User talk:Balaji.md au

--Vito Francisco 03:10, 13 January 2016 (UTC)

On Intensive Care Medicine
Hello.

As requested, I created a medicine subsection for Critical care medicine and categorized your book into it

Books can't have the same name as subjects, that's why I had to use an alternative.

Hopefully this helps. --Vito Francisco 16:48, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Hello again.  I can't rename the Critical care medicine subject to Intensive care/Critical care medicine as it doesn't comply with the naming conventions and would eventually produce scripting failures. Can you think of any alternatives? --Vito Francisco 22:45, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * We could rename the book Intensive Care Medicine to Intensive care medicine (book) and rename the subject Critical care medicine to plain Intensive care medicine.--Vito Francisco 22:53, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * That's a good idea. Will that change the URI of the book? Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 22:55, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes, but we could leave a redirect on the original page: Intensive Care Medicine. --Vito Francisco 23:01, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Great! I think that would be ok. Appreciate your efforts Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 23:03, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay I'll get to it in a while.  --Vito Francisco 23:15, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Fantastic Thanks Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 23:17, 15 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Just realised that the current url of the book is known to many. Will that be a problem with redirect? Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 09:01, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Perhaps changing the category name to "Intensive Care or Critical Care Medicine" and leaving the book url the same is an option? Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 09:34, 16 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Okay. I shall work on it today. Sorry for not replying on IRC, the client stays connected even though I may be away. I'm usually available from 13:00 to 23:00 (UTC). Greetings. --Vito Francisco 14:50, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks Vito appreciate it. I had infact referred to the official constitution of World federation of Intensive Care Medicine(Page 2, Statute 3, Point 1) which states the terms Intensive Care Medicine and Critical Care Medicine are synonymous. That gives ground to create the category "Intensive Care Medicine or Critical Care Medicine" as discussed above. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 00:27, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Yes_check.svg Done Sorry for the delay. Categorizing can be tedious. If you think it's okay, I'll be checking your book periodically and helping out with categorization and formatting tasks. Cheers.  --Vito Francisco 01:51, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Delighted! Appreciate your efforts. Yes please do check and very welcome to improve it as you please! Thanks again. Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 01:53, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I have added you to the list of authors/contributors- hope it is ok. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 02:05, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Thanks! --Vito Francisco 16:15, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

Importation of material from en.wp can be requested at Requests for import. --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 11:33, 19 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks mate. Was a bit put off by the lack of support by one other admin when I requested a permission to use import flag. I wish wikibooks encourages expert authors rather than being critical! Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:49, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * QU is a good sort. I don't think they meant to be off-putting about it.  It's just a matter of discussing the request for permissions in a business-like way.  We all start out relatively inexperienced with wikis and then gradually learn; it's perfectly normal; but it's probably not a good idea to give advanced permissions to someone who's still quite inexperienced, because through simply not knowing what to do with the permissions they might get themselves into trouble. My response to you was different because I was responding to something different:  whereas QU was responding to your request for permissions, I was responding to your request for help at the IRC channel (which I saw on my scrollback when I got up this morning).  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 12:21, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Fair enough if that was the concern. But, not realising one's effort is not correct. The page he commented upon has content that he obviously is not able to understand - eyes do not see what the mind does not know. Anyway I hope he realised that the worth of wikibooks is in its content and not in formatting! Quality content is an extremely rare commodity these days. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 12:31, 19 January 2016 (UTC)
 * "The page he commented upon has content that he obviously is not able to understand - eyes do not see what the mind does not know. " Really? And how would you know that? If you want any help here I would start by not insulting people's intelligence - you can forget getting any assistance from me if you carry on talking about me in a demeaning way. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 11:23, 21 January 2016 (UTC)

I have renamed the subject, so changing the page category is wrong. Libraries do not have a subject called, say, "Physics or Chemistry" it is "Physics AND Chemistry" - inclusive, not exclusive - so the former name is not normal. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 11:20, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Mate please understand there is a background to the specialty's name. It cannot be taken literally or compared to Physics and Chemistry. The world federation document cited puts to rest the issue. Please could you refer to it. Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:28, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * also this is not a place to take personal offence. I did not mean to insult - I am worried at you misinterpreting words. You are being non neutral in callously changing a researched text. If you do not wish to help that is fine but your action could misinform people. Take it easy Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:34, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I take personal offence when insults are personally directed, as they were by you to me. I don't help out here in order to receive insults. I have nothing further to say on this subject. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 11:38, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * There is a way forward. Please see your helpful colleague vito's effort and revert the edit back. With the same yard scale I could say that your comments were insulting and demeaning and we can go for ever. We are not here for that. We could do something useful for everyone if we put aside ego issues. I hope you will understand and welcome you to this project that deals with knowledge that could be life saving. Apologies for any misunderstanding. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:47, 21 January 2016 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the heads up. Now that I think about it... "Intensive and critical care medicine" could be even more appropriate.
 * Thank you for protecting my contributions. I understand your concerns regarding QuiteUnusual edit. While it might had come as an impetuous act, I shall remark this kind of procedures are rather common and direct consequence of the Wikibooks open-content policy (anyone can freely edit and comment on the content). When an edit takes place without any prior notification (or discussion), chances are it is for the book's best interests, and the revision presented more suitable. Also, it's a good idea to check the edit summaries as editors usually leave a brief description about it or even better, the reason behind it. In this particular case, QuiteUnusual did so, explaining why he moved the category, and considering he is much more experienced, personally, I would take his advice.
 * Before taking any action in response, we should always assume the editor at issue is well intentioned, try to contact him, and hopefully start a respectful discussion on the matter.
 * Please, let's not stop the work on this promising book only because of this minor incident. Cheers.
 * --Vito Francisco 16:15, 21 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Appreciate your professionalism Vito. Anyone can and should change - I am all for it. Shouldn't that change be with substantiation? In this case, I disagree on using 'and' as opposed to 'or'. May sound trivial but we should respect a world level conensus document, which states the terms as 'synonymous'. A technical administrator exercising overarching influence on content which is foreign to his/her expertise, neither listening to author/s nor respecting a cited document, is not fitting a democratic and egalitarian system which wikibooks proposes to be. Such acts would lessen the credibility of content and will turn away expert contributors. As I mentioned to you before, the specailty's name varies in different countries and has implications. For instance, the Australian college has elected to be called the College of Intensive Care Medicine. Whereas, colleges and societies in other countries such as the US and India, retain Critical Care in their coat of arms. Instead of debating the literal meanings of Intensive Vs. Critical, for operational purposes, they were declared to be 'synonymous' by the world federation (Synonyms are generally denoted utilizing 'or'). I am happy to see an alternate point of view. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 04:34, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The alternative approach will be to adopt the world federation document's usage of "Intensive and Critical Care Medicine" dropping the "care" bit at the front in Category name. Of note, there is a likely internal inconsistency within that document where there is explicit declaration of the terms as synonymous but using 'and' below. A literary expert could through light on the correct usage. But, adopting the 'usage' as it is in that document, in the absence of an alternative reference, could be a 'neutral point of view' edit. To summarize,the category should be either a.) Intensive Care Medicine or Critical Care Medicine b.)Intensive and Critical Care Medicine c.)Intensive or Critical care Medicine d.) Intensive care or Critical care Medicine. The current categorisation as Intensive care AND critical care medicine appears to concatenate two distinct specialties. I think the option b.) is in tune with the cited reference document and should be adopted for the Category. The book, given it's origin in the Australian environment, has inherited the accepted nomenclature of the Intensive Care bodies here and I do not wish to change it's name, which was a well thought of one. Of note, even a US based reference text book in this area is named "Intensive Care Medicine" (Irwin&Rippe).  Happy to hear your views. As you might have noted, I do not wish to exercise my right to change it but will await your input. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 05:10, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The edit you are discussing is nothing to do with content and everything to do with the way Wikibooks is structured. Wikibooks has a Subject based system used for lots of books of which the one you are writing represents less than one tenth of one percent. You (and I) do not get to dictate how that system works. The fact that I have administrator rights is irrelevant - I get no more say than any other editor except if what you are doing is damaging to the project in the "technical" sense (e.g., if you start misusing categories to group pages in different books together). If you disagree with the change then the correct approach is to discuss it, preferably at one of the noticeboards given it is the Subject system and not the book that is in question. The normal approach on Wikimedia projects is to make changes without discussion, if someone else does like them they get reverted, if the original editor disagrees with the revert then a discussion ensues. "Bold, Revert, Discuss". QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:22, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * The book defined the Specialty (the Category) and hence it is the content. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * And as I commented before, please refrain from making personal comments about me. For example, "which is foreign to his/her expertise." If you don't even know if I am male or female then you certainly don't know my field of expertise. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 09:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I disclosed my perception - similar to how you did. I believe I have the right to hold a view. If you are an expert Intensivist, please do the needful to appropriately create the category. To clarify, it was another administrator that created the category, quite appropriately, after my explanation and substantiation. I request you again not to take personal offence in a project related discussion. Cheers.Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I am discussing the Subject (Subject:Intensive care and critical care medicine that you originally named "Subject:Intensive care or critical care medicine") and not the Category of the book. It was the Subject I renamed; I did not rename the book Category. Subjects contain multiple books not one book and therefore their naming is of broader community interest. In certain circumstances a Subject may appear to be a Category due to the way the MediaWiki software has been implemented for this project. They are, however, different. If you want me not to take offence then you need to refrain from making personal comments. Your view on my knowledge (or lack of it) is not a "project related discussion", it is a discussion about me. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 11:37, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * With all due respect, I do not see a difference between the category and subject. By virtue of it being a reference text, and by appropriately substantiating it, the book self defines it's category (or subject). Unfortunately, this is probably what they call "Knowledge is power"! It may be a drop in the ocean of your books but it seems to impact your categorization. It would be interesting to know to what you refer your categorizations to. Also, discussions here are about 'acts' prima facie. So, I wouldn't take any personal offence for that matter. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 11:45, 22 January 2016 (UTC)

A Subject is equivalent to a Dewey Decimal Class. For example, "500: Natural sciences & mathematics" in the standard system. We use Subjects in exactly the same way: to group together books about the same high level subject. Take a look at Subject:Physics and you will see a lot of physics books, each on a different topic, grouped by completion status. It also contains sub-Subjects like Subject:Acoustics.

In comparison we use Categories to group together the pages in one book. This allows the easy production of print and PDF copies of the book. Each book therefore has one Category, with the same name as the title of the book, and one or more Subjects. On the main page of your book both the Category and the Subject are displayed together as if both were Subjects (where it reads "Subjects:...") but this is just a quirk in the way MediaWiki works. For your book, "Intensive Care Medicine" is the Category and contains all the book pages. "Intensive care and critical care medicine" is a new Subject that has been created as a sub-Subject of Subject:Medicine. It is not specific to your book. If anyone ever writes a second book, say ""Critical care medicine for road traffic accidents", then it will have a Category called "Critical care medicine for road traffic accidents" but be in the same Subject, "Intensive care and critical care medicine" as your book.

This approach enables our readers to navigate the site in the same way one would browse a library - head to the "Medicine" section, locate the "Intensive care and critical care medicine" book shelf; find your book on that shelf. You can see this at work if you go to Card Catalog Office or Subject:Books by subject.

Hopefully this explains it completely. Thanks - QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 12:04, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Interesting. But, it appears the 'Subjects' are classified arbitrarily. I would be interested to know why the subject title with AND is preferable to OR. When there is a group of people deciding to call this 'enterprise' or 'specialty' or 'subject' of Medicine as this or that, wouldn't it be preferable to name your subject based on that? That way it does not stay arbitrary but substantiated. With a subject "Intensive and Critical Care Medicine", everything you describe seems still possible (ex. creation of another book with the title "Dealing with definitions in Intensive and Critical Care" [pun intended]). Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 12:14, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * There are two reasons. Firstly, Wikibooks originally implemented the Dewey Decimal System which was later moved to the current Subject structure. The names are, therefore, inherited from DDC. In DDC and is used to describe classes containing more than one type. For consistency, new Subjects are typically named the same way. For example from DDC:
 * 152 Sensory perception, movement, emotions, & physiological drives
 * 153 Conscious mental processes & intelligence
 * 154 Subconscious & altered states & processes
 * 155 Differential & developmental psychology
 * 156 Comparative psychology
 * Secondly in common English and is used for in addition to whereas or is used for an alternative to. With sets and is used to describe a set containing objects of both type; or a set containing objects of one type or the other. This is normal usage in speech and writing; the usage in logic is different. You are, however, making too much of this. If you feel strongly about it just change it back. If you do, please ensure you change all the relevant links. QuiteUnusual (discuss • contribs) 13:45, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I am only trying to make it NPOV. The alternative to 'or' had been proposed. As per the citation, could you please change it to "Intensive and Critical care Medicine". That satisfies all constraints. I have nothing personal. To preserve link integrity I request that you perform this. ,Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 13:53, 22 January 2016 (UTC)


 * My impression (without getting very deeply into what appears to be an awful hullabaloo over category and subject names) is that there may be two separate issues here, one to do with the difference between book categories and subject categories, the other to do with subject names. In case there really is any lingering uncertainty here regarding book categories versus subject categories, I can speak to that.  (I suppose I'm the leading still-active expert on that infrastructure, since I was centrally involved in the last several upgrades to the infrastructure and Adrignola is no longer around.)
 * For each book, there is a book category whose name is exactly the same as the title of the book. For each subject, there is a subject category whose name is exactly the same as the name of the category.  These two kinds of categories must not overlap, for technical reasons.  Usually there is no problem with overlap, because book titles are required to use title case &mdash; all important words are capitalized &mdash; while subject names use sentence case &mdash; only the first word and proper nouns capitalized.  There's a standard technical kludge that's used when a book has a one-word title that is also the name of a subject (the name of the book category has "" appended to it).
 * A lot of that may change later this year; late last year, in yet another discussion of the inadequacies of our existing category infrastructure, I volunteered to design and, community willing, implement a major revision to the category infrastructure, which I still intend to do (though I'm running behind my hoped-for schedule).
 * --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 15:24, 22 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Glad the issue has opened up a constructive discussion. Also appreciate the change of Category to "Intensive and Critical Care Medicine". If I may suggest a solution, perhaps it is time for a WSBN (Wikibooks Standard Book Number) akin to ISBN, if it had not been thought of already. I opine that such a system would make cataloging easier. Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 01:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
 * To be a bit more clear, what I was suggesting is a work-around for the need for unique identifiers. I sensed this problem much earlier, while I was creating the book. I wondered if it was my syntax but through one of your colleagues, I realized that there is a systemic constraint. If we adopt a WSBN system, the alphabetic identifiers could remain the same for category (or subject)and title - because the category/subject would be numeric. Say, we create a WSBN 001-001-001-001 to denote Wikibooks-Medicine-A_text_book-A_text_book, then the URI of the book could be en.wikibooks.org/wiki/001001001001/A_text_book. It is apparent that it would require a cataloging file similar to ISBN to be maintained (with restricted access). Apologies if this had been discussed before. Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 01:34, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
 * Tbh, I disapprove of code numbers in the wiki context; imho they're confusing and unreadable, quite opposed to the wiki spirit. Beyond my own preferences, Wikibooks has actively moved away from that sort of thing, over the years; we used to classify books by dewey decimal code and library of congress number, and dropped them. Honestly, I believe I know how to fix the practical weaknesses of the current infrastructure; I don't see identifying books (or subjects) by name as a current problem, and I'm not worried about the infrastructure overhaul (it's a massive job, but the challenging part of it is how to nondisruptively propagate the changes I have in mind across several thousand books, and I'm pretty sure I can orchestrate that).  I mentioned it to point out that the current arrangement is, in any case, not worth getting all worked up about.  (As Porky Pine observed, "Don't take life so serious, son, it ain't nohow permanent.")  --Pi zero (discuss • contribs) 01:52, 23 January 2016 (UTC)
 * I can imagine the size of the task! In the code numbering scenario, if human readable form could be symbolically linked (a tiny url), would that make any difference? But, it is true that if it aint broken it's not worth fixing it. Cheers Balaji.md au (discuss • contribs) 02:03, 23 January 2016 (UTC)