User talk:Renaissancedoc

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Hi! I added American Osteopathic Association Bureau of Osteopathic Specialists to the Template:Osteopathic medicine. Let me know if you have any ideas about improving this template. User:Hopping ^T 01:57, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Your contributions to List of medical specialty colleges in the United States

Hi. I wanted to let you know that I removed the information about board certification from List of medical specialty colleges in the United States. List articles normally do not contain any paragraphs of text, besides from an introductory lead. The content you added was already in board certification (medicine), so removing it did not remove any information from Wikipedia. Most content should only be mentioned in the one article it pertains to. Having the same content in multiple places can be confusing to readers, and it is also harder to maintain. I took off the bottom navigation template as well, since it does not directly apply to the article.

If you would like to write about the details about or functions of medical specialty colleges/academies/societies, I recommend you start a new article called Medical specialty colleges to complement the list. I think this article needs to be created since there is already a list of the associations, but "medical specialty colleges" are never defined.

I also saw that you added the AAPS Academies of Medicine. Is there a list somewhere online of these? I would like to have them referenced. If you noticed, the other 2 external links go directly to the AMA and AACOM lists of their respective societies. I would like to replace the AAPS link with one going directly to a page of their Academies, but I could not find one on their website. Please source where you got this list from. Thanks. --Scott Alter 03:46, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

In Wikipedia, you generally should never have to seek anyone's permission to contribute to an individual article. There is a policy to be bold and edit whatever you think needs editing. Don't worry about an individual author's style, since it would be impossible to have all authors of the same article to conform to one style. No one can claim ownership of an article. If I didn't like your style and thought I could make the text more concise or verbose as needed, I would go ahead and do so. In turn, if you thought you could further clarify the text, you might go and make additional changes. Ultimately, consensus would be reached - either by both editors being satisfied with the outcome, or by discussing the changes on the article's talk page and reaching a consensus (sometimes inviting in others for an outside opinion).

Occasionally, major contributors may not like your additions if they change the focus of the article, but there is a policy to assume good faith. If you intend to make large changes to a page, it is good practice to first discuss them on the article's talk page and gain consensus (especially if you would be changing another editor's contributions). Though this does not necessarily apply to list articles that are incomplete (such as list of medical specialty colleges in the United States is). The items you should almost always discuss before taking action include: renaming pages, merging pages, splitting pages, changing widely-used templates, and changing appropriate categorizations. Let me know if you have any questions or need any assistance. --Scott Alter 23:00, 5 November 2007 (UTC)