7meta7

Hello, 7meta7, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 19:29, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

some advice!

Hi!

Again, welcome to Wikipedia.

Being an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" has meant that over the years, Wikipedia has developed lots of policies and guidelines (WP:PAG) to help provide a "body of law" as it were, that form a foundation for rational discussion. Without that foundation, this place would be a wild west - a truly ugly place. But with the foundation, there are ways to rationally work things out - if, and only if, all the parties involved accept that foundation and work within it. One of the hardest things for inexperienced people, is to understand not only that this foundation exists, but what its letter and spirit is, (I emphasize the spirit, because too often people fall prey to what we call "wikilawyering").

Content about health-related issues can be especially contentious here. There is LOTS of crap out there on the internet, and there are editors who want to come here and push it (real tinfoil hat stuff). Please think about that.. this is an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. As a result, over the years Wikipedia has developed some very clear policies and guidelines about how we handle health-related information in particular. The relevant policies and guidelines are Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view#Fringe_theories_and_pseudoscience (policy), WP:FRINGE (guideline) and WP:MEDRS (guideline). The bottom line is that on health related matters, Wikipedia stands very solidly with the scientific consensus on health issues.

Also, anyone's identity in the real world (or real life - we refer to them as "RW" or "RL") is meaningless here. You may or may not be who you said you were in this edit request or this one - we don't care and we are strictly forbidden from trying to find out by our policy on "outing" (see WP:OUTTING). Your RW identity doesn't matter. What does matter, is the quality of sources you bring (see WP:MEDRS for anything health related, WP:SCIRS for sourcing scientific content more generally, and WP:RS for sourcing in general) and how well the content you want to add fits with our content policies -- most importantly WP:NPOV.

It is what you do, not who you are, that matters. This really is the ultimate democratic space.

The more I have learned about how things are set up here - not just the letter of PAG and the various drama boards and administrative tools, but their spirit - the more impressed I have become at how beautiful this place can be. However it takes time to learn both the spirit and the letter of PAG, and to really get aligned with Wikipedia's mission to crowdsource a reliable, NPOV source of information for the public (as "reliable" and "NPOV" are defined in PAG!).

People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something. That passion is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead to tendentious editing, which is really destructive. Advocacy is one of our biggest bedevilments.

Anyway, I do hope you try to understand how things work in Wikipedia before you get into disputes about content. This is unfortunately a common mistake that new editors make but there is no reason you have to continue down that road, which is going to lead to misery for you, and will probably lead you to burn out and leave. There are lots of people here who are happy to teach, if you open up and listen, and ask authentic questions, not rhetorical ones. In any case, good luck! Jytdog (talk) 19:54, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

and by the way, if you have indeed been using the Mercola website for research to try to actually find out anything about health or medicine, you are in big trouble. Lots of what we call WP:FRINGE content there; poorly supported by good science and full of "woo". Jytdog (talk) 21:17, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments jytdog. I do need to find my way around.

One of the pillars of Wikipedia is neutrality and the opening to the Mercola article does not appear to be neutral, and I tried to comment on the bias, especially about the Mercola website. The wording about the website suggests that it contains exclusively controversial supplements and medical supplies. However, that approach is not neutral or factual as the website also contains much other information, a good deal of which is accepted in mainstream medicine.

Just to clarify--I noted that Mercola.com includes research, which it does. A good deal of the reference sources come from people with solid credentials and certifications in their fields. The identification of "lots" of content as "Fringe" does no strike me as a neutral stance consistent with Wikipedia's core pillars. Actually there are experts in "good science" by any accepted standards who contribute at times.

Also, are you the gatekeeper on this article? Who makes the final decision about editing? Again, I am just learning Wikipedia and want to become a regular contributor.

I am in no danger of "misery" or "burn out," but thank you for your concern:)

P.S. Here is an example of some "good science" research from an article I was reading on mercola.com today. It is available on the US Government Med website and was published in a reputable journal. If Wikipedia is going to honor its neutrality commitment, it must allow fair evidence from that website. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24787915 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 7meta7 (talk • contribs) 23:05, 28 June 2014‎ (UTC)

again, there is a lot to learn here, on multiple levels. One level - basic interaction logistics. Always sign your comments with 4 tildas. Also, people expect each other to thread conversations. We do that by indenting, and a colon at the start of a paragraph is wiki-markup for creating indents. One colon if you are responding first, creates one tab of an indent; 2 colons if you are responding to a response creates a two-tabbed indent, etc. Another level. Wikipedia has no "gatekeepers" - as I wrote above we are a radical democracy here, governed by our policies, guidelines, and customs (and you do not understand "neutrality" here, based on how you just used that term. Please don't start throwing around references to policy before you understand what it is actually is. Read closely, and sympathetically, to understand it. And watch how others use it and cite it) Another level (policy} - As I just said - what does NPOV really mean and really say? One thing I will tell you that it does not mean, is that there is no criticism in Wikipedia, nor does it mean that we give equal WP:WEIGHT to all perspectives. It also means that if a "fringe" position is being described, it is given little weight, and is also debunked (see WP:FRINGE for what "fringe" means in Wikipedia and for how we deal with it here. Yet another level -- if you have an argument with those policies or any other policy here, the place to deal with it is not on a given article, but rather on the Talk page of the relevant policy itself. (changing policy is not easy!! but it can be done) A lot of people who come here with an ax to grind make the mistake of trying to redefine policy on the article level instead of at the policy level, where that discussion belongs and can be productive. Again there is a lot to learn here, and charging ahead full steam to argue with the status quo when you don't understand how things work is indeed a recipe for burning out or flaming out. I have seen it happen lots and lots of times. Wikipedia is a complex and beautiful place. Take your time and come to understand it before you start picking fights. Take my advice or leave it, as you will. Jytdog (talk) 23:42, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

btw, the article you cite is what we call a "primary source" and we do not use them on Wikipedia, as they are not reliable. This is described at WP:MEDRS. You are apparently a professor of some sort, and in your discipline, I imagine you have standards as to what "counts" as valid scholarship in your discipline. How to handle evidence, how to weigh it, what kind of conclusions are valid to draw and what are not... even how to talk about the evidence (and I am sorry to say this, but the way you describe the abstract at pubmed shows that you have no idea even how to describe the evidence from which medicine is made, much less how to deploy that evidence). But in any case, Wikipedia also has standards of scholarship that are described in RS, SCIRS and for health related content, MEDRS. If you wonder why we are strict about sourcing of health-related information, check out MEDRS first, and if you still don't get it, you could check out an essay I recently wrote about why we have such standards. It is long and needs a lot of editing-down, but it is here: Why MEDRS?. One of the huge problems with mercola.com is that they take articles like the one you cited, and make way, way more out of them, than they can bear. It is an irresponsible way to handle scientific research, and we run into a lot of new editors who want to do the same thing here. It doesn't fly here. Coming in as ignorant as you are, and on so many levels (including the content-level), and as argumentative as you are appear to be ready to be, is the classic recipe for a miserable time here. Really. I have seen it boatloads of times. This is an amazing place to learn, if you put the ax down. Jytdog (talk) 23:42, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I appreciate your orientation to Wikipedia and am willing to learn. However, you are not modeling the behavior that you encourage with me with your unsupported assumptions about my misery :) (as I am not in the least bit in danger of being miserable on Wikipedia) and that I am like a number of other people you have experienced before.

I will learn what flies on Wikipedia. However, I don't need much experience with Wikipedia to see that the Mercola article does not fit seem to fit the neutrality that is one of the Pillars/ I have wanted to participate in Wikipedia for a while, and I picked the Mercola article for interaction because when I use Mercola's website, on the right the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia article pops up.

"Good science" is a vital, important and often controversial topic for contemporary people, and I look forward to exploring the that area more in relation to the Mercola website.

As I get more involved, I will learn all the details of indents, symbols, etc. 7meta7 (talk) 23:59, 28 June 2014 (UTC)

I am very blunt. I place importance on clarity more than anything which can make me seem harsh and rude. But I am trying to teach you. Back to mercola. I understand that you find the Mercola article more negative than you would like, but that does not mean it is not "neutral". "Neutrality" is a term with technical meaning in Wikipedia. This is the third time I have said this and you are continuing to ignore it. Imagine if your students said "irregardless" over and over again even though you kept trying to correct them! That is not a promising sign. Bigger picture. Mercola.com is full of fringe science as we define that on Wikipedia. Really - please understand the context before you start arguing with an instance of it. If you want the mercola article to be more glow-y you are going to have to change policy first - otherwise you are going to be banging your head against the wall. Again I warn you, it is an unwise decision to pick an article where you want to make big changes, as a learning ground. Become familiar with wikipedia by editing articles where you don't have a lot at stake - where the content is not controversial. Jytdog (talk) 00:17, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

Thanks jytog for your posts.  :) You've introduced me to some fascinating aspects of Wikipedia culture, at least from your perspective. No one in a professional situation has ever said that I wanted something to be "more glow-y." And I don't think that term is used in research or scholarship, including "good science" either. Interesting.More to come — Preceding unsigned comment added by 7meta7 (talk • contribs) 00:35, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

good luck! Jytdog (talk) 00:44, 29 June 2014 (UTC)

I hope that [http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2014/06/26/aspartame-methanol-alzheimers.aspx this] is not what you were praising as "good science" citing that pubmed-abstracted article - oy. That piece is par for mercola.com and is just a mess. Talk about toxic! Please, please don't feed your brain that stuff. There are plenty of websites intended for the public that are based on careful, reliable work. Like this: http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ (If you want to talk about why that article is a mess, I would be happy to. But maybe that is enough said.) Jytdog (talk) 02:56, 29 June 2014 (UTC)