Talk:Hearing loss

Requested move 28 September 2018

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

The result of the move request was: not moved (page mover nac) Flooded with them hundreds 12:08, 5 October 2018 (UTC)

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• Hearing loss → Deafness
• Visual impairment → Blindness

– These are the common names of these medical conditions. 192.107.120.90 (talk) 17:20, 28 September 2018 (UTC)

Survey

• Oppose. The current names are more inclusive than deafness and blindness, which imply absolute lack of sensory input. The topics include discussion of partial sensory loss. Binksternet (talk) 18:13, 28 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Binksternet. In my experience as a totally blind person, I know that many people with partial sight loss don't like being described as blind. Graham87 03:00, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose both topics cover a wide spectrum of the respective impairments, the targets are exclusively about the "totality" end of the spectrum. I predict a strong possibility of WP:SNOW here. Roger (Dodger67) (talk) 08:53, 29 September 2018 (UTC)
• Oppose per Binksternet. power~enwiki (π, ν) 17:08, 1 October 2018 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Suggestion re Units used

"I have a suggestion for Doc James. (Talk) I think that the designation Hearing Level (HL) that you removed after the abbreviation for dB is important because it modifies the unit since dB has multiple references." This was a suggestion by User:UIowagrad. Originally we did not know where to place it, and placed with a previous comment. Today I moved it here. I agree that making the unit more specific is a good idea. TMorata (talk) 18:13, 11 December 2018 (UTC)

Requested move 21 January 2020

The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

The result of the move request was: no consensus to move the page to the proposed title at this time, per the discussion below. Dekimasuよ! 16:47, 28 January 2020 (UTC)

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Hearing loss → Hearing impairment – The title only refers to total hearing loss. The new title covers total and partial hearing loss. Interstellarity (talk) 14:41, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

This is a contested technical request (permalink). Anthony Appleyard (talk) 15:59, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• @Interstellarity and Deacon Vorbis: queried move request Anthony Appleyard (talk) 16:00, 21 January 2020 (UTC)
• Not unreasonable, but this was already the subject of a (different) opposed move request in the past, and is likely to meet with some opposition. –Deacon Vorbis (carbon • videos) 15:31, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

• Oppose for now. "Hearing loss" as a phrase often covers both total and partial. Likewise, "hearing impairment" often has the connotation of referring only to partial loss. Need a better case to be made. -- Netoholic @ 17:43, 21 January 2020 (UTC)

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The above discussion is preserved as an archive of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on this talk page or in a move review. No further edits should be made to this section.

Semi-protection

I want this article semi-protected right away to prevent vandalism, or maybe changes pending protection. Bear420 (talk) 15:18, 1 May 2020 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bear420 (talk • contribs) 15:17, 1 May 2020 (UTC)

Issues with article title and focus

This article is trying to cover multiple different topics within a single article. The real thorny problem arises in subsuming deafness within the concept of hearing loss, which is a profoundly ableist perspective on the subject. The current article focus is towards medical treatment and adaptation; again, that is not a respectful approach for an article that deafness and deaf person redirect to. To be explicit: deafness ≠ hearing loss.

I suggest we cover this topic not in one, but three separate articles:

• Hearing impairment, a physical condition where someone's hearing ability has a social or personal impact, covering complete deafness, partial deafness, or hearing damage
• Hearing loss, the permanent or temporary loss of hearing in previously hearing people (caused by presbycusis, trauma, psychological issues, illness, noise-induced hearing loss etc) and the impact of that event on previously hearing people
• Deaf people/Deaf/Deafness, a social classification for those with a profound hearing impairment, of which deaf culture is a subset (and response to)

The first will allow for a medically-centred article on issues that arise from hearing. The second will allow for an article that covers the event and process of loss of hearing ability in hearing individuals. The third will allow for an article that treats deafness from a social perspective. These are all very complex topics which cannot be effectively covered in one article.

Past discussions on this matter have been overridden (see move of article from deafness to hearing loss in 2014 here). The management of redirects has also not been great (here and here). We will also require review of the incoming redirects to the most relevant article, I've made the below suggestions. Any thoughts? SFB 18:17, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

In theory I agree that Wikipedia should make an effort to distinguish the medical and cultural aspects of hearing impairment. I haven't thought it through thoroughly, but this could be complicated by the fact that "hearing loss" is a medical diagnosis (per International Classification of Diseases). It includes hearing loss and deafness as medical conditions. This would put an article entitled "Hearing loss" within the domain of the medical field and make it part of special Wikipedia guidelines about sourcing (see WP:MEDRS). I think we should seek input from WP:WikiProject Medicine for an article titled "Hearing loss". That would not be needed for any article related to Deafness as a cultural concept. I'm not sure that "Hearing impairment" should be a separate article than "Hearing loss", as they both pertain to physical conditions. I think there could be problems if a naive reader searches with the terms "Deaf" or "Deafness" and ends up in at article about Deaf culture if they're looking for the medical condition. I suppose that could be helped with hatnotes. Sundayclose (talk) 19:38, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sundayclose: I would have much less of a problem with a combined hearing impairment/hearing loss article, as they are much more medically-oriented. I would encourage the use of the former term for the article title rather than the latter – the existence of congenital deafness is why the condition is often described as "hearing loss and deafness" in the literature rather than just hearing loss. Still, there is lots of material on prevention and the process of loss which feels like a topic in itself, much of which is not relevant to a wider category of hearing impairment.

Note that I am not advocating for the creation of a page about deaf culture (which we already have). I am advocating for a page about deaf people in general. A model to follow would be like that found in white people, white culture, light skin, vitiligo. So we would have deaf people, deaf culture, hearing impairment, hearing loss. SFB 19:52, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

Yes, I understand that "Deaf people" and "Deaf culture" would be separate articles, and I'm not opposed to that. But based on experience with deafness-related articles, I would anticipate some problems with people who want to focus largely on Deaf culture in an article "Deaf people". Some of that would occur simply because the editor hasn't noticed that there are separate articles. Some of it, however, would come from editors similar to some I've encountered who insisted (and edit warred) that every use of the word "deaf" in any context should be capitalized "Deaf". Sundayclose (talk) 20:27, 10 July 2020 (UTC)

As a short-term measure, perhaps we could turn Deafness into a disambiguation page or microstub pointing to Hearing loss and Deaf culture. This does not preclude further reorganization. Normally I'd be bold and do it myself, but I'd like to check for objections first. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 00:37, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@John P. Sadowski (NIOSH): I think making deafness a disambiguation page is probably the best end result, but it would be problematic to take that action before splitting the articles, the reason being that there are several hundred articles currently linked to deafness and if we point them to a disambiguation now then the likely result is that some people will just pipe all those links as [[hearing loss|deafness]], which creates a new problem across a diffuse set of articles. I think the best approach is to get the articles going first, then resolve the existing redirects after. @Sundayclose: I think the arguments over Deaf/deaf are a symptom of our existing problem of treating deaf as synonymous with hearing loss. If we create an article that is specifically focused on the biological mechanisms for a lack of hearing, then Deaf/deaf questions are not really that relevant there. SFB 16:22, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

I'm not sure that creating an article on the biological aspects of hearing impairment will avoid editors making edits to "Deaf people" that should go in "Deaf culture". As I said, some people won't notice that there are separate articles; others will zealously try force Deaf culture information into Deaf people. I'm not arguing against having the "Deaf people" article. I'm just anticipating a lot of cleanup and some battles.

I agree with the strategy of creating the articles first, then creating the disambig page. Sundayclose (talk) 16:53, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

@Sillyfolkboy: Good point about the piped links. I think that Deafness would be more like an (initially very short) broad-concept article, that would link to Hearing loss, which describes a medical condition, and Deaf culture and/or other suitable articles about the group of people. If it lacks the disambiguation template, it would have the status of a stub and wouldn't encourage piped links.

I'd be careful about trying to split Hearing impairment from Hearing loss, as these are medical terms that may have precise definitions that are different from what you describe above. I'm not an expert in this field, but I've pinged my colleagues who are. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 23:08, 11 July 2020 (UTC)

Upon further research, it appears that the term "hearing loss" does include lack of hearing at birth. See [1] [2] [3] The Hearing loss article is a fairly well-written article on its medical aspects, almost GA-class. If anything, it's a bit long and I think the articles Causes of hearing loss and Diagnosis of hearing loss should be split from it. Three sections near the end (History, Society and culture, Sign language) focus specifically on deafness rather than hearing loss more generally, and they could be split or moved to another article, with a more succinct summary retained here. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 05:45, 12 July 2020 (UTC)

I made a few initial changes to deal with the most pressing issues. Again, this does not preclude further discussion or content improvements.

• Created Deafness as a short broad-concept article article about varying aspects and meanings of deafness. I copied text from Deaf culture, Hearing loss, and an old version of the Deafness article to give it a start, but it obviously could use improvement.
• Redirected Deaf, Deaf person, and Deaf individual to Deafness (but not any other redirects right now)
• Tweaked the hatnote and lead of Hearing loss to reflect that it covers the medical aspects of hearing loss, and not deafness as a whole
• Split Causes of hearing loss, Diagnosis of hearing loss, and Social impact of profound hearing loss (the last could possibly be renamed, incorporated elsewhere, or otherwise reworked)

The following remains to be done:

• Retarget other redirects as appropriate
• Check the Hearing loss article for appropriate use of the word "deaf"

I hope these initial changes are helpful; as always, feedback and improvements are welcome. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 22:48, 14 July 2020 (UTC)

Merge Deafness here

The article at Deafness is very short and mainly describes the term itself rather than the condition. It's even more or less a word-by-word copying from the "Social and cultural aspects" section, as if someone created that article as an explicit extension of this when a redirect would be better. I say we merge to here what content is not already covered here and redir the old article. Gaioa (T C L) 09:31, 19 August 2020 (UTC)

@Gaioa: Please see the long discussion immediately above where this was recently discussed. The Deafness article was created for the very specific reason that deafness is not at all a synonym for hearing loss. John P. Sadowski (NIOSH) (talk) 18:07, 19 August 2020 (UTC)