User talk:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro

The dufus' guide

Topic selection

• Pick your topic wisely!
• Consider picking an existing article (with significant page views) for ease and maximum impact.
• Creating a new article can be fantastic, but you have to make sure it is notable and worthy of its own page
• Possible topics

Things to know

• Watchlist your article. Log in to check your watchlist at least once a week and respond to comments. Logging in will automatically notify you if you have a message on your user talk page.
• You can edit just about anything here. Think you can improve this page? Then it!
• An outline can be helpful for you to organize your detailed thoughts on a specific subject, but readers don't need to see subsections at every point of your personal outline
• Knowledge of different "spaces". "Article", "Article talk", "User", "User talk", "Wikipedia", "Wikipedia talk", "Template", "Template talk"
• WP:REFNAME

Doing or not doing things

• Be competent. Don't publish gigantic factual errors... Protists aren't viruses... "No information is better than wrong information in medicine" says one editor who edits medical content. (incorporate a disincentive for publishing factual inaccuracies?)
• Do copy everything every time before you click Save page. It depends on your internet connection, but there have been multiple times I've completely lost something long I've worked on because the edit wasn't saved. You've been warned!
• Please add red links that look like this where there should be a link to an existing article that doesn't yet exist! Red links help Wikipedia by pointing out which articles are needed.
• Don't say things that could become outdated in a reasonable amount of time, such as "current research". Instead, say "as of 2011, research..." Otherwise someone will just have to come along and tag your current with. See WP:REALTIME
• Don't publish an article on the same topic under another another title. That creates a bit of a complicated mess. Or if you inadvertently do publish in this way, please help clean up the mess. Thanks!
• Don't publish an article on an idea if it is not factual and up to date. If this idea is just from a book write a book article in the first place and attribute things to the author.
• If your article gets deleted, don't just repost it, because that'll make it eligible for a speedy delete.
• Wikipedia is not a not a how-to manual
• Yes, it just so happens that someone could revert your 5 paragraphs (don't worry every version is saved). They might have had a good reason (see link in previous comment to see what Wikipedia is not). If you do a good job and only add encyclopedic things, however, all should be well.
• Please don't publish biomedical information without following WP:MEDRS, because then me or someone else will have to go behind you to fix it, and Wikipedia's quality will diminish in the meantime
• Pay attention to article layout, an introduction (WP:LEAD) and/or at least a definition (WP:First sentence) should exist at the top of the page.
• WP:HEADINGS
• We're not writing essays. So...
  • Don't ask questions with prose, this isn't an essay.
  • Don't use overly colorful language. Encyclopedias can use interesting words, but we're not writing essays here.
  • Don't start an article with with "Over 34 years ago"
  • Encyclopedias don't typically say who or what about the research. "Shooster and Booster found..." or "A study found..." is almost always unnecessary. Just state the facts, please. (An exception would be foundational studies of historical importance. Then consider placing them in a History section along with a secondary source to prove to readers it has historical importance. Just citing the primary article itself is discouraged.)
  • You may have talked to Shooster. Shooster may have taught you everything you know. That's great. Readers don't care. Readers want the facts! =)
  • Don't cite you talking to Shooster. Encyclopedia's don't do that.
• Consider contacting me or Lori instead of professor Potter if you run into trouble. i think he gets about 50 emails a day. There is an "email this user" option on Wikipedia (on the left side when you're at someone's user or user talk page), though i prefer if you use my user talk page (which automatically emails me).
• Don't capitalize section headings or your article title
• Don't repeat the title of your article in section headings, it's unnecessary!
• Don't harm Wikipedia (decrease the quality of its content) just because you think you'll get points for a class
• Don't waste volunteer Wikipedians' time. They are volunteers. Wasting their time by having them fix your potential harm to Wikipedia is a wiki-sin.
• If your topic isn't important, and others aren't likely to edit it, and it will just likely go without being updated, Wikipedia is probably better off without it. Find another topic. Try to to work on an article you think will get do the most good[1]
• Know stuff (or constantly refer back to) the cheatsheet
• See WP:REFSPACE. That way you know exactly where to place your "ref tags", these guys: <ref></ref> So in articles, when you cite a fact,^[1] there shouldn't be any spaces.^[2][3] That's the "right way." This would be "wrong": see the space after the comma, ^[1] and the period? ^{[2] [3]} (And how there must be a space between the ref tags if this was your article? Don't do that.^{[Biosthmors is mostly right just do what he says]}
• See also sections go above references, which go above external link sections, see this example.
• Please don't try to predict the future clinical applications of anything, see WP:CRYSTAL
• Add categories
• If you wanna revert someone's edit to your article (even if they removed your contribution) try to resist the urge (if it exists) to immediately revert them. consider taking it to talk first (see WP:BRD for details)
• Don't do anything on this list because any of these things may happen 1) you could make yourself look less intelligent than you are 2) you could do disservice to your subject matter 3) you would waste another persons time. unfortunately, wikipedia isn't particularly user friendly, and Wikipedians are volunteers. Therefore, they have devoted a lot of time to figuring out how things work here. They do not like to clean up after people who appear not to care about the encyclopedia by the evidence of their contributions.
• Extra credit? there is dyk, GA, pr. you could ask for my comments. i could provide them. perhaps Potter could reward you.
• List sandbox assignments, peer review comments online
• On Wikipeida, try to not take criticism or praise too seriously. You should actively want people to criticize your work so you can make it better. Sometimes people submit their articles to journals they doubt they'll get published in just for that critical feedback. And ideally, you should be proud of your own work that you publish here, instead of needing to hear other people tell you "good job". I may come by and just leave a couple critical comments on your talk page after you publish your article. See if you can address them or tell me (nicely) why I might be wrong.

Professor specific

• One way forward in this dilemma is to get (at least in the med realm) the profs to understand MEDRS, and get them to include as one of their first steps in the assignment for students to list the sources they plan to use on article talk, and do that relative to WP:MEDMOS (suggested article organization). For example, I plan to use X source to write about Diagnosis of condition Y. That will allow us to head off a lot of wasted time at the pass
• If plagiarism is spotted then...?

Your article is going to look like this when you have the edit window open:

Currently a mess

This is where you put a short summary of things already included in the article. See WP:LEAD for more details. {{Under construction|notread=true}} == This is would be the name your first section == A nice paragraph () might go here. ===A subsection to your first section=== == Here's would be the name of your second section == *this is a first bullet *second bullet *last bullet [[File:Brain coral.jpg|thumb|left|Color slide of brain coral]] #first numbered bullet #second numbered bullet #third ==All about citations== First citation, which I am only using once.<ref>Camihort, K. (2009). Students as Creators of Knowledge: When Wikipedia Is the Assignment. Athletic Therapy Today, 14(2), 30-34.</ref> Second citation, and I'm going to use it again later. <ref name="chiang">Chiang, C. D., Lewis, C. L., Wright, M. E., Agapova, S. S., Akers, B. B., Azad, T. D., & ... Hsiung, S. S. (2012). Learning Chronobiology by Improving Wikipedia. Journal Of Biological Rhythms, 27(4), 333-336. doi:10.1177/0748730412449578</ref> Here's the second time that I am using the chiang citation. <ref name="chiang"/> Another way. ==References== {{reflist}}

AFC or not?

My initial feeling is that this program should be done through AFC instead of having the students create new articles directly. Can you tell us what the "score" was for this round of article creations? How many articles created, how many were deleted, how many SHOULD be deleted/need a lot of work, how many were OK? The answers to these questions might influence my opinion. Cheers... Zad68 20:40, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

(Copied from my Talk page, with additions:)

(In response to my original objection to having students create articles in the mainspace, and suggesting AFC:)

I'm not keen on encouraging students to go through more wiki-bureacracy. I'd rather focus my energy on encouraging them to be competent. Please feel free to discuss your wisdom or concerns at User talk:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro in a new section, if you wish! Or at the WP:Education noticeboard. Best. Biosthmors (talk) 20:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Sure, replied at Dufus. You might not be keen on wiki-bureaucracy, I understand that. But, it's a two-way street: many experienced editors are not keen on having to deal with awful articles that require a lot of our time and energy to fix, or shepherd through AFD. Zad68 20:46, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Yep. That's why I'm involved! Biosthmors (talk) 20:44, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

The AFC is actually a nice compromise. And skipping AFC and going right to creating an article is actually worse for your students. New editors posting articles to the AFC space are generally handled more gently, and the students can "own" the pre-mainspace draft. Mainspace articles can get knocked around in the rough and tumble pretty hard. I still think AFC is the right space for this. Zad68 20:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

All I know is that it created confusion in the class about how to publish an article. They have a deadline to publish. I also think AfC can create delays to publish, right? If it gets knocked around, so be it? I'm very ignorant of how AfC works, by the way. Biosthmors (talk) 20:54, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

It's hardly any more complicated than creating an article in Mainspace. In fact, it's probably easier: 1) Go to WP:AFC, 2) Hit "Create an article now!", 3) Follow the directions. It'll end up in the AFC queue. It's designed for new users, and I think it has the added advantage of allowing a non-registered IP user to create an article. Check it out... Zad68 21:00, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

But isn't there no queue the other way? If they alredy have a draft in their sandbox just copying and pasting is immediate, right? Biosthmors (talk) 21:05, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

That's interesting about the IP thing. But each student in the class is required to edit under their real name. Biosthmors (talk) 21:10, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

(edit conflict) As you suggested, Biosthmors, I posted my general feeling about this idea at Wikipedia:Education noticeboard. But I think Zad68 has a great idea here and I think you should strongly consider it. At AfC the students would have ownership of their material, nobody would edit it or change it. They would be shielded from proposals for deletion or other negative interactions. And the folks at AfC go out of their way to be nice to newcomers. Yes, there is a backlog and the article might not be promoted to mainspace by a given deadline, but that's OK. The professor could grade what they have written right there at AfC. It shouldn't be a requirement that the article get accepted to mainspace, which might never happen with some of them (not every student term paper is suitable for inclusion in an international encyclopedia), or might not happen in time for their grade. The professor would grade on the quality of the article as he or she judges it, not on whether it makes it to mainspace. Please think about it. --MelanieN (talk) 21:18, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Required to edit under their real name? Yikes! Please see Wikipedia:Username policy#Real names and possibly User:Curtis Clark#Note to new editors from academia. --MelanieN (talk) 21:22, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I have seen a couple inappropriate reverts, but I don't think WP:OWN is a major issue for this class. I can look into AfC more, but I'm not convinced. Being friendly is fine is great, which is why I made myself available to the class. I don't want the class to try to write term papers. I want them to write encyclopedia articles. Biosthmors (talk) 21:26, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Yes. The professor wants to encourage quality writing by emphasizing that anything they publish in academeia will be attached to their real name anyway. That's reasonable, in my opinion. Biosthmors (talk) 21:28, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

And what happens if some of their productions turn out to be more like term papers? Will you take charge of proposing them for deletion? Or will the rest of us need to find them and evaluate their suitability in Wikipedia? Look, I'm not trying to be a WP:DICK here, but the professor's idea of what is an encyclopedic topic might not be the same as Wikipedia's; some may simply not meet the criteria for inclusion. And others, even if well written and about a significant subject, might be better merged into an existing article rather than staying as a standalone article. Do you make that judgment, or who does? --MelanieN (talk) 21:38, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Trust me I'm working on this. You're preaching to the choir. And I have most of that written down on User:Biosthmors/Intro Neuro. Biosthmors (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

P.S. For an example of what can happen if a student's topic is deemed inappropriate for mainspace, see this: Wikipedia:Articles for deletion/Brain-disabling psychiatric medical treatment; does this strike you as a good result for this project, or a good experience for the student involved? By posting first to AfC this kind of thing would be prevented. --MelanieN (talk) 21:47, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not so confident in AfC. Wikipedia:Articles_for_deletion/Goldilocks_Mastectomy came through it. I thought it was absurd. I even went to the AfC person hoping that they would clean up their mistake but no. I sent it off to AfD. Biosthmors (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Melanie's hitting at something very important here, what is the actual goal of the exercise? Is it to get experience writing something for public consumption, or really to write and publish something? If it's the former, AFC is the way to go, for all the reasons being pointed out. Zad68 22:48, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

To improve Wikipedia? Biosthmors (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I wanted to correct my own poor choice of word here, the not-yet-accepted AFC articles are not in a "queue" as I said, but rather a "pool". Any one of them may be worked on and accepted or rejected at any time, it is not necessary for them to be worked on in time order. Right now there are over 1,000 articles in the AFC pool, and if you posted a list of the class's AFCs at WT:MED we could look at them right away. Zad68 22:47, 5 December 2012 (UTC)

Or for that matter, the project's Ambassador could clear them, right? Anyone can forward an article from AFC, it doesn't take an admin. Maybe the Ambassador would rather not be in the situation of sitting in judgment on the papers, but they could recruit a partner specifically to review the papers in that one project. Because in any such batch of papers, there ARE going to be some that either are not about an encyclopedic topic, or shouldn't be a standalone article - and I don't think it's right to toss them all into mainspace and leave it to the community to remove the inappropriate ones. BTW I may not have made clear, Biosthmors, that my comments are not directed at this particular assignment; I am talking about the concept in general. That's why I wanted to discuss it in a more general forum, but you really wanted us to come here. --MelanieN (talk) 01:21, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

@Zad. Or at least keep a list of their sandbox work. That's something to think about for next Fall. Biosthmors (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I don't have the time or expertise to "clear" 70 articles. I do have the time to work with the class to improve their article selection and assignment, however. That's how Wikipedia works. All editors publish whatever then it's up to us to decide if it's bad. I'm uneasy with the idea of making students a second-class citizen. Biosthmors (talk) 03:23, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm not suggesting they become a second-class citizen. Many students will write fine articles; you don't have to be an adult to edit Wikipedia, and some of our longtime editors, even administrators, are younger than these students. What I am uneasy with, is the idea that every student is REQUIRED to write an article, whether or not they are so inclined, whether or not they have the skill or the willingness to learn the skill, whether or not their heart is in it. Many of them will do a fine job; some will not; but all of them will create and post Wikipedia articles, because it's required for their grade. Wikipedia is supposed to be written and edited by volunteers, but these students are not volunteers. (I wish you had been able to work with them on article selection. I'm sure you realize that some of the topics they chose are not good Wikipedia topics - but you weren't part of that process, so you are stuck with them. You might talk to the prof about, getting you involved earlier next time.) --MelanieN (talk) 04:24, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

I'm right along with you. I share your concerns. I'm working to make next round much improved. Biosthmors (talk) 04:40, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Zad, perhaps you haven't seen User:Biosthmors/Intro_Neuro#Names_and_article_titles. That's the list for the class. Biosthmors (talk) 20:50, 6 December 2012 (UTC) I've brought it up at WT:MED before so I thought everyone was aware of it. Biosthmors (talk) 20:51, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Sorry, I have Selective Attention Disorder!!  :-P I looked through the list and clicked on a bunch of the articles, and I now respectfully withdraw my concerns! Generally these articles are better-written and better-sourced than the average Wikipedia article, which are most often about things like "Ke$sha's upcoming album I heard some guy talking about in the elevator". My concerns were the same as Melanie's. It doesn't sit well with me that they have to write an article, but the bottom line is that overall the results aren't a problem, or aren't a bigger problem than any other batch of 70 articles. Bad articles will get fixed or deleted, or at the very least, ignored. The good ones will get better. Maybe we'll have a new legion every year of enthusiastic article creators, because the editors who like it will stay and the ones who don't will leave. Have at it... Zad68 21:28, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

=) And even if you do more research and thinking to conclude that the set might have been a net minus for Wikipedia, I hope that next Fall it will be a net plus! Biosthmors (talk) 21:36, 6 December 2012 (UTC)

Neuroscience and race

Hi, I've asked about this article at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine‎ because an article on such a subject with so many primary sources doesn't seem right to me, and may be WP:SYN, but I could be wrong. Thanks, MathewTownsend (talk) 23:38, 11 December 2012 (UTC)