# Talk:Smallpox

"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)

Please read the FAQ at the top of this page. Graham Beards (talk) 23:37, 26 November 2021 (UTC)
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)
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)
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)
Yes there is, and this is in the FAQ at the top of page. Graham Beards (talk) 21:09, 15 February 2023 (UTC)
See Help:Options_to_hide_an_image#Disable_images_on_specific_pages Cwater1 (talk) 15:36, 2 July 2023 (UTC)
The fact that some people have queasy stomachs shouldn't mean the removal of relevant and helpful imagery. Portraying such an extreme case is helpful in that it make the hallmarks of the disease very obvious. MadePublic (talk) 01:26, 30 December 2024 (UTC)
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)
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)
Empathy??? Seriously?? I should feel bad for the child 2A00:23C6:BE86:B401:B563:C24:FE4B:3177 (talk) 17:26, 25 May 2024 (UTC)

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)

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)
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)
This is not a page about christian science, so it is not relevant. MadePublic (talk) 01:21, 30 December 2024 (UTC)

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)

While "decimate" does have that literal archaic meaning, it is has been long replaced with the more general meaning of "to kill a large portion of". Funnily enough the Oxford Reference gives this exact example to explain this fact.
Historically, the meaning of the word decimate is ‘kill one in every ten of (a group of people)’. This sense has been more or less totally superseded by the later, more general sense ‘kill or destroy (a large proportion of)’, as in the virus has decimated the population. Some traditionalists argue that this and other later senses are incorrect, but it is clear that this is now part of standard English.
Molypathy (talk) 01:03, 17 February 2025 (UTC)

"The history of smallpox" article says rinderpest has also been eradicated. WordPerson4 (talk) 17:27, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

It says at the top of this article "Smallpox is one of two infectious diseases to have been eradicated, the other being rinderpest (a disease of even-toed ungulates) in 2011." Graham Beards (talk) 17:36, 24 February 2025 (UTC)

I know there's a FAQ on the top of the page - but that sounds like a "fire first and ask questions later" way of dealing with the problem - I imagine most users don't come to Wikipedia by first going to settings and disabling the option before going ahead reading articles. But let's move to the point
The actual suggestion: maybe we can lower the image's local contrast e.g., in Photoshop? That'll probably lessen its impact on some audiences while keeping the encyclopedic nature of the image (unless the shock value itself forms part of said nature).
People with Trypophobia may find the lead image repelling because, to quote from its own article, of "an intense and disproportionate fear towards holes, repetitive patterns, protrusions, etc., and, in general, images that present high-contrast energy at low and mid-range spatial frequencies." 海盐沙冰 (talk) 06:41, 13 June 2025 (UTC)

Lowering an images contrast often results in a washed out look to the image and may obscure some of the details of the image. For example, the specific appearance of the smallpox bumps may not be as visible with reduced contrast. IntentionallyDense (Contribs) 20:32, 13 June 2025 (UTC)
That's true, but imo the bumps in the current image might've been too visible. The current image is highly efficient at demonstrating the suffering smallpox brings to the patients - and (I’d argue that,) the efficiency comes from the almost instantaneous time needed for one to notice the bumps in their full shape and form. While an image with less contrast is going to be less efficient, one may still be able to notice all the uncomfortable details with more time spent staring at it - as long as we don’t lower the contrast too much.
This level of efficiency is good-to-have, and I’m arguing only for a tradeoff - for a point where the image is not as efficient (less visually stunning) but still illustrates the horrors of the virus (if one wants to focus on it). It's like having an image display on a low-quality LCD instead of a state-of-the-art OLED screen. We want to have an encyclopedic image, and we also want people to read Wikipedia - I'm concerned that an image too graphical may drive some away.
To put it another way - the current lead image in Atopic dermatitis is informative but only demonstrates the milder symptoms (I had severe AD before). The image is still encyclopedic enough for the reader to have a grasp on the concept, without driving some of them away outright. And similar to AD, smallpox has differing (though less wide-ranging) severity too. Think Variola minor.
Thanks for the discussion, and sorry I wrote an absolute wall-of-text here, my apologies... 海盐沙冰 (talk) 13:17, 14 June 2025 (UTC)

The article currently claims that smallpox killed “up to 300 million people in the 20th century” and “around 500 million people in the last 100 years of its existence.”
These two claims are internally inconsistent:
If 500 million died between 1877–1977, and
300 million died between 1900–1977,
Then 200 million deaths must have occurred between 1877–1899 — a span of just 23 years.
This would imply an implausible average of nearly 9 million deaths per year before 1900, which is not supported by historical epidemiological data. Scholarly estimates generally attribute:
~300 million deaths in the 20th century,
An additional 50–100 million in the 19th century,
And a total of 300–500 million globally from the 1500s to eradication in 1977.
The “500 million in the last 100 years” phrase likely originated as a generalised or rounded statement, not a literal 100-year span.
Recommendation: Revise to clarify that the 300–500 million estimate refers to total global deaths from the 16th to the 20th century, and avoid using the misleading 100-year framing unless it is properly sourced and contextualised. 2A00:23C8:E931:8C01:1C43:17C4:47D2:6101 (talk) 21:05, 15 June 2025 (UTC)

It has been a while since this article has been reviewed, so I took a look and noticed the following:

There are uncited statements in the article, including the "Mechanism" section and entire paragraphs.
At over 11,000 words, this article is WP:TMI and WP:TOOBIG. I suggest that information be spun out into the daughter articles already set up, and information summarised more effectively.
There is an orange "expansion needed" banner at the top of "Variola major" section. Considering that this article is already quite large, is this banner still necessary?
Should this article go to WP:GAR? Z1720 (talk) 01:59, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

Hi, it has been 15 years since the GA promotion and GAR is indicated unless someone is prepared to take this on. I am going to remove the "expansion needed" tag because most of the article is about variola major, the nastiest form of the disease. WRT moving content, we have Smallpox virus, which can be linked to. Graham Beards (talk) 09:04, 9 July 2025 (UTC)

I added the template, "Wikipedia is not censored." Okay? Solomonfromfinland (talk) 05:07, 10 November 2025 (UTC)