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Question

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Hello Colin we are the Healthline Editorial team and aren't going to use this account to try to add links. We recently noticed that Healthline was blacklisted from Wikipedia and wanted to try and appeal the decision. We have made updates on site and hope that you would be willing to provide assistance in appealing the decision. HealthInsights (talk) 21:12, 15 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]

@HealthInsights, I'm not Colin, but I happened to see your message. Please read Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 409#Healthline: deprecate or blacklist? if you haven't already. Also, pinging User:David Gerard.
BTW, you should also read Wikipedia:Conflict of interest#Paid editors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 00:36, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I read that discussion and got deja vue about another topic where editors/writers hate. It seems hate makes people decide facts are inconvenient and differing opinions are not just wrong, not even just stupid but actually evil. And therefore Wikipedia must ban it. And so proposals and arguments just end up being a dumping of random made up shit against the enemy. Which seems to be a technique that works.
I had a look at Healthline today. I see "Wellness" is the second menu item after "Health Conditions". And a headline "Regular Chicken Consumption Linked to Higher Death Risk From GI Cancers". There are many editors here who hate wellness and see it as their mission to remove it from Wikipedia. And many editors who are sick to the back teeth of news articles telling readers one day that their food is giving them cancer and the next day that it cures cancer. As an encyclopaedia, Wikipedia articles shouldn't be based on wellness fads nor on the latest flip-flopping health news, no matter how well reported and fact checked by dieticians. As I noted in the discussion, I don't have a problem with the "Health Conditions" part of your website. It is all the other stuff that got you banned.
I don't see any indication that a repeat of the linked discussion would generate a different decision. -- Colin°Talk 06:53, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
My part in it was to assess the consensus of the discussion, which I think I did reasonably - or nobody's questioned it as yet anyway.
If you want Healthline to be accepted back into Wikipedia, my opinion speaking as a Wikipedia editor is that you would have to address and remedy most or all of the reasons raised in the discussion for wanting Healthline deprecated and blacklisted. This may conflict with your own goals as an organisation, of course - David Gerard (talk) 20:07, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Dementia with Lewy bodies is still as wrong as it was during the previous discussion; I didn't dig deeper. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 23:23, 16 May 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@SandyGeorgia: @Colin: @David Gerard: Once we became aware of the blacklisting, our Editorial and Medical teams moved quickly to review the 16 specific links flagged as problematic within the original thread.
We ran a further audit of 880 (invariably older) articles in the topic areas and adjacent topic areas flagged in the original thread. In all cases appropriate updates were made by our editorial team based on input from medical professionals within our network. These updates varied in scope—from minor edits to language and sourcing, to extensive rewrites or redirects.
As a specific example, in relation to @SandyGeorgia’s note regarding dementia with Lewy bodies (DLB), after medical review we clarified the distinction between DLB and Lewy bodies dementia (LBD), including referencing that those terms are often mistakenly conflated. We also amended the assertion that DLB is caused by abnormal protein deposits in nerve cells, clarifying that whilst they are present, the exact cause is as yet unknown.
On a broader note, over the last 15 years and more, Healthline has invested in creating and maintaining a large library of free-at-the-point-of-access health information that draws on peer reviewed medical research, all of which receives medical review (or fact check in the case of our News output) carried out by credentialed medical experts. Our Medical Network comprises 200+ practicing medical professionals. Our Editorial team is composed of more than 100 in-house writers, editors and subject matter experts. Every one of those individuals carries a deep and personal commitment to editorial integrity, and to the paramount importance of creating accurate and accessible health information - a commitment that is more important right now than it has ever been. Those values are enshrined in our editorial approach, our commitment to conscious language, and in our medical review and vetting processes.
We do not create spam. We do not deploy generative AI in any of our content. We are not a content farm. We are a team of experienced and committed editorial and medical professionals working to create accurate and inclusive health information at scale. Often that means we cover broad and emerging health topics that people are actively searching for information around. We always aspire to do so in a balanced and inclusive way, calling out pseudoscience and medical inaccuracies wherever they exist, but doing so in an approachable and non-stigmatising way.
We’re by no means infallible, but we think constantly and deeply about how we can better show up for our audiences through the information we create and distribute. Of course that approach evolves over time, meaning some of our existing content either becomes out of date or no longer passes muster against evolving styles, values, societal norms, and the latest medical research. It is without doubt an ongoing challenge to surveil and maintain a corpus of 50k+ articles, but it’s one we own with integrity and intentionality. As part of that process, we value and constantly elicit feedback and insights from a broad range of quarters. Those insights enable us to identify blindspots, and we use them to refine and improve both our library of content and the surveillance processes we deploy to maintain it.
I hope the extensive work that we undertook upon discovery of the articles that led to our blacklisting underlines that ongoing commitment.
We also believe it’s important to bring attention to the inconsistencies in how these standards have been applied to Healthline. No editorial content on Healthline is generated using AI. At the same time, there are many other health sites of comparable size, reach and focus that cover the same wellness topics as we do, and who openly cite their use of generative AI in their content creation processes, yet remain listed as credible sources. Although we recognise Wikipedia’s caution regarding wellness content, it’s important to note that most major health publications cover wellness topics extensively and are not being flagged as a deprecated or blacklisted source.
Ultimately, at a time when people need access to trustworthy, inclusive, medically accurate health information more than ever, we believe we share the same values you do: editorial integrity, scientific rigour, and making information freely accessible to as broad an audience as possible.
We hope you’ll take another look at the updates we undertook and the wider points made above and reconsider the blacklisting. HealthInsights (talk) 15:24, 3 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
@HealthInsights, I'm curious why you think Colin can do anything about this. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:13, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
I think you'd need to go to Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard and post a new request to appeal the deprecated source and spam blacklist decision made at Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Noticeboard/Archive 409#Healthline: deprecate or blacklist?. The summary for your site at "deprecated sources" says:
Healthline is a medical resource that is substantially written by non-expert freelance writers and reviewed by non-expert advisors. The content is frequently incorrect misinformation, sometimes dangerously so. Due to the heightened requirements for biomedical and medical sources on Wikipedia, the consensus of editors in the 2023 RfC was to deprecate Healthline as an unusable source that cannot meet WP:MEDRS and to blacklist Healthline for the safety and well-being of our readers. References to Healthline should be removed from Wikipedia.
I suggest you try (in fewer words than above) to explain why this is false. From what you've written above, this would appear to be so. While you are never going to win an argument that Healthline is a top WP:MEDRS, I think you have a case that it can be used for basic uncontroversial health facts. I don't personally understand why your site was put on the spam blacklist, unless there was evidence that Healthline staff were posting links into articles. But maybe someone else here can explain why that step was made. -- Colin°Talk 08:09, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
We also sometimes use the blacklist for deprecated sources, when there is consensus to do so. Such a consensus developed in the discussion you linked. Firefangledfeathers (talk / contribs) 11:12, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
The research (e.g., doi:10.1145/3366423.3380300) indicates that WP:REFSPAM is almost pointless, so I'm not sure there's a rational traffic-based reason to want un-blacklisting. But perhaps there is a more brand-oriented motivation behind these requests. If you were, e.g., trying to sell your website, a potential buyer might be concerned about it appearing on any public blacklist. Or perhaps non-Wikipedia websites copy ours, so putting it on ours means its blacklisted in other places, too. Or perhaps it gets used in playground-level taunts on social media ("Sure, you could believe that...if you believe a website so bad that Wikipedia banned it"). WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:19, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
What Colin said, but your article on Tourette's still has issues, and what have you done to make sure you have better writers and reviewers in the future? Just looking at the few articles discussed in the earlier discussion doesn't convince problems have been solved. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 18:21, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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Hi Colin,

This is to let you know that File:King's Cross Western Concourse - central position - 2012-05-02.75.jpg, a featured picture you uploaded, has been selected as the English Wikipedia's picture of the day (POTD) for June 5, 2025. A preview of the POTD is displayed below and can be edited at Template:POTD/2025-06-05. If you have any concerns, please place a message at Wikipedia talk:Picture of the day. Thank you! Jay8g [V•T•E] 23:46, 2 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]

London King's Cross railway station

London King's Cross railway station is a passenger railway terminus in the London Borough of Camden, on the edge of Central London. It is in the London station group, one of the busiest railway stations in the United Kingdom, and the southern terminus of the East Coast Main Line to Yorkshire and the Humber, North East England and Scotland. The station was opened in King's Cross in 1852 by the Great Northern Railway, and has been expanded and redeveloped several times since. This panoramic photograph shows the western departures concourse of King's Cross station, which was designed by John McAslan and opened in March 2012 as part of a major renovation project. McAslan said that the roof was the longest single-span station structure in Europe; the semi-circular structure has a radius of 59 yards (54 metres) and more than 2,000 triangular roof panels, half of which are glass.

Photograph credit: Colin

Recently featured:
Congratulations on this, Colin. I like the way things line up just so for that photo. WhatamIdoing (talk) 05:15, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
Great photo Colin! Samuelshraga (talk) 10:52, 5 June 2025 (UTC)[reply]
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