Talk:Phineas Gage

Prose difficulty

First off, this article is great and I wish more articles were like it in tone. But I see that people have raised concerns over prose difficulty before, and it doesn't seem to have changed much. The long sentences and frequent parenthetical sentences confuse me at times. This is especially concerning in the lead, since we're supposed to write a level down. Is there a good reason to keep it this way? Cheers, Ovinus (talk) 11:38, 1 December 2020 (UTC)

Every author, however modest, keeps a most outrageous vanity chained like a madman in the padded cell of his breast.

— Logan Pearsall Smith (1931). Afterthoughts]

Hi, Ovinus, and sorry I overlooked your post until now. If you don't mind my saying, I'm very glad for your perspective because (from your user page) you're in high school, and I know Gage is a popular topic in certain high school courses. I just ran the article through one of those automated scorers and got a Flesch grade level of 10; on the other hand, I ran just the lead through, and got (no kidding) grade 22 (whatever that means). But let's put the lead aside for now (though see prior thread). I'd be interested if you could pick three sentences/passages from the article proper which you found difficult and we can talk about them. Like all writers I'm married to my own prose; but I'm not completely opposed to divorce. EEng 03:27, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

Haha yes, I actually learned about it a few months ago in my AP Psychology class! In general, I think the prose of the article itself is fine and relatively straightforward to parse, which agrees with your automated assessment. The parenthetical sentences are unusual, and I think could be used more sparingly, but the lead is of more concern given the "level down" guideline.

The following sentence induces fear:

Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"‍—‌once termed "the case which more than all others is cal­cu­lated to excite our wonder, impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our phys­i­o­log­i­cal doctrines"—‌Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, par­tic­u­larly debate on cerebral local­i­za­tion,​​ and was perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in deter­min­ing per­son­al­ity, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.

I suggest it be split up into two sentences, and the given quote shortened:

Long known as the "American Crowbar Case"‍—‌once termed "the case which more than all others is cal­cu­lated to excite our wonder"—‌Phineas Gage influenced 19th-century discussion about the mind and brain, par­tic­u­larly debate on cerebral local­i­za­tion.​​ He was perhaps the first case to suggest the brain's role in deter­min­ing per­son­al­ity, and that damage to specific parts of the brain might induce specific mental changes.

My rationale for shortening the quote is that "impair the value of prognosis, and even to subvert our phys­i­o­log­i­cal doctrines" is pretty difficult mid-19th century language, which a lot of readers wouldn't understand. It's a pretty quote—including it in the article body is certainly justified—but its inclusion in this sentence leads to a very long phrase set off by dashes.

Another scary sentence:

Despite this celebrity, the body of established fact about Gage and what he was like (whether before or after his injury) is small, which has allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have"—‌Gage acting as a "Rorschach inkblot" in which proponents of various conflicting theories of the brain all saw support for their views.

I'd suggest:

Despite his prominence, there is little established fact about Gage and his behavior before or after the injury, which has allowed "the fitting of almost any theory [desired] to the small number of facts we have". Gage acted as a sort of "Rorschach inkblot" in which proponents of various conflicting theories of the brain all saw support for their views.

I find this a bit easier to read. I was neutral on the "Rorschach inkblot" metaphor, but given that this is probably often read by psychology students, I think it's worthwhile. It made me smile, anyway. Pinging EEng. Ovinus (talk) 21:28, 1 January 2021 (UTC)

I've been distracted but don't want to lose this thread. Sort of pinging myself. EEng 01:09, 25 January 2021 (UTC)

Ditto. BTW, I'm wondering if we should change this article to use tamping iron pronouns. Tryptofish, Levivich -- what think you? EEng 03:16, 2 April 2021 (UTC)

Well, since you asked, tamp on. --Tryptofish (talk) 00:10, 3 April 2021 (UTC)

A surprising reassessment

Was discussing Gage for a psychology class last week and remembered this article. So I gave it another read, and I must say: I really like it, probably because I've become inured to drier articles and articles so dense with mostly irrelevant names that I barely remember anything. Good stuff, and I'm somewhat inspired for my future work. In particular, a liberal use of footnotes satisfies both my deletionist tendency to compact information and my desire for extra info for interested readers. Ovinus (talk) 02:28, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Good! Gooooood! Another conversion to the dark side! EEng

Inclusion of full birth and death dates in opening-sentence parenthetical

With apologies for the delay (I hadn't noticed the last reversion), I'm reverting again the change [4] from

Phineas P. Gage (1823–1860) was an American railroad construction foreman ...

to

Phineas P. Gage (c. July 9, 1823 – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman ...

because there's a substantial list of reasons that this change is a detriment to the reader's experience, and nothing at all has been offered to explain how it benefits the reader's experience.

• MOS:BIRTHDATE explicitly contemplates the opening sentence giving years only, when full dates are given elsewhere (and full dates are indeed given in the infobox)
• As mentioned in MOS:BIRTHDATE, the function of the birth-death information is to provide context -- in what period did the subject live? Naked years do that admirably: "Hmmm. 1823 to 1860. Mid-19th-century America. Got it."
• Certainly full birth and death dates should be given somewhere in the article, as a matter of record. But how in the world do we help the reader by telling him first thing -- literally two words into the article -- that the subject was born on, specifically, July 9, 1823 (if indeed he was -- see below)? Or that he died on, specifically, May 21, 1860? In all seriousness, unless the reader's an astrologer and wants to cast the subject's horoscope, this is the absolutely most useless piece of information we could supply at that point, and including it in the opening squanders our most elusive resource -- reader attention -- for categorically zero benefit.
• And, as it happens, c. July 9, 1823 is an incorrect characterization of Gage's birthdate.What we know is that one source reports July 9 as his birthdate, but without itself giving a source; the date is uncertain, and could be completely wrong. That completely different from saying it's "around" July 9. If we're going to have a parenthetical with full dates, it will have to say

  Phineas P. Gage (July 9, 1823 (date uncertain) – May 21, 1860) was an American railroad construction foreman ...

or something like that, which would be completely stupid.

Against this, the "reasons" offered for including full dates (in the lead -- to repeat, they're already in the infobox) have been:

• "please review other articles" [5]
• "No good reason not to give dates. Seems pretty standard" [6]
• "I think it's reasonable to give full dates here, given that it's a detailed page" [7]
• "giving dates seems pretty standard" [8]

None of these say anything about how the reader is served by inclusion of this clutter in the article's opening, but merely assert that all articles should look alike -- the weakest of all possible arguments, and characteristic of editors who make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions of what should be, and then flit off to their next victim, without ever considering whether the page really needed the change they made, or whether the change improved the article at all ... Their editing is an off-the-rack, one-size-fits-all proposition, premised on the idea that what improves one article, or one type of article, will automatically improve every other article or type of article ... [9].

John F. Kennedy's article makes an interesting contrast. For reasons that are surely obvious, a fair chunk of readers coming to that article actually do want to know right off (and possibly only) the date of his death. Full dates certainly belong in the opening of thatarticle.

Pending anyone explaining how full dates in the lead benefit the reader, I've reverted to the longstanding format. EEng 05:50, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

OK. Thank you for the detailed explanation. When I made the edit that I made, all that I had seen was:

• "full birthdates are useless clutter in the lead" [10]
• "Making all articles look alike is the weakest of all possible arguments, and this has been discussed several times. Full dates two words into the article are preposterously useless clutter. See MOS:BIRTHDATE." [11]

Pending anyone giving the far more thoughtful explanation that you have now given here, it looked to me like you were editing against consensus. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:46, 3 December 2022 (UTC)

I didn't mean to include you among the editors who make the changes they want to the page according to their preconceived notions etc etc, but on the other hand I didn't want to omit your edit summary from the list I gave, lest someone accuse me of understating the support for the view opposing mine (misguided though it is). I figured you'd forgive me. EEng 05:43, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

No worries. --Tryptofish (talk) 20:18, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Good. So we settled the first line of the article. Only 887 lines to go! EEng 21:27, 5 December 2022 (UTC)

Odd citation style

Is there a reasoning behind the strange citation style of this article? Why are some references demarcated by their "difficulty" while the others are listed as usual? Besides this, surely the letter system does not work as well as a normal style, as you cannot click the citation in the References section to see where a source appears in the main body? Medarduss (talk) 23:18, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

All I know is this is EEng's child. – The Grid (talk) 23:46, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

I assume that defaults to "not going to be changed"? ~Styyx^Talk? 00:44, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

More accurately, it means "will be changed if the editors who actually care about the article reach a consensus that some other approach will better serve the reader's understanding, but won't be changed just because some drive-by editor thinks all articles should look the same." As to the original question:

• The For general readers section, the For younger readers section, and the For researchers and specialists section identify sources which will be particularly useful to readers in those groups who want to learn more about the article topic. The Other sources cited section lists sources which, well, will not be particularly useful to those who want to learn more.
• The {{ran}}/{{rma}} referencing system allows sources to be organized in logical, useful ways instead of the chaotic, random mish-mash seen in most articles.
• Where a source appears in the main body is trivially found simply by text-searching for e.g. [M].

Quite substantial discussions (found primarily in Talk:Phineas_Gage/Archive_2) led to the decision to do things the way they're done. Any other questions? EEng 09:03, 25 January 2023 (UTC)

[Solved] Bug Report: The ran callout links are inactive on mobile site.

I first encountered {{ran}} on this page and see more discussion of it here than on the template page.

The template which creates the manual superscript has a bug on the Minerva theme used by the mobile site. You can see it if you use these links:

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage?useskin=Vector2022
2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Gage?useskin=Minerva

In each link try clicking the superscript callout links. In the first link, the desktop site has a tooltip and a functional link to References. The second and third links show the bug.

On the second link, the mobile site callouts for {{ran}} do nothing when clicked. The superscript callouts created by {{r}} and {{refn}} on this page will cause a popup with the reference. The popup is the expected behavior. The links from < ref >, {{efn}}, and {{sfn}} all create popups. The {{citeref}} template is slightly different and works on mobile the same way that it works on the desktop site (visible in the Notes section on: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_mouse ); the superscript works as an in-page anchor link with {{citeref}}.

In the third link, the mobile skin (Minerva) is used on the desktop site. The tooltip still works, but something in Minerva breaks the link regardless of the desktop or mobile version.

I hope that this helps and that it is not a strange place to post a bug report. Rjjiii (talk) 02:27, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

This is above my pay grade. I suggest you post this at WP:VPT. EEng 04:04, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction! Rjjiii (talk) 04:25, 6 February 2023 (UTC)

Just updating this thread. The rma/ran references now function on mobile. To implement a workaround, I needed to add "CITEREF" to the handwritten links on this article's references. As an unplanned bonus, those links now create the popup reference on desktop themes/browsers.Rjjiii (talk) 00:21, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Headnote

Should the headnote read

This article is about the man who survived an iron bar passing through his head

as EEng has reverted it back to and is the status quo, or should it read

This article is about the brain injury survivor

as I would prefer it. I believe the current version is strangely long and detailed. The succinct descriptor used in the short description is more than adequate to quickly describe the person before moving on to the next sentence For the UK musical band, see Phinius Gage. Any extra text than is needed is just clutter before you get to the real point of the header. Since I have been reverted and it seems clear we won't agree on this, I'm looking for anyone else's opinion on the subject so we can reach a consensus. Cerebral726 (talk) 19:07, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

As I said in my edit summary, the purpose of the headnote is to help readers determine quickly whether they've arrived at the right page. In my (very extensive, sadly) experience discussing Gage with all kinds of people, I can say with confidence that laymen think of Gage (whom they remember from Psychology 101) as "that guy who had the thing go through his head", not "that guy with a brain injury". Obviously, after a moment's thought one realizes that they're probably the same person, but the point is to use a description most people will recognize immediately without having to think about it.

Notice that the WP:SHORTDESC, which serves a different purpose, is appropriately American brain injury survivor (1823–1860). EEng 20:38, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

As a fan of the article: the current note could be more succinct, but the proposed one isn't ideal to me. When I hear "brain injury", I don't think "iron bar through head", I think car stagecoach crash or a bad fall or something else not involving a hole in the skull. I'm not sure, but maybe "head trauma" sounds better? It seems tough to come up with a more descriptive short phrase that isn't somewhat crass. Matma Rex talk 21:20, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree with EEng that this page is about a person who had something very distinctive happen to him, as opposed to being about a patient who went through a particular medical experience. So "the man who survived an iron bar passing through his head" matches with the page contents just fine for me, and the alternatives that have been suggested seem inferior to me. --Tryptofish (talk) 21:38, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I agree that a brief description of the incident is more distinctive, and therefore better as a distinguisher, than "head injury survivor". But "the man who survived an iron bar passing through his head" does seem a bit long. We could possibly shorten it a little, to "the survivor of an iron bar through the head". —David Eppstein (talk) 21:54, 14 September 2023 (UTC)

I don't feel too strongly, as long as we retain the key ideas of bar-through-head. However, I can't help pointing out that DE's suggestion just above cuts a mere 2 words from the current wording, but at the same time is distinctly less vivid and direct -- kind of medical sounding [12]. EEng 06:23, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

It's merely a hatnote. Its job should be to let readers figure out quickly whether they are in the right place and if not to redirect them. Brevity helps. —David Eppstein (talk) 07:05, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

Like I said, I don't feel strongly as long as bar-through-head is in there. EEng 09:15, 15 September 2023 (UTC)

I am fine with "the survivor of an iron bar through the head" as well. Cerebral726 (talk) 12:52, 15 September 2023 (UTC)