Welcome
editWelcome to Wikipedia! We have compiled some guidance for new healthcare editors:
- Please keep the mission of Wikipedia in mind. We provide the public with accepted knowledge, working in a community.
- 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.
- Please use high-quality, recent, secondary sources for medical content (see WP:MEDRS; for the difference between primary and secondary sources, see the WP:MEDDEF section.) 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.
- 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.
- We don't use terms like "currently", "recently," "now", or "today". See WP:RELTIME.
- More generally see WP:MEDHOW, which gives great tips for editing about health -- for example, it provides a way to format citations quickly and easily
- Citation details are important:
- Be sure to cite the PMID for journal articles and ISBN for books
- Please include page numbers when referencing a book or long journal article, and please format citations consistently within an article.
- Do not use URLs from your university library that have "proxy" in them: the rest of the world cannot see them.
- Reference tags generally go after punctuation, not before; there is no preceding space.
- We use very few capital letters (see WP:MOSCAPS) and very little bolding. Only the first word of a heading is usually capitalized.
- Common terms are not usually wikilinked; nor are years, dates, or names of countries and major cities. Avoid overlinking!
- Never copy and paste from sources; we run detection software on new edits.
- 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