Welcome to Wikipedia from the Wikiproject Medicine!

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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) 17:49, 6 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

Edits to Gemcitibine

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Again, welcome! You made some extensive edits to the gemcitibine. Some of them look great (the writing in plain English is very welcome!), but there are some things that are going to need fixing. Please take some time and review the information in the welcome message above and it will help you understand why, but here are some important things:

  1. The new content in the Side effects section has two big problems.
    1. We are very sensitive to copyright, and this content comes very close to its sourcing. See Close paraphrasing and also WP:COPYVIO.
    2. The new content there gives advice about how to manage side effects, and we don't do that. Mostly per the policy WP:NOTHOWTO; this is also discussed in the manual of styles for medicine and pharmacology - see WP:MEDMOS and WP:PHARMMOS
  2. We keep a common structure - the order of sections -- for drug articles, which is described in those two style guides. I or someone else will restore the correct order. The part of the article above the table of contents, is the WP:LEAD. There should be nothing there, that is not in the body, and it generally follows the same order as the body. In this article there are "edit comments" that you can only see when you edit, that guide editors where to put things.
  3. Sourcing - we are also really careful about the kinds of sources we use to support content about health, as described in WP:MEDRS.

There are other things but I don't want to pour too much on at once. Thanks again for improving the article, and again, welcome! Jytdog (talk) 18:00, 6 May 2017 (UTC)Reply

Talk page logistics

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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. Jytdog (talk) 18:37, 6 May 2017 (UTC)Reply