User talk:Drbethsnow

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--Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 19:17, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the welcome and for all the information! Since I started looking into having a Wikipedia assignment for my class, I've been amazed by the incredible amount of information available to help instructors here. I will continue to update our project page Wikipedia:School_and_university_projects/User:Drbethsnow/Fall2009 and plan to write up an article about our experience when we are done. Drbethsnow (talk) 19:38, 4 October 2009 (UTC)


 * Looking forward to reading it. Feel free to ask me any questions, I've been teaching with Wikipedia for a while now (my current class). --Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus 23:21, 4 October 2009 (UTC)

Copying issues
Dear Dr. Snow,

I appreciate your interest in Wikipedia and your recognition of its potential in education. May I respectfully suggest that you re-emphasise for your students the importance of avoiding direct copying? I'm not the only editor who has been uncomfortable with some of the recent edits to prostate cancer. The following paragraph, in particular, (from this version of the article) is not only linkspam, but resembles its source, the PCF website, a bit too closely for comfort:

''Prostate cancer occurs when prostate gland cells grow uncontrollably and create small tumors.[5] The regulation of prostate cell growth is disrupted therefore grow uncontrollably.[6] Unlike normal cells, prostate cancer cells are not dividing, maturing, and dying in a tightly controlled process because the cells are no longer well regulated.[7] Instead of dying as normal cells should, prostate cancer cells outlive normal cells and continue to form new and abnormal cells which lead to tumors.[8] Prostate cancer typically is made up of many small tumors within the prostate gland.[9] If prostate cancer is detected at this stage, this disease has a high chance of being cured (90%) with surgery or radiation which remove cancer cells in the prostate gland.[10] Unfortunately most prostate cancer cases go unnoticed at this stage because of the lack of symptoms and the difficulty of early detection.[11] If prostate tumor cells go untreated, the cells continue to grow and spread; this is called metastasis.[12] During metastasis prostate cancer cells are transported through the lymphatic system and the circulatory system to other parts of the body where they continue to grow tumors.[13] Once the cancer spreads beyond the prostate gland, the chances of curing the cancer drop dramatically. [14] Most prostate cancer cases are slow growing and take years to become large enough to be detected and even longer to spread beyond the prostate gland.[15] However, a small percentage of prostate cancers are rapidly growing and more aggressive. [16] The difficulty of knowing which prostate cancers are slow growing and which are aggressive has lead to complications in treatment decisions.[17] If a cancer has spread outside the prostate gland, it can be detected by the presence of prostate cancer cells in the seminal vesicle, lymph nodes in the groin area, the rectum, and bones.[18] When prostate cancer spreads to another location such as the bone, that new tumor is still considered to be prostate cancer, not bone cancer.[19]''

This student is clearly bright and enthusiastic, and probably just needs a good explanation of why a change in sentence structure here or substitution of a synonym there isn't enough to avoid charges of copying.

Best of luck with your continuing Wikipedia project, and let me know if I can help in any way! Keepcalmandcarryon (talk) 23:57, 1 December 2009 (UTC)

Hi Keepcalmandcarryon,

Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention! I will talk to the students about this right away to make sure that they understand that copying is unacceptable and how to avoid doing so!

Drbethsnow (talk) 17:28, 2 December 2009 (UTC)