Talk:Smallpox

Frequently asked questions

Q1: I feel disgusted by the images in this article.

A1: Smallpox was a horrifyingly disfiguring disease. Wikipedia does not try to hide uncomfortable facts. You may be interested in learning how to hide images on Wikipedia.

Smallpox has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.

Article milestones
Date	Process	Result
November 23, 2010	Good article nominee	Listed

Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on June 2, 2004, June 2, 2005, December 9, 2007, December 9, 2009, December 9, 2010, December 9, 2011, December 9, 2013, December 9, 2014, December 9, 2015, December 9, 2017, and December 9, 2019.

This article has been mentioned by multiple media organizations:

"Gauthier: Fear factor". MetroWest Daily News. October 21, 2004.
Stephen Pinker (2018). "Hour 3 – Steven Pinker and Movie Reviews". The Michael Medved Show (subscription required).

Ideal sources for Wikipedia's health content are defined in the guideline Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine) and are typically review articles. Here are links to possibly useful sources of information about Smallpox.

PubMed provides review articles from the past five years (limit to free review articles)
The TRIP database provides clinical publications about evidence-based medicine.
Other potential sources include: Centre for Reviews and Dissemination and CDC

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Change the main image

"Wikipedia is not censored" is not a good enough reason to have such a disgusting image at the top. There could be a section later in the page, with a warning that you have to click through to see that image. The main image makes me want to never visit Wikipedia again. I don't want to be forced to look at horrifying images. 91.158.66.11 (talk) 22:44, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Please read the FAQ at the top of this page. Graham Beards (talk) 23:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)[reply]

Hi. I want to point out that the reason for the images is to give you an idea what smallpox looks like when one gets it.Cwater1 (talk) 23:42, 12 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

I forgot to mention that if you do not want to see the images then don't visit the article. If you to know more about smallpox but not want to see the image, learn how to hide certain images. See Help: Options to hide an image. Cwater1 (talk) 14:51, 23 October 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia, like it or not, is the number one research resource for most internet users, on all manner of topics. We should recognise (and respect) that some visitors may be upset by certain imagery, even if they can comfortably digest the information presented in the text. Is there no mechanism for applying a 'click to see image' filter? 2A00:23C7:3119:AD01:D065:7EEC:4667:EFD6 (talk) 20:37, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Yes there is, and this is in the FAQ at the top of page. Graham Beards (talk) 21:09, 15 February 2023 (UTC)[reply]

See Help:Options_to_hide_an_image#Disable_images_on_specific_pages Cwater1 (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]

the image, which no one is forcing you to look at, should make you feel empathy for the suffering of this child. and after you read a paragraph or two, when you read that 300 million people were estimated to have died from smallpox in the twentieth century, you should be considering yourself lucky a) to have evaded the clutches of this disfiguring killer and b)that you live in a time and place where accurate information about this virus (and other viruses) is freely available. 70.31.166.89 (talk) 22:50, 28 November 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Wikipedia shouldn't make me "feel" anything. Wikipedia shouldn't make me "consider myself lucky" about anything. Wikipedia should inform and educate, and how its users respond to that information is not Wikipedia's job to dictate.

The fact is, of the several images of smallpox infections in this article, many of them are successful in portraying the horrifying disfiguration that can be caused by this disease. They are all still orders of magnitude less likely to cause a traumatically shocking reaction in the reader than the one chosen for the main image.

I'd be first in line to promote this image back to the main spot if Wikipedia had a "hide sensitive imagery" setting. But that has been talked about for over a decade. The options that actually exist today are absurd suggestions for this issue. You can either hide every image by default, which, if you think about it, is no help to people that only want to avoid the sensitive stuff. If you don't already know what smallpox is, you have no idea what you're in for. Or you can install browser scripts to block specific images once you already know what they are ... which is a solution for absolutely no one.

This feels very off-brand for Wikipedia. We can all think of subjects that don't have graphic, disturbing photo representations of that thing, and for good reason. If they did, and Smallpox was the norm instead of an outlier, there'd be a lot more pressure for a sensitive-blur setting that was on by default. I'm sure I could visit LiveLeak and find an image that is objectively "better" for the Stabbing article than the 16th-century painting that's currently there, but since common sense is the norm for Wikipedia, the painting remains. Eyevandy (talk) 19:17, 11 September 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Empathy??? Seriously?? I should feel bad for the child 2A00:23C6:BE86:B401:B563:C24:FE4B:3177 (talk) 17:26, 25 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Religion slandering in article

This image description is currently just a religious slandering with an attempt to link it "Likely" to smallpox:

Likely hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic in a patient who later died. Patient described as an unvaccinated Christian Scientist, who "thought that he could by power of mind prevent smallpox."

Should be more neutral and with a respectable source mentioned: "Patient with hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic [link to source]" — Preceding unsigned comment added by XXX (talk) 04:36, 6 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Change was an undocumented addition in this 25 December 2021 revision by Featous. The language is derived from the source (Archived link), but Featous replaced the caption of the image ("A patient likely suffering from hemorrhagic smallpox in a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, epidemic") with the description of the image. I'd agree that the description is irrelevant to the topic of smallpox - no other image contains such language as to the background of the patient, and the original caption was both more descriptive and concise. WP:NPOV. --Xthorgoldx (talk) 05:22, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

This is relevant. Christian Scientists reject immunizations and all other standards of medical care. 75.162.52.251 (talk) 02:35, 28 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Smallpox death toll

Should we add a total death toll of all the humans smallpox has killed throughout all of human history? Romulus Cyrus (talk) 16:52, 8 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I say yes! Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 04:11, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-Protected Edit Request on 25 August 2023

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The language applied in the 25 December 2021 page revision altered an image caption from

 A person with probable hemorrhagic smallpox. He later died of the disease.

To

 Likely hemorrhagic smallpox during a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin epidemic in a patient who later died. Patient described as an unvaccinated Christian Scientist, who "thought that he could by power of mind prevent smallpox."

The description does originate from the image source, but the description is irrelevant to the topic of the article specifically, and noticeably accusatory in comparison to all other images used in the page. Request reversion to previous caption for neutrality and conciseness.

~~~~ Xthorgoldx (talk) 05:38, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The description is sourced to the image.Graham Beards (talk) 07:02, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The previous caption was truncated from the image: "A patient likely suffering from hemorrhagic smallpox in a 1925 Milwaukee, Wisconsin, epidemic," listed as the image caption (whereas the Christian Scientist verbiage was the image description). As both descriptors are from the same source, the more tonally-neutral and concise of the two is more appropriate --Xthorgoldx (talk) 18:49, 25 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Done I agree the more concise caption is more appropriate in this context. I know of no policy that requires or suggests using an image's description verbatim from what is on Wikimedia in all cases. So I've boldly made this change. -- Pinchme123 (talk) 01:15, 27 August 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Decimated?

The current text states:

Because the native Amerindian population had no acquired immunity to this new disease, their peoples were decimated by epidemics.

Decimated literally means reduced by 10%. Is this the correct word when we see a few sentences later:

Case fatality rates during outbreaks in Native American populations were as high as 90%.

Should 'decimated' be changed to some other word or phrase? 'Almost wiped out'? I know this may seem picayune but I think it is important to preserve some language. Tfdavisatsnetnet (talk) 04:10, 3 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The risk of death was about 30%, with higher rates among babies?

This is largely speculative, and the sources cited lack substantial evidence to support it. If the mortality rate had been that high before vaccinations, there would have been few surviving infants, given the numerous other diseases that also caused deaths. However, obtaining more accurate numbers is challenging. Hmm.. 130.226.173.81 (talk) 09:38, 28 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 19 June 2024

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appoval = approval 2603:8000:D300:3650:6C65:54EA:701D:78D (talk) 07:42, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Done Jamedeus (talk) 07:53, 19 June 2024 (UTC)[reply]

FAQ

See Talk:Smallpox/FAQ. I fixed it so that it would be in Category:Wikipedia article FAQs, as it should be. Okay? Solomonfromfinland (talk) 02:26, 22 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]