User talk:NarratingAndy

Welcome![edit]

Hello, NarratingAndy, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are a few links to pages you might find helpful:

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Please remember to sign your messages on talk pages by typing four tildes (~~~~); this will automatically insert your username and the date. If you need help, check out Wikipedia:Questions, ask me on my talk page, or ask for help on your talk page, and a volunteer should respond shortly. Again, welcome! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 21:45, 16 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Reply[edit]

Hello, Pigsonthewing, I am very unsure about the Talk function here, and not sure how to bring your attention to my reply to your message on my Talk page. Is any mention of your name tagged to give you an alert? Are you able to look at what I have drafted in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:NarratingAndy/sandbox2 ? Or do I have to give you permission or what? Andrew King

Hi, you can attract my attention (or that of anyone else) by writing, for example, {{ping|Pigsonthewing}} (in the source code editor) where "Pigsonthewing" is the user name of the person you wish to attract. Or you can always leave a message on my talk page. Don't forget to sign your messages using the "signature and timestamp" button, on the toolbar. You can link to pages like your sandbox using [[User:NarratingAndy/sandbox2]] instead of the full URL.

I've had a look at your sandbox (it's publicly viewable, but not found by search engines), and it's very good; there are just a few issues of house style, which of course is not something you'd know about yet. I've made some edits there, which you can see in the page history.

Firstly, we don't leave spaces between citations

We write from a strictly neutral point of view ("NPoV", in Wikipedia jargon), and while you and most people may find accounts moving, others may not, so we don't use such an adjective unless it's attributed ("reviewer Fred Smith found the account very moving") an cited as such.

Similarly, a phrase like "certainly out of the ordinary" either needs a citation, or should be removed.

Wherever possible please give ISBNs for the books you cite. Ditto DOIs for papers.

I'm going to ping @RexxS: and ask him to comment from a :Wikiproject Medicine. You may also find the "resources" on that latter page useful.

You can write a short bio at User:NarratingAndy - see Wikipedia:User pages.

Keep up the good work! Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 11:40, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hi NarratingAndy, I'm RexxS, a friend of Andy's. I live not far away, and I've done a few events with Coventry Uni in the past. I quite often edit on medicine-related subjects, so I'm more than happy to give any help or advice if you need it. Medicine is a very highly respected field on Wikipedia, and consequently we have our own guidance on style (Wikipedia:Manual of Style/Medicine-related articles, MEDMOS) and sourcing (Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine), MEDRS), which expects higher standards than many other fields.

One of the consequences of MEDRS is that all biomedical content on Wikipedia should be sourced to secondary sources. This runs against the grain for many scholars, who are used to working with primary sources and being able to make evaluative analyses of them. Unfortunately, as an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has a policy of no original research, so we don't allow editors to make their own analyses, and that's why using secondary sources like systematic or literature reviews (where the analysis is already done) is so important for us.

Looking at your sandbox, User:NarratingAndy/sandbox2, I think that the sources you have collected could provide the basis for an interesting new Society and culture section in Motor neuron disease, or possibly as an addition to the existing section in Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, where applicable.

Please feel free at any time to drop me a note on my talk page or ping me into a conversation if you feel I can be of any assistance to you. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 15:58, 19 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

Hello RexxS[edit]

Thank you for your message. I am ploughing through the Student training at present. I appreciate the hints about rules for contributing to Medical pages and will take them on board.

The idea about a section on ALS and Culture is what I am trying to avoid. I.e. on medical pages it is fairly technical and the voice of the people who have a disease disappears even when published. ALS and Culture sounds as though narratives by people with ALS/MND are significant as an artefact produced by the disease, rather than as the authentic expression of what people with the disease experience. Of course, that is my opinion, rather than fact. But people with a recent diagnosis will often go to Wikipedia pages, and they are met by technical stuff only, with few pointers to what people with a disease or condition have said. Not sure whether I feel confident to post this on your talk page which looks very well viewed, but nor am I clear whether you will see this. I will try to finish the tutorials over Christmas with a view to continuing editing properly in 2020.Happy Christmas NarratingAndy (talk) 16:22, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]

A merry Christmas to you too, Andy. Your talk page is on my watchlist, so I see whatever message you leave for me here. You can attract my attention from anywhere by writing {{ping|RexxS}} in a discussion you are taking part in, although you have to remember to sign that post for the notification to get through to me. Cheers --RexxS (talk) 21:05, 23 December 2019 (UTC)[reply]