Welcome edit

Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

Welcome to Wikipedia! We have compiled some guidance for new healthcare editors:

  1. Please keep the mission of Wikipedia in mind. We provide the public with accepted knowledge, working in a community.
  2. We do that by finding high quality secondary sources and summarizing what they say, giving WP:WEIGHT as they do. Please do not try to build content by synthesizing content based on primary sources. (For the difference between primary and secondary sources, see WP:MEDDEF.)
  3. Please use high-quality, recent, secondary sources for medical content (see WP:MEDRS). High-quality sources include review articles (which are not the same as peer-reviewed), position statements from nationally and internationally recognized bodies (like CDC, WHO, FDA), and major medical textbooks. Lower-quality sources are typically removed. Please beware of predatory publishers – check the publishers of articles (especially open source articles) at Beall's list.
  4. The ordering of sections typically follows the instructions at WP:MEDMOS. The section above the table of contents is called the WP:LEAD. It summarizes the body. Do not add anything to the lead that is not in the body. Style is covered in MEDMOS as well; we avoid the word "patient" for example.
  5. More generally see WP:MEDHOW
  6. Reference tags generally go after punctuation, not before; there is no preceding space.
  7. We use very few capital letters and very little bolding. Only the first word of a heading is usually capitalized.
  8. Common terms are not usually wikilinked; nor are years, dates, or names of countries and major cities.
  9. Do not use URLs from your university library's internal net: the rest of the world cannot see them.
  10. Please include page numbers when referencing a book or long journal article.
  11. Please format citations consistently within an article and be sure to cite the PMID for journal articles and ISBN for books; see WP:MEDHOW for how to format citations.
  12. Never copy and paste from sources; we run detection software on new edits.
  13. Talk to us! Wikipedia works by collaboration at articles and user talkpages.

Once again, welcome, and thank you for joining us! Please share these guidelines with other new editors.

– the WikiProject Medicine team Jytdog (talk) 03:21, 20 April 2018 (UTC)Reply

Copy/pasting edit

  Hello Dr Richard Jones, and welcome to Wikipedia. While we appreciate your contributions to Wikipedia, there are certain things you must keep in mind about using information from sources to avoid copyright and plagiarism issues here.

  • You can only copy/translate a small amount of a source, and you must mark what you take as a direct quotation with double quotation marks (") and cite the source using an inline citation. You can read about this at Wikipedia:Non-free content in the sections on "text". See also Help:Referencing for beginners, for how to cite sources here.
  • Aside from limited quotation, you must put all information in your own words and structure, in proper paraphrase. Following the source's words too closely can create copyright problems, so it is not permitted here; see Wikipedia:Close paraphrasing. (There is a college-level introduction to paraphrase, with examples, hosted by the Online Writing Lab of Purdue.) Even when using your own words, you are still, however, asked to cite your sources to verify the information and to demonstrate that the content is not original research.
  • Our primary policy on using copyrighted content is Wikipedia:Copyrights. You may also want to review Wikipedia:Copy-paste.
  • If you own the copyright to the source you want to copy or are a legally designated agent, you may be able to license that text so that we can publish it here. Understand, though, that unlike many other sites, where a person can license their content for use there and retain non-free ownership, that is not possible at Wikipedia. Rather, the release of content must be irrevocable, to the world, into the public domain (PD) or under a suitably-free and compatible copyright license. Such a release must be done in a verifiable manner, so that the authority of the person purporting to release the copyright is evidenced. See Wikipedia:Donating copyrighted materials.
  • In very rare cases (that is, for sources that are PD or compatibly licensed) it may be possible to include greater portions of a source text. However, please seek help at Wikipedia:Media copyright questions, the help desk or the Teahouse before adding such content to the article. 99.9% of sources may not be added in this way, so it is necessary to seek confirmation first. If you do confirm that a source is public domain or compatibly licensed, you will still need to provide full attribution; see Wikipedia:Plagiarism for the steps you need to follow.
  • Also note that Wikipedia articles may not be copied or translated without attribution. If you want to copy or translate from another Wikipedia project or article, you must follow the copyright attribution steps in Wikipedia:Translation#How to translate. See also Wikipedia:Copying within Wikipedia.

It's very important that contributors understand and follow these practices, as policy requires that people who persistently do not must be blocked from editing. If you have any questions about this, you are welcome to leave me a message on my talk page. Thank you. Jytdog (talk) 03:22, 20 April 2018 (UTC)Reply