User talk:Dr.Wonderland

Welcome!

Hello, Dr.Wonderland, and welcome to Wikipedia! Thank you for your contributions. I hope you like the place and decide to stay. Here are some pages that you might find helpful:

• The five pillars of Wikipedia
• Tutorial
• How to edit a page and How to develop articles
• How to create your first article (using the Article Wizard if you wish)
• Manual of Style

I hope you enjoy editing here and being a Wikipedian! Please sign your messages on discussion pages using 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 your question on this page and then place {{helpme}} before the question. Again, welcome! -- Jytdog (talk) 14:21, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

edit war warning

You currently appear to be engaged in an edit war according to the reverts you have made on Resveratrol. Users are expected to collaborate with others, to avoid editing disruptively, and to try to reach a consensus rather than repeatedly undoing other users' edits once it is known that there is a disagreement.

Please be particularly aware that Wikipedia's policy on edit warring states:

1. Edit warring is disruptive regardless of how many reverts you have made.
2. Do not edit war even if you believe you are right.

If you find yourself in an editing dispute, use the article's talk page to discuss controversial changes; work towards a version that represents consensus among editors. You can post a request for help at an appropriate noticeboard or seek dispute resolution. In some cases it may be appropriate to request temporary page protection. If you engage in an edit war, you may be blocked from editing. Jytdog (talk) 14:24, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Wikipedia - some general notes

Hi DrWonderland

You are new here and you don't understand the rules very well, much less the spirit that informs them - it is very very unwise to jump straight into a heated dispute as you have on the Resveratrol article.

I am sorry about this, but if you really want to get involved, it turns out that Wikipedia is a pretty complex place. Being an "encyclopedia that anyone can edit" means that over the years, Wikipedia has developed lots of policies and guidelines (PAG) to help provide a "body of law" as it were, that form a foundation for rational discussion. Without that foundation, this place would be a wild west - a truly ugly place. But with the foundation, there are ways to rationally work things out - if, and only if, all the parties involved accept that foundation and work within it. One of the hardest things for new people, is to understand not only that this foundation exists, but what its letter and spirit is. (I keep emphasizing the spirit, because too often people fall prey to what we call "wikilawyering") The more I have learned about how things are set up here - not just the letter of PAG and the various drama boards and administrative tools, but their spirit - the more impressed I have become at how, well ... beautiful this place is. It takes time to learn both the spirit and the letter of PAG, and to really get aligned with Wikipedia's mission to crowdsource a reliable, NPOV source of information for the public (as "reliable" and "NPOV" are defined in PAG!). People come edit for many reasons, but one of the main ones is that they are passionate about something. That passion is a double-edged sword. It drives people to contribute which has the potential for productive construction, but it can also lead to WP:TENDENTIOUS editing, which is really destructive. WP:ADVOCACY is one of our biggest bedevilments. Anyway, I do hope you slow down and learn. There are lots of people here who are happy to teach, if you open up and listen and ask authentic questions, not rhetorical ones.

PAG are described and discussed in a whole forest of documents within Wikipedia that are "behind the scenes" in a different "namespace", in which the documents start with "Wikipedia:" or in shorthand, "WP:" (for example, our policy on edit warring is here: WP:EDITWAR not here EDITWAR). You won't find these documents by using the simple search box above, which searches only in "main space" where the actual articles are. However if you search with the prefix, (for example if you search for "WP:EDITWAR") you will find policies and guidelines. Likewise if you do an advanced search with "wikipedia" or "help" selected you can also find things in "Wikipedia space". The link in the welcome message above the "Five Pillars" points you to our most important policies and I recommend that you read them all, if you have not already and if you intend to stick around! They guide everything that happens here.

With all that in mind, here are some things that I suggest you read (I know, I know, things to read... but like I said, Wikipedia can be complicated!)

• WP:SPA - please read this - right now your account is what we call a "single purpose account")
• WP:MEDRS - this is our guideline for sourcing health-relating content in Wikipedia. This is probably the key thing you are missing right now
• WP:MEDMOS - this our manual of style, for how we write about health-related things. We are very careful not to discuss pre-clinical findings, as well as initial clinical results, as though they are applicable to medicine. We are very conservative in that regard!
• WP:CONSENSUS - Wikipedia has plenty of policies and guidelines, as I mentioned, but really at the end of the day this place is ... a democracy? an anarchy? something hard to define. But we figure things out by talking to one another. CONSENSUS is the bedrock on which everything else rests. So please talk - please never edit war (see warning above). If you make a change to an article and someone else reverts it, the right thing to do is to follow WP:BRD (please do read that) - but briefly, when you are reverted, open a discussion on the article's Talk page. Ask the reason under policy and guidelines why your change was reverted -- and really ask, and really listen to the answer, and go read whatever links you are pointed to. Think about it, and if there is something you don't understand, ask more questions. Please only start to actually argue once you understand the basis for the objection. If you and the other party or parties still disagree, there are many ways to resolve disputes (see WP:DR) - it never needs to become emotional - because we do have this whole "body of law" and procedures to resolve disputes.

Anyway, good luck! Jytdog (talk) 14:33, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

{{helpme-helped}} Hi Jytdog,

I get some of the rules, problem is it does not take make minutes of reading to see that the previous contributions does not live up to those standards at even a wide margin of error, so I get the feeling that the rules are not objectively enforced, but rather has to do with Wikipedia status and who.knows who, like you and the Doctor maintaining resveratrol apparently is buddies, from your talk pages.

If secondary sources are mandatory, why is the whole article filled with primary, and why then are the primary I contribute removed.`?

If secondary is the golden standard, why was even my secondary sources removed or moved down.

I am terrible disappointed by Wikipedia and I would have loved to contribute, but now I cannot even get myself to edit the danish version, which is also primary sources out of fear that I am wasting my time, with rules, you guys do not adhere to yourself apparently.

I do not get it, my take away is this place is not credible by a far shot, but a very bad place to go to contribute, bogged down by bureacratics, that the Wiki elite does not adhere to themself. Dr.Wonderland (talk) 15:36, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Do also appreciate that those polices and guidelines were not created on Day 1. They have grown with the encyclopaedia - thus there can be old edits which were perfectly valid once. Originally Wikipedia was geared to page creation, and as everyone knows, quality many years ago was not great. Now with 4 million pages, there is a good emphasis on quality not quantity, but we cannot just go back and wipe out what was done before, we just have to slowly improve the articles piece by piece - hence new edits tend to be carefully vetted for quality. Ronhjones  ^(Talk) 15:51, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

as Ronhhones said, WIkipedia is always a work in progress. There are lots of articles that to be frank, pretty much suck, and need a lot of work. Editors who are active always have way too much on their plates than they can do at any one time. You may have noticed that after you started working on the Resveratrol article, several editors moved in and started making dramatic changes, addressing many of the flaws that article had. There is of course more to do! I am sorry that you are discouraged... there is a big learning curve here! But we always need more hands, and if you can steel yourself for the learning curve, and really engage, perhaps you will find your way to sticking around. We always need more editors who are willing to help, who have taken the time to master WP's intriciacies, and who have subject matter expertise! But this is a volunteer project and you will of course choose to use your time as you see fit. If you do stick around, you may want to choose to join Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine where most editors who care about health-related topics talk to one another (on its Talk page) - there is a community of editors who care about this stuff. Also, with respect to Danish WP, you will find that English WP is by far the most evolved with regard to the rigor to which we aspire.... good luck! Jytdog (talk) 16:04, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

and please, please, don't assume that this place is just a terrible bureauracy. There are real people who care and who will work with you. and the policies and guidelines grew up for a reason - there is a very deep and good sense to them, once you get your head around them. Finally, you may want to read the essay, WP:EXPERT which describes the frustrations and challenges that subject matter experts encounter when they come to Wikipedia - you may find some solace there. best regards Jytdog (talk) 16:07, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

Thanks, will try to spend some time reading those and maybe dare to update parts of the Danish one before trying to do anything else. Dr.Wonderland (talk) 21:55, 15 November 2014 (UTC)

real world identity

quick note about your Userpage update. there is no obligation to disclose your real life identity and your credentials do not matter here. (!) Most people don't do that, but many do. purely a personal call. But please see Wikipedia:Username_policy#Real_names and WP:OUTING and maybe see Wikipedia:Credentials_are_irrelevant. But what is most important, is that who you are in the real world, doesn't matter at all here. One of the beautiful and radical things about Wikipedia (and the source of many of its problems) is that anyone can contribute, as long as they follow the policies and guidelines. What matters is what you write, both in articles and on Talk page. Contributions from subject matter experts who (for example) don't understand our sourcing policies and guidelines, are rejected just as quickly as those from a 15 year old vandal. Crazy, right? But that is how it goes. But subject matter experts who have mastered the policies and guidelines are amazingly productive and valuable members of the community. They can quickly see how a given article might be skewed and thus fail to present a truly neutral point of view (as defined in that policy!) and tend to know the literature very well and can efficiently and productively add and remove content to make articles become really great. But it is all in what you write and how you conduct yourself. Jytdog (talk) 16:17, 15 November 2014 (UTC)