Category talk:Wikipedian physicians

Well, I think this is very wonderful for those of us who believe that "information ought to be free." When one of my patients told me she had looked at the Wikipedia epilepsy article but wished it was more helpful, I knew it was time to get to work!

How did you folks come to be editing the Wikipedia? -Ikkyu2 00:39, 30 August 2005 (UTC)

Emergency department

I wonder if you would consider supporting Emergency department atWikipedia:Article Improvement Drive. This department is where we all go if we are very ill, and I feel it needs a boost if it is ever to get featured article status. I would greatly appreciate if you were able to offer support on this.--File Éireann 15:50, 30 October 2005 (UTC)

Specialties

I think it would be helpful to also add a subcategory of Physician Wikipedians by specialty with further categorization of pediatric specialties...for example:

• Physician wikipedians
  • Physician wikipedians by specialty
    • (list of specialties)
  • Pediatric physician wikipedians by specialty
    • (list of pediatric specialties)

Or something to that effect...I realize that this could lead to many strings of subcategories, but it does help those looking for info on a specific topic. bcatt 23:00, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

Unnecessarily complex. Why not just:

• Physiciain Wikipedians
  • Physician Wikipedians specializing in X
    • X Physician Wikipedians specializing in A
    • X Physician Wikipedians specializing in B
  • Physician Wikipedians specializing in Y
  • Physician Wikipedians specializing in Z

-Silence 23:09, 26 January 2006 (UTC)

I'm not really partial to any particular format, I just thought I should have some kind of structured suggestion to at least illustrate my example...any format for listing physicians by specialty would make me happy. The only thing is that I would like to see pediatric specialties listed specifically (rather than grouped in with the larger category...ie: general practice should have a counterpart or subcategory for pediatricians; dentists should have a counterpart or subcategory for pediatric dentists, etc). Actually, looking at your suggested format, I think it would work better (less clicking around, showing all of the specialties on one page, generally easier browsing of the categories). Things do get confusing with how they should be listed, should it be (I am only using cardiology here because that is what I am most familiar with):

• General Practice
  • Pediatricians
• Cardiology
  • Cardiac Surgeons
  • Pediatric Cardiologists
    • Peditric Cardiac Surgeons
• Specialty B
  • Specialty B Surgeons
  • Pediatric Specialty B
    • Pediatric Specialty B Surgeons

Or:

• General Practice
• Cardiology
• Pediatrics
  • Pediatric Cardiologists
  • Pediatric Specialty B
  • Pediatric Surgeons
    • Pediatric Cardiac Surgeons
    • Pediatric Specialty B Surgeons
• Surgeons
  • Cardiac Surgeons
  • Specialty B Surgeons

Or???? bcatt 00:44, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

Remember that one advantage real Categories have over charts like the above is that it's possible to put a single category into more than one above category. So, "Category:Pediatric cardiac surgeon Wikipedians" should be categorized under both Category:Cardiac surgeon Wikipedians and Category:Pediatric surgeon Wikipedians. Also remember that Wikipedians who aren't actually involved in a subject professionally can still be very interested in that subject and be valuable in working on articles on it; that's what Category:Wikipedians interested in medicine is for, and, for example, you could have a Category:Wikipedians interested in cardiology in addition to Category:Wikipedian cardiologists.

I recommend being very careful, however, with overcategorization. It leads to excessively labyrinthine categories that are hard to keep track of and maintain, and that people end up misusing anyway (i.e. people will often add themselves to a more general category even when a more specific category applies to them because they didn't take the time to notice that there's, say, "Pediatric surgeon" as a subcategory of ordinary "Surgeon".) One way I like to deal with it, if you plan to mostly convey the categories through userboxes, is to have specific userboxes (one userbox for pediatric surgeon, one for pediatric cardiac surgeon, etc.), but general categories (all of the surgeon-related categories put users under the "pediatric surgeon", not under all the convoluted specific ones), so there's a more centralized, simplified categorization system that's easy to keep track of, but anyone who's interested in the more specific fields can simply check the "What links here" special page for a template and see who's using that template.

Another option, of course, is, for example, to simply have one category for "Pediatric surgeon Wikipedians", one for "Cardiac surgeon Wikipedians", and none for Wikipedians who are both pediatric and cardiac surgeons (because it would probably be too small anyway, if not entirely empty!), but anyone who is both at the same time can simply add themselves to both categories! -Silence 01:30, 27 January 2006 (UTC)

That all makes sense, thanks. I like the idea of keeping categories general and using userboxes to define specific categories instead...only problem being that some people either don't really keep a user page, or don't pay much attention to new userboxes (or any userboxes), or actually hate userboxes (and therefore don't use them)...any suggestions? bcatt 19:11, 28 January 2006 (UTC)

Overlapping categories?

Does this category overlap with Category:Wikipedians with MD degrees? --DrGaellon (talk | contribs) 18:10, 20 April 2008 (UTC)

It does. But it is not a duplicate, and neither can one be made a sub-cat of the other. I have provided a link from this category to Category:Wikipedians with MD degrees. Jay (talk) 10:10, 17 July 2009 (UTC)