User talk:Doc James

Note: Mostly over at MDWiki.org

Body roundness index

What do you think of the BRI vs. BMI? Also, this.

We don't have an article on BRI yet, but it's getting more public attention. Might be worthwhile to include in your calculators project. Zefr (talk) 01:28, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zefr Yah for sure it would be reasonable to have that calculator aswell. Do you want to give it a try building it? It is not that complicated. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:07, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure. Will work at it over the next few days, and will alert you here. Zefr (talk) 02:18, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

A start class article is completed. Would benefit from your review and edits. Zefr (talk) 02:29, 24 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Amazing. You want to build a calculator to go in the article? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:09, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Using this format, I drafted an equation and tried to solve my own BRI, but it looked and felt clumsy.

When you say "build", how does that work? It would be a significant public contribution for Wikipedia to provide a calculator. The one in the article is easy to use, but is owned by a commercial enterprise. The one offered in the Thomas article is defunct.

For the article, I copied and cited the equation from the 'BRI definition' in the Zhang article, but the original equation development is more extensive and calculus-based under 'Supplementary material' (downloadable file) in the Thomas article. Zefr (talk) 02:42, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zefr Okay here is a draft User:Doc James/BRI. Will need some work to get it to function with metric and imperial like we have for BMI. Also need to figure out how to get two significant figures after the decimal point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:24, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The variables presented in the calculation in your draft and in the article (from the Zhang source) are waist circumference and height, but the original Thomas calculation (from the publication under Web-based Calculator states: Screen shot of Body Roundness Calculator. After the user enters personal information for age, height, weight, sex, race, waist and hip circumferences, the program outputs total percent body fat, amount and percent of VAT, the body roundness index, and whether the individual is within the determined healthy range of body roundness. A graph depicting the resulting individual ellipse (African American curve) and healthy range (green shaded area) provide the user a visual representation of their body roundness relative to the healthy range. (my underlining).

In the Discussion, Thomas summarizes: "we may have reached the limits of maximal accuracy of predictions of VAT and % body fat that rely solely on the circumference measurements (waist and hip), age, height, sex, race, and weight."

The easy-to-use calculator here uses these same 6 variables (race/ethnicity is optional).

I explained in the article under Calculation: "The only device needed to determine BRI is a measuring tape for circumference of waist and hips, and determination of height," which comes from the sources.

Thoughts on best dealing with these variations for the BRI calculator? Zefr (talk) 18:47, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That calculator provide Percent Body Fat, BMI, and BRI. Depending which one of those you want you need to provide different variable. For BRI you only need height and waist. And that is all my BRI calculator uses. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:56, 25 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Anyway the calculator can also be adjusted to take imperial as we see here mdwiki:Template:BMI calculator2 Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:25, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zefr Built another one here mdwiki:Pulmonary_embolism#Probability_testing Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:57, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Both the BMI and PE calculators are nice. What is needed to finish the BRI calculator? Zefr (talk) 01:07, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Would be nice if it accepted metric or imperial, similar to the BMI calculator. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:18, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another one at mdwiki:Chest_pain#Risk_scores. Same data that EN WP provides but is interactive and calculates a result based on user imputs. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:04, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another good one. Given your experience in building the BMI calculator, can't that one be the model to complete the BRI? I wasn't following the VP-Tech discussion you had earlier this month - are there editors from there that could finish the BRI?

As I didn't have VP-Tech on my watchlist, and didn't know about your discussion, I posted a question there today. Apologies for the replication. Zefr (talk) 02:42, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zefr tool takes a bit of trial and error. Have the inputs formating correctly for metric and imperial here User:Doc James/BRI2 but just struggling to get the formula to work... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:22, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zefr okay have it working now. Will need to get the tool activated by default to have it be generally useful. That will require consensus at WT:MED and VPT. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:16, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Does look good, thanks. The equation in the article was rewritten with this interesting history.

Uwappa had some thoughts about color-coding the cells. What do you think?

As you are working on several calculators, are you going to provide a list for WT:MED to review? VPT seems it's had enough discussion about calculators for now. Zefr (talk) 15:45, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

We have both formating styles for BMI results mdwiki:Body mass index. IMO no need to limit oneself to one.

Yes working on a bunch of calculators for MDWiki. If folks here wish to use some of them they are more then welcome to. All material licensed under a compatible license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 15:51, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

What do you recommend next for the BRI calculator being in the article? Should it be applied as for BMI, or was there something further you'd prefer to tweak or add? Zefr (talk) 16:40, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

User:Zefr IMO I think it is ready to go in the article. But we would need to get it turned on for general use. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:33, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done, with thanks for your quick work. As a fairly wide box, it seems practical in the white space beside the TOC, knowing this may violate a style rule. Thoughts? Zefr (talk) 18:01, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Placed in the infobox... Let me know what you think?

Also it does not work unless people have turned the gadget on. So we either need to build a notice for those who do not have it on how to turn on the gadget, or get it activated by default.

Asked at User_talk:Xaosflux#Updating Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:11, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good point about the gadget - most visitors to the page would not know otherwise, and may be frustrated by an unsolved BRI (IP users especially).

Concerning the BRI for % total fat and % visceral adipose tissue, Thomas says "maximal accuracy of predictions of VAT and % body fat rely solely on the circumference measurements (waist and hip), age, height, sex, race, and weight", indicating another calculator including the additional 5 variables - hip, age, gender, ethnicity, weight - would offer something more (possibly only for researchers)... or does this get too deep into the weeds? Zefr (talk) 18:39, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

One could build other calculators for % total fat and % visceral adipose tissue, these are different than BRI though. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:13, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good points. Seems best for the widest viewership to remove it until a fix or disclaimer is provided. Thoughts? Zefr (talk) 01:34, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Good to have something for people to review and provide feedback on. I would leave it for now and we will continue to work on it. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:44, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks like issues are now addressed Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:49, 27 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Discussion now at Wikipedia:Village_pump_(technical)#Turning_on_the_Calculator_gadget_as_default Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:33, 26 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thought 1: Provide realistic default values.

The calculator will show a meaningful result from the start, even to readers who do not input numbers.
Meaningful default input examples are more inviting to enter real data. Also it will require less clicks to step up/down, compared to clicking all the way from zero.
Exceptions like "NaN" and "infinity" will be rare.

Thought 2: Compute a healthy target. Given the input height, what range should the weight or waist be to score "green"? E.g. for a height of 180cm, a 'green' weight should be in the range 60-81kg. Uwappa (talk) 15:45, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yah default values are already possible. What would you like them to be. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:01, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Any realistic numbers will do. So, just go for something close to the worldwide average? Numbers found using Wolphram Alpha:

height: 162 cm
weight: 69 kg

And update those defaults later when anyone comes up with a better idea? Uwappa (talk) 16:25, 28 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BRI uses waist and height... have added defaults[1] Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:37, 29 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

The BRI article has had some changes and considerable talk page discussion. It would benefit from your review and editing, with thanks. Zefr (talk) 19:27, 12 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Hey Zefr. Mainly just interested in the calculator aspect of things. Best Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 03:02, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Impact on calculator, show a silhouette matching the computed BRI, with a background colour for health level.

Step 1, The default situation

Calculator
Units	1 Metric 0 Imperial
Height	1178 cm5 feet 10.078740157480311 in
Waist	180 cm31.496062992125985 in
BRI	2.46

The silhouette is lean. The background colour is yellow, signalling a warning.

The silhouette should be in the center of the cell. Ideally the computed BRI should be on the chest. See Template_talk:Annotated_image#Minimum_width_for_crop? for a reported problem with cropping to narrow images.

Step 2, Reader enters own height, e.g. 160 cm. The silhouette gains some width, the computed BRI value changes, the background colour changes towards green.

Calculator
Units	1 Metric 0 Imperial
Height	1160 cm5 feet 10.078740157480311 in
Waist	180 cm31.496062992125985 in
BRI	3.36

Step 3, Reader enters own waist, e.g. 116 cm. The silhouette changes to an overweight silhouette. The background colour changes to a warning colour.

Calculator
Units	1 Metric 0 Imperial
Height	1160 cm5 feet 10.078740157480311 in
Waist	1116 cm31.496062992125985 in
BRI	8.57

Step 4, Reader plays with waist size. What should my waist be to be green, healthy? A waist of 93cm shows a healthy silhouette in green.

Calculator
Units	1 Metric 0 Imperial
Height	1160 cm5 feet 10.078740157480311 in
Waist	193 cm31.496062992125985 in
BRI	5.01

Step 5, Reader takes action in real life to bring down waist size down from 116 to 93cm. Wikipedia has helped to improve the health of a reader. Good!

Colours, BRI value ranges and the silhouette are still work in progress, so please do not change the calculator yet. What you could do to help with your technical skills:

Put choices Metric and Imperial below each other, left aligned. It will read faster, in one eye fixation. Also it will suit the silhouettes better.
How to get the silhouette in the center, above the BRI number?
Have a look at Template_talk:Annotated_image#Minimum_width_for_crop? I am not sure if a BRI number with 2 decimals will look nice on the chest of lean silhouettes, but it's still good to fix a bug.
Check the proportions of the silhouettes. They look OK to me and I do trust user:Cmglee's computations, but just check to be sure.
Define BRI colours in constants, e.g. BRI1 to BRI20, so there is one set of colours for , the calculator, the 'graph' in BRI article and possible other future uses in the future such as articles in other languages
Just a nice to have: intermediate colours for the calculator, e.g. a computed colour code for BRI values 1.62, 1.71, 1.85 somewhere between the fixed colours of BRI1 and BRI2. The calculator could show subtle colour changes for every cm change of waist.

Uwappa (talk) 09:25, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Wow, amazing... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 16:13, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Please assist with the programming at: Template:Body_roundness_index/sandbox Uwappa (talk) 18:24, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Currently travelling. What is the top ask that is left to be completed? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 21:20, 16 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Just one question left:

How to show only one of 20 silhouettes, based on variable roundedBoundedBRI?

Current path, almost there: have 20 BRI row, show only one row, based on roundedBoundedBRI.

I did try an alternative which failed: dynamically 'compute' a CSS class for just one row with 20 cropped images, e.g. formula = 'bri' + roundedBoundedBRI resulting in CSS class values like 'bri1', 'bri2', ... 'bri20'. Such CSS classes could take care of the background colour and showing only one cropped image in just one row. That idea did not work as I was unable to concatenate strings and don't know how such a dynamic string value could end up in a class= parameter.

Enjoy your trip! Uwappa (talk) 06:24, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will see if Brian has solutions... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:02, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

And... found a solution after working on the calculator documentation, hoping that it would yield a new idea. And yes, it did!

Use 20 hidden checkboxes for roundedBoundedBri values 1 to 20.
Dynamically check only one of them using ifequal in formulas. See it working in the sandbox.
todo, last hurdle: show only one BRI row using CSS, similar to what you already did with unit radio buttons. I've asked user:cmglee to do that last bit as my CSS skills are a bit rusty and slow.

This is very good news. We now can have the same type of calculator for BMI and Waist-to-height_ratio.

Some questions that require medical knowledge:

Is Waist-to-height_ratio actually the same thing as BRI, just a different scale? I would say yes, see and a range of WHtR versus BRI values at c:File:Waist-height_ratio_versus_body_roundness_index.png#fileinfotpl_desc.
Should we have one calculator that computes both BRI and waist-to-height-ratio?
Should BRI and waist-to-height ratio be combined to just one article, body roundness?

Uwappa (talk) 16:58, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

BRI and Waist to height take the same values so yes similar. But I think deserve separate pages though there could be a short overview pages. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 17:08, 17 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

OK, yes we could have a short overview page called Body roundness with units WHtR and BRI, similar to length with units km and mile.

Good news: BRI Calculator 2.0 is working, after a lot of debugging.

The :checked pseudo class was new to me. Rearranged CSS statements so the effect of the :checked is a bit easier to understand.

Please test it at Template:Body_roundness_index/sandbox Are the wikitext and CSS understandable? Is this calculator 2.0 good to go live? Uwappa (talk) 16:43, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Looks excellent. Should we bold the BRI result? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:54, 18 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Can the silhouette be centered? For users who do not have the gadget setting, how do we inform people to see the calculator? Zefr (talk) 00:07, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Gadget is on by default so all should be able to see it now. Will ask Brian if he can centre the silhouette. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:16, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you for the compliment. The result looks just too easy, but it was quite a struggle.

Suggestion: move calculator discussions to Template_talk:Body_roundness_index
Suggestion: move BRI discussions to Talk:Body_roundness_index

So, out of place here, but still a reply with links to previous discussions:

How to inform people to see the calculator? See Template:Calculator#Fallback. I have just added such a fallback, with a link to the calculator check box in preferences.
The calculator now does more than computing BRI. The silhouette shows the concept of 'body roundness'. It is no longer just a 'BRI calculator', hence the changed table caption, now 'Body roundness'. The calculator could also show WHtR as suggested on BRI talk page. WHtR could also show the roundness calculator as could the future Body roundness.
The BRI result was bold and I took that out, use the same font weight as other variables. Let the silhouette be the 'roundness star' here.

BRI without a classification is just a meaningless number. Does 10 mean a perfect body shape? No it does not! The silhouette does a good job of showing BRI in a meaningful way.

The background colour shows some kind of implicit classification. I am not sure it is the right one, see Talk:Body_roundness_index#BRI_categories. Question to medics: Are there WHtR classifications we can reuse for BRI? See Talk:Body_roundness_index#Waist_to_height_classifications_=_BRI_classifications?

I have tried a centered version of the silhouette and did not like it. It as out of line with other variable info. Please keep the silhouette left aligned, consistent with other variable info, close to the field prompt. I've tweaked the cropping so the silhouette is above the BRI value, both for BRI values below and above 10.

Suggestion: Go live with the calculator. It is working, good to go and a giant leap forward compared to the current version.

I expect few if any, reactions from other editors. BRI seems to be a subject that is for medical specialists only, like user:Zefr. And for the roundness calculator talk the crowd is well eh... very small. Uwappa (talk) 08:52, 19 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Calculator 2.0 is live.

Calculator 3.0 is work in progress, see Template:Body_roundness_index/sandbox

Uwappa (talk) 08:56, 20 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very nice Uwappa. Let me know if you need help with anything further. Will be traveling in the mountains for next few weeks so access / time is limited. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:03, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Smile... You are welcome.

My math and programming skills are a bit rusty, so a second brain is welcome. See the current TODO list for roundness calculator 4.0 for an up to date list of things where your help would be great. The most urgent ones:

Check formula of field 'silhouette'. Is that the right formula to go from WHtR to a 1-20 index to crop the right silhouette out of user:Cmglee's ? Values 1 to 18 are the most important, as those match real people who participated in research. Values below 1 and above 20 are the long tail, not relevant for the calculator silhouettes. The silhouettes have height and waist diameter, measured for instance in pixels. Using waist in pixels = diameter in pixels * pi and height in pixels, it must be possible to check the WHtR->silhouette index formula. Does the formula produce the right number 1..18?
How to go from WHtR to a health related background colour? I previously based the colours on on BRI mortality, the blue line in Xiaoqian Zhang's figure 2. All I need for the WHtR based version 4.0 is some key colour names linked to some key WHtR values, like what user:JMF did for the BRI based version. I'll take it from there, come up with hex colour codes and the intermediate gradients.
What is a health risk level text for a WHtR below 0.4? See Waist-to-height_ratio#Suggested_boundary_values for texts published by NICE.

Other, non urgent issues, but with an impact greater than a silhouette in a Wikipedia roundness calculator:

More math, pretty serious in the real world outside Wikipedia: I do not trust the pi bit in ${\text{BRI}}=364.2-365.5{\sqrt {1-{\Big (}{\frac {\text{waist}}{\;\;\pi \;\;\times \;\,{\text{height}}}}{\Big )}^{2}}}$ That is fine to go from Circumference to Diameter required for an the width of a vertical ellipse surrounding a person. The pi bit only works accurate for waists that are perfect (horizontal) circles. I expect most waists to be shapes like an ellipse or an egg.
How to explain to somebody with limited math skills that WHtR and BRI are related? At the moment I have encountered only 1 person who does not seem to understand the following:

Combine

{\text{BRI}}=364.2-365.5{\sqrt {1-{\Big (}{\frac {\text{waist}}{\;\;\pi \;\;\times \;\,{\text{height}}}}{\Big )}^{2}}}

with

{\text{WHtR}}={\frac {\text{waist}}{\text{height}}}

to get

{\text{BRI}}=364.2-365.5{\sqrt {1-{\Big (}{\frac {\text{WHtR}}{\;\;\pi \;\;\,}}{\Big )}^{2}}}

Please select in your preferences: Enables javascript Calculator template to see a working calculator.

WHtR to BRI converter

pi = $π$	3.141592653589793
${\text{BRI}}=364.2-365.5{\sqrt {1-{\Big (}{\frac {\text{waist}}{\;\;\pi \;\;\times \;\,{\text{height}}}}{\Big )}^{2}}}$	3.3588109427631707
${\text{WHtR}}={\frac {\text{waist}}{\text{height}}}$	0.5
Waist	80
Waist diameter = Waist / pi	25.464790894703256
Height	160

resulting into a direct relation

To my utter amazement an attempt using a WHtR BRI converter, was not successful:

Now, just one Wikpedian who has some math difficulties does not worry me much. What does worry me is that medics may fail to understand this basic math and that the whole concept of BRI is a waste of effort as WHtR is a superior, just too easy alternative.

Limited math skills can not have been the problem for Diana_Thomas_(mathematician). She must understand the WHtR rectangle versus the BRI ellipse in

.

Yet I get the awkward impression that she got lost deep down a rabbit hole called BRI, guided by great math skills, but blisfully unaware of BRI's older sibling called WHtR.

Have a look at Template_talk:Calculator when you are out of the woods.

Uwappa (talk) 04:24, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

@Uwappa:, I don't think you should take any more of Doc James's time on this. While recognising your good faith, I think maybe your summary is a bit off. No-one disputes the fact that there is a simple arithmetical relationship between WHtR and BRI and thus (per WP:2+2=4) your conversion is not OR. The challenge is that you are, no doubt unwittingly, giving the impression that the BRI concept has MEDRS support and that is a WP:SYNTH leap that we must not make. That is why Zefr and I are advising you to park it pending significant acceptance of BRI among MEDRS. Which, IMO, will never happen since the WHtR guidelines are already advocated by at least the British and Canadian authorities because they are trivially easy for medics to explain and patients to check, without recourse to calculators and graduated tapes. --𝕁𝕄𝔽 (talk) 11:19, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]
Did you see I was replying to Doc James's: Let me know if you need help with anything further?Please allow him to manage his own time.

I give the impression that the BRI concept has MEDRS support? Really? How?

To me BRI is a redundant concept. A piece of string suffices for a WHtR health check. Can't beat that. Uwappa (talk) 11:47, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Merge

Hello! Should Unstable DNA sequence be merged into Genome instability? Polygnotus (talk) 16:41, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Not sure... Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:01, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Thank you. Perhaps a redirect would be better? I dunno, its pretty far outside my wheelhouse. Also, have you seen Wikipedia:Teahouse#Medical_article_creation_for_students_-_Topic_selection_and_audience_level? They are setting these students up to fail because they get assigned topics that already have an article. 4 people including myself have tried to explain that writing MEDRS articles is not a good beginner task. Perhaps you can help? I still have nightmares from the time I cleaned up after a WikiEdu course. Polygnotus (talk) 18:14, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Mostly over at mdwiki:Main Page in part as EN WP is not supportive / actively prevents the development of multilingual content.[2] We have managed to rebuild the workflow without EN WP though.[3] Agree that use of AI would be a concern. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 19:08, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You know a lot about medicine, I (unfortunately) have spent an unhealthy amount of time on a computer. I put my trust in a doctor, you put your trust in a nerd. I understand feeling discouraged, and you obviously trust the person who said the only option was to fork, but as a nerd I have to say that that decision didn't make much sense, although I do understand the emotion surrounding it. Sometimes people get stuck, having one solution to a problem in mind, and then when that one solution doesn't work out they get really discouraged and see no other option than to leave. But usually there are many solutions to a problem. In this case the BRfA was doomed to fail, and it was silly to even attempt it, but that didn't actually matter because there were other (better) ways to achieve your goals. A "my way or the highway"-mentality rarely works out well on Wikipedia. Since that was apparently not their only mistake it may be wise to reconsider how much trust you put in which person. Polygnotus (talk) 19:44, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That was just one among many reasons. I have made nearly 50,000 edits to MDWiki since mostly moving their 4 years back. I find I am now much more productive.

Plus those who understand English have tons of excellent medical resources to choose from. Those who do not have few or none. As a global public health effort I prefer to concentrate on the later. By the way always happy to have more good faith collaborators their :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 20:29, 13 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Well, I hope you forgive me for not doing a deep dive into all the reasons.

I just think that particular one is not strong. I was impressed by the amount of work that has been done on mdwiki. I understand English (on a good day) but not medicine. Polygnotus (talk) 05:07, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

No worries. Yah classes of students are a LOT of work... I am around here a bit but try to stay out of controversies. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 05:39, 14 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

May I ask what led you to shift your effort to MDWiki instead of continuing with Wikipedia?I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 19:50, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Sure, it was a few things:

One of my interests is supporting the development of healthcare content in other languages. Those who read English have many great sources online; however, this is not the case for most other languages. EN WP is not supportive of translation in that a) some disagree with using easier to understand language in the lead b) some disagree with having references in the leads of articles c) EN WP does not even permit the use of workspaces on the site for translation d) the WMF is not interested in altering software to support translation of health content and without our own site we struggled to deal with a number of issues with references
Many within EN WP were against the inclusion of video and drove away a number of partners we had with respect to video. I consider video to be of importance for those with a lower reading skill or simply a different way in which they wish to learn. We have thus keep videowiki going.
Undisclosed paid editing is often passively and sometimes actively allowed to continue here. When an obvious paid sock a few years back brought a case to ANI they received support. When a realtor was using EN WP to write articles about buildings they were selling and threatened to cross the border to harm me, arbcom supported them. Thankfully I have a working relationship with my local police force who stated they would prevent them from crossing the border, at least for a time. Not interested in dealing with these sorts of issues.
I consider the costs of healthcare to be of importance, including in areas of the world other than the United States when certain medications make the NYTs. Sources from the World Health Organization were deemed insufficient to support such discussion and arbcom has placed against me an editing restriction with respect to this. As such I generally do not edit healthcare content here.
Before I split off I was spending much of my time reviewing other work, rather than writing / creating content myself. mdwiki:Topical steroid withdrawal had a group of those with the condition altering the wording so that it was no longer supported by the references provided. An individual funded by pharma was trying to and has now succeeded in removing cardiac concerns with respect to a very expensive med.
Some of my main collaborators left due to issues of incivility / paid editing. I also had an editor who followed me around to disrupt projects I was working on. They even attempted to follow me to MDWiki.
Finally a few years back during some dark times I began to consider it prudent for us as a movement to have a fully editable version of Wikipedia nearly ready to go if things "went South". And for us to build community skills around running such a site. Currently MDWiki has about 7000 local articles and mirrors the other 7 million or so. It would not take much to pull in these mirrored articles and their histories. But thankfully those dark times have faded into history, at least for now.

Anyway it was a good move for me. I find I am much more productive. It allows me to working on tools like the CT scan viewer, the calculator tool, the OWID visualizer, and NC Commons without disruption. If versions of Wikipedia wish to collaborate and adopt these tools am happy to work with them. Additionally it does not tie my work to any specific language version. Happy to have more collaborators :-) Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 01:58, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Phew. Thanks for explaining how some of the sausage is made. I've had several extremely similar situations over the years.

Your concerns probably explain why so many medical specialties have created their own specialized wikis -- because of the difficulty that highly trained professionals encounter when trying to edit through the red tape here. If professionals are volunteering to edit, they're giving up extremely valuable free time. In situations like these, the most valuable editors get bullied off the site. It's unfortunate as I think the cross breeding of ideas that this place inspires is more effective the larger the audience. Ultimately it will come full circle as the specialized wikis merge, or their advertising or subscription fees become too expensive and the main Wikipedia's editing hurdles are worked out. This may not happen in our lifetimes.

In the interim, I admire your grace under fire amidst the feeling of burn out. The interface between the general public, computer programmers and medical professionals on this site can certainly be awkward at times. I can only imagine the number of situations where people pulled you, willingly or not, into the crossfire.

Having an outside "backup" of Wikipedia is an excellent idea in case it is ever privatized, falls under government censorship or is effectively infiltrated by outside interests.

On a personal note, it's always a pleasure to write with you and it is remarkable how you leveraged this website to positively impact the lives of hundreds of millions, if not billions of people around the world. I will do my best to contribute to your efforts over there and hope you can spare some time back here at the general county mosh pit down the line. I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 02:57, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Another thing I discovered is that running a Wiki really does not cost that much... MDWiki has no fees and no adverts and is run by an NGO. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 02:39, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Norovirus#Vaccine_trials

This needs updating. Do you have journal access in order to back up claimes being made in the UK media?

https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/worlds-first-norovirus-vaccine-set-to-be-trialled-by-nhs-to-combat-winter-vomiti/
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/health/other/world-first-vaccine-for-vomiting-bug-norovirus-trialled-in-the-uk/ar-AA1sJTQ2

The claims seem to relate to Phase 3 trials in the United Kingdom. ShakespeareFan00 (talk) 17:03, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I personally do not see the need for review articles to discuss this. The popular press IMO is just fine as one is just stating that a trial is about to begin, not making any medical claims mdwiki:Norovirus#Vaccines Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:55, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Found one review and it is under an open license. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:14, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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BGerdemann (WMF) (talk) 19:22, 23 October 2024 (UTC) [reply]

Uploading images to Wikimedia from open source journal articles

Quick question about protocol for medical images -- are we allowed to upload images from open source scientific journals to Wikimedia? If so, is there anything we need to do beyond giving the article's reference in the description? I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 19:46, 23 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Yes we can as long as they are CC BY or CC BY SA. For NC and ND licensed images you can upload them here to NC Commons. Nothing special from a pt consent POV as it is assumed that the journal itself takes care of that. Have been thinking of doing a mass upload at some point. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:06, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Very helpful, thank you. I enjoy sandwiches (talk) 02:43, 25 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Top 100 medical calculators

Copied from Template_talk:Body_roundness_index#waist_diameter:

Plan to do the top 100 medical calculators in December. Would love to have your help. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:40, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ha ha ha, that would be a great honour! Happy to see you appreciate my design.

Without any false modesty: I think the calculator design already outclasses the commercial version. The user interface looks so simple, but there is quite a bit of processing going on under the hood to get to the right silhouette and NICE health risk level which adds meaning to data, numbers.

And... it will get even better as it does not deal yet with fine-tuning for male-female, age, ... differences.

user:Cmglee is already working on a female silhouette to explain the BRI formula. Work in progress:

Gender, age won't impact the WHtR and BRI computations but

will impact the user interface for gender
will impact the health level text
it will also impact the background color.

What would you like me to do? What can I do to help you? Uwappa (talk) 08:20, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Will let you know when I am back and working on it. We need a eGFR calculator, we need one to switch between America and IU for blood sugar, etc, etc. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 08:27, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

^{[dubious – discuss]}

Good. Be warned: my medical knowledge is limited, almost non existent. I have very limited experience in working with medics.

You already lost me with terms as eGFR, IU. I've heard about blood sugar, but don't know much about it. So I will need a lot of input for medical terms, formulas, translations from jargon to plain language, etc, etc.

Be aware that design takes time, sweet time. It is hard to design simple things. Something easy like a body roundness calculator can take weeks, for just two input variables. And that is when I have time to spare.

What can be done quite fast: evaluate a current design.

What is good about it?
How can it be improved?

Warning: I apply function psychology in my designs,

the way humans process information dictates the design. No room to discuss the information processing cycle: observe, interpret, learn, think, act and back to observe, interpret, ...
Science is leading, well defined qualities and limitations of the human eye, brain, hands dictate the design. A design should be tailored to humans, not vice versa.
I will ignore the usual personal preferences, opinions, etc with remarks like: Mate how interesting, I think you should go and tell someone who cares!

The term function psychology seems unknown in the English Wikipedia, well the whole English speaking world. There are bits and pieces of design theory coming from people like Jakob Nielsen (usability consultant), Bruce Tognazzini, Don_Norman, the late Jef Raskin and his son Aza, Edward Tufte, Alan Cooper. But names like Лев Выготский and Leonard Verhoef are almost unknown.

So well... you may be in for a few surprises. Working with me may be tough, no guarantees, but happy to give it a go. Uwappa (talk) 09:36, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

IU is international units… GFR is glomerular filtration rate. We can see how it goes. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Ha ha ha, asif 'glomerular filtration rate' is plain English, not incomprehensible medical jargon to me. Sorry, but my medical knowledge is very limited indeed. Uwappa (talk) 21:11, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Smile, I looked up Glomerular_filtration_rate in Wikipedia.

The first sentence is reads for me as:

"*** functions include maintaining an ***; regulating fluid balance; regulating ***, ***, and other ***;"

I am already lost at the very first word and it does not have a hyperlink to another page.

It has something to do with regulating fluid levels, but I am completely clueless what kind of fluids that would be. Uwappa (talk) 21:54, 24 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

out of the woods?

When you are out of the woods, please have a look at:

1. Some documentation for the calculator at: Template_talk:Body_roundness_index#Information_hierarchy I expect the design approach for other medical applications to be similar:

Let the computer do all the number crunching, focus on human efficiency, not computer efficiency.
show categories based on patient values, generally speaking ranging from deadly to healthy.
in an environment outside wikipedia patient values are probably digitally available. Maybe even with a history. Mrs. Jones, things look a lot better for you than last month!

2. A design for a Body Roundness calculator, no input required, zero, just look at the chart, use height for Y axes, waist for X: And yes, it does support both metric and imperial, without any input. Look mum, no hands!

3. An idea for something similar, with 2 input variables, unit indepenent: Template_talk:Calculator#Dynamically_change_numeric_template_parameter? That design is beyond calculator possibilities at the moment.

4. A nasty bug in calculator 4.0. I can't find anything wrong in my own code, suspect that the calculator already hits a limit of formula propagation Template_talk:Body_roundness_index#Bug:_risk_text_does_not_show_for_88 test it out yourself at Template:Body_roundness_index/sandbox The calculator has a lot of hidden fields. A developer may want to see them all for debuging, change CSS class 'obscured' from display: none to display: inline to see all of the calculator fields. Be warned: there are a lot of formulas here at work, which eh... well cause the bug. Change 'class=obscured' for a row in the wikicode to see just some intermediate values. Uwappa (talk) 23:27, 26 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Away for a few weeks. Have asked Brian to look at that bug. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 00:19, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

G'd on ya, thanks! That bug is kind of a worry at the moment. That limit could really f*** things up when calculators get complex using more than 2 input fields.

As a reward, here is an idea for a brandnew state of the art medical tool for a check on central adiposity against WHtR no-health-worries upper limit of 0.5. (ha ha ha, that is about the max medical jargon I know)

Here we go:

take a piece of string equal to your height. If no string available, an old cloth will do fine too.
try to wrap it around your waist twice
too short? Bad news mate, you have health risks because of increased central adiposity, as defined at Waist-to-height_ratio#Suggested_boundary_values

Smile... this method was reverted from the WHtR page, because of some Wikipedia policy.

Do you know anybody in the medical world that could publish this method in a reliable source after an official peer review? That would be just too deadly!

And it is just too easy. A 3 year old in outback Australia would have checked the adiposity of the whole community against the NICE 0.5 WHtR limit while the western doctors are still struggling with the BRI formulas because their smartphone battery is dead, with no electricity in sight for a recharge. And I have yet to see classifications for BRI values. To me this is silly. How can you use meaningless numbers? The 3 year old will have 2 simple classifications:

good
too fat

A kind that is a few years older may invent a method of checking the lower WHtR limit of 0.4 by some fancy folding of the excess bit of string against the rest of it. Look mum, no batteries and uncle XYZ is too lean!

I really wonder. Why would anybody use BRI over WHtR?

Can't they see they are related and WHtR is just to easy.

A tool used during debugging that caused a bit of turmoil, the WHtR to BRI converter here on the right.

Template:WaistHeightRatio_to_BodyRoundnessIndex_converter

While you are at it, how about a peer review for that converter? ha ha ha.

Some other issues where a medic can help:

Any reliable source for a classification of a WHtR value below 0.4? Currently the Calculator 4.0 displays an error message, because it lacks a NICE classification.
How about using Zang's mortality graph for colour gradients behind silhouettes. See 2nd level of pyramid, right hand block of Template_talk:Body_roundness_index#Information_hierarchy

I've used Zang's graph for previous set of colours too, which were BRI based, with a terrible overlap against BMI classes.

Talk:Body_roundness_index#c-Uwappa-20241009125000-BRI_categories

And yes the calculator has a risk level, based on NICE classes at Waist-to-height_ratio#Suggested_boundary_values

Now health risk and chance of dying might be very correlated, but health risk and dying are two different concepts.

The line mortality graph would be perfect for a mapping to colour gradients.

See colour work in progress at Template_talk:Body_roundness_index#Colours_for_Body_Roundness_4.0

I think a green to dark red gradient would work great for the lower end of the scale. Please feel welcome to join in and get the discussion on colours going again, as it has been stuck in the mud for quite some time now.

Uwappa (talk) 01:48, 27 October 2024 (UTC)[reply]

That’s 2 small steps in a sandbox, 1 giant leap for mankind.

Please select in your preferences: Enables javascript Calculator template to see a working calculator.

unit-less input for height and weight. Any unit, a piece of string will do.
play with WHtR to find healthy waist size.

Please:

Record the start time with accuracy in seconds
Enter your own height
Find a healthy waist size
Record the end time
How long did it take you, including the learning curve?

Record time again and try to find a healthy waist size for some friend or family.
How long did it take you, without the learning curve?

Final:

How long does it take you to do this with the commercial tool?

I think the calculator just overtook the commercial calculator by a miles length, 1.60934 km for people using metric system. But who gives a s*** about units :D

Are there any serious competitors for the top 100? Uwappa (talk) 12:13, 29 October 2024 (UTC) Kudos to: user:Cmglee and user:JMF for sharing 'impossible' ideas.[reply]

One chart, many calculations for 1 patient?

A paramedic assisted in a usability test today for the Body Roundness Calculator 4.1.

Have video of the whole test. That video won't make it online. Test subject prefers to stay anonymous and spoke local language, not English. Interesting results, back to drawing board again. Discussed zero input chart options. Got feedback: yeah, but you'll need many charts to cover all aspects of one patient. True...

Will be back with just one chart per patient, showing many calculator results in time.

Uwappa (talk) 19:46, 4 November 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 1

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Upcoming and current events and conversations
Talking: 2024 continues

Commons Community Call: The first community call with Wikimedia Commons volunteers and stakeholders to help prioritize support efforts for 2025-2026 Fiscal Year will take place on November 21. The theme of this call will be about how content should be organised on Wikimedia Commons. The call will be hosted by Chief Product and Technology Officer Selena Deckelmann.
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Wikimedia Foundation Bulletin November Issue 2

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