- The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section.
Sorry, folks, I know this is going to be a disappointment, but I can see no consensus for much of anything. Discussion is confused, and the structure of the RfC makes it difficult to follow what's being supported by whom and with what caveats—Cas Liber's analogy on the talk page of "a bunch of folks with megaphones talking past each other" is a good one. To me, the RfC appears to have jumped the gun, and so it conflates multiple questions, for example:
- Should we have a disclaimer on articles (medical or otherwise) at all?
- If we should, should it be at the the top, at the bottom, or somewhere else?
- What should the text be?
- What should it look like?
By attempting to answer all those questions at the same time, we've succeeded in answering none of them satisfactorily. There are some editors who oppose putting a disclaimer anywhere on articles; some who support oppose it only for articles of a certain quality; and some who will only support it with certain caveats. Many participants, for example, support one of the proposed templates but oppose or offer no opinion on others; does this mean they would object to putting a medical disclaimer on articles unless it was their preferred version(s)? That question is not answered anywhere in this RfC.
My suggestion, should the proposer wish to take this forward, would be to allow a grace period, after which a new RfC is started with the aim of answering the question on which all other questions depend: should a disclaimer be displayed on medical articles? If the answer to that question is "yes", further RfCs can be held to determine secondary concerns such as location, wording, and appearance.
As it is, I do not feel there is any way this RfC could be closed with a conclusive result, as disappointing as those who have put significant effort into the discussion will find that, and it would be grossly improper of me to force such a conclusion where there is not one to be had, especially on a matter which potentially has wide-reaching consequences and is likely to be controversial.
—HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 22:02, 6 February 2014 (UTC)
Should Wikipedia provide a more prominent disclaimer template in general, or for medical and health-related content?
Wikipedia is a prominent source of online health information, and its medical disclaimer is not linked directly on any article. Instead, it is reached by clicking on the small-print link to the general disclaimer, on the last line of all pages. Concerns that Wikipedia make readers aware of the "anyone can edit" nature of Wikipedia have been raised; background discussions are in Alanyst's sandbox and at the Medicine Project talk archive. 06:25, 28 December 2013 (UTC)