User:Johnbod at ILAE/Rome conference talk

ILAE Wikipedia Workshop Wednesday, 11 September, 10:00 – 11:30 CEST

11:15 – 11:25 CEST How you can generate stub articles Speaker: John Byrne

How you can generate stub articles

No time to go through the editing basics today: Wikipedia:How to create a page is a start.

Wikipedia:Stub defines a stub article, essentially "an article deemed too short and incomplete to provide encyclopedic coverage of a subject". There is probably not much point in creating a stub of less that say 200 words; if it is more than say 500 words it is probably not a stub, which of course is fine.

Points:

It is best to practise editing by making small improvements to existing articles, including adding references.

Create a Wikipedia account. On your User page, say something (to make the link turn from red to blue), probably saying something about your medical expertise. This should give your early edits an easier ride.

First check that a new article is actually needed, by searches on Wikipedia etc. This is especially the important in the field of epilepsy, where syndromes and other aspects may have a number of different names and acronyms that cover the same subjects, or over-lapping subjects, subsets, and so on, especially after the 2017 ILAE classification.

It may be that what is needed is a redirect, which is easy to set up, redirecting your term to an existing article, where you add the new term, defing its relationship to the rest of the article.

If you decide a new article is needed, follow Wikipedia:How to create a page - essentially search on Wikipedia for the term and click on the link to "create a new article".

Start with a very clear definition of the subject, using as simple language as possible. Often less simple language, and long medical words, are needed for a proper definition, but where possible keep these out of the first sentence(s), putting them in later.

Use links to appropriate articles.

Add references. Medical articles are supposed to have especially high-quality, recent references. See Wikipedia:Identifying reliable sources (medicine). References are absolutely essential.

When you are not sure what to do, look at similar articles (stubs or not), and copy/adjust what they do. Category:Epilepsy will provide models. Or Category:Nervous system disease stubs for stubs only (quality not vouched for).

Add categories at the very bottom of the page, and this: "{{disability-stub}}", which renders as:

This disability-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

On the talk page (not the article page), add "{{WikiProject Epilepsy|class=Stub|importance=Low}}", which renders as:

Epilepsy Stub‑class Low‑importance

	This article is within the scope of WikiProject Epilepsy, a collaborative effort to improve the coverage of epilepsy and epileptic seizures on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the discussion and see a list of open tasks.EpilepsyWikipedia:WikiProject EpilepsyTemplate:WikiProject EpilepsyEpilepsy articles
Stub	This article has been rated as Stub-class on Wikipedia's content assessment scale.
Low	This article has been rated as Low-importance on the project's importance scale.

You are supposed to add a very short description at the top. This is what Google etc will show on searches. If you don't, someone else will, but maybe not as accurately. As an example, Absence seizure has "{{Short description|Type of generalized seizure}}", which is about as long as they are supposed to be.

Finally, I'm very happy to check articles over - drop me a link at User talk:Johnbod at ILAE; also if you have queries.