Welcome to the WikiProject Medicine. This project aims to enable Wikipedians to cooperate, organize, make suggestions and share ideas on the improvement of the medicine and health-related articles of Wikipedia. Everyone is welcome to join in this endeavor (regardless of medical qualifications!).
If you have any questions, feel free to ask on our discussion page (also known as the doctors' mess). You can also have a look at some related WikiProjects.
Many suggestions and guidelines have been developed since the project began. A particularly useful collection can be found in the Wikipedia:Manual of Style (medicine-related articles), which contains a detailed discussion of issues related to writing medicine articles on Wikipedia. However, these are only suggestions: they should help to give us focus, and inspire our contributions, but no one should feel obliged to follow (or even read) them. This WikiProject is not prescriptive. They should not distract anyone wanting to contribute from our main purpose: to write and improve medicine articles!
If you would like to help, feel free to add yourself to the list of participants (no strings attached!), or just look over the How you can help section below. Also of interest is the (featured) Medicine Portal associated with this project.
We hope you enjoy reading and improving Wikipedia's medical articles,
-The members
To produce reliable and neutral information on medical conditions, diagnosis and treatment in a readable and standardized format. It aims to deal with these diseases in every context, from molecular biology, symptomatology and diagnosis to therapeutical issues and historical and geopolitical ramifications. To this end, the WikiProject will collaborate with other WikiProjects relating to the health sciences.
[edit] News and announcements
| Date | News and announcements |
| 2 July 2009 | The Wikiversity School of Medicine has invited WikiProject Medicine to contribute to articles pertaining to medicine at Wikiversity. For more information please read the information here. Renaissancee (talk) 06:22, 3 July 2009 (UTC) |
| November 28 2008 | Image:Reference ranges for blood tests - by molarity.png is nominated for featured picture candidates, and it needs your vote and/or comments. It's sister Image:Reference ranges for blood tests - by mass.png was passed a while ago, and further addition of references to the main article reference ranges for blood tests has now made it possible to improve this one as well. See nomination page. Mikael Häggström (talk) 14:50, 28 November 2008 (UTC) |
| September 02 2008 | Work on medical reliable sources made it to a guideline, see Wikipedia:Reliable sources (medicine-related articles) - well done to all who worked on this and continue to discuss this. David Ruben Talk 01:17, 2 September 2008 (UTC) |
| August 01 2008 | Work has been started on an article to parameterize the tolerances limits of human beings in the Earth and Extraterrestrial environments (Temperatures, Atmospheres, Gravity, etc), and what makes a planet "habitable," in contrast to the mono-dimensional over used concept "Habitable zone." Please consider assisting with the article in progress Human Habitability. |
| June 22 2008 | A contest for the creation of important missing articles has started, see Wikipedia:WikiProject Medicine/Missing Article Trophy. |
| June 17 2008 | WikiProject Medicine is beginning to organize task forces. If you would like to propose or participate in a task force, see Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces. |
[edit] How you can help
[edit] Collaborate
- Stay in touch. Put this page on your watchlist, along with any task forces that interest you, so you can keep up with announcements and stay in touch with other members.
- Join a task force. If you are interested in a specific topic area, then join one or more of our task forces. Most task forces keep a separate list of their most important projects and would be happy to have a new member!
- Work together. Join in the team effort to improve selected articles in the Collaboration of the Week. Everyone from subject-matter experts to normal readers is welcome!
[edit] Other ideas
Would you like to help, but you're not really quite sure what to do? Have an hour free and want to try something different? WikiProject Medicine has many tasks that any editor can do. You don't have to be a physician or have specialized knowledge.
- Edit articles
- Adopt a stub! There are thousands of stubby medicine-related articles that have the potential to be excellent articles. Categories containing these stub articles are Cat:Medicine stubs and Cat:Stub-Class medicine articles. Add sources and information, and remove the {{stub}} template when it's no longer a stub.
- Create a new article. Many medicine-related articles have been requested for creation. New articles and significantly expanded stubs qualify for our Missing Article Trophy contest and Wikipedia's Did you know?, so be sure to share your achievements with us.
- Improve existing articles. Some articles want expert attention, but most need help that anyone can provide. Alternatively, focus your efforts on the most important issues, or choose any article that interests you from our top-importance, high-importance articles, or 1,000 most popular medicine-related articles.
- Add high-quality references. Correct and reliable references are vital if the articles produced by this project are to be a verifiable source of information for our readers. Adding references is easy with this tool. Just submit the PubMed ID, ISBN, or other identifier, and copy and paste the resulting output (xxxx) into the page between <ref> xxxxx </ref> Alternatively, if you use Internet Explorer or Firefox (2.0+), then Wouterstomp's bookmarklet can automate this step from the PubMed abstract page.
- Add images. Add requested pictures, also listed in Cat:Wikipedia requested photographs of medical subjects.
- Work behind the scenes
- Fight spam and vandalism
[edit] Project organization
[edit] Departments
Task forces
Task forces are groups of Wikipedians gathered for collaborative work on a particular topic within a WikiProject.
The medicine project is organized into task forces to deal with smaller chunks of medicine as it is a huge topic. All are encouraged to participate in any task forces that interest them.
To propose a new task force, please visit Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Medicine/Task forces.
[edit] Participants
The full list of project participants is located on a separate subpage. Any interested Wikipedia editor is welcome to join this project. If you would like to help, feel free to add yourself to the list.
[edit] Templates
[edit] Article-related
- {{WPMED}} - Placed on talk pages of medicine-related articles and used to assess articles.
- {{reqphoto|medical subjects}} - Used on talk pages to request that photographs be added to the article.
- {{med-stub}} - Used on stub articles.
- {{Medref}} - Used to indicate an article in need of references.
- {{Medicine}} - The bottom navbox template to be used on articles about broad disciplines of medicine.
- Cat:Medicine templates - Contains all templates used on medicine-related articles.
[edit] User-related
- Welcome messages (all of these substituted onto a user's talk page):
- {{subst:MedWelcome}} - Welcome template to greet new Wikipedians and invite them to join WikiProject Medicine.
- {{subst:MedInvitation}} - Invite for established Wikipedians to join WikiProject Medicine.
- {{subst:MedGreeting}} - After editor added to participation list.
- {{User WPMed}} - Userbox for members of this WikiProject.
- {{subst:The WikiProject Medicine Barnstar}} - You may award the Medicine Barnstar to those you feel have done superb work in the realm of medicine-related articles.
[edit] Showcase
[edit] Featured articles
Featured articles are considered to be Wikipedia's very best work; they must pass through a review process as featured article candidates before being selected. Articles in bold indicate that the article has been featured on the Main Page on the date noted.
[edit] Former featured articles
These articles used to be Featured Articles, but no longer qualify.
[edit] Featured lists
Featured lists are considered to be the best lists in Wikipedia; they must pass through a review process as featured list candidates before being selected.
[edit] Other featured content
Types of content other than articles—such as images, portals, sounds, and topics—can also achieve featured content status.
[edit] Did you know
Appearing on Main Page, in the Did You Know? section.
[edit] Related WikiProjects
[edit] Awards
Writing good medical articles can be hard work! Why not reward someone you've seen do some good work in the area; decorate their userpage with one of these:
 | The WikiProject Medicine Barnstar | {{subst:The WikiProject Medicine Barnstar|message ~~~~}} | The WikiProject Medicine Barnstar may be awarded to Wikipedians who exhibit exceptional effort and dedication to articles related to WikiProject Medicine. The barnstar design was created by Eustress on April 17, 2008. |
 | The Encephalon Cross | | For commendable contributions to medical articles. Introduced and designed by Encephalon. |
 | Star of Life | | For commendable contributions to medical articles. Introduced by White Cat and designed by Leo R. Schwartz in 1973. |
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
