Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine

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    Welcome to the WikiProject Medicine talk page. If you have comments or believe something can be improved, feel free to post. Also feel free to introduce yourself if you plan on becoming an active editor!

    We do not provide medical advice; please see a health professional.

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    How do we welcome new medical editors?[edit]

    This section has run its course and is now sailing into improper waters. Complaints about user conduct and charge sheets are not appropriate here; such matters should be raised with the the user and/or at ANI. Bon courage (talk) 04:08, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    Should we welcome them with edit war that almost violates 3RR (correction and apologies: there were 3 reverts, but needs a fourth to constitute a violation, but I still think WP:BITE, WP:WikiBullying and WP:PRESERVE apply; and per WP:3RR, “ The rule is not an entitlement to revert a page a specific number of times”) and bite them with warnings and potential WikiBullying?

    Perhaps someone needs to consider self-reverting. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC) edited 12:36, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    +1 to your points, behaviour and tone towards new contributors is very often needlessly harsh.
    That said, at least notifying @Zefr of this post seems appropriate. MaligneRange (talk) 15:46, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It's a Frontiers journal, and I suspect that "the script highlighted it as possibly bad" is all the thought that went into this. Wikipedia:Reliable sources/Perennial sources doesn't mention it, and Wikipedia:WikiProject Academic Journals/Journals cited by Wikipedia/Questionable1 says that it needs case-by-case consideration, not shoot-on-sight edit warring. The journal is indexed in MEDLINE and Index Medicus.[1] Scopus says it's a mid-tier journal.[2] It's therefore probably a reliable source, according to the criteria put forward in question #8 in the FAQ about how to do case-by-case evaluations. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:39, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    "Frontiers" is not the best journal around, but it's certainly not the worst either. There are plenty of Frontier articles that are reliable, and I've personally cited it before. Vontheri (talk) 19:08, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    While I am no fan of Wikipedia being used for class exercises I agree that interaction is poor and reflects negatively on Wikipedia and our hope to continue as a project with new editors.
    Three things strike me. This revert claims in the edit summary that "'smart drug' term and other claims are not supported by a WP:MEDRS review". We don't need a MEDRS review to say that certain drugs are being labelled "smart drugs" by students or the press or whatever nor to say "its use is increasing, especially among students". The removed text said "The reasons for using the drug Modafinil are due to better concentration, neuro-improvement, stress reduction, time optimization, reduction of fatigue, reduction of daytime sleepiness and curiosity" and the source says "The most frequent reasons for using smart drugs were: better concentration, neuro enhancement, stress reduction, time optimization, increased wake time, increased free time, and curiosity". So there's a plagiarism issues here that we see almost inevitably from students who aren't being monitored or taught properly by their teacher. But the key is the text is sourced and not itself incorrect: these are reasons students give. It likely needs more carefully worded to not give any impression that Wikipedia agrees with those reasons or thinks they are scientifically confirmed. The linked article is indeed a medical review paper, so I'd very much expect a beginner to think it was just fine. Instead the editors is told it isn't a MEDRS review and on their user page pointed at Wikipedia:CITEWATCH. Quite how any beginner is supposed to make sense of a table for bots I don't know but in big bold letters at the start it says this page "does not answer whether it is appropriate to cite them". Personally I find this "You cited a predatory journal" reason-why-I'm-justified-in-edit-warring-with-you to be a bit of a clever-dick landmine issue for this project. It is nearly impossible for most editors to figure this stuff out, but get it wrong and you'll be threatened with a block (as here) for trying to restore your apparently MEDRS compliant text which keeps getting removed by some know-it-all vandal.
    Secondly I find it offensive that the editor's imperfect prose has led to him to being told to go edit on Turkish Wikipedia. "Comments made by students on this talk page indicate your knowledge of English grammar is poor. There is a Wikipedia in Turkish. Please edit there, not here". This is repeated on the user's talk page. And in among all the ranting about predatory journals, the student is lectured on punctuation and citation sequencing, as though this is something that matters on your first article edit. This is the encyclopaedia that anyone can edit. Literacy (and numeracy) skills have been notably lacking in some well known WPMED members over the years and I don't recall anyone telling them to go edit somewhere else for those reasons.
    Thirdly the student is told "It seems odd to me ..that graduate students are permitted to do their first encyclopedia editing on a medical topic (this requires expertise)" The main problem over the years with student editing has been (a) undergraduate students doing a 101 course who, well, know nothing about their subject, obviously, and are attempting to write effectively textbook level prose on said subject and (b) courses where the teacher has only just mastered putting three 's together to make bold text. I would love if Wikipedia got edits from graduates as this one, a "molecular biology master degree student". I wonder what kind of "expertise" is "required" to edit Wikipedia's biomedical articles? Would my first aid badge do? This elitism is killing the project.

    -- Colin°Talk 14:33, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you so much for your wise comment, Colin. That really helps :) I agree that the interaction reflects negatively on Wikipedia and our hope to continue as a project with new editors. I think more than one user is affected. That probably affects the whole class. On the Neuroenhancement talk page new users are told that they don’t have “permission” from Wiki Education Foundation to edit. And many others who have edited the article have their edits reverted. I’ve just posted welcome messages on some of those new users’ talk pages. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:30, 8 January 2024 (UTC); 18:25, 10 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    AIUI the Wiki Edu Foundation only supports classes in the US and maybe Canada, so they wouldn't be supporting a class in Turkey. Someone like Justinianus could tell us whether m:WMTR supports university classes, but in general, this is the encyclopedia anyone can edit, and that includes students just as much as anyone else. WhatamIdoing (talk) 18:53, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    To clarify... This is indeed "the encyclopaedia anyone can edit" but the important word is "can". Not "made to" or "paid to". Once you go beyond voluntary participation, the usual contract with the community breaks down. We had a very very few wise lecturers years ago who understood this and ensured the students were aware of the toes they might step on, but they were exceptions. The fault with any of this is the teachers, not the students, and frustrations with unprepared students being made to edit Wikipedia should be laid at their door. We were all new once and I would guess that 99.999% of the world population think a "predatory journal" is one on big cats or sharks. -- Colin°Talk 21:00, 8 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Colin: Not just students, *very experienced* users can be bitten or wikibullied as well, not to mention teachers who have less experience in editing Wikipedia (e.g. [3][4]). --Dustfreeworld (talk) 11:45, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It may or may not be the teacher’s fault. I think almost all students we are talking about are studying in the university. I suppose they should know what is self-learning. The problem is, if we don’t even has a link to WP:MEDRS in our WP:G [5], how can they learn about it? Even the teachers can’t. I don’t think the students need to be “trained”. They need to learn by themselves. I do think our information is somewhat scattered / difficult to understand, etc. Further, more can be done by experienced editors to offer help to new users and equip them with the needed information (e.g. by posting a comprehensive welcome template instead of warnings).
    Sometimes student edits seem especially problematic, likely because there are too much of them (in one topic) at one time, as compared with other individual new users. I don’t think the difficulties in understanding how Wikipedia works are specific to students. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 12:46, 26 January 2024 (UTC); 14:21, 26 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    There might be a case for putting some work into the WP:MEDFAQ. If would-be medical editors read that it could at least convey the basics. Bon courage (talk) 09:11, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Sounds good to me. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:25, 27 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Related discussions:
    --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:30, 27 January 2024 (UTC); 11:05, 14 February 2024 (UTC); --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:19, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    And problem persists weeks after this discussion started, e.g.,
    AND, problem persists *months* after this discussion started ...
    --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:00, 29 January 2024 (UTC); 08:36, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    This is not a noticeboard for discussing users, and in particular not for keeping a running tally. If you have a complaint about a user take it to WP:ANI. Bon courage (talk) 08:43, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Please don’t follow me. That’s enough. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 08:46, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Lay off with the bad faith accusations. I've been watching this noticeboard for over a decade. Bon courage (talk) 08:52, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    IYKYK. You’ve followed me from WP:ANI to here. I don’t want to escalate. If I were to argue with you, I would have done so days ago. Please calm down (and better stay away from me). Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 09:00, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You're spouting rubbish; I'm not even watching ANI at the moment. I'm not sure what kind of crusade you think you're on, but it's becoming disruptive. Bon courage (talk) 09:06, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I repeat: I don’t want to escalate. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 09:32, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Maybe we should take this user to ANI, though it's not well-suited for thoughtful discussion about competing needs. We need to have a discussion about how a dedicated patroller can discourage overstated contributions (e.g., all fruit is anti-inflammatory, so it would only be WP:EXCEPTIONAL to claim that Papaya does not have anti-inflammatory qualities; however, that doesn't mean that we want the articles to claim that Papaya is unusual in this regard) without being rude to good-faith newbies ("None of that nonsense you entered is supported by science" – which is rude, and which doesn't explain why he reverted sentences like Credit for introducing papaya to Hawaii is often given to Don Francisco Marín, a Spanish explorer and horticulturist, who brought it from the Marquesas Islands in the early 1800s). We don't really want to discourage newcomers through wholesale reversion when only part of a contribution is unwanted. WhatamIdoing (talk) 21:04, 7 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I've reminded Zefr that his actions continue to be discussed here. -- Colin°Talk 08:27, 8 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Maybe we should take this user to ANI

    Maybe you are right (and I was wrong?) --Dustfreeworld (talk) 00:09, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    One help would be to, instead of using just a generic warning template by default, to individualize and de-formalize the wording. Adding links to the specific incident in question should be done, to avoid potential ambiguity. And we should civilly, respectfully, and nicely explain specifically what was wrong with the way the editor originally worded/cited it. (Why is Wikipedia often so lacking in civility, respect, and niceness, by the way..?)
    I'm personally not in favor of Wikipedia editing being used as a school assignment, but given that it is, and regardless of if the editor in question is editing as part of school or as a "regular" editor, the same should apply as to how to deal with it and guide them. Remember that there are editors with good intentions who simply need guidance as to how Wikipedia should work (in which case a formal, and often vague, warning could be confusing to them at best, and offensive and scare them off at worst), but there are also editors who actually do have bad intentions for whom a formal warning would make sense.
    You (Dustfreeworld) said "I don’t think the difficulties in understanding how Wikipedia works are specific to students". This is true that the difficulties are probably not specific, but what is specific to most students who are editing as part of a class assignment is the motivation and the reason for why they are editing Wikipedia to begin with. Most editors have intrinsic motivations as to why we edit. Most students have extrinsic motivations to edit Wikipedia. Extrinsic, rather than intrinsic motivation, almost always results in inferior results. Vontheri (talk) 00:28, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    ...all else being equal, except that when you compare a graduate-level class against a random newbie, all else is not equal. A grad student after a grade is probably going to make a better contribution than someone who's finding television boring tonight.
    I have been missing the old Wikipedia:Requests for comment/User conduct process recently. Some of the reverters may be aware that an individual editor or two disagrees with their approach, but there is no longer a good way to determine whether the community in general feels the same way. WhatamIdoing (talk) 04:38, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    A grad student after a grade is probably going to make a better contribution than someone who's finding television boring tonight.
    I'm not so sure about that. Those two categories of editors (grad student and bored person) tend to make very different kinds of edits. The former group is more likely to make long edits, and the latter group short edits, for example. And how many people actually begin editing Wikipedia because they happened to be bored one night and thought "Hey, maybe I could randomly start editing Wikipedia to pass the time!" I know that's certainly not at all how or why I began editing. I began editing because I saw an article about a topic I was quite familiar with that I felt was lacking important information, so I decided to start adding information, learning on my own the way things were supposed to be formatted and such. In other words: for reasons of intrinsic motivation.
    I'm not quite sure what you mean by, "A grad student after a grade" in the sentence, "A grad student after a grade is probably going to make a better contribution than someone who's finding television boring tonight." Do you mean by "after a grade" as in after they completed the class assignment that involved editing Wikipedia? And then the assumption is that they will continue to make edits long-term after their class is over? I'm curious, does anyone have any data for what % of people who first edited Wikipedia as part of school assignments go on to continue to become regular editors? My guess is that it is not very many.
    I remember once running across an article (it was a long time ago and I can't remember what the article was, sorry) and I thought, "This reminds me of the writing style of some of the poorly-written papers I've seen before written by university students in the class of a professor I know." (This professor is a graduate-level professor at a school that is... let's just say not very selective in its admissions. I've seen some atrociously horrible writing from some of her students before.) I soon found out that the article I had just read had, in fact, been written by a student as part of a class using Wikipedia editing as an assignment! Extrinsic motivation just simply tends to result in bad writing. (Not always, of course, but very often.) If we have Wikipedia articles that are written by students who don't actually care about Wikipedia but whose goal is to simply get a "passing grade," then we are going to have a lot of poor-quality articles.
    I also have observed that there seems to be a near-universal assumption that if someone is editing due to a class assignment, then this necessarily means that they have never seriously edited Wikipedia before and don't already have any way of knowing how things are supposed to work. Imagine if you were currently a student in a class and found out you were going to be treated like you knew nothing about Wikipedia, when you already likely know even more than the professor knows about how it works. It would feel pretty condescending and frustrating, wouldn't it? Vontheri (talk) 18:16, 30 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I wonder whether our glorification of intrinsic motivation would stand up to scrutiny. I doubt that any of us would say that getting a paycheck makes us do a bad job in our day jobs, so why would extrinsic motivation be fine there and bad here? I'd say that bad writers are going to produce bad writing regardless of their motivation. We have to watch out for incompatible motivations (e.g., Wikipedia wants encyclopedic content; the spammer wants people to click an external link), but I don't think we need to be concerned about whether the student's short-term motivation is extrinsic (or perhaps really intrinsic at one remove: they're taking that class voluntarily, which shows some intrinsic motivation).
    I'm not sure that your experience is entirely typical. My first edits (as an IP, originally) were just a case of https://xkcd.com/386/, except for typos. Editors who begin contributing because they have something to tell the world tend not to be retained as long as those of us who like fixing typos or doing other gnoming tasks. They post their content about the subject they care about, and then they're pretty much done. It may take them 10 edits or 1,000 to tell the world about their subject, but it won't take 100,000.
    Wiki Education Foundation does not track student retention. However, several editors say that they have continued (sometimes in a new account), which is more than we can say about most non-student editors. I think I've "met" approximately as many retained student editors as I've met former vandals, although the pool of vandals is much bigger than the pool of student editors. For context, 70% of accounts never make even the first edit. Of the minority that make one, most of them make only one or two edits, and never edit again. In the last month, there were only about 25K Wikipedia:Extended confirmed editors who made even a single edit, and only about 10K who averaged one edit per day in the last month. Editors like you are the top 0.1% – the equivalent, in income terms, to an American resident who makes several million US dollars per year. There just haven't been enough students to produce very many like you. WhatamIdoing (talk) 06:14, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think "throw random statistics" and "add some anecdotes from recollection" is really addressing the issues. These comparisons with other things are terrible. For example, there are several reasons I do a good job, but some of them include the degree I have, the years of experience I have and that I'm being asked to do something within my competency. And any boss looking for people to do a non-trivial task will be asking the same things: qualifications, experience, appropriateness. If someone asked to go be a dentist for a day, or an optician, or fix the wheel alignment on someone's car, I'd be rubbish no matter how much you paid me or no matter how much fun I might think those things are. So saying, WAID, that our arguments don't stand up to scrutiny because being paid doesn't make you a bad employee is a rubbish argument. I'd be the worst dentist ever, whether you paid me or not. It would never have crossed my mind to be a dentist for a day. Similarly, no newbie would ever set themselves the tasks these students are being compelled to do.
    There may well be some student classes, following all the rules, who are being asked to do far more reasonable things, like some first aid, that they have actually had some appropriate training for. But that doesn't deny the existence of classes that are awful, and every time we look, the teachers are awful, have never seriously edited Wikipedia, and students are not being supervised. Nothing in that last sentence is changed by comparisons with newbies or employees.
    The 70% stat isn't worth repeating, WAID. You yourself have said that a big chunk of that is auto-created en:wp accounts for users on other projects who merely glance at a page here while logged in. And there isn't really a hard dividing line between IP and account in terms of being able to edit most articles. There are times when a statistic has too many unknowns for it to be useful. This is one of them.
    From what the teacher and the students have said about this class at AN/I, this has been a terrible experience for all of them. But these are graduate students. So they are bright, capable and they already know some useful stuff. They could have been great editors, but they were required to do something that was beyond their abilities, by someone who hasn't a clue. -- Colin°Talk 08:48, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    To a first approximation, all newbies are bad. We have no evidence behind, and not even any common sense support for, the idea that a newbie who is incentivized to do something plausibly relevant and correct (e.g., by getting graded) is going to be worse than a newbie who doesn't.
    While all newbies are bad, we also know that student editors are less-bad than others. Students almost never vandalize articles, they almost never engage in block-worthy behaviors, and they are more likely to respond to complaints than non-student newbies. (NB: I am making a comparison of the relative chances of getting a response between class-based newbies and non-class-based newbies; I am not saying that an absolute majority of students respond to messages we post). In the medical area specifically, garbage from newbies is an ongoing problem. We have banned all newbies from editing articles like COVID-19 pandemic and Cancer to keep them from being stuffed with conspiracy theories, quackery, and whatever is lighting up social media this week. Students may re-write sex-specific articles to sound gender neutral, but they don't generally replace conventional medical treatments with advertisements for the Supplement o' the Week. WhatamIdoing (talk) 17:01, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Colin, IMO that last sentence you wrote is a very big assumption that was based on your interpretation of what the instructor had said about how they felt. FYI, both the instructor and the graduates hasn’t posted at AN/I. The instructor has posted at the Education noticeboard, and I think that’s the remark that you based your assumption on.
    The instructor said, “my students are afraid of editing Wikipedia and then during their editing experience some felt discouraged and quite exhausted due to some unfriendly approach or comments from some users.” I believe this is one of those comments the instructor is referring to:
    which is “offensive, factually incorrect and misguided, particularly in their attitude that graduate students shouldn't be editing” and that comment was directed to the *whole class*, just after they introduced themselves.
    I think “this has been a terrible experience for all of them” because *all of them have been wikibullied*. I believe there maybe some misread and misunderstanding here. I do believe all of us would agree that the WikiBullying should be halted and not going further. I hope the assumption/accusation can stop (better yet, be striked out) especially when the instructor’s RL identity was disclosed elsewhere at WP. Respectfully, --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:19, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    That comment ("There is a Wikipedia in Turkish. Please edit there, not here") was one of the ones I had in mind when I said that I missed the old RFC/U process. It was eliminated years ago, but when it was active, it was a place to talk to users about whether they understood that a comment like that might come across as being racist. Someone could genuinely intend such a comment to be purely helpful and in support of both the person it is addressed to and the Turkish Wikipedia, but that's not the way I "hear" such a comment. WhatamIdoing (talk) 22:37, 31 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You don't "know that student editors are less-bad than others". Sure, their class assignment is unlikely to ask them to remind readers that Trump won the 2020 election or that ivermectin cures Covid 19. But then, students in class are also not out smoking pot or driving while drunk. What evidence do you have that these classes make any different to that person's behaviour on Wikipedia at other times, likely with a different account or as an IP. That they are less likely to make drunken "amusing" edits. Or that someone in a psychology 101 class is less likely to believe right wing conspiracy theories or be anti-vax solely because they once were required to edit Wikipedia for a grade?
    But their class assignment, largely unsupervised it seems, is likely to end up with them selecting non-recent primary-research papers and just reproducing the paper's text into our article in some random place. They aren't, AFAICS, being asked to seriously study the topic of the "sympathetic nervous system", select among the best recent secondary sources, and then summarise that to fill in the gaps or improve what is there. This is classic "find a factoid on PubMed and insert into Wikipedia".
    Being self motivated and being externally motivated have different pros and cons. One isn't 100% bad. Sure, people can be self motivated to vandalise or push conspiracy theories, which are unlikely to be motivators in a decent class. But with the worse classes we see newbies make bigger and more challenging edits than typical newbies might otherwise, on topics that they really really don't yet understand. I can't see how that is anything but trouble. They either then plagiarise their one and only source, or attempt to write it in the words of someone who doesn't yet understand. That someone taking a class teaching the basics of stem cell biology, say, is then asked to Teach The World via Wikipedia about stem cell biology. -- Colin°Talk 10:36, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    What evidence do I have that students aren't running WP:BADHAND accounts? Exactly the same as the evidence that I have that for the regulars on this page, including you.
    The evidence that we do have indicates that the students making their first edits are more likely to be productive (by every measure I've heard of: getting reverted, getting blocked, adding sources, editing on more than one day, etc.) than non-students making their first edits.
    I don't think we should judge students by "the worst classes" any more than we should judge other newbies by the worst of other newbies. The worst classes require, at minimum, a bunch of reverting. The worst other editors require police reports.
    I think that it's also a mistake to classify students as extrinsically motivated when they are voluntarily signing up for a class that edits Wikipedia. A person who chooses to take a class that is advertised as editing Wikipedia (and at least some of them are, including one grad school class whose whole reason for existence is to improve Wikipedia) is already intrinsically motivated. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:53, 1 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I didn't say they were consciously running BADHAND accounts. Consider your reasoning by any other circumstance. Their behaviour while editing Wikipedia using accounts registered to the class and potentially observably by teacher is going to be similar in many ways to student behaviour in the class room. On the other hand, outside of the classroom or lab, student behaviour is notoriously poor on many measures (though better on some others due to being brighter and better off than average). So when you say these students are model editors in many aspects, I'm rolling my eyes.
    Students often get choices of modules to pick but once chosen it becomes as much an obligation as if there was no choice of module. If it counts for their grade that's extrinsic motivation. If the choice of what to do on Wikipedia isn't entirely up to the students, that's extrinsic motivation.
    WAID I repeat that your "at least they don't require police reports" argument is really inappropriate and somewhat offensive. Please stop comparing students to vandals or, now, criminals. Would you be happy in real life if hostile workplace behaviour against you, or a moderate level crime against you was dismissed with an "just be glad you weren't...." severe crime? It isn't in any way a valid argument. It's a sort of dishonest politician argument. There's probably a Wikipedia article for it.
    There exist bad classes. There exist students making copyvio edits of random papers they found. There exist students adding material to articles that is already there because they were told to add material, not to improve what was there. There exist students creating new articles for topics we already cover, because they were told to create new articles. There exist students to keep reverting back their edits because otherwise they fear they won't get their grade. There exist classes where the teacher has no skill or knowledge or experience of the subject, which isn't how good education works. There exist classes where the teacher assumed Wikipedia would fix the problems and correct mistakes. And there exist classes where students are asked to do something so beyond their abilities on articles that matter deeply to editors here, that those editors behave in a hostile and unacceptable way in return. And so on. Imaginations about what random newbies might do on a random night are entirely irrelevant. -- Colin°Talk 12:46, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, there exist bad classes. But: Even the bad classes aren't worse than other newbies.
    The problem here is more like:
    We have 10,000 newbies running around a festival. Most of them are okay, but some of them are causing problems that annoy staff, sometimes out of ignorance (ranging from "Hey, y'all, watch this!" to "I thought this was the line for the toilets") and sometimes out of malice (e.g., pickpockets and taggers).
    All our attention is on one group of 10 guys wearing matching T-shirts. They're trying to do (what they believe is) the right thing, but they're really not figuring it out: they were blocking the path when others needed to get past, confused when people tried to talk to them, and generally caused small, temporary, reversible problems. The security team tries to tell them what to do, but it doesn't seem to help. Eventually the group, having had a miserable day, goes home. Meanwhile, the security team has had to eject 1,000 individuals from the event.
    We go home, too, and we talk about how horrible it is those ten guys were for doing what they thought they were supposed to be doing. We talk about banning groups, even though there were lots of other groups doing well. We don't talk at all about the 1,000 individuals that were tossed out of the event.
    Why is our attention focus on 1% of the problem? Is it because we find a group inherently more threatening?
    More than 10% of accounts created last year were so bad that they get blocked after making their first edit. None of these students – in a "bad class" – were so bad that they got blocked. Why are we saying that these students are worse than the ones who got blocked? We had editors (not you, of course) proposing banning all classes because this one group of newbies caused some non-block-worthy problems, but we don't have editors proposing banning all newbies, even though a really sizeable minority of newbies cause block-worthy problems and almost all of them, especially if they make more than a couple of edits, cause non-block-worthy problems. Proposing to ban the category of newbies that causes fewer problems does not seem rational to me. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:04, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    [Sigh] Why this topic started by me: How do we welcome our new (medical) editors (including teachers/PG/UG, etc.) ?
    Now becomes: How do we *criticise* our new editors? ... [Sigh] ... --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:01, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well there's a false dichotomy, as though it is a choice between students or newbies. Both of them are newbies. And I wager, outside of their class assignment, which they generally edit with an account created for the purpose and assigned to the class, their editing behaviour, should they edit, is virtually indistinguishable from the behaviour of matched peers who happened to not get an assignment. So you've created two population groups that are actually just one population group: newbies.
    Your measure, whether they get blocked, is fairly extreme, and doesn't measure any of the other bad stuff like copy vio or plagiarism. Nobody has ever suggested that teachers are asking students to vandalise or asking students to insert racial slurs or do anything remotely like that which cause your 10% of first edits are blocked scenario. So why is that in any way relevant.
    WAID, I'm really unconvinced you comparing students to newbies or vandals or criminals is in any way helpful. In the UK, we don't let learner drivers on the motorways. Someone just beginning to remember to look in their mirrors before signalling before maneuvering to the next lane, is not going to interact well with the asshole in a BMW doing 90mph when they swerve out into their path unanticipated. If driving instructors took it into their heads that the motorway was a great place to learn (nice straight road, wide lanes, no traffic lights or roundabouts) we'd criticise these driving instructors for not appreciating how motorways work. That criticism would be valid. But what I'm hearing from you is that learner drivers under instruction never get arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol. They never get done for speeding at 100mph. Their car is never uninsured and they never drive without a (provisional) licence. Whereas thousands of "drivers" do all those things. So clearly we should focus on these problem "drivers" and totally ignore the problem "learners on motorways". Especially as the learner drivers have a big L painted or stuck on their car, so we are especially aware of them. If anyone tried that on you, you'd respond "So what, my criticism is still valid". In fact, some student classes are worse: the students are like learners whose first vehicle is actually an articulated lorry and it turns out their driving instructor can't drive but once watched Top Gear and "how hard can it be"? -- Colin°Talk 14:23, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    (Translation note for the above: motorway = freeway). I agree, plus student newbies are likely to get added overconfidence from being told they have been sufficiently trained, & being told, indeed instructed, to make edits, often pretty bold ones. Admittedly, the majority never seem to make any actual articlespace edits at all. Johnbod (talk) 15:33, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don’t think comparing “editing Wikipedia” with “driving on the motorways” is relevant.

    We welcome new editors. We want more people to become part of *us*, especially people who are experts in their field. Classes that teach how to edit at Wikipedia is a good way to promote Wikipedia (both editing and browsing). I’ve read student editors wrote that they thought only certain elite group could edit Wikipedia, but when they found out (through their course) that they could edit too they found it really satisfying. I don’t think there are persistent wikibullying ([10] ..., etc.), WP:OWN/elitism/etc. on the motorways (BTW, according to the definition of *that regular user*, I think most of *us* in this thread should be OUT of this WP Project MEDICINE, I don’t know why we can still discuss / are still discussing here ;-) I don’t think they are promoting the motorways by teaching people how to drive.

    I agree that edits from classes may cause problems for regulars here. I don’t think that has much to do with “who brings the new editors here”. As noted by me and others, it’s an issue mainly because there can be a large number of edits in a short time, usually in the same topic. Further, people immediately bristle when a cluster of students start editing because they’ve seen similar problems happened before (but I suspect those issues have long been exaggerated by some of our regular users, due to their own behavioural problems / mindset that I’ve mentioned), and this can lead to subsequent escalating conflicts.

    IMO, most of the problems can be dealt with through better communication (and less incivility and WP:OWN/elitism mindset) between regulars and new users, better enforcement of disciplinary actions against obviously problematic senior users, and more support for classes.

    As to support for classes, it seems to me that it all comes down to resources. As said by Rhododendrites at the Education noticeboard [11]: “... there is no staff support outside the US/CA ... the international education program has been extremely under-funded. Meanwhile, it seems like there are fewer resources for educators outside NA today than there were ~8 years ago. The education program extension has been deprecated after it was abandoned by the foundation, there were once a lot of resources over at the Outreach Wiki, but that's been rolled into meta:Education, which has almost no content. I hope that's temporary, …”

    That said, with limited resource, I believe there are still much that we can do, e.g., informing new users about our rules as soon as they register (by a welcome template for instance), improving our (navigation of) guidelines and documentation, be nice and explain more patiently instead of posting a vague warning, etc.

    It seems to me that most users involved in this discussion aren’t very interested in discussing all these. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:10, 5 February 2024 (UTC); 22:13, 5 February 2024 (UTC); 14:32, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    More on support for classes, posted by Ian (Wiki Ed): [12] --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:34, 5 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Vontheri,

    One help would be to, instead of using just a generic warning template by default, to individualize and de-formalize the wording ... And we should civilly, respectfully, and nicely explain specifically what was wrong with the way the editor originally worded/cited it. (Why is Wikipedia often so lacking in civility, respect, and niceness, by the way..?)

    ... regardless of if the editor in question is editing as part of school or as a "regular" editor, the same should apply as to how to deal with it and guide them. Remember that there are editors with good intentions who simply need guidance as to how Wikipedia should work (in which case a formal, and often vague, warning could be confusing to them at best, and offensive and scare them off at worst), but there are also editors who actually do have bad intentions for whom a formal warning would make sense.

    Agreed. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:25, 3 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I'm not comparing editing Wikipedia with driving on the motorway. I think most countries let beginners out onto the roads, rather than requiring them to take lessons on private ground. Many people, however, find a big empty car part in which to learn how to start and stop and turn the steering wheel around. And in my country, nobody would dream of practicing a three-point-turn on a motorway slipway, or parallel parking on the hard shoulder. Any instructor doing that would likely get some kind of ban and disallowed from teaching. Some classes use sandboxes (and some never seem to escape them). Other classes ask for small edits. But many it seems ask them to make big edits, usually adding new material rather than fixing what's there, and this can end up just repeating existing material or being a copyvio. And usually that material is something the student is on a topic the student is only just learning about. I don't think that is anything to do with the students themselves being newbies. It is the teacher's fault.
    I think students could be asked to do assignments on Wikipedia that we would be happy with. But when they are not, mostly I think this is related to the teacher not understanding how Wikipedia works due to inexperience and over-confidence, and the "obey authority" roles between student and teacher that means the student has to do what they are asked, rather than voicing their discomfort or suggesting alternatives. There is also, as you note, a matter of scale. Years ago the medical project had a huge class (think over a thousand) taking psychology 101 being asked to make edits by a guy who had essentially watched Top Gear and though driving on the motorway was easy and fun thing for their students to do, and he could put his feet up and let everyone else mark his homework assignments. But even a few students all being asked to go find some latest medical research on pub med and add it to a Wikipedia article can create a monster.
    I agree there are civility problems with the example that started this, and I've gone through them already. Wikipedia, for some reason, puts up with people who have civility issues that would have got them sacked from most office workspaces long ago, usually because they are highly productive editors doing thankless tasks. While it would be wonderful if some of the issues you see got addressed, Wikipedia has been going long enough for me to doubt they will. In other words, these classes will have to learn not to poke the bears.
    Wrt what people are interested in. This is a volunteer project. (well, outside of class assignments and paid editing it is). If you are going to cajole editors into helping out with the education projects, a discussion like this probably isn't the place to do it. Colin°Talk 08:52, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    It’s not true that Wikipedia puts up with people who have civility issues because they are highly productive editors doing thankless tasks. We’ve seen many long-term editors blocked indefinitely, including former administrators and former bureaucrats, who were *really* “highly productive editors doing thankless tasks”. The issues didn’t got addressed probably because no one bothers to complain. Regulars won’t because it’s thankless, they aren’t the victims, they believe that does more harm than good to themselves, etc. Newbies won’t because they don’t know how to (or even don’t know that they can). --Dustfreeworld (talk) 10:46, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Well I've seen many editors who Wikipedia puts up with (or at least, survived for a remarkable amount of time) because of the perceived value they gave despite their constant hostility to others. I do think you hit the nail on the head with "*really*" before the "highly productive editors". Not because Wikipedia failed them, but because Wikipedia became their life. In my experience, editors who spend their lives on Wikipedia or Commons, burning the midnight oil so you can't even work out what timezone they are in, uploading or categorising millions of photos or making hundreds of thousands of edits, end up being asked to leave. It's just not a sane or healthy thing to do. (Operating a bot account is another sure fire way). -- Colin°Talk 12:01, 14 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    On a related note, I do think too much value is given to the quantity of edits someone has made. Quantity of edits tells nothing about quality of edits. I have observed editors who, in my opinion, are using Wikipedia like it's a game where number of edits = points scored. It's hard to imagine it being an indication of good mental health when you see someone making hundreds of edits a day at all hours of the clock nearly every day of the year.
    Even if such an editor is doing productive tasks, if they are constantly acting in incivility, then perhaps the number of editors they scare away outweighs their productivity? Vontheri (talk) 07:26, 16 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Vontheri, Totally agree. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 22:12, 22 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    .. the number of editors they scare away outweighs their productivity ..

    Yep. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 00:12, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I believe it's somewhat situational. I'm a medical student who does some editing while studying things. In many cases, I find that pages are lacking expanded explanations or recent knowledge, and in this case it's better for me (or an undergraduate, or anyone else) to add content, provided it's well-sourced. But when there is an expert who knows more about the subject, I would immediately defer. Authority and expertise has its place, and ideally every bit of info on every medicine page would be written by specialist physicians. But there just aren't enough of them volunteering their time to expand Wikipedia, so that's not realistic. But we can make way when they do come around.
    For what it's worth, I've had no trouble as a newer editor, even when I make relatively large changes or ones I think may be controversial (of course, I cite these changes as best I can). Just-a-can-of-beans (talk) 19:26, 12 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    WikiProject Medicine was originally created by medical students. We've always got a handful of current and prospective medical students around, and they tend to be great contributors. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:58, 15 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    But when there is an expert who knows more about the subject, I would immediately defer ← I wouldn't be too deferential. Wikipedia has had some experts (even Nobel Prize winners) who have very odd ideas and are terrible at editing Wikipedia. Expertise at identifying and summarizing sources in an encyclopedic manner needn't correspond to subject-matter expertise. Bon courage (talk) 09:07, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I wouldn't let the few oddballs contaminate the basic principle. You know, if someone actually is a neurologist of many years experience, rather than a student who has only ever opened an introductory neurology textbook a few months ago. But a medical degree is not required nor is it a guarantee of wisdom over the entire topic domain. A cardiologist who last heard anything about epilepsy drugs in a 30 minute lecture in the early 1990s, for example. I wish we had more topic experts because to create a really great article (vs adding factoids or a couple of formulaic lead paragraphs) requires a lot of effort and source resources and a deep understanding of the topic. -- Colin°Talk 15:06, 28 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Just-a-can-of-beans ideally every bit of info on every medicine page would be written by specialist physicians
    I have to strongly disagree with that. One of the advantages of Wikipedia is that it allows people from diverse backgrounds and perspectives to contribute. If everything written about medicine were written by physicians then Wikipedia might as well just be a medical school textbook--or worse, articles written with the target audience being patients who are all assumed to read at a 5th grade level. There are countless ways to learn and be knowledge and wise about medicine (or any topic) besides formally holding a degree.
    That said, I would certainly hope that someone editing an article has at least intermediate understanding of the topic, and at least near-advanced understanding of the topic if it's a medical-related article. (minor edits such as correcting typos are an exception, obviously.) But there are countless ways of gaining advanced knowledge about medicine besides attending medical school or practicing as a physician.
    I've personally met M.D.s who didn't know what renin or pulse pressure were, another who didn't seem to understand how buccal administration works, as well as one who didn't know the difference between hypopnea and hypoxia, and another who didn't know that Cymbalta wasn't an SSRI, and, perhaps most shockingly, a very experienced M.D. with a high reputation who didn't even know the difference between phenotype and genotype. Those are just a few examples; I could go on forever... My point is that having a medical degree, or having any certain specific medical specialty, certainly does not infer infallibility, nor does it mean that someone who isn't a doctor isn't capable of knowing more about a given medical topic than someone who is a doctor. Doctors should certainly contribute to medical sections of Wikipedia, but so should lots of other sorts of people, and Wikipedia is stronger and more complete because of that diversity. Vontheri (talk) 19:39, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Colin I'm no fan of Wikipedia being used for class exercises, either. I think editing Wikipedia is something that should be done out of intrinsic motivation, and not for the purpose of getting some grade in some class. Articles written by students (warning: I'm hugely over-generalizing here) tend to be poorer-quality in more ways than one. Vontheri (talk) 19:10, 29 January 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Sorry for my late arrival to this discussion. For the last two falls (2022 and 2023) my Novembers have been taken up by fixing students edits from the University of Georgia Microbiology course (Wikipedia:Wiki Ed/University of Georgia/MIBO 3500 Introduction to Microbiology (Fall 2023)). My experience has not been great. To me it seems the students are just let loose: their mistakes go unchallenged by their course teachers and worse, their assigned articles are abandoned by the course after the students have completed their assignments. You would think the teachers would at least clean up after their students, but no. The students are only motivated by grades and will, well on at least one occasion, edit war to preserve their edits. Most students don't even know that "bacteria" is plural and that the species of bacteria and the diseases they cause are not the same thing. And this is a university level microbiology course! At the completion of the courses I am left feeling exploited by the university. (Rant over). Graham Beards (talk) 11:12, 6 February 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    How do we welcome new editors? There's an essay (much of which I wrote): WP:Encourage the newcomers. It includes all the empirical evidence I could find on the question (if you find more, please add it). On account of said evidence, I think adding T209797 to Huggle might also be pretty effective. HLHJ (talk) 02:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks HLHJ. That’s a great essay. I’m especially amazed by the graphs, for example:
    First message to new users (including vandals), by tool used. Reverts of new good-faith editors increased (from ~7% to ~20%) in 2007,[1] and new editor retention dropped sharply.[2]
    I agree with you that adding the { { citation needed } } feature to Huggle may help. It will need other features like { { medref inline } } as welll. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think other tags are a good idea, too; I commented on T209797 to suggest a general tool for adding inline point & span tags. Anyone can add a comment or token; adding specific ideas about use cases might be quite useful.
    I didn't actually make the graphs myself! It might be possible to remake that >decade-old graph live via Wikidata now. HLHJ (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep the graph needs update. The trend seemed to indicate that “Other bots” were becoming the major problem (not Huggle) in 2011? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think Huggle is the problem; semi-automated editing countered an existential threat. Cluebot is, I think, also part of the solution; the third of those 2011 new users who were reverted by Cluebot were probably almost all vandals. Because the evidence says "inline-tagged new editors stay, reverted new editors leave", I think the problem is that it's now hard to inline-tag noob edits. This is not an intrinsic problem. It's hard to imagine a scenario where newcomers don't need semiautomated scrutiny. It's easy to imagine an interface where adding "cn" to a new edit is a single click.
    The longstanding lack of semiautomated tagging capabilities is influencing our culture. Pre-2007, citation-needed tagging was very common. It was policy to tag only stuff you thought was unverifiable, and delete it only after giving others a chance to verify it (BLP excepted, it's still policy). Readers knew to distrust anything with a [[citation needed]] tag; it was part of pop culture.
    Now, an increasing number of editors think they are expected to revert all probably-true but unsourced content (even on medieval Japanese furniture). It's rare to tag it first or talk to the contributing editor afterwards. I've been working on an explanatory template, contribs welcome.
    The current interface marks new editors as pass/fail, and never as "imperfect, but means well and should improve". Whether a new editor will stay depends mostly on the fate of their first three or four edits. It's more a learning cliff than a learning curve. HLHJ (talk) 02:15, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    References

    1. ^ File:Desirable newcomer reverts over time.png
    2. ^ Meta:Research:The Rise and Decline

    How not to deal with problem 'new' editors: a case study[edit]

    So we've got an aggressive 'new' editor and likely sock-puppet spamming terrible sources (preprints and primaries) all authored by ERG Plini into multiple articles (e.g. Tyrosine, Red meat, Locus coeruleus). They get encouraged by Dustfreeworld with misinformation like this.[13] So no, unless this is the royal "we", we the community on Wikipedia do not think

    • WP:IAR is the "one most important" rule (and especially telling problem new editors this seems like egging them on to create further problems)
    • that WP:MEDRS "allows us to add the main conclusion of a primary study to the article"
    • that if we "find any statement that we don’t agree and doubt about its accuracy" we "usually" tag it, especially if it's misinformation
    • we should add poor/unreliable sources to article's External links

    Discouraging good faith, viable new editors is a problem; encouraging the disruption of problem editors is as much a problem too. Bon courage (talk) 02:32, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you for replying to this never ending thread started by me.
    I would like everyone to read carefully the context of the content dispute:
    I have replied to your post there. Yep, I saw edit warring, warnings/threatening, WP:WikiBullying and WP:BITE phenomenons/behaviours very similar to those I mentioned above in my very first post.
    On the other hand, we have some other users which have a very different approach when dealing with content that they don’t agree with, which I really appreciate. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 02:54, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Looks like another user is deleting some of the new comments on that article’s talk page. Those who are still interested in this boring discussion may refer to this: [14] --Dustfreeworld (talk) 03:39, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Now at: WP:ANI#"you are censoring me in a fascist way". Bon courage (talk) 03:47, 26 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Just for the record [15] --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:08, 8 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    How do we work with our newly-joined colleagues?[edit]

    Do we work with them by ... WP:4RR … warnings ... following untrue claims (e.g.,[16] [17]) … and WP:Tendentious editing?” @Zefr

    And,

    --Dustfreeworld (talk) 23:14, 11 April 2024 (UTC); 19:26, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    :I don't think that this is the right place to collect information about disagreements with a single editor. WhatamIdoing (talk) 03:58, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    Promotional edits relating to Cord blood.[edit]

    I've recently got done with reverting a large amount of promotional editing relating to private cord blood banks across several articles, from a couple of single-purpose IP editors. These edits included non-WP:MEDRS sourcing, namedropping of particular companies, and cherry-picking quotes from various bodies to misrepresent their support for cord blood treatments. Here's a list of articles I found problems with:

    I think it is very likely that this is undisclosed paid editing. Please consider putting the affected articles on your watchlist to keep an eye out for more promo. - MrOllie (talk) 16:27, 22 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    probably [24]--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:17, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Gustatory hyperhidrosis[edit]

    After expanding Gustatory hyperhidrosis I'm starting to notice that most of the classification systems seem to list it as a synonym for Frey's syndrome. Before i make a redirect can anyone else find a clear distinction between the two.

    Orpha entry, NORD entry, ICD11 classification, OMIM entry, MESH ID, Disease database entry. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 04:53, 28 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    redirect--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 01:29, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The Core Contest Returns![edit]

    Hi all—The Core Contest returns! Leaving this here:

    The Core Contest—Wikipedia's most exciting contest—returns again this year from April 15 to May 31. The goal: to improve vital or other core articles, with a focus on those in the worst state of disrepair. There is £300 of prize money divided among editors who provide the "best additive encyclopedic value". Signups are open now. Cheers from the judges, Femke, Casliber, Aza24. – Aza24 (talk) 23:30, 31 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    thanks for post--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:16, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    {{WPMED welcome}} improvement consensus needed before implementation[edit]

    What do you think of my changes to {{WPMED welcome}} at Template:WPMED welcome/sandbox? I made it to maintain the original message's intent while streamlining some sections to be more concise and for better readability. Can I WP:BEBOLD and make the change? waddie96 ★ (talk) 15:55, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The word count was reduced from 288 to 270. Do you think there is an opportunity to make it even shorter? I've read recommendations that e-mail messages not be longer than five sentences, if you want them to be read. That might be shorter than we can realistically manage, but it might be worth trying.
    I don't normally use this template myself, so I would defer to those who are using it. WhatamIdoing (talk) 16:43, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes, but I'd also like it to be even shorter, if possible no more than 200 words. If we remove the clauses on primary sources we save 28 more words (there's already a wiki-link to secondary sources, which in turn has a link to primary source in its second sentence). Draken Bowser (talk) 17:20, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    it looks good--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 18:08, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I’ve managed to get it down to 216 words, and write it in prose instead of the layout that was bulleted. Let me know what you think? waddie96 ★ (talk) 22:02, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Also: If anyone knows what the parser function would be to link to the posting users’ talk page at drop a note on my talk page waddie96 ★ (talk) 22:06, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Nice work, I didn't even notice how much the bullet points bothered me until you sacked them. Would it be better to say "..we'd be thrilled.."? Draken Bowser (talk) 15:33, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
     Done: → "we’d be thrilled" waddie96 ★ (talk) 15:18, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I appreciate that you have shortened it, but some of the new intro is overly effusive and wordy, with some unnecessarily puffy adjectives (like diverse, extensive, dedicated). It's good to welcome new editors even if one is not yet thrilled with their contribs, and I would be unlikelty to use such an effusive, wordy template. I suggest asking Colin to tighten the wording before implementing. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 16:25, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I was thinking of making it in a more encyclopaedic tone, if that’s what you mean, with less puffery. But the initial welcome template seemed to want to bestow a sense of a personal greeting, hence I kept the puffy words. waddie96 ★ (talk) 15:14, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    @Colin: If you wouldn’t mind taking a look and I’d appreciate if you’d consider tightening the wording per SandyGeorgia. Thanks. waddie96 ★ (talk) 15:16, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yes ... thrilled, dedicated, diverse, extensive ... none are needed, all are overly effusive, and the page is generally short on the most helpful info ... it could point at MEDRS as well as WP:MEDMOS. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 15:39, 3 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks for the ping. I don't go around dropping these templates and think they should probably reflect the personality/style of those using them. So I'd rather those who want to send them worded it. But I agree with Sandy that some of the adjectives aren't great. Not sure all of us are "dedicated", for example, or that "boasts a diverse range of expertise" is accurate. Anyone can edit. I'm not sure about trying to explain MEDRS in a few words, with jargon about primary and secondary sources is going to enlighten many rather than just confused. But I don't know what do to instead rather than just link to the guidelines (e.g., WP:WHYMEDRS is way too long and rambling and mostly just one long departed guy's opinions). -- Colin°Talk 09:06, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    TikTok-A-Thon for Trans Healthcare[edit]

    Hi all

    I just finished writing TikTok-A-Thon for Trans Healthcare, I would really appreciate some help with it, also please add it to your watchlist, I know trans related pages get trolls, vandals etc.

    Thanks very much

    John Cummings (talk) 19:34, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Notability of 2024 dengue outbreaks[edit]

    Are the 2024 outbreaks of dengue notable enough to create a new article? --Imconfused3456 (talk) 20:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    To create its own article I don’t think it’s necessary, it is covered at Dengue fever outbreaks#2024. waddie96 ★ (talk) 22:09, 1 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Consensus to list named telehealth facilities[edit]

    I removed a list of some telehealth facilities from the Medical abortion article. Would other folks please weigh in as to whether they should be restored or not. Thank you. The discussion is at Talk:Medical abortion#Recent reversion - claim of advertising. --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 06:32, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The edits were at [25] and [26] --Whywhenwhohow (talk) 06:36, 2 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Fibroma of tendon sheath -- What is this condition?[edit]

    I am writing for an American Hand Surgeon in practice for over 30 years : "The problem I have with this one is that this a diagnosis I have NEVER made. We need to understand if this is another name for something I do treat, if it's rare, etc. What's going on?" Ischyros7 (talk) 03:27, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Fibroma of tendon sheath seem to be pretty rare and aren't very well described in literature so it makes sense that you haven't see one before. Wikipedia isn't really the best place to be asking medical type questions however I can direct you to some more clinical resources on the topic. Pathology Outlines does a pretty good job of summing up the more technical details of the condition.[27] Radiopeadia is more generalized and easier to understand but gives some key info on it as well.[28] CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 03:38, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    See my response here: Talk:Fibroma of tendon sheath. Jaredroach (talk) 16:51, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Spam/UPE ring on medical articles[edit]

    Hi all, I've just blocked a slew of accounts that I detected with checkuser making edits to medical/human biology articles that range from weird to outright promotional. The goal appears to be plug particular books and journal articles, though some of the edits are just nonsensical. The obvious rubbish seems to have been removed quickly but I hoped knowledgeable folks here would keep an eye out for the more subtle promotion. Some of the articles that came up repeatedly:

    It shouldn't be too hard to follow the breadcrumbs from the blocked accounts there to other articles if anyone's interested. If you see any more accounts like this, please report them to AIV or ping me. @Kimen8: FYI, since you seem to have reverted quite a few of these. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 15:25, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Thanks so much. I trust you saw the discussion on User talk:Arjayay § "Spamming the same undergrad book"? Kimen8 (talk) 18:19, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    If you have a bunch of new accounts adding information from the same textbook, it's possible that this is a Wikipedia club or an editing event at their school. WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:25, 4 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Unlikely. The account that triggered the investigation and several others were spamming commercial websites as well. HJ Mitchell | Penny for your thoughts? 09:03, 5 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    MEDRS-related RfC[edit]

    Note there is a RfC at

    Which may be of interest to members of this noticeboard as it contains question about the application of MEDRS and invokes an 'Opposing view' for certain syndromes. Bon courage (talk) 02:50, 6 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Navel fetishism[edit]

    Hi - this article seems to have attracted a number of dubious claims / sources. I tried to delete a number of unreliable sources, but I think this article needs some serious editing to make sure statements are backed up by WP:MEDRS-worthy sources, which definitely isn't the case now. Thank you! GnocchiFan (talk) 21:13, 7 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    per the talk page you might want to post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Sexology and sexuality--Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:42, 12 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Sources for brain health and pollution / Vascular dementia[edit]

    In case anyone is interested:

    A long list of sources for pollution and neurological conditions. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 21:23, 8 April 2024 (UTC);03:39, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    I think we need some help. One of the sources being preferred in Vascular dementia is apparently a 24-year-old newsletter "article" from a local medical club. Just having someone tag or remove the outdated material (twenty-four years old!) would be helpful. There are only five current editors watching this page. WhatamIdoing (talk) 02:58, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The Cass Review[edit]

    The Cass Review is an important and much anticipated "independent review of gender identity services for children and young people" led by Hilary Cass, which was commissioned by NHS England in 2020 and is due to report tomorrow (10th April 2024). It is likely to generate a lot of news coverage, but hopefully also some professional responses too. The Wikipedia article was only created yesterday by User:Void if removed so likely isn't on many watchlists. It would be good if editors here could help over the coming days. Thanks. -- Colin°Talk 13:27, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Chronic functional abdominal pain[edit]

    I'm currently updating the page Chronic functional abdominal pain and I have questions about the article title.

    The ICD11 lists it as functional abdominal pain syndrome.[30] However several article discuss renaming it to Centrally mediated abdominal pain syndrome.[31]

    I'm just wondering what name would be more appropriate here. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 23:11, 9 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Since CMAP is mentioned in the first sentence of the lede it's probably not an issue worth worrying about, but WP:MEDTITLE guidance is always worth a read. CV9933 (talk) 11:29, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yeah the main problem I have with the current title is that it doesn't distinguish it as a syndrome or disease and that may lead to confusion. According to WP:MEDTITLE "The article title should be the scientific or recognised medical name that is most commonly used in recent, high-quality, English-language medical sources, rather than a lay term (unscientific or slang name) or an historical eponym that has been superseded." and the ICD-11 is recommended for disease names. The only thing is that the ICD-11 uses the term "functional abdominal pain syndrome" but newer literature including the Rome criteria uses the term " Centrally mediated abdominal pain syndrome" CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 19:13, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    These types of discussions often lead to those who would propose that when searched, title A produced X hits and title B returned XXX hits therefore title B should be used. But MEDTITLE also tells us that some terminology is in flux and recently proposed names may not yet be widespread in adoption, from which one might infer that there is no rush and doing nothing for now is probably the best course of action. CV9933 (talk) 19:42, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    My only problem with the current title is that it isn't commonly used in literature and isn't classified under any of the disease databases (for lack of better terms) that we use. WP:MEDTITTLE also specifies that "The article title should be the scientific or recognised medical name" which isn't true for Chronic functional abdominal pain. I think it would make more sense to rename it to "functional abdominal pain syndrome" as that seems to be the more recognized term and is what's used by the ICD-11 and because as you mentioned proposed names might not be widespread. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 20:31, 10 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    You could be bold and just change it with your rationale in the edit summary, or propose a move on the article talk page. If the latter, then use it as an opportunity to gain consensus to update the title to CAMPS. CV9933 (talk) 08:49, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thank you for your help! I’ll change it tonight when I have the time to make sure all the names match. CursedWithTheAbilityToDoTheMath (talk) 18:28, 11 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    How do we welcome new medical editors? [2][edit]

    Tags, reverts, etc.[edit]

    I believe this:

    and the subsequent comments,e.g.,

    warrant more discussion. I don't have time to come back to it yet, but perhaps others will do. Aside, I don't think the issue "How do we welcome new medical editors?" has been completely resolved. Thanks. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 05:03, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Copied and continued from the closed thread above:

    How do we welcome new editors? There's an essay (much of which I wrote): WP:Encourage the newcomers. It includes all the empirical evidence I could find on the question (if you find more, please add it). On account of said evidence, I think adding T209797 to Huggle might also be pretty effective. HLHJ (talk) 02:37, 10 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Thanks HLHJ. That’s a great essay. I’m especially amazed by the graphs, for example:
    First message to new users (including vandals), by tool used. Reverts of new good-faith editors increased (from ~7% to ~20%) in 2007,[1] and new editor retention dropped sharply.[2]
    I agree with you that adding the { { citation needed } } feature to Huggle may help. It will need other features like { { medref inline } } as welll. --Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:54, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I think other tags are a good idea, too; I commented on T209797 to suggest a general tool for adding inline point & span tags. Anyone can add a comment or token; adding specific ideas about use cases might be quite useful.
    I didn't actually make the graphs myself! It might be possible to remake that >decade-old graph live via Wikidata now. HLHJ (talk) 18:40, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Yep the graph needs update. The trend seemed to indicate that “Other bots” were becoming the major problem (not Huggle) in 2011? --Dustfreeworld (talk) 18:49, 11 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    I don't think Huggle is the problem; semi-automated editing countered an existential threat. Cluebot is, I think, also part of the solution; the third of those 2011 new users who were reverted by Cluebot were probably almost all vandals. Because the evidence says "inline-tagged new editors stay, reverted new editors leave", I think the problem is that it's now hard to inline-tag noob edits. This is not an intrinsic problem. It's hard to imagine a scenario where newcomers don't need semiautomated scrutiny. It's easy to imagine an interface where adding "cn" to a new edit is a single click.
    The longstanding lack of semiautomated tagging capabilities is influencing our culture. Pre-2007, citation-needed tagging was very common. It was policy to tag only stuff you thought was unverifiable, and delete it only after giving others a chance to verify it (BLP excepted, it's still policy). Readers knew to distrust anything with a [[citation needed]] tag; it was part of pop culture.
    Now, an increasing number of editors think they are expected to revert all probably-true but unsourced content (even on medieval Japanese furniture). It's rare to tag it first or talk to the contributing editor afterwards. I've been working on an explanatory template, contribs welcome.
    The current interface marks new editors as pass/fail, and never as "imperfect, but means well and should improve". Whether a new editor will stay depends mostly on the fate of their first three or four edits. It's more a learning cliff than a learning curve. HLHJ (talk) 02:15, 14 March 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    References

    1. ^ File:Desirable newcomer reverts over time.png
    2. ^ Meta:Research:The Rise and Decline

    Cass Review[edit]

    Being discussed above. Bon courage (talk) 12:18, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    Hi all

    A major review into trans healthcare, the Cass Review, has been published in the UK, I'd really appreciate if people with an understanding of medical research could read it, its currently a very edited article with quite high traffic. To put it mildly the report is being used by politicians and press to push for restrictions to healthcare provisions. The report has been criticised by academics and trans groups in the UK for issues with both its research methodology and its recommendations, but I don't have experience in writing about this kind of thing on Wikipedia.

    Thanks

    John Cummings (talk) 11:00, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    hi, I could be wrong but if you look two/three spots up its the same post, --Ozzie10aaaa (talk) 12:10, 13 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

    Question re medical terminology[edit]

    There seems to be a debate over medical wording over at Talk:Death from laughter#"atonia" - link is broken, and word meaning?. Thought members of this WikiProject might be interested in this discussion, as I don't know how to rephrase the sentence to be clearer to the reader. – GnocchiFan (talk) 09:55, 14 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Thank you[edit]

    Hi! I hope this is the right venue for this feedback. I have chronic medical problems that were slowly destroying my life, and none of my doctors could figure out what was going on or what to do about it. I have now identified some of my conditions and found treatments that help a great deal, and my doctors and I are working to understand my illness more clearly and improve my symptoms further. I finally get to start living a real life again, and I couldn't have done it without the tireless efforts of WikiProject Medicine contributors. I will be grateful forever, please keep up the great work. 174.21.188.119 (talk) 23:16, 15 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Trodusquemine[edit]

    I recently reverted some major changes to trodusquemine that a new editor made to this article because I thought that they were one-sided. Another editor has now restored those changes. I notice that there seems to be a history of conflict of interest problems and sockpuppetry associated with the article and that the most recent editor's username matches the last name of the lead author of newly added references. So maybe some more experienced editors can have a look? Thank you. Reba16 (talk) 01:10, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

    Rolled back, and COI Welcome template added to ZASLOFF's talk page, given that Zasloff is an author of the cited article(s). The revision was also much worse than the original. Klbrain (talk) 09:35, 16 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]
    Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Medicine&oldid=1219200240"