Talk:Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 11 January 2019 and 20 April 2019. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Kayrox63.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 23:53, 16 January 2022 (UTC)

Digoxin murders

Why is there absolutely not mention of the baby deaths and the controversy surrounding Susan Nelles? The incident was a huge, if distasteful, part of the history of SickKids —Preceding unsigned comment added by 67.193.128.193 (talk) 13:34, 23 November 2010 (UTC)

I agree. Looks like that was removed by Jphillips23 on 20:37, 16 July 2010. It is relevant to the article. The article is here ==> Toronto Hospital Murders. Perhaps some content can be returned or the event mentioned and linked? --9Doors (talk) 04:44, 7 January 2011 (UTC)

I've reinserted the 1984 Grange inquiry into the "history" timeline for 1980-81, the time of the various deaths. These are not proven to be murders but the events and subsequent inquiry are nonetheless a significant event in the history of the hospital. K7L (talk) 00:20, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The

The digoxin baby deaths and Susan Nelles 1981 arrest and exoneration warrants a separate article. Cafe Nervosa 20:50, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

Certainly, but there isn't sufficient content to split it off yet. Mindmatrix 21:18, 24 November 2005 (UTC)

SickKids

The SickKids name is not the official hospital name, although the Hospital does use that frequently on its website and that is the name it is frequently referred to in Toronto. I am changing the article usage to Hospital for Sick Children since people from all over could be reading the article. Flyguy649^talk_contribs 04:56, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia standard is to use the common name, not necessarily the official name. Otherwise we'd use Dominion of Canada, not just Canada. GreenJoe 05:21, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Dominion of Canada is not the country's name any more, so that's a false argument. SickKids is jargony, and not formal (or enclopedic) in tone. Although the hospital has been promoting itself as that for about 3 years now, the name of the hospital is "The Hospital for Sick Children". A qhick glance at Princess Margaret Hospital (Toronto), Toronto General Hospital, St. Michael's Hospital (Toronto), and Mount Sinai Hospital (Toronto) shows that only TGH uses the acronym exclusively within the body of the text. I'd like to discuss this more. However, I am going to revert your changes to restore the other edits to the article which have been removed, while keeping the SickKids bit. Flyguy649^talk_contribs 05:36, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Legally, if you read the Constitution, it's still Dominion of Canada, but common usage has changed to just "Canada." See also Wikipedia:Naming conventions (common names). GreenJoe 05:50, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

Actually WP:NC(CN) refers to the naming of articles, not usage within the article. (Should we move the page to SickKids? Of course not.) And The Constitution Act, 1982 does not refer to the Dominion of Canada at all, but only Canada, so this is the de facto legal name. But this is largely irrelevant here. On local news, the first instance of mention of the Hospital is always to the full name. They do often also use SickKids. The article clearly defines SickKids. While I prefer the full name within the article, it's not critical to the article. Flyguy649^talk_contribs 06:16, 14 April 2007 (UTC)

If you want to be pedantic, the official name is The Hospital for Sick Children (note the leading, capitalized "The", which is part of the name). SickKids is also officially used by the institution now, although previously it was simply jargon. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Rwintle (talk • contribs) 20:23, 26 January 2012 (UTC)

If you want to be even more pedantic, WP:THE. There's a policy for just about anything here. K7L (talk) 00:23, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Inappropriate usage of genetic code

In its present form this article makes a very bad usage of the term genetic code. The genetic codes of humans, monkeys, rats and many other very distantly related living organisms are all absolutely identical. What the well intentioned editors wanted to mean instead of genetic code was probably genome. Please correct if I am right, and please explain if I am wrong. -- Sophos II (talk) 23:31, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I took out the section. This article isn't about genetics, its about the Hospital for Sick Children. It would be nice to have some more material about recent research activities, but this section is a rather bad paraphrase of a Reuter's article.Reuters, One man's genes show DNA is still a mystery —Preceding unsigned comment added by Dhodges (talk • contribs) 03:14, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Assessment

I rated the article "Start" class today for WP Canada and Toronto. I also changed the rating for WP Medicine from B to C - I don't believe this is a B class article yet, I don't believe the article is complete enough for a "C" rating, but I can accept it because I briefly thought about it for the other projects. Other editors may feel free to adjust to their tastes. PKT 14:39, 8 August 2008 (UTC)

Advertising?

What in this article makes it look like an advertisement? DavidChipman (talk) 22:27, 1 November 2012 (UTC)T

The article as it stands is well written, but there's a fair amount of puffery. "critical mass of scientists and entrepreneurs"? -not unless they're about to undergo nuclear fission.-Dhodges (talk) 02:20, 2 November 2012 (UTC)

This article looks like an advertisement because any negative information is inexplicably absent. I've put the 1984 Grange Inquiry back into the history, no idea why it was removed to leave a ten-year gap. K7L (talk) 00:25, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

The Maclean's article is interesting reading. Is it legally necessary only to say that criminal charges didn't stick, rather than that the single-use medications were later implicated? Sminthopsis84 (talk) 11:52, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Dear @DavidChipman: (cc: @K7L: @Sminthopsis84: @Chowbok: @CambridgeBayWeather: @Mindmatrix:)

The article looked like an advertisement because it was only eight kilobytes long before User:Cath33 added six more kilobytes of PR-style puffery (diff) in October 2010. I thank you all for your past edits, and I ask of you one big favor for the future: Whenever you see a puffery-laced article about any corporation, organization, or musician, please figure out who caused the problem and please immediately revert back to the last PR-free revision. I have now done so for this article.

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 21:15, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

This isn't on my watchlist and I suspect my only edit was to add an airport code. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 21:53, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Dear @CambridgeBayWeather: You made this edit in 2011, and noted in the edit summary, "Still looks like an advert". If only you'd rolled back the article to the PR-free version back then! :) P.S. If you install the Twinkle gadget, you can semiautomatically tag an article with {{advert}} or {{news release}} using the "TW > Tag" dialog box. —Unforgettableid (talk) 22:48, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

From what I can see, User:Unforgettableid tagged the article, waited 13 minutes, then reverted it to a version from FIVE YEARS AGO! That user then selected which text they found worthy to add back to the article--thus making that user the de facto owner of the article. I propose the wholesale deletion by Unforgettableid be reverted until this can be discussed. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:41, 11 June 2015 (UTC)

Dear @Magnolia677:

The article was created eleven years ago. Unfortunately, five years ago, in the fall of 2010, the single-purpose editor Cath33 expanded the article from seven kilobytes of good content to fifteen kilobytes of PR-filled content. Please see the diff for yourself. Over the years, Chowbok, CambridgeBayWeather, and Smithinopsis84 all noted in edit summaries and/or tags that the article looked at least somewhat like an advert, but nobody rolled the article back to the pre-Cath33 version. I don't know why. And, in fact, Sminthopsis84 removed the advert tag, with the edit summary "Less like an advertisement now", without rolling the article back. By the time I arrived, the article was up to eighteen kilobytes. Much of those eighteen kilobytes was still text contributed by Cath33. The quickest way to eliminate all of her words was to roll the article back. My goal was absolutely not to own the article: it's not my article. I only wish that someone else had rolled the article back sooner.

I hope that everyone will help out by restoring additional worthy text from the May 2015 revision of the article to the current revision. Just beware: most of that revision's "History" section is PR material contributed by Cath33. I don't know whether she wrote it herself or copied it from elsewhere, but it was probably originally written by in order to try to make the hospital attract more donors and to attract more patients from other provinces and countries. In fact, much of it is even comprised of self-sourced claims. It's probably better we shouldn't restore any of Cath33's "contributions".

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 22:48, 12 June 2015 (UTC)

Enough. This is Wikipedia and people do whatever they want to. As I suspected most of my edits were to do with there being a heliport here. The only edi of any substance I made was this one when a copyright violation caught my eye. I removed it, fixed a few referenes and add some links. I did not address the advert and I'm not going to as it's not something I want to do in an article that I know little about. So please stop with scolding. While the quickest way was rolling back to 2010 it was also the worst way to fix the problem. In articles like this the correct way is to rewrite the material. The spammy look could have been fixed one section at a time. Oh yes, I do have Twinkle installed and have done for some time. CambridgeBayWeather, Uqaqtuq (talk), Sunasuttuq 07:21, 13 June 2015 (UTC)

Dear @CambridgeBayWeather:

You didn't have to address the advert. No Wikipedian is ever obligated to do anything. It would have been good if someone would have rolled the article back sooner (or at least added an {{advert}} tag around the time of your edit), but nobody was obligated. And yes, you were allowed to roll the article back, even if you know little about the hospital. Advertising is advertising. With some detective work, anyone could have determined which user added the advertising. WikiBlame would probably have made it even easier. (When viewing an article, click "View history" then "Revision history search".)

I haven't checked, but I bet the apparent copyvio was probably added by the same user who made the whole article read like a news release. She probably just copied text wholesale from her employer's website.

Rewriting material would have removed the article's spammy look, but not its spammy essence. When a single-purpose account adds seven kilobytes(!) of material to an article, they tend to choose to mention only things which will make their employer look good. They tend to leave out anything which might make them look bad. When they have doubled an article's size, I believe that the best way to restore the article to NPOV is generally to remove all (or almost all) of the text which they person added. Rewriting it still leaves the article unbalanced. True, the text removal could have been done manually. Anyone is welcome to do so manually, and like you said, it's a superior option. I simply don't want to spend so much time. I have too many other things to do outside of Wikipedia.

I strive to not scold fellow Wikipedians. If I have ever done so, it was probably a misjudgement on my part; historically, I haven't always done so well at speaking politely. Which of my words came across as scolding?

Cheers, —Unforgettableid (talk) 15:23, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Before you flit off, please remove the libellous allegations above about someone who you know nothing about, or I'll ask an administrator to do it.

I completely agree with CambridgeBayWeather's response above. Now that the revert has happened, it is so difficult to find what might have been the basis for good rewritten material, that I don't have the energy to try. If you had left it alone, it would have progressively improved as people patched parts that they felt the inclination and the wherewithall of fixing. Pages like this one improve over time as people who have them on their watch lists are prompted to make an improvement when they see some activity, but the massive disruption puts it beyond that kind of help. There are a number of wikiquette essays that you would do well to read, though they don't necessarily cover this exact situation; most of them are pointed to from Wikipedia:Etiquette, and a supremely important one is Wikipedia:Assume good faith. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 21:20, 16 June 2015 (UTC)

Dear @Sminthopsis84: Most of your points are excellent, but I'm unconvinced that that the article would have ever gotten back to a corporatese-free state without a revert. A significant portion of Cath33's "contributions" had remained in place for half a decade until I finally reverted the article. If problem text has remained for five years, perhaps that's a hint that it might remain forever unless someone does what's necessary in order to rectify things. —Unforgettableid (talk) 17:04, 22 June 2015 (UTC)

In my opinion you have made the article more like advertising than before, not less. You are misrepresenting the Herbie Fund as if it covers all "patients not covered by Canadian health insurance", which is not true, it is a very specialized fund. The History section has been mutilated: some former negative components such as the Grange Inquiry (explicitly mentioned above) removed. I propose reverting to this version. I consider user:Cath33 to be a minor player in the puffery on this page, which is most recently attributable to User:Unforgettableid. Sminthopsis84 (talk) 18:13, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

• Support - a revert would assure that all the deleted data was re-included. Unfortunately, editors have already been rebuilding the damage, and it would be a shame to delete their hard work. Magnolia677 (talk) 23:00, 24 June 2015 (UTC)

Requested move 17 August 2019

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: pages moved. I've made a few swaps - page move as discussed - Hospital for Sick Children was targeted here too, so I've moved the DAB to that page and updated redirects accordingly.(closed by non-admin page mover) Steven Crossin ^{Help resolve disputes!} 02:42, 25 August 2019 (UTC)

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The Hospital for Sick Children → The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto – This is a geographically ambiguous name that can be confused with other similarly named hospitals around the world. I suggest change in line with WP:QUALIFIER and redirect this title to Hospital for Sick Children (disambiguation). Cnbrb (talk) 14:43, 17 August 2019 (UTC)

• Support move as proposed. There are several hospitals containing "Hospital for Sick Children" within their title and so this article name, which is very generic, should direct to the dab page and be geographically clarified. Bungle ^{(talk • contribs)} 21:26, 17 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support as per above - There's hundreds of hospitals named "The Hospital for Sick Children" - No evidence to say this well known over others. –Davey2010^Talk 13:26, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
• Support proposed move. The other hospitals which use or have used the same name are sufficiently notable; this should not be a WP:PRIMARY TOPIC. BlackcurrantTea (talk) 19:01, 18 August 2019 (UTC)
• Oppose proposed move. Of the ten other hospitals on the disambiguation page, none has exactly the same name. -Dhodges (talk) 02:14, 19 August 2019 (UTC)

 Comment: all of these hospitals are known locally as "The Hospital for Sick Children"; this Toronto-specific article uses a generic name for something specific. The inclusion of the definite article is not enough to distinguish this institution above any other similarly named hospital. The Toronto hospital is not well-known enough to count as a primary topic. Cnbrb (talk) 09:44, 20 August 2019 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Funding before History?

Not sure why the Funding section was placed before the History section. Can it be moved? Jimj wpg (talk) 14:27, 26 August 2019 (UTC)

Requested move 17 May 2022

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: Withdrawn. Consensus is not supporting the idea. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 03:57, 29 May 2022 (UTC)

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Hospital for Sick Children (Toronto) → SickKids – Natural and concise disambiguation. — Ceso femmuin mbolgaig mbung, mellohi! (投稿) 19:57, 17 May 2022 (UTC) — Relisting.  ASUKITE 20:14, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose. Corporate branding. Title is better retained as it is. -- Necrothesp (talk) 11:40, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Canada has been notified of this discussion. ASUKITE 20:13, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

Note: WikiProject Hospitals has been notified of this discussion. ASUKITE 20:14, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

• Oppose Not distinctive enough. Toronto's not the first hospital I think of when I hear that name. G. Timothy Walton (talk) 20:29, 25 May 2022 (UTC)
• Oppose, "SickKids" is corporate branding. Same situation as University of Western Ontario calling themselves as "Western University" when they haven't actually changed their name. PKT(alk) 20:48, 25 May 2022 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.