User talk:CheerfulOctopode
Welcome to Wikipedia from the Medicine WikiProject![edit]
Welcome to Wikipedia from WikiProject Medicine (also known as WPMED).
We're a group of editors who strive to improve the quality of medical articles here on Wikipedia. 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. In your wiki-voyages, a few things that may be relevant to editing Wikipedia articles are:
- 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. 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!
- Sourcing of medical and health-related content on Wikipedia is guided by our medical sourcing guidelines, commonly referred to as MEDRS. These guidelines typically require recent secondary sources to support information; their application is further explained here. Primary sources (case studies, case reports, research studies) are rarely used, especially if the primary sources are produced by the organisation or individual who is promoting a claim.
- 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, revert, discuss editing cycle. If you encounter any problems, you can discuss them on an article's talk page or post a message on the WPMED talk page.
Feel free to drop a note on my talk page if you have any problems. I wish you all the best on your wiki voyages! WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:36, 5 August 2020 (UTC)
- Some of the above ^^^ may be useful eventually. Mostly I'm here because I saw your note at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine, and I wondered whether I could send you on a little mission to improve those articles by removing some (possibly) bad content.
- Background: We don't like to cite scientific papers that report original studies, especially small studies in non-human animals. We don't like those because – well, it seems like you can get just about anything to happen once in a lab study, and it's not good for Wikipedia editors to be guessing which of those research projects got the right answer. It's sometimes okay to say that there is some research going on in animals, and of course you cite animal studies for veterinary subjects, but mostly it's not a good idea for articles about human diseases. We try to stick to review articles and textbooks instead. Medical guidelines and position statements from the WHO are great, of course.
- So, that mission: I noticed that the Atherosclerosis article has several paragraphs about rabbits in the ===Dietary=== section. It seemed inappropriate to me, but I only took a quick glance. Would you be willing to read that, and if it seems equally inappropriate to you, would you remove that? The best Help:Edit summary to give in that sort of situation is a link to "WP:MEDRS". It would be really helpful to have some new eyes on these articles. If you have questions or need help, then feel free to come back to WT:MED. It's a helpful group. WhatamIdoing (talk) 23:39, 5 August 2020 (UTC)