User talk:NeuroJoe/BI481 Spring 2011

General comments for everybody

I have seen some initial efforts in main space. Since there are and will be some common mistakes I will make here comments that may probably be of use for all the students in the class. Some of this comments are copy and paste from comments made at some of the students or projects talk pages, so may not be of use word by word for all cases:--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

Sections

• The Wikipedia manual of style for medicine articles (See WP:MEDMOS) has a proposal of organization into sections for different kind of articles (i.e: recommended sections for an article on a disease, or in an anatomy article, etc.). Following such proposals will make articles consistent with other wikipedia articles, and will also help you to organize them without forgetting important data.--Garrondo (talk) 14:17, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

• A "conclussion" section is great for an essay, but not really suitable for an encyclopedia. It would better be integrated in article or eliminated if present.--Garrondo (talk) 14:40, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

• Section "further reading" are quite extensive in some cases. With the quantity and quality of references in the article that you are adding it seems a bit redundant. Readings would be better integrated in article as references, eliminated, or moved to the talk page of the article. --Garrondo (talk) 14:44, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

• In see also section there should not be articles that have already appeared and linked in the article: Policy is that when a link already appears in the article it should not appear also in the see also section. In this sense "see also" is the place for connected links not mentioned in text. Similarly there is no point in having "red links" in see also section, since the intention of the section its to point to other "existing articles".--Garrondo (talk) 12:37, 28 March 2011 (UTC)

Style of citations

• have you heard of Diberri's template? It is a tool that makes formatting of references in wikipedia really easy (and nicer and more error-free than hand formatting). You search for an article in pubmed (although it also works with isbn numbers and other kind of data), copy the pubmed id, paste it into the tool, check the "add ref tag" and copy and paste the result to the article. For example the pmid for the article "Eye movements in a familial vestibulocerebellar disorder" is 8355816 (See PMID 8355816). I have copied the number into the diberris tool, ticked the add ref tag box, and pasted the result into the vestibulocerebellar syndrome as an example. While not mandatory it might be a good idea than you used this themplate.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• Also as a minor comment: inline citations in wikipedia go after and not before the full stop of the sentence, there is no space between the full stop and the ref, and after the ref goes a space before the next sentence. A correct example would be "Hello world, I feel great today. Today is sunny."--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• Do not cite or link a book to google books. Instead include the whole data of the book in a template. (You can do it easily by adding the isbn number to Diberri's tool)--Garrondo (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)

• Citing several times the same reference: When the same reference is cited several times it should appear only once in the references section. See an example on how to do it: before, difference, after. (In this case I only fixed one as an example).--Garrondo (talk) 15:54, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

• There should not be internal links in the references section.--Garrondo (talk) 06:57, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Type of sources

• Take a look at WP:MEDRS which talks about the best sources for medical-scientific articles in WP. Secondary reliable sources (such as reviews in scientific journals or textbooks) are preferred over primary ones (non-review articles in journals). Websites in most situations are far from being ideal sources. My recommendation would be that you searched for basic text books (neuro-anatomy books for example in the case of glia limitans or pia mater) and used it/them instead of websites and primary articles, at least for the most general facts of the article.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
• At this point sources of most of the articles are not very good so you should also use textbooks and reviews to eliminate current sources with better ones. --Garrondo (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
• Once you find better sources you would have to add them as inline citations. I, or anybody in the neuroscience or medicine projects will help you with it but you can also see Wikipedia:Citing sources and comment above.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
• In summary: at this point it may be easier for you as a first step to go library of the university and have in your hands some of the basic neuro-anatomy books instead of doing lots of database searching. You may also search google books, taking a look at the indexes of the books and if interesting later searching for them in your university library.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

• With similar words a recommendation by Looie496 (a neuroscience expert) to another of your classmates at my talk page: The best resources to locate info on academic topics are Google Scholar and Google Books, both accessible from the Google main page (...). For this topic Google Books will give you lots of pointers to basic information.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)

WP behavior

• It would also be a good idea if you left a link on the article's talk page to your proposals and your questions about it: editing tends to encourage editing and you may receive comments from other editors.--Garrondo (talk) 20:19, 20 March 2011 (UTC)
• Every time you make a comment at a talk page (but NOT an article in mainspace) you should sign after making it. There is a button in the editing tool bar to automatically do it (one with the pencil image).--Garrondo (talk) 14:00, 21 March 2011 (UTC)

Audience

• Wikipedia is aimed for a general audience: Lots of plain language, explanation of difficult words and internal links are needed. Internal links should be the easiest and first to fix. --Garrondo (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
• Nevertheless overlinking can also be a problem: words such as "card games" should not be linked in a neuroscience article since they are not very relevant for the article and most people will know them.--Garrondo (talk) 14:10, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
• As stated above, WP is aimed to a general audience. Since most people writing science articles have higher education and some terms are hard to explain this can be a great challenge. I have edited the signs and symptoms section as an example of what can be done to make access to the article easier. I try to use non technical terms when they correctly substitute a technical one (for example "inside the skull" instead of "intracranial") and when that is not possible in addition to the wikilink the first time I use an important term I try to explain it with a short line (this can usually be easily done by going to the term article and copy-editing a line from its lead). For example the first time instead of simply saying These physiological symptoms can be indicative of cerebral ischemia I would say These symptoms can be indicative of insufficient blood flow to the brain (ischemia). See this comment for an example of how I would try to make the accesibility of an article easier.--Garrondo (talk) 06:49, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Titles of sections

• No Caps on titles. Instead of "Motorcycle Accident and Neurological Profile" should be "Motorcycle accident and neurological profile". --Garrondo (talk) 13:57, 22 March 2011 (UTC)
• Titles should not be bolded.--Garrondo (talk) 07:43, 23 March 2011 (UTC)
• Titles should not be redundant with the article name: For example in the article Directed Attention Fatigue a section title should be "Biology" and not "Biology of Directed Attention Fatigue" (It is understood that we are talking about Directed Attention Fatigue.--Garrondo (talk) 07:43, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Images?

Now that most of you have written most of the articles it would be great to add some images. Any image found in commons can be directly added to the article. If you do not find suitable images there, there are other (more complicated) possibilities.--Garrondo (talk) 07:52, 25 March 2011 (UTC)

Internal links

Similarly linked words should not be capped differentely to what would be done if unlinked.

For example a paragraph in intention tremor was: such as Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke, Alcoholism, Alcohol withdrawal, Peripheral neuropathy, Wilson's Disease and Fragile X Syndrome, as well as Brain tumors, low blood sugar, normal aging, a variety of drugs, such as sedatives and anticonvulsants, and traumatic brain injury.

Correct paragraph should be: Some causes include a variety of neurological disorders, such as multiple sclerosis, stroke, alcoholism, alcohol withdrawal, peripheral neuropathy, Wilson's disease and fragile X syndrome, as well as brain tumors, low blood sugar, normal aging, a variety of drugs, such as sedatives and anticonvulsants, and traumatic brain injury. Only exception is Wilson's disease since it is a proper name.

• Words should only be linked once: the first time they appear in the body of the article (the lead and images are an exception to this in the sense that words that are linked in the body of the article should also be linked in the caption of an image or the lead. --Garrondo (talk) 07:01, 30 March 2011 (UTC)

Writting style

• A way of aiming to a general audience is to use as less as possible the word "patient", since it is considered that such term is more appropiate in medical language. Since talking about a disease to eliminate it completely is impossible. However it is usually a good idea to alternate it with "individuals", "individuals/those/subjects/people with X disorder". In other cases the term can be simply eliminated. Take a look if you have time to Parkinson's disease, an article that was very recently promoted to Featured article and in which I was the main editor to get a gist of this kind of editing.
• When everybody writes an article it is common to overuse the article title. However in most cases it is clear that we are referring to it. When I finish an article I search for the title all over the article and in each occasion I rethink if it is really necessary or it can be eliminated. You would probably be surprised by the number of times it is uselessly used.

Note from Satellite Glial Cell Group

We were advised in our peer review that we should redirect the title of our article so that is congruous with our mention of SGC's throughout the article. Burgart (talk) 02:36, 27 April 2011 (UTC)

Klazomania

I see your students have been working on this article in sandbox. My experience with student projects in the past has been that they do not engage on article talk, so I'm posting here instead, although I'll repeat this conversation at Talk:Klazomania and hope they will follow it there.

The work on cursory glance looks reasonable (I haven't examined it in detail yet for close paraphrasing, copyvio, and correct use of secondary peer-reviewed sources per WP:MEDRS, but what stands out right away are the following:

1. Most significantly, the article lead has been eliminated: see WP:LEAD.
2. The article sections should conform with Wikipedia:MEDMOS#Diseases or disorders or syndromes; some of them are misnamed, some text could be better placed, History should not be first, and the order of sections could be improved to comply with WP:MEDMOS. A good deal of text needs to be moved around.
3. PMIDs are missing for verification that secondary sources are used and primary sources are not overused. I'll work on adding those, but it would be helpful if your students viewed this Dispatch on "Sources in biology and medicine".
4. Sourcing: the Merck Manual is not a good source for medical articles, and there are secondary peer reviewed sources that have been neglected. Please have your students review WP:MEDRS and the Dispatch above.
5. See WP:MEDMOS wrt audience-- words like "sufferers" for example are better replaced with neutral words like "individuals".
6. I'll fix the faulty footnote placement (students may want to review WP:FN, footnotes go after punctuation except dashes).
7. Much attention is needed to wikilinking.
8. The bottom of the article was wiped out along with the lead.

Finally, if your students would post a note to article talk when they are working in sandbox, their work can be guided by others and may be more productive and efficient. It's a very nice start, and I hope this list will help the article become even better, in line with Wikipedia medical standards.

Regards, SandyGeorgia (Talk) 01:32, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

OK, I'm glad to see they are responding on talk (they get an "A" for that in my book). A note for future reference: when working on medical articles, pls make sure your students understand the standards for sourcing medical articles so they don't waste a lot of time using sub-par sources. Also, I have had klazomania watchlisted for eons (it's part of the Tourette syndrome suite, although I never did anything with klazomania), and had no idea it would be part of a class. Had I known, I could have provided sources, and would not have started working on the article so soon-- it seems the students are still working, so now it may be hard to tell their work from mine. You might want to place a template on article talk in the future, so regular editors watching the article will know what's coming. Anyway, that they are collaborating with established editors of that article is a HUGE improvement over what I usually see on university projects-- but what else would I expect from Boston College :) :) SandyGeorgia (Talk) 03:28, 2 November 2011 (UTC)