Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/Prostate cancer

Prostate cancer

Partial self-nomination. This is an article we've worked on at the Medicine Collaboration of the Week, and the topic certainly merits a featured-standard article. We've been working hard on this article and feel it has improved significantly. It has had a peer review which can be read here. InvictaHOG 07:06, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

• Support:Extremely good and informative page. Well referenced important subject. Should be on the front page. Giano | talk 08:42, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support a good informative article that provide many references. Would do nicely on the doorstep. Scoo 16:24, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
• Oppose, on a few technicalities, the numbered references in text do not have corresponding numbered notes, look at using a system like that in Canberra where the same ref is used more than once. I don't think the headings within the radiation therapy section add anything to the article- they break up the text and the TOC unnecessarily. And it would be nice to know the prognosis for men with prostate cancer in places other than the United States.--nixie 05:35, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I replaced the an with ref throughout and reformatted the radiation therapy section. Prognosis in other countries is related to life expectancy, with most developing countries having fewer deaths because they don't live long enough! But as far as hard numbers, as usual, they have been hard to come by. When you have limited health care, you have limited public health. The prognosis section has been targeted for some expansion, but nothing has really been forthcoming yet...InvictaHOG 11:22, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• The notes are still funky, it happens somewhere after note 40.--nixie 11:26, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

After looking at it now, I still see a problem with the references system: If an external link is added somewhere in the article, all the numbers of the references will be screwed up. Also, the refs have to be in the exact order they appear in the article to match the right number. Does another system/template exist that works better? Or would it be better to remove all the numbers from the reference list? --WS 11:30, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

• Ref/note is not ideal, but it is the best system, and ideally the numbers in the text and the numbered refs should match, so don't remove the numbers. The numbering should automatically happen if the notes in the text and the list are in the same order. If a note is referred to more than once (which will cause a numbering problem in the text numbering), use the system that is used in Canberra which enables multipe cites of the same number to the same note. Alternatively use a different label for each use of the same note, foe example notes 9 and 40 have the same label, which is causing one of the numbering issues. You may also want to include commented out instructions so people that may add ref subsequently know how to do it.--nixie 11:45, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

I see what happened and fixed it for this article. I like that you can use ref_label to identify numbered links, but it seems fairly cumbersome to make sure that link 4 stays link 4 (which seems to be the way it works from the tag). In any event, they now line up (though I duplicated a reference instead of using ref_label). We should come up with a better system. InvictaHOG 01:35, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I reworked the prognosis section into an actual prognosis/epidemiology section. I have included what statistics I could find from America, China, Japan, Africa, India. It's difficult to know how reliable the data is, but it's all we have! InvictaHOG 02:17, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for all your efforts, support. There is still one minor problem, note 27 on the list of references links the note 10 in the text and vice versa.--nixie 02:42, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

Conditional Oppose - It's a wonderful article, and it contains a ton of great notes/references, which is very important for medical topics. There are a few paragraphs in the "screening" session that do not have notations explaining what their sources are - I apologize for not having the time to read the sources completely (surely that can be understood) but unless there's a consensus that it's obvious where one needs to go to find information to support statements like this:

Prostate cancer screening generally begins after age fifty, but may be offered earlier in black men or men with a strong family history of prostate cancer. Although there is no officially recommended cutoff, many health care providers stop monitoring PSA in men who are older than 75 years old because of concern that prostate cancer therapy may do more harm than good as age progresses and life expectancy decreases.

Fantastic article in all other respects though, and whatever is decided here, everyone involved deserves kudos :) - JustinWick 02:48, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

I added a reference which not only goes over some guidelines (unfortunately, there are a multitude of guidelines from different well-respected groups) but also offers a view into actual practice. InvictaHOG 03:33, 14 December 2005 (UTC)

• Support. The physicians working on this have done an excellent job of presenting an informative, easily read, and well referenced article. Edwardian 19:24, 14 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support. I think this is an excellent article; well-researched and documented. Great images too. Rlevse 19:47, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
• Object Not up-to-date with groundbreaking recent research. If anyone is interested, let me know, since I am an expert on scientific topics. Cognition 21:26, 15 December 2005 (UTC)
  • What 'groundbreaking recent research' are you referring to? Something specific? --WS 18:34, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Conditional Support: I also like the article & quality of images. This article highlights an area popular ignorance, & could potentially save lives. well done Medi Collaborators. however, i think we should wait a couple of days until it's featured. today is the day wikipedia featured it's dullest, most frivilous article. though this article is by no means dull, the subject matter is a little dry. something like the Dinosaur article (or even corvette/TGV) is the perfect antidote to the tedium of shoe polish. then after a couple of days we could feature this article? Veej 00:07, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
  • Someone else mentioned this when you made a similar comment above, but being a featured article is not the same as being Today's Featured Article.165.139.116.60 18:20, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
    • The above was me forgetting to sign in The Catfish 05:45, 17 December 2005 (UTC)
• Support, looks great and with plenty of references. The Medicine CotW seems to be accomplishing a lot of great things! Tuf-Kat 01:39, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• comment:I skimmed through it quickly and well appears okay in general. Makes me feel like I should go get my prostate checked. It has some good images however, maybe some statistics (on the population demographics and on how many people get prostate cancer), I think, could be in the format of a graph to lighten up the subject? (it is good as is though!). It seems to talk mostly about the medical side of diagnostics and treatment. (Technical!) What are the psychological effects or the "lifestyle alterations?" (maybe not important either, because you could do some further reading) ... All these examples are to say that everyone learns differently... maybe an anecdote might please the more tactile learners... 1) how do people cope with it 2) Are there any famous people that have had this disease and coped with it? (probably in the links at the bottom, I know, I should read the article completely, but these are only my impressions) --CylePat 03:33, 16 December 2005 (UTC)
• Comment. Good use of inline citations, looks good with one exceptions: too many short sections - I could tag several as them as 'stub sections'. This also results in a rather too large ToC. Expand the sections, or merge with others.--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus ^Talk 20:13, 16 December 2005 (UTC)