Welcome to Wikipedia from the Wikiproject Medicine! edit

Welcome to Wikipedia and Wikiproject Medicine

Welcome to Wikipedia from Wikiproject Medicine (also known as WPMED).

We're a group of editors who strive to improve the quality of content about health here on Wikipedia, as part of the larger mission of Wikipedia to provide the public with articles that present accepted knowledge, created and maintained by a community of editors.

One of our members has noticed that you are interested in editing medical articles; it's great to have a new interested editor on board!

First, some basics about editing Wikipedia, which is a strange place behind the scenes; you may find some of the ways we operate to be surprising. Please take your time and understand how this place works. Here are some useful links, which have information to help editors get the most out of Wikipedia:

  • Everything starts with the mission - the mission of Wikipedia is to provide the public with articles that summarize accepted knowledge, working in a community of editors. (see WP:NOT)
  • We find "accepted knowledge" for biomedical information in sources defined by WP:MEDRS -- we generally use literature reviews published in good journals or statements by major medical or scientific bodies and we generally avoid using research papers, editorials, and popular media as sources for such content. We read MEDRS sources and summarize them, giving the most space and emphasis (what we call WP:WEIGHT) to the most prevalent views found in MEDRS sources.
  • Please see WPMED's "how to" guide for editing content about health
  • More generally please see The five pillars of Wikipedia and please be aware of the "policies and guidelines" that govern what we do here; these have been generated by the community itself over the last fifteen years, and you will need to learn them (which is not too hard, it just takes some time). Documents about Wikipedia - the "back office" - reside in "Wikipedia space" where document titles are preceded by "Wikipedia:" (often abbreviated "WP:"). WP space is separate from "article space" (also called "mainspace") - the document at WP:CONSENSUS is different from, and serves as a different purpose than, the document at Consensus.

Every article and page in Wikipedia has an associated talk page, and these pages are essential because we editors use them to collaborate and work out disagreements. (This is your Talk page, associated with your user page.) When you use a Talk page, you should sign your name by typing four tildes (~~~~) at the end of your comment; the Wikipedia software will automatically convert that into links to your Userpage and this page and will add a datestamp. This is how we know who said what. We also "thread" comments in a way that you will learn with time. Please see the Talk Page Guidelines to learn how to use talk pages.

  • Thanks for coming aboard! We always appreciate a new editor. Feel free to leave us a message at any time on our talk page. If you are interested in joining the project yourself, there is a participant list where you can sign up. You can also just add our talk page to your watchlist and join in discussions that interest you. Please leave a message on the WPMED talk page if you have any problems, suggestions, would like review of an article, need suggestions for articles to edit, or would like some collaboration when editing!
  • The Wikipedia community includes a wide variety of editors with different interests, skills, and knowledge. We all manage to get along through a lot of discussion that happens under the scenes and through the bold, edit, discuss editing cycle. If you encounter any problems, you can discuss it on an article's talk page or post a message on the WPMED talk page.

Feel free to drop a note below if you have any questions or problems. I wish you all the best here in Wikipedia! Jytdog (talk) 22:29, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Note on formatting citations edit

Quick note, that there is a very easy and fast way to do citations, which often also provides a link that allows readers to more easily find the source being cited.

You will notice that when you are in an edit window, that up at the top there is a toolbar. On the right, it says "Cite" and there is a little triangle next to it. If you click the triangle, another menu appears below. On the left side of the new menu bar, you will see "Templates". If you select (for example) "Cite journal", you can fill in the "doi" or the "PMID" field, and then if you click the little magnifying glass next to the field, the whole thing will auto-fill. Then you click the "insert" button at the bottom, and it will insert a ref like this (I changed the ref tags so it shows):

(ref) Huhtaniemi, I (2014). "Late-onset hypogonadism: current concepts and controversies of pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment". Asian journal of andrology. 16 (2): 192–202. PMID 24407185. (/ref)

That takes about 10 seconds. As you can see there are templates for books, news, and websites, as well as journal articles, and each template has at least one field that you can use to autofill the rest. The autofill isn't perfect and I usually have to manually fix some things before I click "insert" but it generally works great and saves a bunch of time.

The PMID parameter is the one we care about the most.

One thing the autofill doesn't do, is add the PMC field if it is there (PMC is a link to a free fulltext version of the article). you can add that after you insert the citation, or -- while you have the "cite journal" template open -- you can click the "show/hide extra fields" button at the bottom, and you will see the PMC field on the right, near the bottom. If you add the PMC number there that will be included, like this (again I have changed the ref tags):

(ref) Huhtaniemi, I (2014). "Late-onset hypogonadism: current concepts and controversies of pathogenesis, diagnosis and treatment". Asian journal of andrology. 16 (2): 192–202. PMC 3955328. PMID 24407185. (/ref)

The autofill also doesn't add the URL if there is a free fulltext that is not in PMC. You can add that manually too, after you autofill with PMID Jytdog (talk) 22:29, 17 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Class? edit

Are you editing WP as part of a class? Jytdog (talk) 00:23, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

Yes Jytdog, during my studies Biology on the Radboud university of Nijmegen, Netherlands, Im following the course Toxicolgy, during this course we have to (in groups of 2,3) make a wikipedia page on a toxic moleculair substance and submit it to wikipedia. As seen with the page I made about 1,2,4 benzotriol, this becomes a problem with wikipedia between student and wikipedia admin. As this can be irritating for both the students (who want a good grade) and wikipedia admins. Maybe it is a good idea to contact dr. J.B. Koenderink who is the leading teacher for this course at Jan.Koenderink@radboudumc.nl.
Hooray! Thanks for the reply. Please ask your teacher to create an account and to see this thread at the WP Education project incident board, and to see this page about using WP for class assignments. Thanks again! I will note your post at the incident board. Jytdog (talk) 22:46, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
I will send my teacher an email concerning this matter, I can see how this can be a problem for you and I am sorry for all our problems. I hope that in the futere this assignemtn will be better supervised before being submitted to wikipedia.— Preceding unsigned comment added by TB Leenders (talkcontribs) 23:04, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Quick note on the logistics of discussing things on Talk pages, which are essential for everything that happens here. In Talk page discussions, we "thread" comments by indenting - when you reply to someone, you put a colon ":" in front of your comment, and the WP software converts that into an indent; if the other person has indented once, then you indent twice by putting two colons "::" which the WP software converts into two indents, and when that gets ridiculous you reset back to the margin (or "outdent") by putting this {{od}} in front of your comment. This also allows you to make it clear if you are also responding to something that someone else responded to if there are more than two people in the discussion; in that case you would indent the same amount as the person just above you in the thread. I hope that all makes sense. And at the end of the comment, please "sign" by typing exactly four (not 3 or 5) tildas "~~~~" which the WP software converts into a date stamp and links to your talk and user pages. That is how we know who said what. I know this is insanely archaic and unwieldy, but this is the software environment we have to work on. Sorry about that. Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 23:16, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Thanks that would be great. I feel bad for students who get thrown into WP without training and the appropriate framework. And the thing about getting a grade creates a conflict of interest that just exacerbates everything. Sorry you were put in this situation. Jytdog (talk) 23:18, 18 March 2017 (UTC)Reply
Just a quick note here as well; I already also replied on the education notice board. I am the program manager for the Dutch Wikimedia education program and will contact the teacher as well. Best, --AWossink (talk) 13:54, 22 March 2017 (UTC)Reply

TB Leenders, you are invited to the Teahouse! edit

 

Hi TB Leenders! Thanks for contributing to Wikipedia.
Be our guest at the Teahouse! The Teahouse is a friendly space where new editors can ask questions about contributing to Wikipedia and get help from experienced editors like Naypta (talk).

We hope to see you there!

Delivered by HostBot on behalf of the Teahouse hosts

16:03, 18 March 2017 (UTC)