Welcome to Wikipedia! We have compiled some guidance for new healthcare editors:
Please keep the mission of Wikipedia in mind. We provide the public with accepted knowledge, working in a community.
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. (For the difference between primary and secondary sources, see
WP:MEDDEF.)
Please use high-quality, recent, secondary sources for medical content (see
WP:MEDRS). 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.
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.
Reference tags generally go after punctuation, not before; there is no preceding space.
We use very few
capital letters and very little bolding. Only the first word of a heading is usually capitalized.
Common terms are not usually
wikilinked; nor are years, dates, or names of countries and major cities.
Please include page numbers when referencing a book or long journal article.
Please format citations consistently within an article and be sure to cite the
PMID for journal articles and
ISBN for books; see
WP:MEDHOW for how to format citations.
Never copy and paste from sources; we run
detection software on new edits.
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.