User talk:Gdavidzon

Welcome to Wikipedia from the 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) 05:45, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Some editing basics
Thanks for your interest in improving the Nuclear medicine article. I've removed your changes, as you didn't cite any reliable sources. Also you added terms like "currently" and "nowadays" but per WP:RELTIME we don't us such terms - Wikipedia articles have no dateline, so content needs to provide the time context.

Also, please know that the beginning of the article, above the table of contents, is what we call the WP:LEAD - it just summarizes the body of the article. Nothing should be there, that is not in the body of the article (and well-sourced there!). Hope that makes sense. Jytdog (talk) 05:48, 9 March 2017 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the information. I understand that the intend is to keep the content reliable. However, if you read this article on the topic of "Nuclear Medicine" much of it lacks citations and is very outdated. Hence, I don't really understand why non-cited statements are still part of this document. Just to give you an example: under title interventional nuclear medicine it says "Radionuclide therapy can be used to treat conditions such as hyperthyroidism, thyroid cancer, and blood disorders." where are the citations here?


 * I am interested in improving the content of this wikipedia page, but as you know if impossible to do this at once. Is there a way to have a copy of the article that I can keep editing over time and once is ready I can submit live or for review?


 * Thanks, — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gdavidzon (talk • contribs) 06:07, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Thanks for replying!  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  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.  Will reply on the substance in a second... Jytdog (talk) 07:13, 9 March 2017 (UTC)
 * Hm! Interesting.  I agree that the article could use a lot of work and I am grateful you are interested in improving it.   When I come across an article like this, here is what I do:
 * Check the manual of style to makes sure the article is structured correctly. (for this one, see Manual_of_Style/Medicine-related_articles
 * gather up the most recent/best references I can find, and review them so they are fresh and handy (literature review articles and textbooks, mostly)
 * pick a section of the body, and revise it, based only on the references (not what I know already), and adding citations for each edit.
 * repeat, over and over, until the body is all good.
 * Then revise the WP:LEAD so it summarizes the now-good body.
 * You can do that piecemeal -- there is no need to present a perfect thing, and this is better for other editors who watch the article too.
 * Make sense? Jytdog (talk) 07:18, 9 March 2017 (UTC)

Note on formatting citation
One of the things that is most daunting to new editors, is providing citations.

There is a very easy and fast way to do citations, which often also provides a link that allows readers to more easily find the source being cited.

You will notice that when you are in an edit window, that up at the top there is a toolbar. On the right, it says "Cite" and there is a little triangle next to it. If you click the triangle, another menu appears below. On the left side of the new menu bar, you will see "Templates". If you select (for example) "Cite journal", you can fill in the "doi" or the "PMID" field, and then if you click the little magnifying glass next to the field, the whole thing will auto-fill. Then you click the "insert" button at the bottom, and it will insert a ref like this (I changed the ref tags so it shows), where ever you had put the cursor in the article:
 * (ref) (/ref)

That takes about 10 seconds. As you can see there are templates for books, news, and websites, as well as journal articles, and each template has at least one field that you can use to autofill the rest. The autofill isn't perfect and I usually have to manually fix some things before I click "insert" but it generally works great and saves a bunch of time.

The PMID parameter is the one we care about the most.

One thing the autofill doesn't do, is add the PMC field if it is there (PMC is a link to a free fulltext version of the article). you can add that after you insert the citation, or -- while you have the "cite journal" template open --  you can click the "show/hide extra fields" button at the bottom,  and you will see the PMC field on the right, near the bottom. If you add the PMC number there that will be included, like this (again I have changed the ref tags):
 * (ref) (/ref)

The autofill also doesn't add the URL if there is a free fulltext that is not in PMC. You can add that manually too, after you autofill with PMID Jytdog (talk) 07:20, 9 March 2017 (UTC)