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about this dif, i personally hate wikilinks to authors and journals within refs and remove them if i am editing content that includes them. visually they are - to me - clutter, again to me, those links don't illuminate the actual article content at all (and i sometimes click on them by accident and they take me to something i absolutely don't care about) are you strongly in favor of generally wikilinking to journals and authors in refs? is this something you generally do? Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 17:23, 13 December 2014 (UTC)

Yes I am strongly in favor of linking journal titles and yes it is something I generally do. It provides useful information for verification. A good WP article on a journal provides impact factor and rank. Additionally the article on the journal provides a link to archives and information about access, this aids in verification when the cited article does not have an open access link. Some cited articles that are not open access become available after the end of an embargo or when a change in availability happens. In general a linked journal title demonstrates minimal notability of the journal cited. The article on the journal is also sometimes useful for research on the subject of the linking article. This is useful when going beyond Google searching for research. Links to authors likewise demonstrate notability and can provide information useful in establishing the published in the field expert status of the author. I do a lot of "in the background" verification and find these links highly useful. I also participate in discussions on talk on a variety of somewhat controversial subjects and having the links for journals and authors provides those engaging in the discussion a quick way of seeing or checking the journal and author cited.
I would urge you not to remove such links. The authorlink parameter is there for a reason and I am pretty sure policy supports linking journal titles. If you request I will try and look up appropriate PAG. In doing verification I have found it necessary to use multiple links for a reference, dead url, broken doi, pmid with no link out, searching at journal website, etc. As I am somewhat familiar with you as an editor, I think you are one of the few who actually reads the full text of articles cited. I do so also, frequently without edit or comment, and I find the more complete a reference is the more likely I am to find the full text of that reference. My strong personal opinion is that journal titles should be spelled out in full and linked. Thank you for your contributions and for this question. - - MrBill3 (talk) 17:41, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
interesting! Hm - to me all we need is PMID for medical references, and really, the rest if cruft, to me. But i generally do full plain text citation: "first author et al, title, journal, VOL(issue):pages PMID xxxx" - all just copy/pasted from the pubmed citation) There is absolutely no policy/guideline mandating some single citation format. all WP cares about is that a) it is complete enough that someone else can find it again to fulfill WP:VERIFY; and b) within a given article, the reference style is consistent. With most things like this (like BC vs BCE, or UK spellings vs american), it is a per article thing. see Wikipedia:Citing sources. Jytdog (talk) 18:07, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
In looking through PAG briefly, I am not seeing support for my position. I would maintain my argument as above, summarized as "provide maximum support for verification". PMID is a great baseline, however as I mentioned not all PMIDs provide full text access which is required for actual verification (cite supports content, not just exists). I would also be interested in your opinion on providing support for notability/appropriateness of source in talk discussions. If your opinion is strongly held perhaps a posting at Proj Med would be a good idea, similarly at FTN. Best. - - MrBill3 (talk) 18:16, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
To blather on I think providing an author list is appropriate in terms of attribution. I use the displayauthors parameter to limit to 4 authors but I usually list all named authors. It would take very little persuasion for me to change to displayauthors limited to 2. - - MrBill3 (talk) 18:20, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
it's ok i don't mind the discussion. :) but I don't get the sense that you went and looked at Wikipedia:Citing sources. did you? See also Wikipedia:Manual_of_Style/Medicine-related_articles#Citing_medical_sources for MEDMOS's take on it which is "There is no universal standard for formatting citations on Wikipedia, but the format should be consistent within any one article. Some editors format their citations by hand, which gives them control over the presentation. Most editors on biomedical topics prefer to use citation templates " (I am in the "some editors" camp, clearly :) ) And it has been discussed at WT:MEDMOS a lot (see here) and at WT:MEDRS (see here) and at WT:ProjectMed (see here). If you want to open this up on Project Med, have at it, but its something that has been discussed many times.
Really - there is no policy/guideline mandating one citation style. - it is 100% consensus of article, like BC/BCE or UK/American spellings. People get very passionate about all three and in my view, the passion/debate is not productive, as there is consensus and no way to solve it outside of "this is the way that is already established in this article; don't overturn it and flip it some other way, because you will start an argument that will never end". With regard to your comment about PMID, I don't understand what you are saying. If there is a legal free version, it will be linked from there. If there is not one, we shouldn't link to copvio ones per WP:COPYVIO (see also Wikipedia:External_links#Restrictions_on_linking) With regard to discussions of authors/journals on Talk, there have been just a few times when I have challenged use of a source by another editor due to the quality of the journal - that terrible article about glyphosate in the journal, Entropy (one of the bad kind of "open access" journals), and more recently, I commented on the Frontiers series of journals and recommended using it lightly as it tends to be special-edited and filled with articles that are "woo" on whatever the pet theories of the special editor are. Generally its not important - generally if a journal is pubmed/MEDLINE indexed it is going to be good enough for MEDRS.. Finally, If I ever get around to writing Reliable Sources for Toxicology I may propose something there about journals (for reasons I will explain in that imaginary document). But thanks for the discussion! Jytdog (talk) 18:47, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Regarding PMID, they do not always have a link if free legal copy is available. I don't know what their completeness/criteria is but I have found PMID entries without links where the content is available free at the journal's website. As a side note some authors post a free legal copy elsewhere (they usually have copyright, often post to their .edu acct., sometimes to ResearchGate or ArXiv or the like). Sometimes permission is granted to publish at a society's website etc.
As there is no specific policy and generally edits which improve the encyclopedia are acceptable, even when differing from article consensus, I feel free to edit boldly. I don't fight reverts in general. I have implemented a uniform citation style on a number of articles (some contentious) and have been well received. When I do that I post to talk. I think my arguments can stand on the basis of improving the encyclopedia. Templates provide a number of useful improvements. I have no objection to you or any editor adding references in whatever style chosen, the more refs the better, as long as the basics are there.
I have seen several discussions that involve the impact factor and the quality/nature of the journal cited. Likewise discussions of authors as experts. PubMed indexing is not a guarantee of meeting MEDRS. I think you may find articles on predatory, fringe and other questionable journals provide some discussion of this and references to support talk page discussion of the journal as a source.
I don't feel the need to bring this to WPMED or WP:FTN. I prefer to continue to edit boldly and discuss as needed. Thank you for this discussion. Should you feel an edit of mine introduces clutter or inappropriately violates article consensus I don't take strong objection to being reverted. A note on the talk page of the article would be appreciated so I might present my argument. If you have a strongly held position, please restate it here, otherwise I will consider this a friendly discussion with no specific resolution. Two editors with different styles and a relatively minor disagreement on an issue without strong policy support either way. I appreciate your discussion and your taking time to look into and link to PAG and prior discussions. Best wishes and happy editing. - - MrBill3 (talk) 19:21, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
yes your takeaway is where i was coming from - was just inquiring; not aiming for any kind of showdown. live and let live!  :) Jytdog (talk) 20:31, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
wanted to add to this. a while back I asked somebody, maybe BogHog, about why he used templates and filled them out so carefully. Whoever it was, said something about one day there being a kind of back-end bibliography of sources used in Wilipedia.. some kind of bibliographic thing, that could only work if all the citations were the same and fully fleshed out. Sounded like blue sky stuff to me. just another angle on this whole thing.. Jytdog (talk) 22:37, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
Templates are used by a number of different data gathering/scraping projects/systems/programs both within WP and on the meta project as well as external software used for studying WP. I think at least in med articles they allow analysis of citations for assessing the quality/currency/accuracy of WP articles. An example of a useful function they allow is WP:COinS. As you may have guessed :) I am a big advocate of templates. They also provide uniformity and guide editors to include pertinent information. In doing verification I often use paywalled resources where volume, issue etc. is quite useful. Another point favoring linking journal titles is, decent journal articles list the journal's indexing and abstracting (databases that cover the journal). When searching for non free articles it is helpful to know where to look (which database).
I did want to take a moment to thank you for your contributions to WP. I see your username often and your contributions have seemed almost :) universally excellent, collaborative, constructive, thoughtful and reflective of reading and comprehending sources. It was no small compliment that I can tell you actually read the full text of sources. You bring both a level of expertise and an understanding of the unfortunate intellectual/psychological/political/philosophical divide that limits understanding and collaboration. So, THANKS. - - MrBill3 (talk) 22:58, 13 December 2014 (UTC)
thanks for pointing me COINS! hm! does that matter somehow? I am totally ignorant and would like to learn. And thanks for your kind remarks - i am all glowy. i do acknowledge that i am too harsh sometimes! a real challenge for me.. (emotion with a squished up mouth that I don't know how to make). I have admired your work too!! Jytdog (talk) 01:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
The short answer on COinS, not really. For some users of certain software or browser add-ons or dohickeys it provides a customized link for some references. Don't know of any specifics, nor of widespread use. For meta data and related projects I think, yes templates are important. I prefer firm advocate of policy to "harsh". It can be easy to get frustrated, that is one of the reasons I do a lot of reference and background verification work. Best. - - MrBill3 (talk) 01:55, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

I, too, favor including as many wikilinks as possible in refs. Keep in mind that the refs section is separated from the content, so wikilinks serve a very useful purpose there. -- Brangifer (talk) 01:59, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

thanks for jumping in BullRangifer. How are they useful to you? Thanks! Jytdog (talk) 02:03, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
I suspect they are useful to me in much the same way they are to any other user; they aid my search for knowledge about the source, provide context, and sometimes lend some degree of authority (or lack of same) to the source. We use wikilinks in articles for the same purpose. They link us to all the knowledge here. I find that tremendously useful.
In an analogous sense, some people find categories useful, while others find See also links helpful. Different strokes for different folks. Just because I find a category at the bottom of an article to be sufficient for me, doesn't mean I delete See also links to the same information (except in blatant cases). I leave them there so those who like See also links, but don't use Categories, can still find the relevant information easily.
The wikilinks do no harm. -- Brangifer (talk) 04:40, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for answering! Jytdog (talk) 04:50, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
and btw, i heard it, that you both really value those wikilnks that i hate. i will refrain from deleting them going forward. just don't ask me to add them. :) Jytdog (talk) 04:52, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
-- Brangifer (talk) 05:12, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks for your consideration of other editor's positions. As a BTW, here is a look at an article I am working on the refs for: the older version of Electrocorticography (still working on it). Of note the first reference had no pmid. I found that but the pmid listing had no link. Going from the article on the journal in WP I went to the journal's website. There I found the full text article is available free with (free) registration. Now the ref has a link for the article and notes registration is required. Once I have finished reworking the refs, I will probably choose to register and read the article. Perhaps the article will contain a doi which I will add. For a more complex example of "what I do to articles" take a look at Sepsis. I am actually writing WP articles for all journals cited in that article that lack them (well except one so far). I consider the Sepsis article important and think there may come discussion of the quality of sources for which links to journals may be useful. Anyway I think you will find the references in Sepsis are far more uniform, clean, complete and informative than before I started. Best.

Another BTW, if you have some interest in templates you may find these two tools most useful:

Lookit Brangifer with his fancy smiley ECing me, my od was more precise ;). - - MrBill3 (talk) 05:16, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

you guys are tooooootally geeking out on me now. i am so lo-tech. ack. Jytdog (talk) 05:37, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
but great work on the sepsis article!!! thanks for that, super hard topic. Jytdog (talk) 05:38, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
I just did the refs over on Sepsis then posted a note as Project Med, others took to working on improving the article. I did do some work on getting free links for anything I could. I found it too technical for me (and I have pretty extensive experience with the subject - me:ICU RN). I am not the strongest paraphraser/content writer. However as with many WP articles on med topics, I find the references section very useful. No disrespect to the encyclopedia but I read actual journal articles (highest possible quality) for my professional erudition. - - MrBill3 (talk) 05:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
oh hell yes. a good place (most times) to find the real stuff to read! that is actually how i got sucked in here. read refs, went back and read what the article said, and said "no... this cannot stay"... it's an endless vortex. Jytdog (talk) 06:51, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

OK since we have spent a good amount of time discussing references and the links within. I am going to provide a full explanation of my reference style for journals with an example article Electrocorticography.

  1. Full list of authors with |last1, |first1 etc. (|implies parameter), |first is initial(s) only no spaces or periods. Jr etc. goes in |first after a comma, no period. |displayauthors set to 4. This provides full attribution and will return results when searching for any author's name. It allows each or any author to be linked with |authorlink1 etc. It sets a consistent format with comma between last and first, colon between authors (no final period unless no date, or over 4 authors triggers et al.) Using 4 authors gives plenty of info but keeps down excess. It also allows citation bot to complete (without creating duplicates the way listing multiple authors in |author does).
  2. For the date on journal articles (volume and issue specified) I usually use just |year rather than |date. FYI |month is deprecated and just the year works with |date.
  3. The title of the article with only first word (also first word after punctuation, proper nouns) capitalized. |url given only but always for free full text. While |doi or |pmid may lead to a free version, how does one know? If its linked its free. The url given lead directly to full text, not abstract page with tab for full text etc. If registration is required |registration set to yes. If it comes from anywhere but the journal or publisher |via set to domain, site (ResearchGate, arXiv etc.), or author's (or other with rights, society etc.) page it comes from. See ref 13 in example. |archiveurl and |archivedate set in most cases of |via. |deadurl set. If the article title contains the title of a publication I add italics for the title of an article I use single quotes (Response to 'Easy ECG' by John Foo).
  4. |journal set to full name of journal spelled out and wl'd. Redlink OK if the journal is halfway decent (the article will wind up getting written). I sometimes cheat the wl a little and link to the society article, journals or publications section. See ref 13 again in example. Useful for verification (finding archives, databases, societies etc.) and research.
  5. |volume set. |issue set if it is a supplement I use Suppl no period. Very useful for verification (where is the article in that archive?)
  6. |page or |pages set. Only the page numbers that change for second number (1061-1067 is 1061-7, 1498-1504 is 1498-504). For page numbers with a letter (E, e, S) letter only on first number. FYI for cite:journal |page and |pages return the same (this is handy for journals that use article numbers not pages, I put that here.
  7. |doi set, frequently very useful, surprisingly often broken.
  8. |pmid set, a must for credibility, very useful for author lists, accurate title of article (and journal).
  9. |pmc set if available. This will create a link on the article title if |url is not set. I sometimes set both for redundancy but I'm pretty confident PMC is stable (sometimes the layout is better at the journal too).
  10. |location only set if there are 2 journals with the same name (some translated journal names are.
  11. |issn only set if there is a need to verify the journal exists (not likely in med articles, not promising in terms of RS but there is WP:PARITY and there are new journals.
  12. |publisher set only if highly relevant to credibility on subject.
  13. |arxiv set if I have it, |url set to arVix url (duplication I know but not everyone knows arVix means a free copy is available).
  14. |bibcode set if I have it, not a priority for me.
  15. |jstor set if I have it not usually applicable in med articles.
  16. |trans-title and |language set if applicable, two letter code (ISO 639-1) used for language. Whenever available original title included, but I don't go to |script-title.
  17. |format set for XLS and DOC not for PDF.
  18. |type set for reviews and position statements (if not implied), editorials, letters to the editor, anything but an article.
  19. |department rarely set in med article, used for things that type doesn't work for but need to be identified.

I think that just about covers it. I have a personal style for cite:book too but thats another story. Just thought I'd spell it out so perhaps I can refer to it or cut and paste it when I boldly impose templates and uniformity. Speaking of a vortex...I wrote three articles for the journals in the example article, Seizure (journal), Journal of Neuroscience Methods and Journal of Clinical Neurophysiology and I will probably write IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Engineering. Then I can read the free full text articles, then search out the paywalled ones in the databases I have access to. After that I might comment on Talk about what might need changing. I think it is a potentially important article as it is the medical backbone of Brain–computer interface which I think is an up and coming subject. I'm frightened to think of the series of timestamps on my contribs history.- - MrBill3 (talk) 13:45, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

wow! just wow. thanks for explaining the detail you go into on refs. wow. Jytdog (talk) 16:02, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Autopatrolled

Hi, given your high-quality article creations, I have added the autopatrolled, autochecked user, and pending changes reviewer rights to your account. Happy editing! --Randykitty (talk) 13:43, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I hope you continue to check on and tweak my new articles as needed as a Project Journals participant. I think the scope of Journal of Neuroscience Methods needs to be spelled out some. The style guide says what the journal covers doesn't need to be stated if its obvious, but I think it provides a place to wl the subject covered. If you go through and take out garbage indexes I will take note. Thanks again for your guidance and contributions. Best. - - MrBill3 (talk) 13:51, 14 December 2014 (UTC)
Congrats! Well-deserved. -- Brangifer (talk) 18:31, 14 December 2014 (UTC)

Thank you

Hi MrBill3, I read the article on credentials and now understand the WP policy on it. Thank you for sending, and apologies for reverting your edit. 79616gr (talk) 01:22, 31 December 2014 (UTC)

Noah

Hello! There is a DR/N request you may have interest in.

This message is being sent to let you know of a discussion at the Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard regarding a content dispute discussion you may have participated in. Content disputes can hold up article development and make editing difficult for editors. You are not required to participate, but you are both invited and encouraged to help this dispute come to a resolution. Please join us to help form a consensus. Thank you! Myrvin (talk) 09:50, 1 January 2015 (UTC)

Autism Research Institute

Hey Bill. I'm not still affiliated with them, but I noticed the article was renamed from "Defeat Autism Now!" to "Autism Research Institute" based on consensus established at an article-naming board of some sort. The article however still focuses exclusively on DAN! due to its prior article-name. You may remember that I previously wrote a draft ARI page, before trimming it down to focus exclusively on DAN! after that seemed like the direction we were going. I posted on Talk that if the article is going to be called ARI, that we should consider implementing the ARI page, but haven't gotten a response yet and thought you might be available to check in on it.

Also as a heads up, I've shared a draft on the Talk page of the Heather Bresch article, which you indicated you may have some interest in. Cheers! CorporateM (Talk) 23:19, 11 January 2015 (UTC)

Help with a source?

A while ago you kindly offered to help with source access where I have trouble. Can you access PMID 24192111: it may be useful for our Kombucha article (though I am slightly taken abaken to see an article published in an apparently respectable journal have an abstract which includes the lay concept of "detoxification"!). Alexbrn talk|contribs|COI 05:46, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

I'll do what I can. I am still recovering from computer death and am pretty busy at work, but I will check what I can. - - MrBill3 (talk) 06:27, 15 January 2015 (UTC)

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Proposed solution to problem

... of computer death is to simply confiscate one from the kids, or use one of your spares. Betcha never thought of that. If you lived close by, you could borrow one of my Lappys. -Roxy the dog™ (resonate) 12:13, 11 February 2015 (UTC)

Evidence Aid Edits

Mr Bill,

Thank you your input is really helpful and your encouragement was most welcome.I don't know the group that well other than via impacts I have seen them make in other countries so I have contacted their administrators for some of this information. I know from working Disaster relief in Florida how important it is to have evidence based information on what helps as they work with mostly untrained volunteers in a compromised environment. AmyEBHC (talk) 08:30, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

I have made multiple changes in hope of reducing any neutrality issues and took out quotes from world leaders in case they could be construed as promotional. I left one in raising awareness is this an appropriate context? I don't think the blog post is unreliable in describing the work and what has been done [7][unreliable source?] by Amy Price of ThinkWell. I welcome your input AmyEBHC (talk) 10:05, 7 April 2015 (UTC)

As a thank you

The Special Barnstar
For going out of your way to help both me and Amy. Huddsblue (talk) 08:11, 8 April 2015 (UTC)

Message

Hi MrBill3, the following is copied from the Talk section of the above page. I'm not sure if the Talk there pushes messages to the editors involved or if you would have needed to pull periodically to see it. Take a look and let me know if you agree what section your edit belongs.

MrBill3, Note that I'm not the person who removed your edit and generally take a laissez-faire position on articles that inspire the most devoted passions from all angles, supporters and detractors - that's just life in an opinion driven world. I won't remove anything factual, but I do think the following point needs to be considered.

Your link is only a fact in that it is a reference to one person's opinion, though so labeled only implicitly. Every public figure has supporters or opponents with opinions that range from accurate to very biased.

What is misleading about the link, in my opinion, is that the cited person's opinion was about the ORGANIZATION after ARC's death while it was under the leadership of ARC's husband, Jonathan Murro. Incidentally, while others have different opinions, I more or less agree that the ORGANIZATION did eventually become cult-like. BUT ...

The article is about Ann Ree Colton, not the organization's course after her death. Were this practice to be followed consistently, we would see links to Dawkin's followers who did every imaginable act in articles about Dawkins himself. No clear separation of concerns.

I would recommend you move it to a section on the Niscience organization if you insist on having it somewhere - as you seem to really want. It's actually fine by me if it sits where it should be. You can link to it from the Ann Ree Colton page directly or even any page that just mentions Ann Ree Colton, or just keep a link to the "Niscience" page.

What do you think?

Sincerely,

Archimboldo — Preceding unsigned comment added by Archimboldo (talk • contribs) 19:41, 18 June 2015 (UTC)

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