Welcome

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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. 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 be aware that predatory publishers exist - check the publishers of articles (especially open source articles) at Beall's list.
  4. Reference tags generally go after punctuation, not before; there is no preceding space.
  5. We use very few capital letters and very little bolding. Only the first word of a heading is usually capitalized.
  6. Common terms are not usually wikilinked; nor are years, dates, or names of countries and major cities.
  7. Do not use URLs from your university library's internal net: the rest of the world cannot see them.
  8. Include page numbers when referencing a book or long journal article.
  9. Format references consistently within an article and be sure to cite the PMID for journal articles and ISBN for books; see WP:MEDHOW.
  10. Never copy and paste from sources; we run detection software on new edits.
  11. The ordering of sections typically follows the instructions at WP:MEDMOS.
  12. Think carefully before working on featured articles (these have a gold star at top right). It is often hard to improve featured articles.
  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) 16:44, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

Thalidomide

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HI Mpagan2, about your changes to this article.... what you are doing here, is creating a literature review, or perhaps a history of discoveries about its biology, in Wikipedia, using what we call "primary sources". However Wikipedia isn't built this way, and this kind of assembly of a narrative is a form of what we call original research, namely synthesis. What we do here is find reliable secondary sources, (for example, already-published literature reviews), published in high quality journals, and we summarize them here in Wikipedia. Please see WP:MEDDEF (part of WP:MEDRS) for a defintion of the kinds of sources that we use.

Another thing that is happening, is that what we call WP:WEIGHT is getting thrown off via the very detailed expansion of this section. Please be mindful of WEIGHT - it is a key part of the WP:NPOV policy.

I realize that the section was somewhat messed up when you came upon it. I have trimmed it back, so it is sourced only from reviews and gives WEIGHT within it, as weight is given in the reviews.

I realize this is a class project, but you are working in live WIkipedia space. Jytdog (talk) 13:44, 8 May 2017 (UTC) pasted commented here that was left on my talk page in this diff -- Jytdog (talk) 14:18, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

Hi Jytdog. Thank you for your feedback regarding my recent revisions to the thalidomide page. As you mentioned this is a class project and with that my work needs to be reflected on this page somewhere. Taking what I did already, do you see anywhere on this page or on any associated pages where I may elaborate on the mechanism of action like I previously did? I understand this needs to be concise first and foremost, but I would like to still be able to add what I've found whether it be under this section or perhaps starting a new one to fit my findings.
Best, Mpagan2 (talk) 14:14, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
Not in the way you have done it, no. The issue is not just "concise" but the way you are building content. Wikipedia needs to be built from secondary sources, and summarize them, and you have built a self-created review from primary sources.
For your class work, one thing you can do is create a "sandbox" page (here, I did it for you: User:Mpagan2/Sandbox) in your "userspace" (see WP:Userspace) and the content can go there, and your instructor can look there. I took the MoA and synthesis content from the last version of the article that you edited and put it there; I also cut the content from your Userpage and put it there. Jytdog (talk) 14:29, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
btw, is your class working with the Wikipedia:Education program? They offer all kinds of support and training... Jytdog (talk) 14:30, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply
I see your point. Thank you for creating that sandbox page that will surely help me for the project. As far as I know, no we are not using this program but my professor may be interested in it so I will pass along the message
I noticed that you did keep the synthesis portion I had added, however I revised as the first sentence as this is actually incorrect. Thalidomide is racemized in the body and using enantiomerically pure forms of the drug is not useful. This change can be found in my sandbox page User:Mpagan2/Sandbox. (talk) 15:00, 8 May 2017 (UTC)
Got it thanks Jytdog (talk) 16:45, 8 May 2017 (UTC)Reply