Bobby Darling

Welcome to Wikipedia! We have compiled some guidance for new healthcare editors:

1. Please keep the mission of Wikipedia in mind. We provide the public with accepted knowledge, working in a community.
2. We do that by finding high quality secondary sources and summarizing what they say, giving WP:WEIGHT as they do. Please do not try to build content by synthesizing content based on primary sources.
3. Please use high-quality, recent, secondary sources for medical content (see WP:MEDRS; for the difference between primary and secondary sources, see the WP:MEDDEF section.) High-quality sources include review articles (which are not the same as peer-reviewed), position statements from nationally and internationally recognized bodies (like CDC, WHO, FDA), and major medical textbooks. Lower-quality sources are typically removed. Please beware of predatory publishers – check the publishers of articles (especially open source articles) at Beall's list.
4. The ordering of sections typically follows the instructions at WP:MEDMOS. The section above the table of contents is called the WP:LEAD. It summarizes the body. Do not add anything to the lead that is not in the body. Style is covered in MEDMOS as well; we avoid the word "patient" for example.
5. We don't use terms like "currently", "recently," "now", or "today". See WP:RELTIME.
6. More generally see WP:MEDHOW, which gives great tips for editing about health -- for example, it provides a way to format citations quickly and easily
7. Citation details are important:
   • Be sure to cite the PMID for journal articles and ISBN for books
   • Please include page numbers when referencing a book or long journal article, and please format citations consistently within an article.
   • Do not use URLs from your university library that have "proxy" in them: the rest of the world cannot see them.
   • Reference tags generally go after punctuation, not before; there is no preceding space.
8. We use very few capital letters (see WP:MOSCAPS) and very little bolding. Only the first word of a heading is usually capitalized.
9. Common terms are not usually wikilinked; nor are years, dates, or names of countries and major cities. Avoid overlinking!
10. Never copy and paste from sources; we run detection software on new edits.
11. Talk to us! Wikipedia works by collaboration at articles and user talkpages.

Once again, welcome, and thank you for joining us! Please share these guidelines with other new editors.