User:Presto54
Hello, I'm a board certified neurologist, a long-time user and an editor since late August, 2011. My "editing" thus far hardly merits that title, but I hope to get more active in the future as I can find the time. Presto54 (talk) 03:06, 7 September 2011 (UTC)
The case for placing external links (ELs) to MedMerits in relevant Wikipedia articles
[edit]Disclosure: I am a medical advisor to MedMerits. (Please note that WP:EL does not prohibit anybody with a COI from proposing ELs, so the COI provision of WP:EL should not be the basis for objecting to such a proposal. One or more members of the community without a pertinent COI should decide whether the proposal has merit. Linking to MedMerits has been debated extensively here and here. I'm following the approach recommended by RexxS in the latter. You may not want to review the debate, so the essentials of my case follow.)
About MedMerits: MedMerits is a website that brings restricted information into the public arena. It offers free and unrestricted access to a wealth of neurologic content under license from MedLink, generally in greater depth and wider coverage (in neurology) than Wikipedia.
About MedLink: MedLink is an Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME®)-accredited medical publisher with an independent editorial board. It is restricted to fee-paying subscribers.
Validity of MedMerits as an EL: MedMerits meets WP:EL requirements that ELs contain neutral and accurate material that is relevant to an encyclopedic understanding of the subject and cannot be integrated into the Wikipedia article due to... amount of detail (such as... online textbooks).... Moreover, MedMerits is a unique resource in the public arena that contains details useful to the public but beyond what a Wikipedia article would contain if it became a featured article.
Desirability of MedMerits as an EL: Having disclosed my conflict of interest, please set aside your own biases and consider as objectively as possible whether Wikipedia users would benefit from having an EL to MedMerits in the selected WP article. In other words, does it offer added value to users interested in the selected disorder, including differentiation from other disorders? Presto54 (talk) 06:49, 25 October 2011 (UTC)