Final (107/0/0); Closed as successful by 28bytes (talk) at 21:23, 6 October 2013 (UTC) [reply]
Zad68 (talk · contribs) – Zad68 is one of our most promising and talented medical editors. He's been with us for almost 5 years with over 15,000 edits. He really picked up his activity in March 2012, where he made the bulk of his 5000+ edits to article space, and began extensive engagement on article and user talk pages. That is where Zad truly distinguishes himself; he demonstrates impeccable discretion--calm, thoughtful, incisive, diplomatic skills. He is as expert as anyone I've seen at getting past controversy to discuss content while mediating between challenging points of view at the most contentious articles in the medical space.
A quick look at Zad's top contributions demonstrates why his unique disposition is so critical: Low back pain, Circumcision, Lyme disease, Medical uses of silver, ADHD, Water fluoridation. In addition to stellar mediating and content additions in those topics, Zad is also active at major noticeboards--AIV, ANI, RSN, DRN, BLPN, UAA--and he is a clueful commenter at AFD. Zad works heavily on peer review and GA review of medical articles and has helped to bring the extremely heated article Circumcision up to GA quality. Zad is a regular at WikiProject Medicine where he's become a trusted voice of reason and an active and helpful participant. He deeply understands the evaluation of medical evidence and demonstrates his grasp of the medical reliable sources guideline through his continual efforts to mentor other editors in appropriate use of medical sources. He also leads by adding new evidence about systematic reviews of medical studies to articles as new publications re-evaluate the efficacy of treatments.
That Zad manages to work at the heart of alternative medicine, elective procedures, medical controversies, and popularly disputed therapies with such grace is a testament to his value as a Wikipedian and a thorough encouragement towards what his value as an admin will be. He consistently and fairly applies his critical thinking to finding and adding quality sources; yet, he does not belittle or discourage those with differing views or a less developed sense of evidence quality. Quite the opposite, he teaches and guides those who come to our articles with often vehement views, making them better editors as he lowers the heat in controversial discussions and subjects. Continuing to work in these areas with the added admin tools will allow him to be even more effective in helping editors create dispassionately accurate and up-to-date encyclopedic medical content that reflects the best available evidence.
--Ocaasi t | c 14:56, 27 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Zad68 20:09, 29 September 2013 (UTC)[reply]Dear candidate, thank you for offering to serve Wikipedia as an administrator. Please answer these questions to provide guidance for participants:
It'd be appropriate to semi a Talk page if there were ongoing, persistent disruption from a wide range of IPs that couldn't be handled appropriately with an IP range block. Another reason I can think an article Talk page might be semi'd or even (briefly) full-protected would be if it were the Talk page of a high-visibility BLP of an individual at the center of some unfolding current event, and the Talk page kept filling up with BLP violations. Also, there might be an office action related to a legal complaint, I've seen a tiny handful of those.
The proper way to request that an article Talk page be protected is to go to WP:RFPP and create a new entry in the Current requests for protection using the ((lat)) template. To then request that an edit be made to a protected article Talk page (this is what I think your question is asking for), go to the WP:RFED section of WP:RFPP and create a new entry using the ((edit semi-protected)) or ((edit protected)) template as appropriate. These are pretty rare, I couldn't find even one example of a proper request to edit a protected article Talk page in the last four months of edits (10,000 diffs) to WP:RFED. This doesn't come as a surprise: I logged out, went to a protected article Talk page, and found no link to WP:RFED... actually there's absolutely no indication that requests to edit the Talk page will be entertained anywhere. The only thing it says is that you need to create an account or log in, maybe that should be fixed.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, and as such is a tertiary source, with content built mostly on secondary sources. Building content on primary sources should be the exception and not the rule, therefore I start off from the position that the content should probably not stand as added, but do look for reasons to see if it could. So, the first thing I do is go read the primary study. I'll look at things like the journal it's published in, whether it's MEDLINE indexed, the study type, date, the population studied, who the authors are and what institutions they're affiliated with. I'll then read the context within the article where the content has been added. If it's an "orphaned" primary source (meaning it's not being used alongside a secondary source that uses it), I'll go look at some secondary sources and see if I can find a secondary to support instead, or if the primary study has a conclusion out of line with the general consensus of the secondary sources (a problem per WP:MEDREV). It's also possible the new content added is already covered elsewhere in the article, supported by secondary sources, in which case it should be removed as duplicate.
There are a few cases where the use of a primary study might be beneficial. It's helpful if the article is using the conclusions of a secondary source which cites that primary source, and the edit is adding a bit of important detail or clarification directly from the primary study. If it's a new study in a research area that is not very active, meaning primary studies on the topic are few and far between, and secondary sources synthesizing conclusions from the primary data just aren't available, it might make sense to leave those in the article, although even here the lack of studies and secondary sources might indicate that current thinking has abandoned the hypothesis being tested by the study. If it's a large, advanced-stage clinical trial in humans with really interesting results, it may be appropriate to mention it with a general statement like "Research is being conducted into the use of X to treat Y" (without stating the results) in a Research directions section, although this is a judgment call. In most other cases, however, content based on primary research isn't appropriate for our articles, and I'll likely remove the added content. The quality of primary research is widely variable, and it isn't even always obvious that what was studied is actually relevant to the article topic; we need good-quality secondary sources to do that sort of evaluation. Also, a primary source cannot establish its own noteworthiness, and without a secondary source, it can't be shown that the principle of due weight is met.
In responding, I'll take a look at who the editor is, the article edit history and Talk page to see if this primary study has come up before, which might inform how I'll respond. In particular, if the results of the primary study added are not in line with the consensus findings of secondary sources, this is a red flag indicating that a diplomatic response is needed. If it's an IP or registered editor who's just getting started in making biomedical edits and hasn't been welcomed, I'd use Twinkle to apply a welcome template, and leave a hand-written message too explaining what happened and pointing to WP:MEDRS. If it's a new registered user with a problematic username I'd follow up on that also. If the edit were particularly good I might thank the editor for the edit, maybe even hand out a barnstar if I'm lucky!
Further population based and case controlled studies found the risk of stroke post chiropractic spinal manipulation to be identical to a visit to a primary care physician[cite Cassidy 2008]. The authors concluded they found no evidence of excess risk of VBA stroke associated chiropractic care compared to primary care.
I agree with the original revert in that the content and source as it stood could be seen as a WP:MEDREV problem, and also needed to be fundamentally reworked. Previous to this Cassidy 2008 primary study, reliable secondary sources indicated that manipulations of the upper spine were associated with a risk of stroke. For an example, look at this 2007 systematic review by Ernst. The purpose of Cassidy 2008 was to provide better evidence through a more rigorous protocol, and this primary source came to the conclusion that there was no increased risk.
So, to (possibly) replace the primary, I found a MEDLINE-indexed article, PMID 23320608, that cites and summarizes Cassidy 2008. It is actually a primary source itself, but it has a large discussion section that acts as a secondary source. It's not optimal but it might be useful, I'd want to propose and discuss that idea. I also found nine more relevant sources that covered Cassidy 2008, mostly from Canadian chiropractic associations, but none of them were MEDLINE indexed. It's another matter for discussion as to why Cassidy 2008 hasn't been picked up by more MEDLINE-indexed secondary source journal articles in the 5+ years since it's been published. (I also found PMID 20682039, which is an editorial published in a non-MEDLINE indexed journal, so it wouldn't be useful for the article, but it provides a very nice, clear explanation of why the Cassidy 2008 study methodology was better than previous studies, and what the results mean.) There were a few other problems with the edit: it had a copyvio, it didn't summarize the source accurately in several ways, and the ref cite itself had mistakes in it (it specified the wrong journal and date). So I agree with the revert, and I probably would have opened a discussion on the Talk page about using PMID 23320608 instead.
I hope this demonstrates my thought process well; if you have any more detailed follow-up questions on this content, we should probably take it to the relevant article Talk pages. Zad68 13:52, 4 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]
Please keep discussion constructive and civil. If you are unfamiliar with the nominee, please thoroughly review his contributions before commenting.
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I hear this concern. As mentioned, medical articles (or at least the ones I've been working on) don't make much use of fair use images, but I'll be sure to pay careful attention to the WP:NFCC policy and WP:FAIRUSE guidelines if I should come across the need to upload or use a fair use image. Thanks for the note and the support. Zad68 17:04, 2 October 2013 (UTC)[reply]