Wikipedia:WikiProject Alternative medicine

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This project having failed to solve the various problems associated with alternative medicine articles Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Health_controversies has been set up by User:Leifern who proposes that they shall all be solved there.

This WikiProject is believed to be inactive. If you are not currently a member of the project, please consider joining it to help. Otherwise, we apologize in advance for our error should your project be active.

Although this Project is currently inactive as an organized collaboration, Wikipedians wishing to make suggestions on how to organize the data in articles about alternative medicine are invited to post here. Like all WikiProjects, these project pages are only suggestions designed to stop the madness of editing articles in a never ending spiral of circular editing.

This project primarily uses lists to create groupings of articles and attempts to fully comply with Wikipedia:Categories, lists, and series boxes. The scope of our Wikiproject is defined entirely by these Core Project Lists and Articles. While the implementation of our project predated categories, we have recently placed greater emphasis on categories. But, as this guideline states: "Lists have a substantial advantage over categories and series boxes in that they can be annotated. A list can include items that do not yet have an article, and can also show series or groups where the items would be completely separate on the category page. A well-annotated list may duplicate a category, but not be redundant with it."[1]

• Article series boxes -- There is no natural ordering to the topic of CAM that would form a complete linear series of articles. Therefore, Wikipedian Guidelines[2] prohibit the use of article series boxes by our Wikiproject. In addition, boxes that stated: "This article is part of the article series on ..." have fallen out of favor,[3] and are accordingly not used by this project.

Contents 1 Title 2 Scope and Goals 2.1 Scope 2.2 Goals 3 Related Wikiprojects 4 Participants 4.1 Public Participants 4.1.1 Editors desiring to be a Public Participant should Register here. 4.2 Private Participants 5 Announcements for CAM 6 Classification Systems 7 Standards of Quality Guidelines 8 Infoboxes 9 Open Tasks 9.1 Compliance audits of CAM articles 9.2 Core Project Lists and Articles 10 Representative articles of this Wikiproject

Title

WikiProject on Alternative Medicine

Scope and Goals

This WikiProject aims primarily to facilitate the development of professional looking articles on all aspects of complementary, alternative and integrative medicine. The scope of the Wikiproject will be referred to throughout our project pages simply as CAM.

Scope

• Terms and concepts in alternative medicine - A Glossary of quick and to the point definitions of important terms and concepts unique to CAM. All stub articles should be added, here.
  • Our one infobox links to this list.
• List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine - These articles are about an alternative position on health, healing, and/or illness; or are related to these topics.
  • Issues related to the promotion of healing, health, and wellness.
  • Illness
    • Issues related to the prevention of illness.
    • Alternative concepts of illness.
    • Specific forms of illness targeted by alternative treatments.
• Branches of alternative medicine - These articles are either about fully developed systems of alternative medicine or they are about generic alternative methods of treatment or therapy.
  • The various branches are organized up to two layers deep into related sub-groupings so that the public can easily locate similarly related branches of alternative medicine.
  • Diets and exercise in general would be considered a branch, but all the many different kinds of diets, such as vegetarianism, and exercise should be covered in List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine so as to avoid too many nested layers of relationships.
• Famous people in alternative medicine
• History of alternative medicine
• Index of topics in alternative medicine - A master list, of all the articles currently existing on Wikipedia that have been identified as being related to CAM; or that are about an alternative position on health, healing, and/or illness; or are related to these topics.

Goals

1. To develop and promote the scope, goals, and tasks to be covered by this WikiProject.
2. To enhance the image, status and acceptance of the topic of CAM in the Wikipedian community.
   • To promote better quality CAM articles.
   • To help stabilize these controversial CAM articles so that the number of edit wars will be reduced.
3. Develop a navigational aid to promote better coordination, content distribution, and cross-referncing between articles dealing with CAM.
   • To promote better public satisfaction with the coverage of CAM in Wikipedia through easier access by using lists.
   • To encourage the development of more CAM articles.
4. To develop and promote classification systems that are suitable for comparing all the CAM related articles participating in this WikiProject to each other.
   • To collect statistics about the participating articles.
5. To develop and promote standards of quality guidelines to be followed in all CAM related articles participating in this WikiProject.
   • To formally review and rate the compliance of the major branches of alternative medicine articles and other specific CAM articles that have a history of controversy to our standards of quality guidelines.
     • Compliance audits are designed to stop edit wars and are needed only in areas of controversy.
6. To develop and promote the use of our infoboxes and custom messages.
7. To provide a facility that supports the special interest community that will be carrying out the goals and tasks of this project.
   1. There is always strength in numbers. Divided we fall, but united we will triumph!
   2. To function as the centralized sounding board watchlist for all CAM related issues.
   3. To function as a support group for the participants of this WikiProject.
      1. A friendly place for people interested in creating Wikipedia articles on CAM to congregate and discuss their concerns amongst like minded people.
      2. To provide a place for discussions that will allow our special interest community to develop more and better CAM articles.

Related Wikiprojects

Some aspects of this WikiProject have been modeled after:

• WikiProject on Buddhism
  • Just like alternative medicine, Buddhism is a religion and philosophy that is alien to Western culture.
    • This is an individual statement and not policy of the WikiProject. Moreover it is totally wrong. Ashibaka (tock) 21:29, 5 November 2005 (UTC)
  • We have adapted Buddhism's navigation aid to fit the needs of this Wikiproject.

Participants

What does participation involve? As little or as much as you'd like.

Public Participants

The sole qualification to publicly participate in this WikiProject is the ability to develop neutral and objective articles, that are in compliance with Wikipedia's Neutral Point of View. You may, also, optionally declare what your interest is in CAM while registering here.

Editors desiring to be a Public Participant should Register here.

Please register using this format: # ~~~~ - Optional comments.

1. John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 02:24, 16 Apr 2004 (UTC)-- My declared areas of interest are natural health, natural therapy and Psychosocial or Mind - Body Interventions, as well as the founder and developer of this WikiProject.
2. Ashibaka ✎ -- I am interested in alternative medicine and other areas of pseudoscience (sorry, that's too harsh, some branches of CAM might be useful). I would like to keep all articles entirely NPOV.
3. Heidimo: I am particularly interested in traditional Chinese medicine, including lesser known and subtle aspects. I am also interested in medical intuition and auriculotherapy. I have practical expertise in these fields as well as writing/proofreading/editing skills. I teach and write on these topics regularly.
4. IrismeisterUser talk:Irismeister Interested in health, non-visual eye physiology, free speech and free thinking. Will participate in all encyclopedic and medical research projects in which John and Heidimo take part, in the limits of my for ever shrinking free time (and clearly approaching next Wikipedic censorship and ban, as a free thinker). Keep up the good work, even if I will be silenced here again, for you are the sanity of Wikipedia ! - irismeister 18:32, 2004 Apr 18 (UTC)
5. Greenman Very limited time, but this is one of my primary areas of interest. 2 May 2004
6. DryGrain 00:00, 14 May 2004 (UTC)
7. xyberdoc Homer Lim, MD from St Carlos Medical Center
8. ALargeElk | Talk 13:50, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC)
9. SargonZ Talk First year osteopathic medical student at Touro University College of Osteopathic Medicine.
10. John Gohde 08:31, 30 Jan 2005 (UTC) My declared areas of interest are natural health, natural therapy and Psychosocial or Mind - Body Interventions. I am all for making this Project active.
11. Smithfarm -- NPOV matters to me.

Private Participants

As with all Wikipedia articles, anybody may edit articles related to CAM. You may, if you wish, at your own option choose to privately follow any of the guidelines of this WikiProject. In addition, a private participant is any editor who edits one of our Core Project Articles.

• Our talk pages are open to anyone who feels like commenting in a friendly manner.

Announcements for CAM

The announcement project page will function as the official centralized sounding board watchlist for all CAM related issues for this WikiProject and ideally for Wikipedia as a whole. It will, thus, separate changes to the main project page from CAM related announcements. Its respective talk page will function as a support group for the participants of this WikiProject and for private announcements, such as requests for participating in VfDs, Quickpolls, and Comments.

• Our participants routinely participating in VfDs, Quickpolls, and Comments will be one of our methods for achieving Wikipedian community consensus that will be required before a community wide resolve is built to end the edit wars currently taking place in CAM.

Classification Systems

Our classification systems are hierarchy scales of evaluation that can be use to compare one CAM article to another.

Standards of Quality Guidelines

Our Standard of Quality Guidelines are simply that: guidelines. They should not be seen as part of "official" wikipedia policy, merely a useful way to approach some controversial issues. If you make an edit based on these guidelines, you should still be prepared to explain it if others disagree, and if necessary, to compromise and reach an agreement.

Infoboxes

The most visible impact upon Wikipedia by our Wikiproject will be the display of our infoboxes and category.

Open Tasks

Beyond editing our Core Project Lists and Articles, writing new articles on CAM related topics, editors interested in working on any open tasks for this Wikiproject should read through our announcement project page for information on what work needs to be done.

Compliance audits of CAM articles

This WikiProject is in the business of coordinating the formal review of the major branches of alternative medicine articles and other specific CAM articles that have a history of controversy in regards to their degree of compliance to our standards of quality guidelines.

• Our public participants periodically reviewing the compliance of CAM articles with a prior history of controversy to our standards of quality guidelines will be one of our most important methods for achieving Wikipedian community consensus that will be required before a community wide resolve is built to end the edit wars currently taking place in CAM.
• See Compliance Audit Checklist of Key Questions
• See Completed Reviews of CAM articles.

Core Project Lists and Articles

The following lists/articles were either created by the Project or are our category.

1. List of terms and concepts used in alternative medicine
2. List of miscellaneous topics related to alternative medicine
3. List of branches of alternative medicine
4. List of famous people in alternative medicine
5. History of alternative medicine
6. Index of topics in alternative medicine
7. category:alternative medicine

Representative articles of this Wikiproject

It has been proposed that every WikiProject choose a single article which represents what the Project members hope each article will eventually look like, so that interested onlookers can see where a Project is heading.

• Natural Health -- Best represents the branches of CAM series of articles.
• Lifestyle diseases -- Best represents the philosophy of CAM series of articles.
• History of traditional Chinese medicine -- Best represents the history of CAM series of articles.
• Moshe Feldenkrais -- Best represents the famous people of CAM series of articles.