User talk:Mathglot/sandbox/Drafts/Using medical database collections

Title

Or maybe it should be, "Using academic database collections" since not all of them are strictly med-oriented. Otoh, this is oriented towards MEDRS and not the general case, so what we really mean is, ""Using academic and medical database collections to find MEDRS-compliant sources", but that's too wordy. Need a clever wordsmith to come up with a good title. Mathglot (talk) 01:43, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Invitation

Hi Colin. At WT:MED, referring to the links in the talk header template generated by the {{find medical sources}} template, you wrote:

I think it is possible the links could be very useful but we can't control the search results as much as we'd like, so editors will need some training as to how best to use each search. I think that training could be better done in a project help page than in any official guideline page.

That received support from SandyGeorgia who named you, along with WhatamIdoing, as premier wordsmiths, but she was concerned that it would take a long time to put such a document together. I also thought your idea was a really good one.

So, I decided to do something about it. In order to address the concern about it taking a while, I thought I'd write up the scaffolding of such an article, leaving the actual detail of how best to use each searchable database collection up to you and WAID (and anyone with MEDRS experience who wants to jump in). I've organized it as you see; in theory, all you have to do is to add explanations for each collection in the last column of the table, and add any relevant thoughts to the empty sections (or delete them). Or feel free to reorganize it, or to toss it out and start from scratch, if you wish.

This page isn't meant to strictly adhere to the links currently present in the {{find medical sources}} template, although it was born out of it due to the current discussion at WT:MED. Probably it should be a superset of those links. Also, I don't think mere presence in the table should be seen as an endorsement of any kind, but rather as advice; i.e., one could add NY Times, (even Facebook) or wherever newbies might be tempted to go, and say when (if ever) they were appropriate. The last column is where the advice can go, and the advice for users could be, "Only use for ABC", or, "Don't ever use, because XYZ." To the extent that this would be a supplement to help (mostly) new editors figure out when to use and when not to use certain resources, this could also be the place to wave them off from using a source; they won't receive that information if we don't include it somewhere. Maybe a whole separate table, listing stuff never to use, or rarely, and why not?

An advanced stylistic feature that occurs to me and could be useful down the road, is to have color-coded rows; so, green background for impeccable sources, orange for "good for some purposes", red for "rarely/never", gray for "it depends/don't know/no consensus" and so on. But we could look into coloring later; the first thing would be to fill out the text so it can be useful to editors seeking guidance on individual searchable database collections of medical content.

Anyway, here it is, if you want it. Someone with deep MEDRS experience should be writing up the descriptions, and I can't do that part of it, so it needs volunteers to jump in. If nobody finds it useful, nbd; drafts get deleted automatically after six months' inactivity. Adding Wikmoz. Thanks, Mathglot (talk) 23:58, 14 November 2021 (UTC)

Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2008-06-30/Dispatches was written by Tim Vickers, is quite old, but may have some useful bits still. SandyGeorgia (Talk) 00:09, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

Thank you for taking the initiative to create this! It could be valuable to have a MEDRS version of WP: RSPSOURCES. Or perhaps something closer to the above-mentioned dispatch. Just need to work through the scope and purpose to ensure this doesn’t become another one of Wikipedia’s many poorly-maintained lists (WP:LORD, Medical literature retrieval, List of academic databases and search engines, etc.). If the scope is limited to focus on the key user instructions that transcend individual services, (pay attention to date, source reputation, and location in the hierarchy of evidence) then maybe it can be summarized within a new section in WP:MEDRS. But definitely need to think a little more on this. - Wikmoz (talk) 00:41, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I had never heard of List of academic databases and search engines, which is exactly your point, I think. Heh, just an occupational hazard of being a wiki, I guess. Mathglot (talk) 06:46, 15 November 2021 (UTC)

I made the comment about a guide before I had a play with the links and to be honest, I don't see the point right now. Nearly all the links are pretty useless. But if someone can demonstrate otherwise... -- Colin°^Talk 17:14, 15 November 2021 (UTC)