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The following Misplaced Pages contributor has declared a personal or professional connection to the subject of this article. Relevant policies and guidelines may include conflict of interest, autobiography, and neutral point of view. KimDabelsteinPetersen (talk · contribs) / Electronic cigarette Electronic cigarette This user has declared a connection.

Legal status of electronic cigarettes vs Regulation of electronic cigarettes

Legal status of electronic cigarettes is limited to only legal status. But with the title Regulation of electronic cigarettes it is very broad. I can create a new article for Regulation of electronic cigarettes. Please provide at least six refs and possibly start a sandbox if anyone is interested in my services. QuackGuru (talk) 15:35, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

• ... or you could, you know, let someone else do it. Just a thought. I've asked Arbcom to stop you from editing in the topic area until the case is over.—S Marshall T/C 16:19, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

User:Johnbod, please provide some references and we can create a new page. After you provide the references you will soon see a new page. QuackGuru (talk) 16:44, 23 September 2015 (UTC)

Wouldn't it be better to play to our relative strengths - you provide the refs, & i'll write it up? Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 24 September 2015 (UTC)

Sorry. I did not have time to gather the references. QuackGuru (talk) 21:43, 29 October 2015 (UTC)

• Not surprisingly, the previous discussion here fell on deaf ears and we now have effectively two articles covering the same, legal status and legal status disguised as "Regulations of electronic cigarettes". Yet another article that needs competent rewriting.--TMCk (talk) 14:03, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, it's a start! Thanks for bringing it to our attention. At the moment all it does is repeat legal status stuff. Johnbod (talk) 15:19, 8 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oh, now he's moved "legal status" to the ungrammatical Regulations of electronic cigarettes, without discussion! We should have two pages, which I'd suggest should be called Legality of electronic cigarettes (by country, essentially exists) and Regulation of electronic cigarettes (by issue; yet to be created). Johnbod (talk) 01:49, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Having two articles on the same subject with nearly identical names that basically say the same thing is confusing. AlbinoFerret 15:03, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

No, one is answering the question "Are e-cigs legal in Aruba", the other should deal with the far wider range of types of regulation (I recently gave a sample list here) and not degenerate into a by-country list with no generalizing narrative. Johnbod (talk) 15:39, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

It looks like QG had the page speedy deleted rather than allow others to fix it.

(Deletion log); 01:03 . . RHaworth (talk | contribs) deleted page Talk:Regulations of electronic cigarettes ‎(G8: Talk page of a deleted page)

(Deletion log); 01:03 . . RHaworth (talk | contribs) deleted page Regulations of electronic cigarettes ‎(G7: One author who has requested deletion or blanked the page) AlbinoFerret 18:01, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

"Regulation" is broader, and can include industry self-regulation. "Legal" may be too limiting (if not now, then eventually). But it's a trivial matter to rename a section, so it may not matter all that much right now.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:39, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

RFC Are these sources the same?

RFC: Are these sources the same?
There has been removal of a referenced claim from the article. During a move the claim "and there is relatively low risk to others from the vapor." was removed. The edit comments says "remove duplication". There is a talk page section on the topic found here..

The sources in question, both agencies are part of the UK department of health NHS Smokefree site from the British National Health Service and the PHE Report from Public Health England.

Policies that control WP:VER WP:RS and WP:MEDRS AlbinoFerret 06:36, 30 October 2015 (UTC)

Sorry not seeing what is wrong with this dif ? The content was just moved? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 23:02, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

A claim was removed, perhaps you missed that. But the specific question is are the sources the same. AlbinoFerret 23:25, 2 November 2015 (UTC)

Please discuss below in the discussion section

Are the sources the same or different?

• Different sources They are clearly not the same source. They are from two different agencies with distinct url's. While they may say similar things the wording is not the same so one is not a copy of the other. AlbinoFerret 06:53, 30 October 2015 (UTC)
• Different sources,, clearly While the conclusions are the same, the wording is not, and it never hurts to have statements from multiple sources anyway, as long as they are high quality. And they certainly are in this case. LesVegas (talk) 17:12, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
• The websites are related. The UK NHS website says "Smokefree is a public health campaign initiated and supported by Public Health England, an executive agency of the Department of Health" The NHS website was created by PHE. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

You should make up your mind whether it is related or not.--TMCk (talk) 19:11, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we then remove all the duplicative findings from the US government agencies like the CDC and FDA? Should we remove similar statements from different parts of the WHO? AlbinoFerret 19:40, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Thats unresponsive to the question, the question is are they the same, not are they similar. AlbinoFerret 22:59, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Does it matter? If it's the same claim supported by independent sources then we have two references at the end of the claim. Why waste time with an RfC if the only difference is either 1 or 2 references at the end of the same claim? CFCF 💌 📧 22:47, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• They look related to me You are welcome to make your case they are separate sources, as you have been all along Cloudjpk (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Thats unresponsive to the question, the question is are they the same, not are they similar. AlbinoFerret 22:59, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Different sources They base their views and opinions on the same background, and thus come to similar/same conclusion, just as many other such agencies and organizations do. Why should there be/is there a different standard between pro and contra organizations? --Kim D. Petersen 06:34, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
• Different sources It doesn't matter that they reference the same study. These sources use multiple fact-checking tools and are independently reliable sources of information. --Iamozy (talk) 19:27, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we remove claims from the articles that cover the similar things regardless of who created the source?

This question is too broad. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• No We need a simple across the board rule. Instead of allowing editors to pick and choose what claims they want to add that are similar but remove others they disagree with. AlbinoFerret 19:11, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Of course the question is too broad. Editors apply judgment. Cloudjpk (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Idealy we shouldn't single cite individual statements/papers, but instead strive to summarize the literature with a nod towards notable outliers, as per Misplaced Pages's pillars. But since this isn't done in this article, which instead consists mainly from individually cherry-picked sentences from papers - then the answer is No. --Kim D. Petersen 06:38, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
• No Doing anything else invites gaming. We need to be consistent and should never allow cherry picking to take place with regard to claims from articles that cover similar things like this. LesVegas (talk) 19:13, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

• Consolidate If two reliable sources agree on a statement, say that. But there's no need to state a single claim in two separate instances. --Iamozy (talk) 19:33, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we remove claims from the articles if they are from the same group or author and discuss similar things?

It would be better to provide a specific example. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

The pages are full of duplicative claims, read it. AlbinoFerret 19:12, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Comment This should be applied the same across the articles, regardless of the conclusions. We should not pick out things we disagree with to remove. AlbinoFerret 19:36, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Specifics needed here in my opinion. Cloudjpk (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Again in an ideal world, we shouldn't have an eye for individual papers/authors, but instead focus on what the weight of the literature tells us. Instead there should be summarization of what the literature in general says about particular subgroupings of particulars about the topic. So yes: we should, but currently we can't. --Kim D. Petersen 06:41, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
• Comment MEDRS is already clear about this: editors should not reject high quality sources because of content or conclusions, but instead focus on the quality of the source. LesVegas (talk) 19:15, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we remove sourced claims if they are based on findings from other sources?

It depends on the claim and the sourcing. This is another vague question. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• No That allows gaming of the system and editors picking and choosing to remove things they disagree with. AlbinoFerret 19:13, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
• Confused about this question. But again, see my two other answers: We should summarize the literature - not focus on individual papers/authors. --Kim D. Petersen 06:43, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
• Comment is there an example of this having occurred in the past? I too am confused about this question. LesVegas (talk) 19:17, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

No, LesVegas so far we have lots of duplicate findings and I cant remember any others having been removed. AlbinoFerret 23:37, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

Well, every article and talk page should have some reasonable consistency. It's unfortunate that parameters like these need to be put in place to keep editors from removing duplications when an editor just feels like it, but I entirely think it's reasonable. I will say it again: duplications should never be used for multiple government agencies and should only be removed in cases of much lower source-status, such as systematic reviews all the way down to primary studies. But as a general rule, duplications don't need to be removed and I think only should be considered in cases of lower level sources. This was clearly not such a case. LesVegas (talk) 00:34, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

It seems that there is some confusion, British National Health Service is quite different from Public Health England. They are not the same agency. They are both agencies of the UK department of health. Just like in the US we have a Department of Health, and the FDA, CDC, ect. From the Public Health England wikipedia article

Public Health England (PHE) is an executive agency of the Department of Health in the United Kingdom that began operating on 1 April 2013. Its formation came as a result of reorganisation of the National Health Service (NHS) in England outlined in the Health and Social Care Act 2012. It took on the role of the Health Protection Agency, the National Treatment Agency for Substance Misuse and a number of other health bodies.

AlbinoFerret 23:13, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Yes, claims by the NIH are different from those by the FDA or CDC, for instance. Governmental bodies often have nuanced statements that differ slightly depending on context (and that's interesting and helpful) and even when they are exactly uniform, multiple such sources should still be used in tandem to illustrate consensus. LesVegas (talk) 19:21, 10 November 2015 (UTC)

• I have requested a close at WP:ANRFC listing this one and the related one below. AlbinoFerret 19:41, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Questions added after the start of the RfC above

Should we remove or keep the text? Is the text redundant or different? QuackGuru (talk) 23:39, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we remove text sourced to the UK NHS website if it is repetitive?

• Remove duplication. In 2015 a report commissioned by Public Health England concluded that e-cigarettes "release negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders". They found that their safety won't be fully known for many years, and there is relatively low risk to others from the vapor. The part "release negligible levels of nicotine into ambient air with no identified health risks to bystanders" and "there is relatively low risk to others from the vapor" is repetitive. They virtually mean the same thing but in different words. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)
• No We dont do this with any other source that is in the articles. When multiple sources come to the same conclusion or are based on other sources they remain. I will add they only appear to be duplication because they were moved together from their orignal location in Harm reduction. AlbinoFerret 19:08, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Remove duplication Seems much the same source saying much the same thing. Of course it doesn't follow that all other sources are repetitive. When different sources come to the same conclusion, that's hardly the same as the same source saying the same thing twice. Cloudjpk (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• Loaded question - it implies that there is repetition. Rather invalidates the RfC. (defaults to No) --Kim D. Petersen 06:18, 4 November 2015 (UTC)
• No There are many reasons for duplication or partial duplication of citation or external opinion. Duplication may be justified for example to indicate the range of opinions or support (say from different times, places, or schools), or to include citations of sources that overlap but are not identical. Removal should require individual justification, such as for when someone strings together half a dozen assorted citations to lend support to a contentious point, not merely because one editor thinks that one citation is on principle adequate, and two must accordingly be excessive. JonRichfield (talk) 08:19, 16 November 2015 (UTC)
• No I have looked at the text and it might be nice to rewrite it completely to make a non-redundant, stable, cogent, watertight document, but by the nature of the topic and situation that will not happen. The material is not unduly repetitive because its degree of repetition conveys some of the climate of opinion in different bodies concerned in the matter. It would be simplistic assume that a single reference to a single position of a single source amounts to the same as invoking more than one source in a matter open to opinion and position rather than undebatably rigid fact. If it were a matter instead of tediously quoting a long roster of sources, that would be another matter. JonRichfield (talk) 04:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
• No Different bodies even coming to the same conclusion illustrates consensus. Where I would suggest duplications should be removed are in lower level claims, such as systematic reviews, which often go either way, and are often cherry-picked by editors with a strong bias. But, no, consensus statements or statements by national health bodies, even if the statements are exactly the same, only further illustrate consensus about a claim and these are our best sources and should, in fact, be used liberally. LesVegas (talk) 19:35, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
• Per Petersen: "Loaded question - it implies that there is repetition. Rather invalidates the RfC. (defaults to No)". Not enough information has been presented to determine whether even a single citation is redundant, much less whether a whole swath of them are.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Should we remove repetitive text from the UK NHS website when there is another claim from the Public Health England website?

• Remove duplication. AlbinoFerret stated "By moving them together you created the problem you want to fix." I came to the conclusion it is redundant text. "In 2015, the Public Health England released a report stating that e-cigarettes are estimated to be 95% less harmful than smoking," "The UK National Health Service stated in 2015 that e-cigarettes have approximately 5% of the risk of tobacco cigarettes." Wherever the text I highlighted in bold is placed it is still duplication. Both are from related UK organisations. The "Positions of medical organizations" section is meant to be a WP:SUMMARY. It is not a summary when the "approximately 5% of the risk of tobacco cigarettes" claim is not in the main article. It is WP:UNDUEWEIGHT to include both. QuackGuru (talk) 18:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

Let me get this straight. First you remove the part from the positions article and then you come here to say it doesn't belong here because it's not over there?--TMCk (talk) 19:20, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

I initially added it but I came to the conclusion it was repetitive. QuackGuru (talk) 19:28, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

• No We dont do this with any other source that is in the articles. When multiple sources come to the same conclusion or are based on other sources they remain. AlbinoFerret 19:09, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

But are the two sources in question really multiple sources? Seems like much the same source. Perhaps I'm missing something here. Cloudjpk (talk) 22:54, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

The British National Health Service (NHS) is quite different from Public Health England (PHE). They are both agencies in the UK department of health. AlbinoFerret 23:20, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

That's the case you're welcome to make. Do they have different missions, funding, purposes, clientele, activities, staff? Would it be possible for them to come to different conclusions? And so on. It's a question of these sources; not a broad question of editing policy.Cloudjpk (talk) 01:42, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

The answer to these concerns is yes they are diffrent. Much like the FDA and CDC in the US. AlbinoFerret 01:51, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

• Just as loaded a question. NHS != PHE according to (amongst others) QuackGuru, thus the two are not the same and statements similar but not same => No. --Kim D. Petersen 06:20, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

• Remove duplication. The sources are similar if not identical; the conclusions are identical. Cloudjpk (talk) 06:47, 4 November 2015 (UTC)

• No, for the same reasons as AlbinoFerret above, plus what I said in the immediately previous sub-question. In any case, removing duplication may sound fine, but not when the duplication is relevant and functional. The articles we write are not permitted to be essays (OR and similar religious war cries) and we accordingly are compelled to limit ourselves to citations that might entail redundancy. JonRichfield (talk) 04:53, 8 November 2015 (UTC)
• No Repetitive text and repetitive claims possibly shouldn't be used if we have two similar claims from lower level systematic reviews, of which there are now many for E-cigs and vapors, but should always be done when it's high level governmental health authorities making claims, even when the claims happen to be identical, because that illustrates consensus amongst public health authorities analyzing meta-data. LesVegas (talk) 19:37, 10 November 2015 (UTC)
• No, they're difference sources, of the kind we need in order to establish the breadth with which the claim in question is made and supported. See WP:OVERCITE for a good rundown on when actual citation overkill is happening.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussion for text

I started these new questions because the questions for the other RfC were too vague IMO. According to User:AlbinoFerret the conclusions are the same. Correct me if I am wrong. QuackGuru (talk) 23:39, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

So its ok when you add duplicative conclusions but not others? AlbinoFerret 17:52, 11 November 2015 (UTC)

I was in the process of improving the text. I removed the duplication and SYN. I did the same for this page. I recently removed a sentence that was redundant. Do you agree with removing the redundancy? User:AlbinoFerret, are you still claiming that adding redundant text improves the page? QuackGuru (talk) 19:27, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

The way you word that question "are you still claiming that adding redundant text improves the page?" is a linguistic trap that misrepresents all that I have said. That you have now removed some duplication is a good thing, remove a bunch more. I do not believe that the NHS is a duplication, and moving it caused any resemblance to duplication, The statement belongs in harm reduction and the deleted part restored. AlbinoFerret 00:35, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

The text is still redundant. QuackGuru (talk) 05:42, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Go for GA?

Has there been any thought about taking this article through Good article nomination. It seems fairly comprehensive content- and sourcing-wise. The prose could use some improvement but I don't think that is as a huge issue for GA status as it is for FA. Sizeofint (talk) 11:16, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Sizeofint, things are being deleted from the lede that summarise the body. Sourced text is being replaced with vague text or original research. QuackGuru (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm, well I guess at present it would fail the stability criteria then. Sizeofint (talk) 22:43, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

User:Sizeofint, I noticed someone added MEDRS violations, restored a COPYVIO, deleting sourced text to recent reviews, and replaced sourced text with original research. User:SMcCandlish, they never wandered away. The second I stop editing this article it will quickly be turned into something very different. You said "There's a much more meaningful problem here, a campaign to keep genuinely reliable sources out of these articles, to push a POV against scientific coverage and treat this solely as a "lifestyle and culture" topic." Sanger said "I think Misplaced Pages never solved the problem of how to organize itself in a way that didn't lead to mob rule". Thoughts? QuackGuru (talk) 20:50, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I dunno at this point. The ArbCom thing is still ongoing. The copyvio insertion is best dealt with at the copyvio noticeboard. Then it's the community resolving the matter (in a way that can restrain a copyvio-habitual editor if necessary) instead of one party at an ArbCom case opening himself to claims of editwarring (invalid claims or not) by trying to revert the copyvios unilaterally. I.e., I think this has basically become "political" and has to be treated as a political process instead of a normal editorial one. If someone's inserting OR, an an initial attempt to rectify it fails, then use the OR noticeboard, and so on. It's a drama-ish, drawn out approach, but when dealing with WP:CIVILPOV matters, that's the only route, probably, especially on a major, controversial topic that may attract fandom-based or even industry-shill editing. Anyone pursuing a civil-PoV tactic would already be playing a political game and angling to use dramaboards to get what they want strategically, so probably the only antidote for this is to ensure that the boards are already familiar with what is going on before you get vexatiously hauled in front of them with cherry-picked diffs only chosen from, say, moments in which you've lost your temper or done something potentially controversial yourself (if you even want to be the one to deal with this stuff, a duty I'm not sure I'd volunteer for). This all has to be about the encyclopedic end result in the end, so stick to that and to what's being done with the content in anti-policy ways, rather than who's doing it and what their possible motivations might be. The problems need to be shut down more than any particular editor doing something problematic. Anyone who is WP:NOTHERE will lose interest and go away if PoV-pushing avenues are shut down to them, without the side effect of making martyrs out of them. (And that can happen; I've seen it with my own eyes.) PS: Another technique, though potentially a quasi-pointy one in spirit though not in execution, is just walk away and quietly encourage others to do so, and let any dominant PoV-pushing faction just hang itself with its own rope over the next 6 months or year, creating a pseudo-article that everyone can see is crap, so it can be razed and something better built on its ruins. Another technique is to write new articles on narrower topics that are bulletproof-sourced (it can help to prepare these offline until around B-class level), then work to integrate that sourcing into the more general articles, using RfCs as necessary to resolve contradictory POVforks in the overview article that resist merging.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:31, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Self-clarification: In light of ArbCom and WP:AC/DS and all 'at, I should make it clear that I don't think any of the present editorial pool are industry shills. I think some have edited this page and might return if one or more of the regular editors who would revert PoV stuff from them were to disappear for a long time, however. As I said on my own talk page, I would hope that enough non-WP:NOTHERE editors would remain watchlisting this page to prevent an actual going-to-hell-in-a-handbasket result. That said, such results have happened before and been swept clean and turned into better articles, so I think it'll work out one way or another. Nutty PoVs tend to stay long-term in articles (and could thereby even influence public thought about the topics) mostly when the topic is esoteric and attracts few editors to moderate the PoV-pushing.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:22, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, the stability thing would get this punted from GAN. Which is a shame, because that kind of review process is precisely what would weed out a lot of the PoV pushing (and there are multiple forms of it; I think we've identified at least four different "viewpoint camps", along at least two axes, in this topic area). I find it very frustrating because I'm not in any of them and just want to see a balance emerge. It's not WP's job to "declare a winner" in these debates (it's important that we don't; that's the job of external sources). This article needs to lay out:

• The view that e-cigs cause more harm than good because they attract would-be-nonsmokers into a form of smoking/addiction, and the long term health effects are unknown (plus other issues, like too few dosage regulations, toxic ingredients, accessibility by minors via Internet orders, etc.).
• The view that e-cigs are a boon because it is not plausible that the effects are worse than breathing in burning material, and there's evidence that e-cigs help real smokers quit real smoking, meanwhile there's already an increasing raft of laws and regulations on e-cig aerosol content, availability to minors, etc.
• The view that whatever the medical debates, e-cigs are being unfairly targeted for regulatory scrutinym even banning, by a hypocritical system that condones alcohol drinking and other worse habits and is singling out one lifestyle choice as a distracting scapegoat and out of reactionary neophobia.
• The view that society needs to better control and discourage all of these things, and that this is not simply "just as good a place to start as any", but an obvious and urgent one because of the misleading way that these products are promoted, and the politically weak position they're in compared to big tobacco and big liquor, and the drug cartels for that matter.

And there's probably some other well-attested viewpoint or two or five to work in. Let the readers draw their own conclusions (which may be no conclusion; I find myself neutral on each axis I outlined, for reasons that would not necessarily be obvious). Some of these are clearly MEDRS matters, some are socio-political.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:31, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Revert 19.11.15

The following discussion 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.

@Johnbod: Smoking cessation: the article is stuffed with contradictory sentences one after the other - why pick on this one -- Might as well start somewhere. Are you happy for me to fix this stuff or would you prefer that I tagged all the contradictory sentences for you to fix?—S Marshall T/C 17:27, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

This text is already in the Harm reduction section. QuackGuru (talk) 20:36, 19 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't think it is, but "Vaping may have potential in harm reduction compared to smoking." is. I'd be happy to move the disputed sentence to "Harm Reduction", removing the one I just quoted, but keeping the reference for the new text.

In general, where significant chunks of text are being addressed, I think new drafts (up to a para at a time say), should be proposed here for discussion. Johnbod (talk) 02:07, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

See Electronic cigarette#Harm_reduction. "As of 2014 promotion of vaping as a harm reduction aid is premature, but in an effort to decrease tobacco related death and disease, e-cigarettes have a potential to be part of the harm reduction strategy."

"Vaping may have potential in harm reduction compared to smoking." This text is redundant. It can be deleted.

There is a summary of "Harm reduction" in the lede. QuackGuru (talk) 02:48, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• Johnbod, the reason I fought that colossal Arbcom case was so that I would be allowed to change the article. No, I'm not going to submit my edits to a committee process before I make them. If you don't like what I write, change it. If you've given any specific and intelligible reasons for that revert, I haven't seen them yet, so perhaps you could point that out to me.—S Marshall T/C 08:47, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• And then you revert me, as you just did. And then we end up here. We might as well do that from the start, and not sentence by sentence - that way of doing things is half the trouble with the article as it stands. Take it from someone with a lot more experience here than you, re-drafting section by section is the way to go in an article like this. Otherwise someone just rewrites your rewrites, and only 1-2 people can be bothered to follow the edit-history, and no-one except the author will bother to defend any version. Johnbod (talk) 09:00, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• I don't recall reverting you, Johnbod. I recall reverting one edit of Blueraspberry's. I think you're confused about this, which is understandable given the volume of editing recently. I see that you don't want me to go through fixing the contradictions so I'll tag them for you to fix.—S Marshall T/C 11:07, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

• Probably. Please don't bother on my account - I'm unlikely to do anything about them that way. The article is full of contradictions because the sources are. The way to fix that is not just to remove things, but to redraft a balanced narrative that explains the issues and the different statements, and everybody editing the page directly at the same time won't achieve that. Johnbod (talk) 11:45, 20 November 2015 (UTC)
• "As of 2014, their usefulness in tobacco harm reduction is unclear, but they have a potential to be part of the strategy to decrease tobacco related death and disease." This is the current text in the lede. It would be confusing to place both sources at the end of the sentence. Both sources do not verify the same text. Sources usually disagree on this topic but that does not mean there is anything to fix. I disagree with adding a tag. QuackGuru (talk) 18:59, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

New paragraph, headed Nicotine yield.

Smoking an average traditional cigarette yields between 0.5 and 1.5 mg of nicotine.(source). The amount of nicotine in a cloud of e-cigarette vapour is widely variable and estimates based on the studies available to date need to be treated with caution (same source). EU regulations cap the concentration of nicotine in e-liquid at a maximum of 20mg/mL. This is an arbitrary limit based on limited data (source).

This new paragraph would go somewhere around the "construction" section. It also belongs in our horrible, horrible fork called electronic cigarette aerosol (which amusingly fails to quantify the nicotine concentration in the vapour, although it certainly has a lot to say about the levels of formaldehyde, carcinogens and lead). If, that is, that's one of the forks that survives AfD.—S Marshall T/C 20:04, 20 November 2015 (UTC)

It's nonsense to compare an average traditional cigarette yields between 0.5 and 1.5 mg of nicotine with the concentration of nicotine in e-liquid! The tobacco of an traditional cigarette contains ca. 14mg nicotine (1.1-2.9% of dry weight of tobacco SOURCE: Click). You have to compare either the amount of nicotine in liquid and tobacco or the amount of nicotine absorbed from liquid and tobacco. You can't compare apples with pears - Mixing up things is misleading! BTW: The only thing that counts is the nicotine delivery respectively blood plasma concentration of nicotine.

• Effect of an electronic nicotine delivery device (e cigarette) on desire to smoke and withdrawal, user preferences and nicotine delivery: randomised cross-over trial.
• Nicotine absorption from electronic cigarette use: comparison between first and new-generation devices. (Hint: Look at Fig. 4, Click me)--Merlin 1971 (talk) 11:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I like the idea S Marshall, go for it. AlbinoFerret 00:30, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm sorry. That's a cogent point well made. I should have been less facetious and more careful; a lesson for me there. (My excuse is that I was stung). Let's try this:

Smoking an average traditional cigarette yields between 0.5 and 1.5 mg of nicotine.(source). The amount of nicotine in a cloud of e-cigarette vapour is widely variable and estimates based on the studies available to date need to be treated with caution (same source). Vapers tend to reach lower blood nicotine concentrations than smokers, particularly when the vapers are inexperienced or using earlier-generation devices (Nature source linked above). EU regulations cap the concentration of nicotine in e-liquid at a maximum of 20mg/mL, but this is an arbitrary limit based on limited data (source).

This would be a whole lot easier if other people could directly edit what I write, wouldn't it?—S Marshall T/C 00:36, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Better! Much better! :) How about a sentence that Vapers tend to reach the lower blood nicotine concentrations much slower than smokers?--Merlin 1971 (talk) 11:07, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I added the specific information about EU regulations to the construction page. For this page I added general information about the liquid concentrations. See "A cartridge may contain 0 to 20 mg of nicotine." If the other information is added to the construction section it should be added to the construction page body and lede. QuackGuru (talk) 01:47, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• No you don't, sunshine. We will not be going back to that old problem where I'm not allowed to change the article but when I start a talk page conversation QuackGuru pre-emptively makes changes before consensus is reached.—S Marshall T/C 02:49, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• @Merlin 1971: How about:-

  Smoking an average traditional cigarette yields between 0.5 and 1.5 mg of nicotine.(source). The amount of nicotine in a cloud of e-cigarette vapour is widely variable and estimates based on the studies available to date need to be treated with caution (same source). In practice vapers tend to reach lower blood nicotine concentrations than smokers, particularly when the vapers are inexperienced or using earlier-generation devices (nature source linked above). Tobacco smoke is absorbed into the bloodstream rapidly, and e-cigarette vapour is relatively slow in this regard (nature source linked above). EU regulations cap the concentration of nicotine in e-liquid at a maximum of 20mg/mL, but this is an arbitrary limit based on limited data (source). The nicotine concentration in an e-liquid is not a reliable guide to the amount of nicotine that reaches the bloodstream (source).

  Is the nicotine content of e-liquids regulated in the US?—S Marshall T/C 13:11, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• One minor thing: You'd need to drop the "in a cloud" (which is formed out of exhaled vapor) or replace it with (inhaled) aerosol. As for your question about US regulations, not yet.--TMCk (talk) 13:23, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• This article probably needs a glossary of technical vaping terms.—S Marshall T/C 14:43, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• Not e-cig specific. One wouldn't say "smoke cloud" either unless maybe when it is about second hand smoke.--TMCk (talk) 15:21, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• I would. I smoked for 25 years, and I used to talk about a cloud of smoke. Might be one of those American dialect things.—S Marshall T/C 15:54, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

A cloud is commonly a specific (usually) visible physical formation but we're getting off topic a bit (I guess).--TMCk (talk) 16:03, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• Next draft:-

  Nicotine yield

  Smoking a traditional cigarette yields between 0.5 and 1.5 mg of nicotine (source 1), but the nicotine content of the cigarette is only weakly correlated with the levels of nicotine in the smoker's bloodstream (source 2). Likewise the amount of nicotine in a puff of e-cigarette vapor is widely variable and estimates based on the studies currently published need to be treated with caution (source 2). In practice vapers tend to reach lower blood nicotine concentrations than smokers, particularly when the vapers are inexperienced or using earlier-generation devices (nature source linked above: source 3). Tobacco smoke is absorbed into the bloodstream rapidly, and e-cigarette vapor is relatively slow in this regard (source 3). EU regulations cap the concentration of nicotine in e-liquid at a maximum of 2% (20mg/mL), but this is an arbitrary ceiling based on limited data (source 4). In practice the nicotine concentration in an e-liquid is not a reliable guide to the amount of nicotine that reaches the bloodstream (source 5).

  Nearly there now?—S Marshall T/C 16:13, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• Looks good. Maybe add (now or later) common nicotine content besides (or instead) the EU specific regulation.--TMCk (talk) 16:31, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• The common nicotine content is in the article. See "A cartridge may contain 0 to 20 mg of nicotine." The specific info about EU regs is in the construction page. It is better to use common info on nicotine content. QuackGuru (talk) 16:49, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

• The common nicotine content of cartridges is not the common one for e-liquids in general. Maybe read "your" article on it?--TMCk (talk) 17:13, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Looks good to me. BTW: I like the way this open and productive discussion is developing!--Merlin 1971 (talk) 17:48, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Okay, if QuackGuru's is the only objection then please could someone pop that paragraph in below "construction" and above "health effects"? In a less fraught article I'd do that myself.—S Marshall T/C 17:57, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

And get reverted in one sweep or tiny little subtle edits? No no, it's all yours :) --TMCk (talk) 18:01, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

TMCk, you wrote "Looks good. Maybe add (now or later) common nicotine content besides (or instead) the EU specific regulation.--TMCk (talk) 16:31, 21 November 2015 (UTC)" Do you think EU specific regulation is too EU-centric? Would it be better to add a general claim instead? QuackGuru (talk) 18:05, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

I mean exactly what I said above.--TMCk (talk) 18:11, 21 November 2015 (UTC)

Followup

Some of this should be worked into the Electronic cigarette aerosol article. I'm skeptical that the EU limit of 20 mg represents the upper limit of the range of concentrations in commonly available liquids, especially outside of the EU. That's too much coincidence to take seriously. In answer to a question toward the end, it'a not "EU-centric" to include info on the EU regs, though we would probably include other limits that have been enacted in large/influential jurisdictions. This kind of regulatory detail may be better at the aerosol article. Whether or not that will remain a separate article forever is an open question, but it is one for now, and should not be neglected, much less should the articles provide contradictory info or convey contradictory implications.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:41, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Were you canvassed here? AlbinoFerret 23:48, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish's view is very welcome here. He's the kind of editor we need to attract to this topic.—S Marshall T/C 00:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I am not trying to drive anyone away, I just found it interesting that he showed up soon after QG posted on his talk page. AlbinoFerret 00:56, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Canvassed? No. I check in from time to time, though mostly was just observing while the RfArb was running. I was too late to get in on this RfC or whatever it was, because I've been super-busy with a server project, then Thanksgiving (the US version). I didn't even know the RfArb had closed, or that various clarifications and AE actions had been launched with regard to them, so it seemed wise to see what was going on after QG corrected me on the RfArb still being ongoing. I don't know why I wasn't notified of its closure. I found this RfC-thing after reviewing your ARCA request and QG's AE request (which I'm declining to get involved in). Had I known about it, I would have supported the editing direction it took and the outcome. I just think it leaves some issues open with regard to reams of detail being added here that more properly belong entirely in the aerosols article, copied to it, or mostly in it and summarized here. They should not WP:POVFORK even if some would like to see a merger (if anything, it just makes merging more difficult later).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Thanks for the response. :) AlbinoFerret 03:44, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• Yes, I can produce sources that say that concentrations well in excess of 20mg are available. I haven't found a source that says exactly what range is available on general sale, unfortunately. Anyone got anything?—S Marshall T/C 00:49, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

6, 12, 18, 24 used to be the commonly sold strengths in the UK, as looking at any website would tell you, though with the new regulations coming a move to 12, 16, 20 seems to be happening. Much higher strengths are rarely seen in the UK, and designed for the tiny mix-your-own market, rather than actually using. I'd think 30 or 36 are the most anyone much would enjoy, though there's no accounting for Americans. Johnbod (talk) 04:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• I'm sure you're right about that. I don't think it would be a good idea to say so in the article without a source, though.—S Marshall T/C 11:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Are pp. 65-67 in the PHE Report what you want? I'm like a broken record suggesting people actually read the thing. Johnbod (talk) 13:07, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• That's ideal. Thank you!—S Marshall T/C 21:16, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Btw, I've just noticed that it seems the "EU upper limit" of 20mg only applies to unlicensed e-liquid. Medically-licensed products have no upper limit. I can see the logic, but it's still wierd. Johnbod (talk) 16:34, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

New article

See E-liquid. Do editors want to keep it or redirect it? I could expand it to include more information about the chemicals added to the liquid. QuackGuru (talk) 18:41, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

The article contains nothing but duplicative information from Construction and should be removed. Adding Safety information or other information from the articles to it would make it a coatrack and would duplicate information from that article. I know of no discussions of splitting off e-liquid from Construction and the pages creation without the same is a big problem. AlbinoFerret 19:10, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm inclined to keep it for now. It's obviously all just a copy now, but there is plenty of coverage of flavours (targeted at children or not), the market, strengths, regulation and so on that is far from fully covered at present in the other articles. But it needs to develop its own content. Johnbod (talk) 19:17, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

I think the section in Construction should be expanded first. There is a lot of room to expand it. At the moment it is unnecessary to have a separate. There may never be a need for a separate page. I don't have additional sources to expand the page. QuackGuru (talk) 19:25, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

Johnbod, if its kept, I think we should remove the information from Construction. I never thought of eliquid as part of construction which imho should be more hardware related. Eliquid is more software. We could add a link to see also. AlbinoFerret 19:33, 22 November 2015 (UTC)

If anyone finds more sources please post them on the e-liquid talk page or help expand the page. It is a bit short. QuackGuru (talk) 18:33, 24 November 2015 (UTC)

• Obvious content fork of Electronic cigarette aerosol, to which it should be merged. And "e-liquid" is meaningless jargon to anyone who is not an electronic cigarette user (or who doesn't live right near a shop that specializes in them and uses this jargon in their window advertising). "E-juice" and "e-vapor" are the exact same topic, other than what state the material is in because it has or hasn't been used yet. We don't have separate articles on gasoline in a can and gasoline as it's being combusted in an engine, or beef as its being sliced for cooking and beef as it's coming out of the oven. "E-liquid" in the bottle is not a notable topic, as it doesn't do anything or have any effects. The aerosol is the notable topic, since it does and it's what all the research is about. In skimming E-liquid I cannot see a single thing in it that cannot be merged to Electronic cigarette aerosol, and doing so would make a notable improvement in said article. It could also merge in some other way , though I think it's too much material to merge into the main Electronic cigarette article which is already getting unwieldy under WP:SUMMARY.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  23:48, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

  Better solution outlined at #differentsolution anchor in the "Discussion" section. Tl;dr: The aerosol article is actually redundant in its most important parts with the safety article; merging in that direction would leave only non-biomed info about the aerosol, which could be merged into the liquid article, and that article kept, with the aerosol one being the page that gets merged away. It's a cleaner way to get rid of one of the pages than merging from liquid to aerosol.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Merge The subjects are notable and can stand alone. There is room on WP for one small e-cig article WP:NOTPAPERAlbinoFerret 23:54, 28 November 2015 (UTC)
• Suport Merge. E-liquid is what is used to make the aerosol. Same topic. QuackGuru (talk) 01:06, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Discussion

• The material could be merged in some other way, e.g. to "Electronic cigarette liquid and aerosol", or even all into the main article at least for a while. The point is that we don't need vying articles for the same product as it is sitting on the shelf and being used. Even the pics are just examples of the marketing of what one puts into and gets out of the e-cig device. The more significant material from an encyclopedic standpoint is the composition and health information, but there's no reason to exclude the marketing information. There's just not a compelling reason for splitting that into a separate article. Imagine if we had, instead of Smokeless tobacco, "Smokeless tobacco pouches and snuff" to cover the packaging, and "Smokeless tobacco spit" to cover what comes out of that product and technically delivers the nicotine? The only reasons we have a separate Tobacco smoke article are a) there are separate articles on different forms of smoking, like cigars, cigarettes, pipes, hookas, and b) the amount of research material on tobacco smoke, both for smokers and secondarily, is huge, and there's also separate legislation on smoking as an activity (to keep smoke away from non-smokers) versus the regulation of sales of cigarettes, etc. To merge all of that into one article would not be feasible. We don't have that kind of situation here. We have a pretty large amount of material about e-cigs, large enough to support probably a split about chemical material (and its marketing and health effects) vs the device and its operation, just as we have separate articles on tobacco the material and various things like pipes and hookah and so on. I think there's some personality conflicts involved here. I've seen it alleged by various editors that Electronic cigarette aerosol is primarily the "owned" article of one editor, and see that editor claims that E-liquid is someone else's attempt to do likewise (and that some sockpuppetry has been involved). None of that seems relevant to whether we're producing good article content that is well organized. At this point, I'm starting to think it might be better to merge it all for a while into this article, sort it out, then work up a proper WP:SUMMARY split plan. However, I think the it would conclude in the end to split out the "stuff" from the "device" (particularly since there may be more devices than e-cigs in which the "stuff" can be used) and not have a pre-/post-use split in the "stuff" material.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

If it is not to be stand-alone I agree Electronic cigarette aerosol is the better place to put it, but since that term is surely far less well known than e-liquid (and most people still think it is "vapour") the name would certainly need changing. Actually there are dozens, if not hundreds, of very short articles relating to aspects of smoking, so that lengthy spiel backfires imo. Johnbod (talk) 04:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I'd be in favor of merging quite a few of those tobacco topics, too, but keep in mind that the volume of material involved about tobacco is about an order of magnitude larger, so many such merges wouldn't be doable. Another issue is that many of them are separate pages for long-term cultural reasons; a hookah isn't just some variant of a pipe, etc. There are no such consideration with a globally marketed product that's only been around a few years.

I don't quite see the rationale for merging both these e-cig–related pages to E-liquid. (This will be semi-long, too, because of the number of criteria in WP:AT.) It seems to be a WP:COMMONNAME argument, but that rubric applies to multiple names for the same topic (e.g. dipping tobacco vs. moist snuff, etc.), and is not always the logic that gets applied anyway ("dipping tobacco" is not actually the common name, but a WP:DESCRIPTDIS; there are so many names for that stuff that none of them are demonstrable to be the common one exception regionally, so a descriptive term was chosen; this problem is also why many plant species articles are at the scientific names instead of one of conflicting vernacular ones). Here we have multiple names for different states of the same subject material, which isn't quite the same thing as different names for the same subject. We only have articles on specific states of a material when they're independently notable of another state (Ice, Liquid nitrogen, Ground beef). There seems to be no notable use for "e-liquid" other than aerosolizing it. The most encyclopedic aspect of the topic is the aerosol, not what it looks like in cute packages people call "e-liquid" or "e-juice" (and for which the common name probably is the latter anyway). Cf. Incense; we don't have separate articles for the stick, cone, powder, resin, oil, etc. forms; the packaging isn't independently notable, the state of it in actual use as smoky stuff is the meat of the topic, and we secondarily cover how it is packaged and sold before use. The fact that so many people have been misled into thinking it's a vapor is a good reason to use the aerosol title, since this is an encyclopedia with an educational mission, and "vapor", like "juice", is a misnomer. Next, "e-liquid" is both jargon and an abbreviation, which we avoid in titles for severable reasons; we'd surely use "Electronic cigarette liquid" were the merge to run the other way, for WP:PRECISION and for WP:CONSISTENCY with the other articles in the series. It wouldn't present any WP:RECOGNIZABILITY problems (the RM to rename Electronic cigarette aerosol to use "vapor" concluded that as well with regard to that topic). It just would not be the most WP:CONCISE conceivable name, but that's the criterion we most often sacrifice in favor of the others (after commonness, when it does not quite address the full scope of the content).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:34, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

• Personally, I'm a lumper not a splitter. I think that the number of articles we have in this topic area is unnecessarily bloated and will definitely confuse the uninformed reader: see Category:Electronic cigarettes. I think that having separate articles on Safety of electronic cigarettes and Positions of medical organizations on electronic cigarettes can no longer be justified, since the disruption in the topic area has abated for the time being (I think it should now be possible to remove duplicative and superseded content even if it's sourced). I would be in favour of merging e-liquid and electronic cigarette aerosol. However, I also think this is the wrong place for the discussion and would recommend that it happens on the talk page of one of the articles to be merged.—S Marshall T/C 10:13, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Normally that would be SOP, but centralization works better in a topic like this, because all eyes on are this page, and hardly anyone's watchlisting the recent split-offs. Centralizing whether to merge these pages on the main page of the topic, especially when that page is one of the proposed targets of the merge, and both of aerosol and liquid pages have been suggested for merging back into this main articles, will reduce the chance of WP:LOCALCONSENSUS problems.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:37, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I created the E-Liquid page. I must say that I am frustrated to have read two of the above editors opining that I am a sockpuppet. I am not. If there is a cliche of editors that OWN these page's content, I am unaware it and thus strategising to the same, seems not conducive. But regardless.

E-liquid is aerosolized as a matter of fact. And encyclopedia should make readers aware of popular confusion of terms, which are science based, but it should not adopt that definition for the sake of convenience. There is an electronic cigarette (or generations of same- by alternate names). There is the E-Liquid. And there is the is the aerosol. Each is unique and each has its own issues. I believe each should have its own page, though some smaller information should be inside of Electronic Cigarettes, and link to aerosol and E-liquid as the main areas. For example E-Liquid has concerns over manufacturing and regulations. Aerosol has concerns of impact to user and others. A car has fuel, and exhaust. There is a page called Vapor (inhalation) which is actually for TRUE vaporizers. E-Liquid is incorrectly grouped within that page, which I will want to move off. To do that I would reference E-Cigarettes, explain why they are aerosol and not vaporization very Briefly.....and then put signposts for the correct pages for that content. Thank you Mystery Wolff (talk) 11:16, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

@S Marshall and SMcCandlish electronic cigarette aerosol was improperly split off from Safety, as it sits now Aerosol is a POV fork/coatrack with nothing removed from Safety to aerosol, just copied. Safety needs a lot of work in organizing and c/e for readability and flow. I may have time tomorrow to start this and move a lot of the aerosol/vapor stuff from Saefty to aerosol and leave a summery on Safety and a link. But I also think that e-liquid is a strange fit anywhere. Perhaps leave it as it is until the split is correctly done for safety/aerosol because I have a feeling aerosol is going to grow considerably. Then perhaps split off e liquid from aerosol to shrink the page down after growing? AlbinoFerret 19:40, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. OK, well, that seems to provide a different possible solution: If the aerosol safety material were merged back into the safety article, that would leave A) what this stuff is, chemically, B) the technical process by which it becomes an aerosol from the liquid, and C) the marketing and other non-technical/non-biomed stuff. A and C appear to be material that could be merged into the liquid article, with C summarized in detail in the safety article. B probably belongs in the main article with the other material on on e-cig operation, and summarized at the liquid article. Both A and C would be summarized briefly in the main article. Then there's no need for the aerosol article, and the liquid article has a reason to exist, mostly to hold the non-biomed material. This would resolve the conflict between having redundant articles on two matter states of the same product, and consolidate the safety/health info in one main article, with the aerosol/vapor titles redirecting to it, and a hatnote disambiguating to the article on the "e-liquid" for people looking for non-biomed info on it. That would arguably be a "cleaner" result than moving safety into out of the safety article into the aerosol article. The core reason I supported moving the liquid info into the aero. article is that the aero. safety is the most important part of "the story" of the liquid/aerosol. But if that's ultimately the focus of the safety article, then that's taken care of and the aero. article is redundant.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  03:19, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

The thing is, there wont be much to merge back to Safety, nothing was taken out of it, just copied over. But its probably a good idea to double check to make sure. If you look at Construction of electronic cigarettes, it has a pretty good section on the technical operation of the device. There was already a lot of it on the page when I started to organize the page and started to make it more readable, it really wasnt done any place else. To me Construction is in half way decient shape, and will get better now that there is no longer a brick wall. E-liquid was split off of Construction, but it didnt really fit there either. By the way, I was able to start a little on the organizing of safety. There is a lot of duplication. AlbinoFerret 03:47, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

PROPOSAL Merge e-liquid and electronic cigarette aerosol into one Called: E-Liquid and E-Liquid Aerosol (Vape)
I can see removing (Vape) but it does add clarification with a unique word, that is not Vapor. E-liquid is not vaporized by the dictionary definitions. However Vape is a new word.
Removal of Electronic Cigarette is good, because its more associate with one variety of "Vaping" equipment. E-Liquid is used in all forms of EC and later generations of Electronic cigarettes and MODs. E-Liquid is devices agnostic, while "Electronic Cigarette Aerosol" is not.
The aerosolization of E-Liquid makes the vapor constituents not changed very much. Radically different that combustion artifacts.
I think this proposal is OK, they are close enough to group to one. Mystery Wolff (talk) 11:46, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

RfC: reduced volts and aldehydes

   Proposal by AlbinoFerret - E-cigarettes at normal voltage generate very low levels of formaldehyde. A review found that later generation e-cigarettes at a higher voltage of 5 volts generated equal or higher levels of formaldehyde than smoking. Another review looking at the same studies pointed out that the levels were the result of overheating during testing that bears little resemblance to common usage. A 2015 Public Health England report that looked at the similar studies concluded that by applying maximum voltage and increasing the time the device is used on a puffing machine, e-liquid's can thermally degrade and produce high levels of formaldehyde. This poses no harm to humans because they detect the "dry puff" and avoid it. 

New Discussion

In the above failed RFC we had a number of proposals. I am still in favor of the second and 4th with with a minor change "A 2015 Public Health England report looking at the same studies" should be similar studies because they looked at different ones using similar methods that came to the same flawed conclusions. I also question if we should have any mention of the findings because of the flawed nature of the findings, but it may be better to leave it in so we dont have others wanting to add it since it was highly publicised in the news. In any event, what is done here should also be done on Safety imho. AlbinoFerret 23:19, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree we shouldn't lose all that work when we are so close! Er, 6th proposal:

Normal usage of e-cigarettes generates very low levels of formaldehyde. A 2015 review found that later-generation e-cigarettes set at higher power may generate equal or higher levels of formaldehyde compared to smoking. A 2015 review found that these levels were the result of overheating under test conditions that bear little resemblance to common usage. The 2015 Public Health England report looking at the research concluded that by applying maximum power and increasing the time the device is used on a puffing machine, e-liquids can thermally degrade and produce high levels of formaldehyde. Users detect the "dry puff" and avoid it, and the report concluded that "There is no indication that EC users are exposed to dangerous levels of aldehydes."

1. ^ Polosa, R; Campagna, D; Caponnetto, P (September 2015). "What to advise to respiratory patients intending to use electronic cigarettes". Discovery medicine. 20 (109): 155–61. PMID 26463097.
2. Cite error: The named reference Orellana-Barrios2015 was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
3. ^ McNeill, A, SC (2015). "E – cigarettes: an evidence update A report commissioned by Public Health England" (PDF). www.gov.uk. UK: Public Health England. pp. 77–78.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)

How about that - primary study details to note - ideally a cite with both review and primary study in it? Johnbod (talk) 04:08, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

I fixed the note, it was messed up, so I used the note tag, hope you dont mind. If you want more in the note just move the end tag. I think we have a winner! The 6th is a good combination, and the note hides all the extra stuff that can be looked at if someone is interested. AlbinoFerret 05:47, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

Since we have no opposition I have added it to the Safety article, and in its lede. I then synced the Safety lede to the summery. AlbinoFerret 21:42, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Interesting source

"What to Advise to Respiratory Patients Intending to Use Electronic Cigarettes" by Riccardo Polosa, Davide Campagna, and Pasquale Caponnetto. Published Sept 2015, a review, and free access. AlbinoFerret 06:31, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Very interesting, and at least 2 of the authors are well-known, but is it strictly a review? Johnbod (talk) 18:43, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

I an not 100% sure if its strictly a review, but that is what it appears to be as it reviews work by others and is not new research by the authors. The article is undoubtedly a secondary source in a pubmed indexed peer reviewed journal and not an editorial. That two of the authors are well know and have other sources already in the articles is a plus. I like the fact that its newer source that is free to access, that is a plus to verifiability as readers of the articles may not have access to pay walled journal articles. AlbinoFerret 19:19, 23 November 2015 (UTC)

Mass changes to smoking cessation

Sourced content to reviews was replaced with a randomized controlled trial. The reviews are not outdated content. Sourced content was deleted again. The part "A 2015 review found e-cigarettes was positively associated with smoking cessation." is original research. This edit appears to be a WP:COPYVIO because the 2014 review stated "Our meta-analyses demonstrated a higher smoking cessation rate of 20% achieved with e-cigarettes, suggesting that factors beyond nicotine replacement alone may contribute to smoking cessation." This edit replaced accurately sourced content with original research and deleted one sentence that is accurately sourced. This edit deleted sourced content. This edit made the text less accurate than the previous wording. QuackGuru (talk) 16:40, 27 November 2015 (UTC)

QuackGuru: I have asked for help regarding your editing. Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Misplaced Pages:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement&oldid=692779454 If I need to escalate to something more official, I will find out how and do so. You are running ruff-shoot over multiple pages as if you are the owner of the content.

You really jump the shark, when you say that I am doing a copyright violation, by using a near quote from the conclusion of a public study...where I attribute to the authors and cite them. You are taking meta-studies, which find 2 clinical trials that support the efficacy of cessation of smoking, in randomized trials....and then that is absolutely bastardized into a phrase " Researchers found limited information" They found 2 randomized trials, which are not cheap. Other places you want to put content in from a meta-study which is attributed to the source study, and after I go through the time and effort to look up the source, to find its being absolutely misquoted...you simple delete that, revert it, and say it was duplication.

QuackGuru, Please Stop this. I kow have to spend the time to undo you edits. And that is not time that you should FORCE me to spend. Mystery Wolff (talk) 07:24, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I have now had to do a manual revert, because of this. Please, if you want to edit and make changes, do it line by line, so people can see what you are doing. I will do the same. Mystery Wolff (talk) 07:43, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Mystery Wolff Why did you combine Construction and E-liquid again , they are separate pages as you well know. How is the reader to determine what page to go to if the information is mingled? Every other page that is separate has its own section. First I simply made it a sub section, you reverted, then I made it its own section, you reverted. Please explain why. AlbinoFerret 15:03, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

AlbinoFerret Let me apologize for problem. I had to do a manual revert to vandalism by QuackGuru. He did a mass of edits with little explanation, and a manual revert was the only way. My manual revert could have be mechanically executed better and I think I know how to do it better. It was late and I did not capture well a couple of edits you had, and the manual revert was what would have caused them. Because of the style of QuackGuru the page is in such flux with so little explanation, its hard to sort things out. As far as the pages I believe that E-Liquid is its own thing. Contraction of the device can talk to it....but after a quick dialogue it should send people over. As you know E-Liquid page is being shredded up by QuackGuru. Keeping information in line with each page, is something I want to work on as well. It should not be that there is duplication to the point that a single edit needs to be changed in 5 places. Mystery Wolff (talk) 22:44, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

The WP:OR was restored along with the WP:MEDRS violation. Sourced text to reviews were also deleted. The WP:COPYVIO was also restored after I rewritten it. QuackGuru (talk) 18:37, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

QuackGuru ::I regard the changes that you are doing as destructive. You are at the point of removing references to the full studies. When you see a link that was not auto-generated to a full study, and delete it in favor of an abstract, that is a problem. When you delete longitudinal studies with zero explanation, it is a problem. When you slap in edits after edits, with little or no explanation it a problem. Other editors can not see what you are doing. I don't want to play the game with you that citing a source is with the conclusions made, is some form of copyright violation. Your claim that the University of East London is not an acceptable source is outrageous. Mystery Wolff (talk) 23:02, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

It is a study not a WP:MEDRS review. QuackGuru (talk) 23:07, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

The nature of observational studies and those of medicine are different. The MEDRS is being used as a catch-all to remove content that you don't want to see. QuackGuru, I have already read you suggesting that 90% of this page was created by you, and you are concerned about other editors changing it. There is an existing ARB concerning you (or whatever is the right term) that you should review. If you wanted to explain what the issue SPECIFICALLY with "A longitudinal study of smokers and e-cigarette use, reported that daily users of e-cigarettes, were 6 times as likely as nonusers/triers to report quitting." Otherwise I am simply too frustrated deal with it more tonight. Your persistent incremental edits won't just undo all new contributions, they may tonight though Mystery Wolff (talk) 03:21, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I tagged the two studies. After I also tagged the OR you restored it again, among other problems. QuackGuru (talk) 04:08, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I concur the U. of London study seems to be a valid source for this. MEDRS does not prevent the use of all sources that aren't medical literature reviews. A study like that is a WP:PRIMARY source, but a peer-reviewed one from a reputable publisher, so it can be included with attribution and without trying to make it say something it doesn't. We just can't, per the WP:AEIS rule in WP:NOR, present its novel claims as fact in WP's own voice, and WP:NPOV prevents us from presenting novel claims, even with attribution, that don't have wide acceptance without also providing the sourced alternative view(s). WP:FRINGE prevents us giving novel claims that are considered nonsense without making it clear that mainstream science regards them that way. Better understanding of this interplay would go a long way to easing a lot of strife here. What we don't want to see is "This was disproved by a newer 2015 study." Primary research that has not been independently validated doesn't really demonstrate anything, it just says "here's our methodology and results; what do our colleagues think of this?" When it's undertaken to check the results of previous work, it means "We know they said that, but we just ran these tests and got this result instead, so this needs further research attention".  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  05:01, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I did write information about the latest and third RCT using a WP:MEDORG compliant report. See "A third RCT in 2014 found that smokers who were not interested in quitting, after eight weeks of e-cigarette use 34% who used e-cigarettes had quit smoking in comparison with 0% of users who did not use e-cigarettes, with considerable reductions from smoking in the e-cigarette group." The Cochrane review covers the other two RCTs. See "A 2014 Cochrane review found limited evidence of a benefit as a smoking cessation aid from a small number of studies, which included two randomized controlled trials (RCT). " QuackGuru (talk) 05:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

So, why is there a dispute? There are two viable sources (of different sorts). Let's just cite them as saying what they say, and attribute them so it doesn't look like WP is asserting that something is a True Fact(tm), when RS clearly do not agree on all these details of, well, much of anything on this topic.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:24, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

The issues are contained in the first item under this topic. It takes time to read them. Here is one https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&diff=next&oldid=692674401 The source says they found they are as good as NRT. The wording is done in a way that suggest there is not evidence, and then conflates that with saying "better than NRT" If you look at the source they found it better, but did not have enough assert that with confidence. In the version that QuackGuru wants, it takes another sentence to back off and then say they are as good as NRT. His complaint my edit, I remove the double negative, state what they found, and remove the entire sentence which was a backtrack. As another example read above of what QuackGuru wants to put in, hyper selective wording. "A 2014 Cochrane review found limited evidence of a benefit as a smoking cessation aid from a small number of studies, which included two randomized controlled trials" What they found were two serious studies RCT that said there was a benefit to cessation. The word limited refers to the count. When it says limited evidence, its not trivial evidence, its a count of studies. QuackGuru does this as many times as you see in his original post in this section, to see the rest. Its simply QuackGuru's personal POV skewing content. Do you now understand the what the dispute is? Mystery Wolff (talk) 12:46, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It's obvious what the nature is of the personality dispute between you and QG, and that you don't like each other's wording. None of that gets at why where would be any dispute about the inclusion of both sources, which is what I asked about. What I'm getting is "source A should be excluded because editor X wrote this about it" vs. "source B should be excluded because editor Y wrote that about it". It seems to me that if both editors wrote nothing about either, then the sources could be integrated easily by someone else.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  13:21, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish, you are just wrong, I know that you and QuackGuru talk and interact...but this has nothing to do FOR ME with personality. Its not about word choice and wording. We have real data. We have real science. And we have a level and bar to clear with Misplaced Pages for content inclusion. Let's improve the article. Mystery Wolff (talk) 14:47, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

As usual, the Biener study is covered in the PHE Report, p. 50, and Bullen 2010 on p.73 - I wish people would actually read that. Also, Mystery Wolff, please read WP:MEDRS carefully, and don't omit the date field in refs. Johnbod (talk) 12:54, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Will look at the Biener study I will search for it tomorrow, if the link is super handy posting it here would be lovely. Have looked at WP:MEDRS and understand its guides, will look again. Just to clarify something, do you think Cessation of Smoking via replacement over to Electronic Cigarettes is a medical claim? Or medicine of any type? Both are legal products. Both are nicotine products. If the FDA gets its way they are both Tobacco Products. Addiction is premised upon damage and harm of smoking, and again the nicotine addiction is defined as nicotine addiction. So when research shows that one product in the same category is replacing another....how is that not marketing or consumer data. Because the studies are using statistics does that make them MEDICINE? Not trying to be flippant, but Medicine is the highest and most guarded (as it should) bar on Misplaced Pages for sources....how does that relate to consumer preferences for two legally sold nicotine products??? I will contribute and cite those properly regardless. Mystery Wolff (talk) 13:24, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Pure data on prevalence of use is not strictly MEDRS, but in fact can conveniently be sourced from MEDRS-compliant sources, and probably should be. Anything to do with effectiveness in cessation, or e-cigs' role in harm reduction, is certainly MEDRS, as is anything drawn from medical research, including observational etc studies . Johnbod (talk) 16:04, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

2016 is near

Since E-cigarette is a fast moving field of study, we should be replacing all the references from 2011 and before that can be replaced. There may be some that cant be, but I think its best to update all that we can to keep the article up to date. AlbinoFerret 15:44, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree this is a good goal. Older studies are also focused on older generations of products.Mystery Wolff (talk) 01:14, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Replacement of quitting language in Harm reduction

QG replaced a claim that quitting would reduce harm more. This is not a harm reduction claim. Harm reduction is not quitting. Harm reduction is switching to a device that causes less harm for those that cant or wont quit. AlbinoFerret 21:33, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Hmm. The diff shows an insertion, not a replacement. And it's sourced. I'm skeptical that any harm reduction system/regimen or even individual therapist would deny the claim presented. I.e., it would appear to be a claim within harm reduction in the EC context, just not one unique to harm reduction. The insertion appears to be for reader understanding of the topic of the article, not for reader understanding of the harm reduction therapeutic philosophy's exact statement positioning. I've been through a harm reduction regimen, and it was repeatedly made clear that quitting entirely would produce better health results and was also a more successful strategy on average, because of the tendency to slide back to excessive usage. This would not necessarily apply to all things, e.g. someone who has developed a dependency on pain pills that they actually need for medical reasons, so it's correct that it's not always a central tenet of harm reduction in all contexts. But in this particular case that kind of conflict doesn't arise.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I moved the text to Electronic_cigarette#Smoking_cessation. Either section is fine with me. The current text is "If e-cigarettes are used to quit smoking, they could reduce harm even more if the tobacco user quit using both." Don't be surprised if it gets deleted again without explanation. QuackGuru (talk) 04:58, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

You do realize that text is unacceptable, Quack, whatever the sources? With the second "if" it vanishes down a logical rabbit-hole. Johnbod (talk) 13:00, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Yeah, that doesn't work. The underlying, point that not smoking any of these things any more is better than switching from cigs to e-cigs, is an obviously valid one and source. It just needs to be in a sentence by itself. It would be "cleaner" that way from a sourcing perspective, and also be more "portable" if it's desired to move it to a different section.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  13:12, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish What you say above about your experience is pure rank Original Research, not even Research, is your personal experience. The question of whether reduction of the number of cigarettes is improvement, is a sciencetific one regarding the body. It is not as you say, something about slipping back to smoking. That is know as something called a "quit attempt" QuackGuru is interjecting a theory that E-Cigarettes cause harm. Where is that evidence? He even says that he won't be surprised if his OR is challenged. And all of this is put into a section which is designed to be talking about cessation of smoking. Its the wrong place. SMcCandlish do you not see the problems? Mystery Wolff (talk) 12:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

You need to actually read WP:NOR policy (cf. what Johnbod saying the same thing to you one thread ago about MEDRS; there's a clear WP:COMPETENCE problem happening here). NOR applies to content in articles, not to what people may consider on talk pages. You also need, I must suggest, to stop picking fights over nit-picks of no significance. My mentioning personal experience as one source of my personal skepticism on this issue is not among the actual rationales I present for why the addition is potentially valid. As I said to you on on my talk page, you need to pay attention to what people actually say instead of what you can imagine is the worst or stupidest thing they could have meant if you warp what they said. I have now interacted with you a grand total of three times, and all three times you have done this. That's not going to be tolerated for very long, by me or anyone else.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  13:09, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I do not think its clever to be told their is a lack of WP:COMPETENCE, nor the other shots. Your ability to tolerate is your capacity, I don't need that information or warning. I would like to stick to the topic which is right here, this section, if you are able.

The topic is Original Research being place into the Article. This is what the original poster of this section pointed out as a problem https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=692861634&oldid=692860023 You are professing your personal experiences in the TALK page as explanation on why to move in the OR. It gets moved into Smoking Cessation. That is the not the proper spot. If you want to talk about your personal experiences, its fine, but you are doing it so as to make a case. You need evidence of harm to assert that Electronic Cigarettes should be ceased entirely, your story confuses that with personal speculation. If you ACTUALLY have a sourced article of harm from Electronic Cigarettes to humans, in regular usage, a honest study of this, I want to see it. PLEASE. As you were told, the basis of a complete quitting is necessary for harm reduction regarding cigarettes is because of theories that a small number of leaf cigarettes is the same harm as many. Your story confuses that.

And the real problem remains QuackGuru is moving in Original Research. Look at the citation for it, its a 3 person patient by patient write up. Its not even cited well or properly. "This clinical case conference discusses 3 cases of patients" Is not that type of UBER primary source not an issue now? And QuackGuru puts that statement out as unequivocal fact. Lets deal with what this section is supposed to be talking about, leave the personal stories for our personal talk pages. If you would. Thanks Mystery Wolff (talk) 14:17, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I don't care what QG's assertions are; they aren't the basis of my argument for including the sourced fact somewhere because it's useful for our readers' understanding. I already laid out my actual rationale regarding that "The diff shows an insertion, not a replacement. And it's sourced. I'm skeptical that any harm reduction system/regimen or even individual therapist would deny the claim presented. I.e., it would appear to be a claim within harm reduction in the EC context, just not one unique to harm reduction. The insertion appears to be for reader understanding of the topic of the article, not for reader understanding of the harm reduction therapeutic philosophy's exact statement positioning." ("My story" should not confuse that in any way; it's simply an illustrative example.) Maybe it's not crucial to include the insertion there or at all; I just hadn't seen a viable rationale for excluding it entirely, and remain skeptical about the one for excluding it from that section. It looks like a lingering after-effect of the battlegrounding (i.e., resist this edit because of who made it). If the particular source seems weak, there's surely another. A weak-source argument was not presented until just now, in your later argument with me, not by either your or AF's objections to its inclusion. Even your own remains mostly about QG and your opposition to him.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  02:59, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Regarding the insertion of specifically "If e-cigarettes are used to quit smoking, they could reduce harm even more if the tobacco user quit using both". Who is still supporting it? I believe the entire items should be deleted and not included. Because:
1. Its citation is purely primary, and Worse it's based off the unique experience of 3 individuals memorialized a medical journal. This fails even the most generous tests.

2. It is error to think that "If the particular source seems weak, there's surely another" that's silly science at best. I am not aware of any study showing that E-Cigarettes cause harm to human when used in accordance to manufacturer instructions. (e.g. Plugging in 110V device into a 220V outlet and expecting everything to work out fine, bad plan). With ZERO evidence of harm, it is impossible to say, as speculated, that further harm reduction would come from NON-usage. This is why it is Original Research being done inside of the talk page, and nowhere else.

3. Harm reduction for Tobacco and other items, have their own topics.

4. All Original Research, by definition is WEAK SOURCED.

So given all that---Is there anyone still wanting to make a case for sentence to being included, or can it be removed and we be done with it???
Reply if you want it in....otherwise the assumption should be...it can go.(if not already gone) If anyone is wanting to make a fresh case for it, lets hear it. Mystery Wolff (talk) 10:50, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• Can someone please post the supporting quote from the source? Can't seem to find it. Thanks.--TMCk (talk) 14:34, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

It can be found on page 8 "When used as a form of pharmacotherapy for tobacco cessation, ECIGs may help to reduce harm even further if the tobacco user quits successfully." AlbinoFerret 15:07, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

From context is it clear what is to be quit successfully, e-cigs or tobacco? SPACKlick (talk) 15:32, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

From the source imho its tobacco. The source is free to read here AlbinoFerret 15:39, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec)Found that part too but it doesn't confirm the fact, at least not the way I read it. It says "...form of harm reduction for those who use other tobacco products..." and goes on "...ECIGs may help reduce harm even further if the tobacco user quits successfully.", the later referring to completely quitting smoking while the former I read as dual use.--TMCk (talk) 15:40, 1 December 2015 (UTC)

• "If the particular source seems weak, there's surely another." is not true here. I am remain unaware any showing that millions of Electronic Cigarette users are being harmed. If there was it would be being blasted all over this Article...and it has not. Everything is speculative at best. You need to show there is a harm, before you can attribute harm reduction. For this edit, we need a solid source making the claim, and we simply do not.
  

HERE ARE THE LINES USED TO MAKE THE EDIT ECIGs are a potential form of harm reduction for those who use other tobacco products, due to reduced exposure to known carcinogens and other toxicants found in tobacco products. When used as a form of pharmacotherapy for tobacco cessation, ECIGs may help to reduce harm even further if the tobacco user quits successfully. 

• Those lines are from a paper. The paper fabricated three theoretical patients, and proscribed a set of means to deal with these phantom patient's needs relating to Electronic cigarettes.
  
• The first line talks about ECIGs reduce harm for those who smoke (use tobacco products), because ECIGs are less toxic. This is dual usage.
  
• The 2nd line describes that further harm could be reduced if the Dual User, quits tobacco. ECIGs within the sentence, are described as pharmacotherapy therapy, and not "tobacco".
  
• So this is saying Harm is reduced by replacing smoking with vaping, in dual usage, and even more if the user stops smoking altogether.
  
• The quote in question placed into the article, INSERTS the word BOTH, and has absolutely no basis within the article itself.
  
• If anyone is making a case that line remain INSERTED into the ARTICLE....speak now....because next stop is closing this case out, and removing it in the Article.
  

Mystery Wolff (talk) 10:40, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm with Mystery Wolf. My reading of the paper is that it's saying Ecigs can reduce harm y reducing smoking of tobaccoo and reduce it further if the user eliminates tobacco entirely by using ecigs. It doesn't mention ceasing to use ecigs at all as far as I can tell. SPACKlick (talk) 10:48, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Removal of spaces

QG looks like he wants to remove all the spaces in references. As a byproduct there are no spaces in the references at the bottom of the page making them harder to use by readers. AlbinoFerret 22:28, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

QuackGuru is also removing references. I have no idea why he is doing so many changes to references but it harming content. CERTAINTY removing spaces is not productive. I bring in a reference to the full study, and that reference is deleted in favor of a source that puts out an Abstract, and then paywall for them to sell you the full study. These are often publicly funded studies, which are published in multiple places. Mystery Wolff (talk) 22:49, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

The spaces in the reference section are still there. Reducing the bytes is not a bad idea. QuackGuru (talk) 22:58, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

AlbinoFerret informed you of a problem, I confirmed and told you of other problems with your edits to reference. You now say you are trying to save space on the internet by removing ASCII spaces here and there. WHY? Why is this even a thing. Use the standard Citations mechanism. Its really really quite good. It will either create the reference automatically from the link, or it will just ask you to plug in information. After that there is nothing else to do. Use the standards, this is not your webpage. Mystery Wolff (talk) 23:25, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

I just checked the references before and after the changes. The references are the same. I wanted to reduce the bytes. QuackGuru (talk) 23:30, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

Whatever's going on, it would be helpful if we settled on a WP:CITEVAR, such that references were formatted consistently. I would advocate using the most common way, which is this: {{cite journal |title=Yadda Yadda |first1=Jane |last1=Smith |first2=John |last2=Doe |...}} (without implying anything about particular parameter order, though I have a practical approach to this, which varies based on whether Harvard referencing is being used or not). This formatting makes it easy to read and edit, permits usable line wrapping, and uses minimal but not impractically minimalist space. The various conflicting vertical styles are a pain in the butt and vastly lengthen the page, while also making it hard to get any sense of the paragraph structure. Also of poor utility, taking up too much space and looking like symbolic soup, is "super-spacing" of the form {{cite journal | title = Yadda Yadda | first1 = Jane | last1 = Smith | first2 = John | last2 = Doe | ... }} "super-spacing"; because of the amount of horizontal arrow-key scrolling required, it palpably slows down editing. The worst is run together with no spacing at all, which is hardly human readable and has major line-wrapping problems in source view:{{cite journal|title=Yadda Yadda|first1=Jane|last1=Smith|first2=John|last2=Doe|...}} PS: It works best to add one space between the = and URLs, as another line-wrapping aid.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:24, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

2014 study

Goniewicz, Maciej L.; Hajek, Peter; McRobbie, Hayden (2014). "Nicotine content of electronic cigarettes, its release in vapour and its consistency across batches: regulatory implications" (PDF). Addiction. 109 (3): 500–507. doi:10.1111/add.12410. ISSN 0965-2140. PMID 24345184.

I mentioned the study at Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine#2014_study. See "METHODS: We studied five UK brands (six products) with high internet popularity." Also see "This study determined the nicotine content of the cartridges..." This study is not a WP:MEDRS review or WP:SECONDARY source. QuackGuru (talk) 23:21, 28 November 2015 (UTC)

While reviews are preferred. The amount of nicotine in a cartage sourced to a primary study by authors of reviews already in the article should be ok until someone finds a review. Were not looking at a real controversial claim. AlbinoFerret 00:59, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Published since 1884. http://www.addictionjournal.org/ With over 6000 entries in PubMed. Peer-reviewed. What could possibly the argument that it's not reliable??? I am waiting on a large survey to be republished concerning usage, that should help with anything needed on nicotine strengths Mystery Wolff (talk) 01:55, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

It is covered in the PHE report. Johnbod (talk) 01:56, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

The argument isn't that the publication isn't reliable, just that the content of the paper is primary-source research. The purpose of such papers is to say "Hey, we just did this study and here are our results; does the rest of the world think this is valid research, or did we do something wrong?" Primary research is very often found to be flawed. This is among the reasons that WP:AEIS claims must come from secondary sources, and that MEDRS wants to see peer-reviewed secondary sources like literature reviews for AIES claims that are medical (a journalist parroting what a questionable primary study said is technical a secondary source, but it doesn't add anything to the reliability of the claims made in the study). When we use primary-source papers from peer-reviewed science journals, they need to be for non-controversial things (just cite them), or not in WP's voice for controversial things and instead directly attributed in the prose as well as cited, and usually balanced with any conflicting views also found in reliable sources, not simply presented a known fact.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:34, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

* Policy: Unless restricted by another policy, primary sources that have been reputably published may be used in Misplaced Pages; but only with care, because it is easy to misuse them.

* In science, data is primary, and the first publication of any idea or experimental result is always a primary source.

* A conclusion written concerning the raw data, is a review, analysis of the primary information. It is for purposes of Misplaced Pages secondary. Publishing through a peer reviewed journal, is a review of the conclusion (if given, as often only data is presented). A conclusion, in science, it is not data, it is analysis and a Narrative review, not primary, and in essence a defacto narrative review. Again I am speaking to Conclusions within peer reviewed journals.

* A secondary source usually provides analysis, commentary, evaluation, context, and interpretation. It is this act of going beyond simple description, and telling us the meaning behind the simple facts, that makes them valuable to Misplaced Pages.

* Reputable secondary sources are usually based on more than one primary source.

* Peer reviewed journal entries which provide conclusions, most often do present the other primary data that they used when making their evaluations of all the data, to create the conclusion.

* Every source is the primary source for something.....More importantly, many high-quality sources contain both primary and secondary material.

* "Secondary" is not, and should not be, a bit of jargon used by Wikipedians to mean "good" or "reliable" or "usable". Secondary does not mean that the source is independent, authoritative, high-quality, accurate, fact-checked, expert-approved, subject to editorial control, or published by a reputable publisher. Secondary sources can be unreliable, biased, self-serving and self-published.

* In the case of peer reviewed article which presents a conclusion WE KNOW it is fact-checked, expert-approved, subject to editorial control and published by a reputable publisher. They are not necessarily authoritative or high quality due to demands of publish or perish.

* "Primary" is not, and should not be, a bit of jargon used by Wikipedians to mean "bad" or "unreliable" or "unusable". While some primary sources are not fully independent, they can be authoritative, high-quality, accurate, fact-checked, expert-approved, subject to editorial control and published by a reputable publisher.

SMcCandlish Of the above most of which is primarily resourced from Misplaced Pages, and a few that are my condensings...of them...exactly which do you disagree with? I do believe I understand the goals of the guidelines, and I do believe the guidelines are being gamed by QuackGuru, which you have guided QuackGuru on those problematic nature of those undertakings. Correct? The Video which is sourced and cited and view-able on this very page, has the Director of the CDC stating that 25% of all Electronic Cigarette users no longer smoke. If I memorialize that assertion by the CDC into the text of the same subsection, will you object to it being cited, as reflective of the current understanding of cessation and the relationship to Electronic Cigarettes? I hope this clarifies for you. If you do decide to respond to each of the bullet list, I can assure you that I will be appreciative. To be extra clear, your remarks are interpreted as support of the multiple deletions by QuackGuru of content that I resourced and placed in this page, and interpreted to be vouching for QuackGuru actions. I am happy to read a clarification to that interpretation. Thank you........ Mystery Wolff (talk) 10:33, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

This is not the page for a line-by-line analysis of how to interpret policy on primary sources; try WT:NOR for that (and several of your bullet points are not correct, especially "In the case of peer reviewed article which presents a conclusion WE KNOW it is fact-checked, expert-approved ...". That's a misapprehension of what peer review is; it's not confirmation of the veracity of the findings.) It's fine to use primary sources in a balanced way and usually with direct attribution; it is not permissible to use them for controversial information (see WP:PRIMARY), or for analytic, evaluative, interpretive, or synthetic claims (see WP:AEIS), in Misplaced Pages's voice. This is not a difficult boundary to work within: just don't present conclusions from primary research as known fact, but rather as results reported by specifically attributed researchers, studies, institutions, etc. How hard can it be to write "According to X, Y is true" instead of the bald assertion "Y is true"? All of our non-crap science articles are written this way where ever they're using primary papers. Finally, I'm not here to "back" anyone; the primary problem with this entire content area is an intense level of factionalization and the irrational results that produces; it needs to stop. It's mysterious to me that I can contradict QG's view on this thread, and you walk away with the interpretation that I'm contradicting you instead. I'm just going to write it off as lack of coffee or something.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  12:19, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

SMcCandlish its not coffee is frustration. You comment here: "This is not a difficult boundary to work within: just don't present conclusions from primary research as known fact, but rather as results reported by specifically attributed researchers, studies, institutions, etc." That's fine. What I was told is by QuackGuru is that it must be secondary, he removes my hard to locate citations. But when I actually point to the conclusion why showing the cite....GUESS WHAT? He says I have committed a copyright violation. Combined that with what you instructed, and rinse and repeat, all my edits are REMOVED by QuackGuru....and I have to come here and try to explain. Yes it needs to stop. I am reading QuackGuru explain how he is responsible for 90% of the content and he does not want to have other editors change it. Hour later I am reading him on your talk page telling you that I am sockpuppet. Its not coffee or none coffee, its frustration, with controlling cliche of editors. (which btw, I have only seen you on the talk page not the article fwiw) Mystery Wolff (talk) 13:08, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

I understand feeling frustration about this, but yours was misdirected at me. My own is not directed entirely in QG's direction, as I made pretty clear in my "this topic is a battleground" comments at the RfArb. It needs to be understood that someone trying to find a path through the mine-field, and sometimes agreeing with party A and sometimes with party B based on the merits of the points they raise, should not be interpreted by party B as being in a conspiracy with party A, and second-guessed over trivial matters in thread after thread. I'm actively supporting the idea that RS which don't happen to be the #1-most-favored kind at MEDRS (which is a guideline, not a policy, and some points of which have been disputed) can still be used appropriately in this (or any) article. The fact that QG opposed the inclusion of some of them, and the fact that I don't auto-oppose everything QG says or does, does not magically equate to me opposing the inclusion of those sources, especially when I'm clearly stating that I just object to their misuse.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  02:17, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Just for information: The "game-the-system-problem" is solved (for at least six month).--Merlin 1971 (talk) 17:45, 29 November 2015 (UTC)

Proper use of additional sources should help reduce strife and increase encyclopedic value

I'll try to distill some thoughts scattered through several threads above. The concentrated kernel is this: We do need to include more sources, including primary papers, but in ways that comport with WP:AEIS and WP:PRIMARY (not to mention WP:COMMONSENSE. The WP:MEDRS guideline is easy to misinterpret in multiple ways. A compounding problem is that what WP means by "primary source" and how one can be used is not clearly understood by everyone (even some MEDRS regulars), probably due to the facts that different fields use "primary source", "secondary source", etc., in quite different ways as terms of art within their own research fields, and assign quite different weight to them (typically, secondary literature reviews are treated like catch-up homework, an all an active researcher cares much about is what's hot in the primary papers flow, since this indicates where there are new research opportunities). This is natural; as everyday people most of us are more interested in what's on the news tonight than a re-examination of what was in the news last year and whether it was reported correctly, and what consensus has emerged about what was reported.

A primary research paper, no matter how prestigious the journal it's published in, or a position statement / press release, no matter how influential the organization that issued it, is still a form of primary source. That does not mean "a poor source". It's entirely authoritative for what the views are of its authors (individual researchers/teams, or an agency/ministry/association speaking as an entity), but it doesn't "prove" or "disprove" anything about the underlying science. It may later turn out to be 100% correct in the conclusions it draws, but this is frankly pretty rare. This is also true of position statements issued by medical regulatory authorities and medical associations; they are socio-political decisions based on research but are not themselves science nor a scientific consensus; they're a an organizational reflection of that consensus or some segment claiming to represent it. It's very clear in this topic, much more so that average, that entire national-level health departments or medical certification organizations can directly contradict each other's "medical consensus" views, which are partially formed for political considerations that have nothing to do with the scientific data.

No new piece of research, however exciting, or position statement, however strident, is a better source for WP purposes that a literature review , even if it pre-dates the new paper, though it's often reasonable to attribute and include a paper's novel claims or press release's firm positioning, in a balanced way. The new papers are vetted by peer review only enough to see publication; their results are not "proven" by publication, only offered to the scientific public for it to collectively start trying to confirm (to put it more succinctly than I did before). That confirmation is generally only going to appear (if it does at all) later, in a literature review or other high-end secondary source. A position statement isn't vetted by anyone at all when it comes from a body like the AMA. It may be vetted in ways that undermine its independence and reliability when it comes from a national institute/ministry subject to external political pressure from national leadership. The fact that WP:MEDRS doesn't seem to recognize this problem with position statements is a clear indication why it must be treated as a guideline subject to some common sense interpretation, even if the overall approach of it and the rationale behind it have a great deal of consensus buy in. The existence of a guideline does not constitute immutable consensus that every word in it is perfect.

There seems also to be some sporadic confusion that even after a literature review has indicated acceptance of a claim by scientific consensus, the original paper shouldn't also be cited along with the lit. rev. But that's nonsense; the original-paper citation provides access to the underlying research not just a précis of it, and actual medical/science professionals in our readership expect it to be included. The secondary-source citation to the lit. rev. helps all readers verify that WP isn't full of crap as to what the real-world views are and what level of acceptance they have. The primary-source citation helps expert (or even university student) readers be sure that the claims WP is repeating aren't full of crap as to the science. These are different forms of verifiability and they're both important. "Real world consensus" doesn't always mean as much as we'd like .

Conclusion: Much strife could be avoided if people stop injecting bogus "you can't include that because it's just a paper not a lit. rev." arguments, both when a paper is cited with attribution and balanced against other views, and later when a paper is an additional cite for something sourced to a lit. rev. Things will also improve if people stop trying to use primary paper and position statements as if they're secondary sources; they may be high-value in some cases but they must be attributed. Much other strife could be avoided if people stop playing "this is newer so delete this better but older source" and "this new, unproven paper is from a better journal, so delete the slightly older literature review from a smaller journal" and "this obviously politically biased FDA statement trumps real science" games. The end. :-)  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  02:39, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Most of this flies against normal Wikiproject Medicine practice, and won't be accepted by that project, I think you'll find. I agree myself that it's good to give the primary source at the same time as the review, but this isn't normally done. There isn't much need to use primary studies here, as reviews (of very variable quality) are being banged out at an excessive rate, perhaps one every 2 months for the last few years. We should perhaps make more use of the best ongoing prevalence studies though. "Position statements", which are highly relevant to this subject, are fine when it is made clear that this is what they are, which I think is generally done in these articles. In this very new area, with research growing from next to nothing a few years ago, the exact date of a review piece is highly significant, and we should prefer new over old. Johnbod (talk) 02:59, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I agree, we will have nothing but problems bringing in primary sources, and with the rate of reviews appearing they are really not needed. Thats not to say we cant bring one in if there is consensus, but that will be hard to do. Position statements are good, but they are largly the same thing with slightly different wording and add to the duplication. There are a ton of them on Safety all basically saying the same thing or duplicating other things. AlbinoFerret 03:55, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

I'm glad that we do agree that position statements are can be useful, are not required, and (I trust) should be attributed, if I'm reading you (plural) correctly. Last time I raised that suggestion at WT:MEDRS, multiple heads asplode (just as they did about the fact that reliable secondary sources basically equate to high-end editorial filtration, despite the fact that the models outlined on the page already make this clear, and editors outside medical topics intuitively understand this, regardless of topic, quite quickly). I'm not suggesting that a raft of primary studies be used, just that where something seems pertinent, and perhaps has already aroused off-WP comment, that including it may be useful. This seems to come up frequently (and the recently departed-for-a-while editor seems to have been the primary opponent to ever allowing it for any reason). I strongly agree that new reviews (and cross-sectional studies, etc.) should be preferred over old; what I meant about age was: the bogus argument that last month's lit. rev. can be trumped by this week's primary research paper, a common and lame recentism error or PoV tactic, substituting novelty for reliability.

I'm skeptical that "most" of what I said would raise WP:MED's ire; more that some particular bits of it would raise a lot of ire. To be clear, I approach all this from a WP:CORE policies and WP:RS guideline perspective – i.e. the stable, WP-wide consensus for years and years about how WP is written and operates – and I view a small portion of what goes on at WT:MEDRS and gets written into WP:MEDRS to be unacceptable WP:LOCALCONSENSUS, bucking actual policy. I'm not alone in that. So, yes, I understand that some MEDRS regulars would disagree with some of this. Interestingly, I've learned from direct experience that they won't agree on what they disagree with. The cognitive dissonance happening on those pages is mostly due to people bringing their conflicting professional experiences and expectations into the WP environment and then getting territorial about it, instead of adjusting to WP's own model and terminology. We all basically just have to work around it until those conflicts are sorted out. The more important things in MEDRS are the delineations between biomedical versus non-biomedical sources and why WP has a responsibility to make that distinction; and how to distinguish between the many kinds of medical publications for relative reliability (though it needs to more clearly identify the one model's "primary studies" with the other's "unfiltered information"). The inclusion and mostly-successful conveyance of these key matters are the reasons I support that WP:PROJPAGE having been elevated to a guideline; it's crucial that we get that stuff right, even if some other material on that page is sometimes ignored. MEDRS is a child thrust into an adult role by necessity, and which is still growing up and learning to cope.  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽ⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ≼  04:51, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

As editors who choose to go forward in this Article, a lot of this inside of baseball stuff should hopefully not be necessary. Of the (6) categories only one of them is related to which is Health Effects and its child topics. When a clarification is made that it is Vegetable Glycerin VG that is being used, vs generic Glycerin, it should not need a medical survey to add that improvement to the article. Items regarding the construction of the devices will not be well cited in Medical Journals regardless.

It is important to remember for this Article, that Electronic Cigarettes are not a medical device, and under what is soon expected to be completed under the Tobacco Control Act of 2009, Electronic Cigarettes will be treated as Tobacco Products. Tobacco Products can not make health claims per the TCA. The FDA failed to in the courts to regulate E-Cig as drugs. This was Sottera decision, which the FDA failed in its appeal challenge.

A person who switches out one Nicotine product for another is not ceasing the use of Nicotine. You will find many medical journals confused in the terms Tobacco, Smoke, Cigarettes, Nicotine, and they are entirely conflated into each other. Smoking Cessation to some is quitting Cigarettes, to others its quitting Nicotine.

The scientific studies are funded in large part by the FDA, and the FDA is still deciding how to regulate E-Cigarettes. Some studies designs are not even allowed currently because the FDA has to generate classification codes for research applications.

This all does make this article an oddball, but so long as editors are earnest, there really should not be a problem. Mystery Wolff (talk) 08:10, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

(edit conflict)I'm most in agreement with Johnbod here. We should rely on reviews for issues of what is relevant and interesting aspects of the topic area - but i am open for expanding discussion about individual issues with primary sources, where reviews have already indicated that these particular primary sources are relevant an on point. Ie. that we "vet" primary sources through secondaries. I'm strongly against using primary sources ourselves. That (imho) would lead to POV issues.

What i think should be more focused on, is summarizing reviews on particular subtopics and figuring out what is the overall view on that particular topic, and what the most interesting divergent views are. As opposed to the current methodology which seems to have been "here is an interesting tidbit, lets put that in". Another issue we have is that some of our material is sourced to reviews that doesn't have a focus on the particular information that is given, and thus is a poor source for the text... For instance a throwaway line in a review about nicotine strength, could suddenly becomes a major conclusion in our articles, and sometimes even directly in contradiction to reviews that have focused on that particular aspect. --Kim D. Petersen 08:19, 30 November 2015 (UTC)

Nicotine Concentrations

The page says concentrations range up to 30 mg/ml But it seems they range up to 54 mg/ml. Apparently this strength is not common, but it is sold. Is 54 mg/ml the upper end of the range? And what's an suitable source for this? (Above source merely by way of example) Thanks! Cloudjpk (talk) 22:26, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Not sure a blog is a good source for that. AlbinoFerret 23:39, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Saying "ranges commonly between 3 to 30 mg/ml" would be fine. ie Inserting "commonly" with a range. Strengths is very variable. And it depends on device usage. Some devices are higher volume, and thus lower nicotine is used. Much like a gear on a bicycle, you need to understand the back gear to know how much to pedal. Nicotine strength is only one factor in total delivery of nicotine to the user....with the others being type of device and frequency of use of the device. Big shovel vs 10 spades.Mystery Wolff (talk) 23:56, 2 December 2015 (UTC)

Indeed a blog is a poor source, which I mention only by way of example. Does anyone have a suitable source?

"Commonly" seems good. I think the article would be improved by giving both common and full ranges. E.g. here's the common range, here's what's on the market.

Is any product sold at higher concentrations than 54 ml/mg? Not for dilution but for actual use?

Thanks! Cloudjpk (talk) 00:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Not to my knowledge, and the 54mg sounds like nicotine base for DIY e-liquid. AlbinoFerret 01:03, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Agreed. There's a bit on this higher up here, and a link to (you'll never guess) the PHE Report. Johnbod (talk) 01:48, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

OK, thanks. Please note I'm not getting into nicotine deliveries and usage variations and such, which I think is already covered on the page. I'm simply updating the range to what is sold.

It does seem 54 mg/ml is the top end of the range. E.g. White Cloud double extra strength cartridges and disposable e-cigarettes I haven't been able to find any higher. Is that indeed the highest concentration sold? Cloudjpk (talk) 21:49, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

54 mg/ml is at the very extreme end of e-liquids - and extremely rare. It is really makes sense/only used when talking cig-a-likes, since these deliver less nicotine to the bloodstream than later generation e-cigarettes. 54 mg/ml is, as mentioned above, not uncommon in DIY liquids though, where it is "mixed down"/diluted to the nicotine strength that the DIY'er requires. --Kim D. Petersen 02:25, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Completely anecdata but after searching through reputable suppliers I could only find oe that sold at 54 mg/ml and that is sold as a base to mix down. I can't find anywhere selling higher than 36mg/ml intending it to be vaped without dilution. Would be very interested to see the source of the 54mg/ml claim. That said 54 is quite weak to mix down from ,most people offering 72 or 100 as the bases. SPACKlick (talk) 03:41, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

It would be useful to someone looking to make 6mg DIY.AlbinoFerret 04:18, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

ALERT, and Discussion for this Article moving forward past the ARB, and proper stewardship

Please carefully read this information:

The Arbitration Committee has authorised discretionary sanctions to be used for pages regarding Electronic cigarette topic area, a topic which you have edited. The Committee's decision is here.

Template:Z33

Background: This Article has been subject to edit wars, wikilawyering, playing of ARB panels, for some time, which has resulted in a Locked page in order to prevent all of these problems. Recently one prolific editor of this Article was topic Ban. During that ARB process assertions of sockpuppetry, NPOV and tagteaming have been pushed out, by editors who are associated with this Article.
The editor who was topic banned for 6m made many many edits, reverts both by UNDO, and incrementally. While I have frustrations with their process, and support the ARB, the assumption of Good Faith, and the process by which all of the current edits were sustained....it should be assumed that the current version is well sourced, and appropriate. That mean changes should be explained. I believe there are a lot of items that need changing. But it can not just be done under the banners of "wording".

I am well aware that there has been a tug of war for a long time on these pages, but that does not mean that Misplaced Pages guidelines should be abandoned. Perhaps those strategies were needed, but after the ARB decision, it time to go back to Process. Topic banning one editor can still leave the other half of the problem, if you assume partial good faith
Don't remove content without explaining it. It does not necessarily need to be in Talk. But it sure needs to be in the Edit comments.

Don't remove context and explain it by saying its a from of wordsmithing. Wordsmithing does not change the context of the citation.

If content or context is removed without explanation, (including explaining something else in the edit notes, instead of the changes) It is my belief its Vandalism and/or POV pushing.

If you are going to wordsmith existing sentences, try to batch them out for each category. Think them out, instead of a blur of changes which are grammatical problems. "These has been" is wrong "These have been" is correct. Singular "It has been" is correct.

Here are some examples of problem edits in my view. Sorry if they may be yours. I don't want your work wasted, I don't want to be required to revert. I realize bothering to post this could make my edits under more scrutiny....but as the ALERT above shows....everyone should be assuming it on this Article.

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=693011615&oldid=693011196 Removes context of "smoking". The type of nicotine usage is critical to the topic. Without digging in, I would expect this edit to make the sentence no longer match the cite.

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=693465623&oldid=693465457 no explanation on why a cited sentence is removed. Its bait and switch via the Edit description. I think its obvious this is a useful sentence to be included. I would listen to an argument why not....its just not given.

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=689215178&oldid=689214324 Cutesy non specific Edit description that forces all other editors to need to look. This edit was not better, not needed, it can be argued successfully that it is....but the editor did not bother. If a change from electronic cigarette to e-Cigarette was desired, it can be done in TALK and then moved out in mass to the entire Article.

Last there is this one, that almost has a description, until you open it up and realize what was removed. https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=693464684&oldid=693422936 Removes DATES including effective date, Removes the REGULATOR NAMES, removed product definitions, Removes EU information, Remove USA specific information.

I do believe QuackGuru was a problematic editor, but I don't preclude he was being messed with. I began on this Article, just recently, and I see no reason to research or care about all the past shenanigans. So with all that said, feel free to ignore me, but don't ignore the Alert and the 5 Pillars. Mystery Wolff (talk) 08:03, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

• I intend to go through the article fixing Quackguru's linguistic infelicities, and I fully intend to continue. By the time I'm done this article will be considerably shorter. I'd encourage you to go through my changes and revert any you dislike, as you have already been doing; I'll simply shrug, move on and fix the next problem. With QG gone, most of the work on this article is uncontroversial stuff that I don't need to discuss.

  When you say, it should be assumed that the current version is well sourced, and appropriate, I wholeheartedly disagree with you. This article is well-sourced, but a lot of its content is inappropriate. The mere fact that a sentence has a citation does not mean it belongs in Misplaced Pages and it definitely doesn't mean it belongs in this particular article. But I don't intend to argue with you about it for the time being: I'll try to take out the trash, and if you put it back then I'll simply take out the next lot.—S Marshall T/C 18:43, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

I'm in agreement with S Marshall here. And for that particular reason, i've decided to not comment on individual edits for a while. There are so much fluff and repetitions to fix, that priority should be in fixing prose before focusing on WP:WEIGHT and verification. If anything is blatantly wrong - then it should of course be fixed immediately, but these changes are not likely to make such. --Kim D. Petersen 02:30, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

So far S Marsall is doing a good job by what I have seen. This article has needed a cleanup for quite some time. If something really needs to stay, replace it. As S Marshall has pointed out there is much more to do and moving past those replacements to look at them later is a good plan. For those wanting to replace, make sure the source actually says what you are replacing. Misrepresented sources have crept into the article before, and double checking cant hurt.. AlbinoFerret 04:21, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Of the 4 edits above, I only have problems with the 4th. S Marshall's edit summaries are generally good on why he is doing something, though more on what he is doing would often be good. I'm also not following all the blizzard of edits closely (to which MW's reverts contribute). At some point we will need to move to discussing in more detail here, including drafts. Johnbod (talk) 11:29, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Johnbod: I am talking to the blistering rate of changes and them being mislabeled. You don't have the time to watch all these edits go in, and I do not either. But in just a few days, important information is being removed, just deleted. Important information. The term "STILL out of control" comes to mind Mystery Wolff (talk) 12:14, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

But you have not been able to produce very pursuasive examples of this. Johnbod (talk) 12:20, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=693703109&oldid=693703019 This is an important study no reason to delete it

https://en.wikipedia.org/search/?title=Electronic_cigarette&type=revision&diff=693465623&oldid=693465457 This is an important point to make. The objective stated above is simply to cut down words. How is that of value, are we know Twitter?

You call it "the blizzard of edits" yourselfMystery Wolff (talk) 12:34, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

You already cited the 2nd one. The first needs better phrasing, not removal. It is indeed a key study. Johnbod (talk) 12:38, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

@Spartaz:,@EdJohnston:,@L235:,@Rhoark:,@Gamaliel:,@Lankiveil:,@DeltaQuad:,@NativeForeigner:@Seraphimblade:,@Doug Weller:@Euryalus:,@LFaraone:@Thryduulf:,@DGG:
This is a request for guidance or action regarding a series of cases that have been brought to your attention, which has resulted in multiple actions on this Article (and broadly defined). Admins, Clerks, and ARB boards have spoken to this
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Enforcement#S_Marshall
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Editor_conduct_in_e-cigs_articles
Here: https://en.wikipedia.org/Wikipedia:Arbitration/Requests/Case/Editor_conduct_in_e-cigs_articles/Evidence

To paraprash it all. (loosely) A set of interested sockpuppets and tag-teaming editors were found out of the UK (IP's sniffed and confirmed) and some UK editors banned. ARB warring between S Marsall and QuackGuru with various forms of support for S Marsall, and none for QuackGuru.....QuackGuru topic banned for 6 months. Lots of drama.

Todays Situation is that the floodgates of edits are open. While the ARBs handled one side of the problem, it has left the other, who is doing gross amounts of edits and says he has a vision for the article, and no matter what edits are reverted he will keep pounding them in. Already S Marsall, had gone about deleting important content, having it reverted, coming over here and making his statements you see above, and then doing the edits again.
You can read the above. So What did the ARBs do? It removed half of a power struggle by two editors who were not cooperating, both with opposite POVs and their edits looking that way....and left only one.
The ARBs left an imbalance and tacit approval of the other side of the Edit:WAR. So now a BLIZZARD OF EDITS are coming through from S Marsall. If they have to be reverted, he does not care, he will just come back the next day to do it again....and make the article where he wants it. HOW IS THIS ANY DIFFERENT THAN THE EDITOR QUACKGURU that you just Banned.

Well to this other editor(me),its not any different. Its the same. Why I care....lots of time with cites and edits to get stuff in, and they they are just vaporized.
If this needs to go to another process, tell me, but at this point to the Admins pinged.....I suggest you need to reopen the previous ARB, look at what S Marsall has said what he is going to do, look at what his edits have been after QuackGuru....and take a vote....Is the ARB complete? Y or N. Was the problem Solved Y or N. Do we need to take more action before closing this Y or N. I think you have all the paperwork on your desks without any of it being clear off yet. I don't want to start a new process.
TLDR Dear ARB, read assertions already counter to the Alert, See ARB re-open, and reconfirm, nip in bud, close. Thank you. A rare Mystery Wolff (talk) 14:40, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

The difference? You are coming into this article as a new editor at a time when the article was on hold and all parties were on their best behaviour. The difference is, S Marshall is editing per WP:BRD an established way of editing. When he is reverted he leaves it be and goes to other areas of the page. Disruptive editors would have reverted again and edit warred in the change, S Marshall has not done that. The article is in drastic need of copy editing. I am sure he will discuss anything you need to discuss. Discussing every single edit is not required. I will also caution you on WP:OUTING, I suggest you read that page and possibly remove any identifying info quickly. AlbinoFerret 15:24, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Dear Arb, this is very premature! Johnbod (talk) 15:26, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Maybe a trout for Mystery Wolf's battleground behavior on talk pages...--TMCk (talk) 15:36, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

If others agree with User:Mystery Wolff that there are too many changes and not enough discussion the logical response might be a month of full protection. That would at least force discussion but still allow changes via {{Edit protected}}. A statement above by S Marshall indicates he plans to go on making changes without waiting for consensus. If time is going to be wasted by reverting the same thing in and out multiple times then holding WP:RFCs might be worthwhile. (RfCs take time, but so do revert wars). An alternative to protection could be a voluntary agreement by several people to do more talking for each edit. EdJohnston (talk) 16:16, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

EdJohnston I dont think protection is needed. There is no edit warring going on. A couple of edits by S Marshall were reverted and he left them that way and went on to copy edit other things, standard BRD. Yes he said he was going to continue editing, not that he was going to focus and push edits he has done that are reverted. The vast majority of his edits are non controversial copy editing. I am sure when the copy editing is done more discussion will happen on the fine points. AlbinoFerret 16:29, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

(ec) Besides not agreeing with Wolff (and I can't imagine others fully do either), a lock down would bring improvements (like we had since the ARB closing) to a halt and is the last thing we need here. Certainly not by taking a new SPA's (so far) "assessment" for granted.--TMCk (talk) 16:32, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

I really do not see that people agree with Mystery Wolff at this point in time. What is happening is a major textual overhaul of the article, which hopefully will result in a significant improvement in prose. Once that is done, i suspect that there will be discussions on sentences/paragraphs to ensure that everything is weighted in accordance to NPOV and is completely in sync with the underlying literature. --Kim D. Petersen 17:58, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

It would be helpful to present some diffs at WP:AE with an explanation of what is inappropriate about those particular edits. Based on your comments here all I know is that you do not like some edits by S Marshall. Gamaliel (talk) 16:33, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

AE is open to all, but it would be more effective to get proper discussions going here. Anyone who has been following the threads here for a week or more could have something useful to say. User:Mystery Wolff, per your talk page "..I want to make sure that I am on the same level playing field as everyone else". if you want to have a level playing field it might help if you would give us a hint of why you created your account on 19 November with apparently no prior Misplaced Pages edits but much knowledge of the arb case, just to edit regarding electronic cigarettes. EdJohnston (talk) 18:09, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Statement about regulation restored to Health effects section

User:Doc James, care to explain why? P Walford (talk) 13:52, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

You mean why I fixed the ref? Or why I readded the details removed without discussion?Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 18:02, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

"As of 2014 electronic cigarettes had not been approved as a smoking cessation device by any government.ref name=WHOPosition2014/>" isn't really true, this being 2015. I'm not sure if any actual e-cig has been approved as medicine in any EU country, but in the UK the approvals process is being decided, subject to the final UK legislation implementing the directive. A consultation process on the regulations ended in September. If not here, this has been pointed out when removed from other articles. Johnbod (talk) 18:12, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

The details weren't removed. They were moved to the appropriate section -- Regulation. Why should the statement be in Health effects? P Walford (talk) 18:19, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Sounds like a regulation claim to me. AlbinoFerret 04:26, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Ah yes see that the statement was moved rather than removed.

Are they approved as a smoking cessation aid in the UK? Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 04:58, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

The advice varies Electronic cigarettes are to be licensed and regulated as an aid to quit smoking from 2016, it has been announced. ... Some health professionals do not recommend them because they believe the potential for harm is significant.NHS news 2013 updated August 2015, Quit4Life is proud to be one of the first "e-cigarette friendly" NHS stop smoking services in the country. Whether you quit smoking using traditional medication or an e-cigarette, evidence shows that you have a much better chance of quitting... Quit4Life regional NHS program 2014 It seems to be left to individual doctors/practices until the full effects of the TPD come into effect in 2016 SPACKlick (talk) 07:23, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

So in other words not yet. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 09:22, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

It won't be "they", in the sense of all e-cigs, obviously, but individual models etc which have gone through the (massively expensive) process of approval as medicine. This process has not been finalized, partly because the final legislation has not been passed. But it won't be like Canada, where all devices must be approved but the authorities apparently have no intention of approving any. Where other EU countries bound by the TPD have got to I can't establish. Nonethless I think the TPD, which is passed and commits all the EU countries to similar regimes is enough to make the WHO statement misleading now, as phrased. It would not be more misleading to say "electronic cigarettes have been approved as a smoking cessation device by 26 governments". Johnbod (talk) 11:21, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 3 December 2015

This edit request has been answered. Set the |answered= or |ans= parameter to no to reactivate your request.

<a href="http://www.southwestsmokeless.com"><img src="http://www.southwestsmokeless.com/image/vape-responsibily.jpg" width="30%"></a> TheresaJordan (talk) 21:30, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

• Oppose Pure SPAM. AlbinoFerret 21:38, 3 December 2015 (UTC)
• Oppose Unadulterated, indeed Cloudjpk (talk) 21:50, 3 December 2015 (UTC)

Not done: please establish a consensus for this alteration before using the {{edit semi-protected}} template. Clearly this addition is opposed, and edit requests are meant to be uncontroversial edits Cannolis (talk) 01:54, 4 December 2015 (UTC)

Vape Shop nominated for deletion

Here is a link Misplaced Pages:Articles_for_deletion/Vape_shop AlbinoFerret 16:35, 4 December 2015 (UTC)
Cite error: There are <ref group=Notes> tags on this page, but the references will not show without a {{reflist|group=Notes}} template (see the help page).

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