User talk:Frolicin

Chiropractic
Hi Frolicin, and welcome to the Wiki. I want to explain a bit about your recent edits to Chiropractic, so you'll understand better why they were reverted (undone). For one, this article is extremely controversial, and it's not at all uncommon for changes to go through several revisions until they stick. More importantly, the information that you added--while offering some valuable points--needs to be supported by sources that Wikipedia considers reliable. This is not to say you are lying or that your personal experience is insignificant, but to structure debates around the most respected and high-quality research, scholarship, and journalism, we have established certain guidelines over time.

If you want to hang around, reading through WP:RS, WP:MEDRS, WP:V, WP:NOR, and WP:NPOV will be immensely helpful to understand what that entails. In a nutshell, if you want to put information into an article that is not just common knowledge, you should be able to find a published source from a mainstream newspaper, book, journal, or paper which has been through some process to establish its accuracy. According to WP:Burden, since the information you added was challenged, it's on you (or another editor) to find support for it if it is going to be put back in. Simply stated, your personal experience is not considered an acceptable source (no one's is), unless it has been published in one of the sources like I described. That's just the beginning, though, so let me know if you have any questions. Thanks, Ocaasi (talk) 20:18, 27 October 2010 (UTC)
 * Hi Frolicin, a couple of thoughts. First off, and not most important but perhaps most urgent, please be very cautious about making implications about taking legal action.  Because of the consequences that such steps can potentially have, all statements have to be assumed to be serious and responded to with full resources.  WP:LEGAL will offer some guidance here.  I'm not saying you can't contact the WP:WMF, but please hesitate using language like "obviously malicious... slander".  Those words have a very specific meaning and they suggest civil liability and damages and the like.  So, if you can, keep the discussion on content rather than motivations, especially legal ones.


 * As for the content of the article, many editors have taken a look through this and tried to improve on its point of view and coverage of the topic. Chiropractic is a complex, evolving, and controversial area and the efforts to make the article accurately reflect both the good and the bad and the flux is ongoing.  Your best efforts, if you want to understand how this conversation proceeds would be to read through the archives at Talk:Chiropractic.  At 32 indexed pages long, with each one having reams of discussions, I assure you that there are many editors who have worked on this, some more successfully than others.


 * You should introduce your thoughts at the talk page and let some other editors help you try and access sources to support your statements. One which I recently found helpful was http://www.cleveland.edu/state-art/ a positive review of the field published at Cleveland Chiropractic College.  Even sources like this, though, can struggle to compete with Wikipedia's sourcing guidelines, which generally favor published articles in mainstream medical journals when it comes to medical issues.  The links I mentioned above will explain this.


 * Meanwhile, what you choose to spend your time on is up to you, but I can guarantee this will take more than an afternoon to resolve. Before investing too much, take a look at the talk page archives to see just how many people have approached the article, how they've done it, and how it worked out.  I'm not suggesting at all that the article can't be improved, and I've been working to do so, but it does require a good deal of careful research and willingness to be put through a variety of objections.  Good luck! Ocaasi (talk) 03:41, 28 October 2010 (UTC)