes with some diseases? If you had, you’d understand that the topic should be off-limits.
I’d have to agree with you. Apparently, there are two articles on here on how to fake headaches. Here are the links to the two articles. http://www.wikihow.com/Fake-a-Headache
http://www.wikihow.com/Fake-a-Headache-at-School
They possibly could be merged together if we wanted to have them merged. Also, for the Fake a Headache at School article, the Never fake a migraine stuff that was on the article was placed by anonymous user 99.85.100.40 ( http://www.wikihow.com/User_talk:99.85.100.40
). The edit was soon reverted, but he/she decided to instantly revert the good version back to his/her botched version, with an edit summary of “NEVER FAKE A MIGRAINE!!!”. I have left two messages regarding this concern on their talk page. They could be blocked if this behavior continues.
I find these articles really insulting towards people who actually have migraines because they are like really serious things. It is a disgrace they should be on wikiHow and can turn people away.
To offer a constructive suggestion - How about an article about how to write about diseases and medical conditions?
system
12
If anyone has the experience or knowledge in a field, I strongly encourage those to start articles, http://www.wikihow.com/Special:CreatePage
or to improve existing ones to make them more accurate.
Elocina
13
We do think about the good topics. For example, I made several improvements to an article for people who had spouses with depression, and members of the community worked together to make it a featured article: How to Help Your Spouse With Depression: 11 Steps (with Pictures)
A lot of active wikiHowians (like @Maluniu
and @Mash317
) have done similar things when it come to creating good, useful content. The person who started the article hasn’t even been on the site since April and has only made 3 edits. She (assuming the author is female) probably hasn’t even read these messages about the article she created four months ago. I had never seen this article before it was flagged on the discussion page, because wikiHow has thousands and it’s impossible to read them all. My aunt and grandmother have both suffered from migraines, so I know it’s not a joke. My aunt was accused of faking. When my grandmother was in a nursing home for Altzheimers, it took a long time for the staff to understand and respond to her migraine symptoms. Unfortunately, dishonesty is not a deletion criteria here and I don’t want to say yes an article can be deleted, only to find that people voted otherwise. If you have ideas for good migraine-related content, however, let me know and I will see what I can do to help. I will also advocate for one master fake sick article which distinguishes between pretending to have a cold and faking a disease like migraines. Neither are good, but faking a disease has a lot more serious implications. Tl;dr but with regard to the article on writing medical articles, it’s been something I have been trying to figure out for a long time --the best way to fix the medical articles. There are some things that are obvious (for example, I know enough to recognize that telling someone “go to 7-eleven to buy a slurpee for your sore throat” is bad advice) but there are some things that aren’t – to take a recent example from Collaboration Corner, an article someone wrote about using caffeine to treat ADD. So, writing medical articles is definitely something I could use advice on before I gave advice to others on the subject.
Elocina, Thank you for your very considerate reply. Yes, there are some very good articles on this site. That doesn’t, however, negate the potential harm of this one. Of course, no one person here can read every article, but someone should read and review every article published. Thank you for your offer to see what you can do to help with migraine articles here, but given the “collaborative” nature and the ability for anyone to edit content in a wiki environment, I’m extremely hesitant. If not for the fact that anyone who wanted to could edit them, I’d write some pieces here myself. I’m the author of a book (Living Well with Migraine Disease and Headaches published by HarperCollins), two medical journal articles and hundreds of online articles about migraine and other headache disorders. A suggestion - Require medical articles to be sourced back to reliable sources, including edits.
Teri Robert said: A suggestion - Require medical articles to be sourced back to reliable sources, including edits. That kinda should be optional. To make it a requirement an administrator would need to add it to wikiHow’s policies (not the Terms of use).
Whether to require sourcing is an issue that should be looked upon in light of the mission and goals of wikiHow. Who is your audience? What’s your goal for your place in the online community? One thing patient advocates teach patients is not to trust health content that isn’t sourced. Since I’m new here, these are questions for y’all to ask and answer, not me.
Actually, the community would have to vote on a policy change. As an admin, I couldn’t just go and add something a policy like that.
I wasn’t trying to say that a positive article negates the harm of other articles. I was just trying to point out that there are some good articles, because based on the discussion page comments I feel like some people may be judging the entire site based on one article. Every edit does get read through a process called Recent Changes Patrol, however, the person who read the original article may not have been educated about migraines. I did contact the original author to let her know what was going on, but have not heard back.
Hopefully, when the proposed Article Greenhouse plan goes into effect this should allow articles to be brought up to speed thereby escaping the problem wikiHow is facing. Once the articles end up in the Article Greenhouse seasoned editors can research and source articles of interest. For now NAB is the pit stop for where articles are supposed to be improved. Sadly, there are far fewer NABers than NAB articles waiting.
