Introduction

We take the quality of each WisdomCard very seriously, and it's important to us to give people who use OrganizedWisdom reliable health information, organized for easy reading and understanding.

Read this page carefully! It's important that you understand what we're looking for, because your first three WisdomCards are a tryout. If you submit a WisdomCard three times and it does not meet our quality standards, you may be dropped from the Guide training program.

Following the successful completion of your first three WisdomCards, we'll ask you to work and train as a guide applicant with the goal of becoming "certified" by our physician review team.

What to Know

When you are welcomed as a Guide Applicant, you will be given access to create WisdomCards and instructions on how to claim your first topic. We strongly recommend that your first WisdomCard topic be a disease or medical condition rather than a hospital, physician or foundation.

Watch the video: How To Claim a WisdomCard

When you look at your WisdomCard, provided you're logged in, you'll see a blue bar containing white links down at the bottom of your screen. Click "Edit" to see the code you'll be editing. (Useful shortcut: To edit a WisdomCard, you can use the shortcut shift-alt-E, then use shift-alt-S to save your changes.)

Some of this will look confusing. You can ignore anything in curly brackets, including all the places you see {{PAGENAME}}. This is NOT something you have to replace. Putting PAGENAME in double curly quotes tells our system to automatically insert the name of the page. Less work for you!

Step 1: Find Great Links

Start by becoming familiar with health sites included on the Useful Resources list. While it is expected that you preferentially utilize these health sites, don't confine yourself to those if you find better sites! Your topic may be one where there are specialized sites or pages available, and it's your job to find the most useful resources for your topic.

Deep linking is good. It's OK to link to, say, the Mayo Clinic overview of a condition in the "5 Great Resources section", and a sub-page on treatments in the Treatments section. But please do not link to the exact same page twice on your WisdomCard.

Remember that your page title is not the only term you should search. If your topic is "brain cancer," for example, you might also search on "brain tumor" and "cancer of the brain." Use your search skills to uncover the very best web sites and resources.

Pay attention to the dates on your links. We prefer that links be no more than 3 years old, and that scholarly articles be no more than 5 years old. If the only information you can find is older, then use it, but be sure it's the most recent information available. For news and journal articles, please include the date in parentheses after the title in the link text. See below for specific formatting details.

Step 2: Evaluate Your Links

• Does this link come from a credible source? Or is it "spam"? (Read this post for tips on recognizing credible health sites.)
• Does it answer the question of the section it's in? Is there another section where it would fit better?)
• Last and most important: Will it help the user?

The Basic Elements of a WisdomCard

• 1) Each WisdomCard should include at least 30 to 60 high-quality links when possible.
• 2) Our goal is to feature at least 3-5 fantastic resources in each section of the WisdomCard template.
• 3) ALWAYS include 5 Great Resources in the first section.
• 4) Make sure the Section Template Headings are relevant to your topic and are grammatically correct. Please note, the WisdomCard topic title gets automatically added into the template.
• 5) If a particular section doesn't make sense or needs to be reworded to be grammatically correct, please update accordingly.
• 6) When possible stick to the Template, but you may add or remove sections if necessary. Please email guides [at] organizedwisdom.com if you feel more than one change is necessary to the Template for your topic and someone will help you determine what is needed for that WisdomCard.
• 7) Must-have resources: Check eMedicine.com and UpToDate.com for information on your topic. These should be included in every WisdomCard for which the sites have info.
• 8) Complete the "Research Notes" section by including two or three useful and relevant facts on the topic. Research Notes should be three to five sentences long.
• 9) Select at least one "Guide Favorite" by inserting this code: {{toppick}} after the most useful links on the WisdomCard.
• 10) Insert "Warning Icons" to indicate sensitive sites or alert people about special issues. (See the code for Warning Icons below).
• 11) Organize each link so that it specifically relevant to the section it is listed under.
• 12) List up to 10 "Related Searches" at the bottom of each WisdomCard.
• 13) Check spelling and formatting to make sure that it is correct.
• 14) You may link to any type of media in your search result (audio, video, text, Flash, etc.).
• 15) Add redirects to help users find your card.

Step 3: Format Your Links

Watch the video: How To Add Your First Link
Watch the video: Credit the Source

This is the hardest part for many Guides. A properly formatted link looks like this:

* eMedicine: [http://www.emedicine.com/MED/topic2722.htm Lymphedema]

Here's a step-by-step outline:

Start with an asterisk.

Then the name of the site, followed by a colon. We do not use the ".com" in the names of most sites, unless it would be difficult to understand without it. ("About.com", for example, is an exception.) If the content comes from a syndicated provider such as A.D.A.M. or Healthwise, credit that source first, then the site where it was published. For example:

* Healthwise (via WebMD): [http://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/tc/warts-and-plantar-warts-symptoms Warts and Plantar Warts - Symptoms]

After the colon, there's a space.

Then you open a set of square brackets, like this [.

Add the URL right after the first bracket, then a space.

Next, enter the page title. The page title is usually the largest piece of text at the top of the page. It's OK to copy and paste page titles -- in fact, it's recommended, especially in the case of complicated, hard-to-spell health terms. However, please don't use ALL CAPS -- capitalize the first letter of each word, so it is in Title Case. Please do not just use a single word, such as "Symptoms" as your link text, but rather a more descriptive title, like "Non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma: Signs & Symptoms" that fits with the page title and content.

Then close the brackets, like this ].

• Homepages

In cases where you are linking to a site's homepage, there is a choice of formatting options depending on the site.

For a site that has a good descriptive motto, mission, or subtitle, please use that as your link text:

* Family Enhancement & Play Therapy Center: [http://www.play-therapy.com/ Play Therapy Information for Therapists and Parents]

Often you can find a good phrase in the title bar of the browser, where many sites put their motto or their own site description:

* Know Mycotoxins: [http://www.knowmycotoxins.com Global Mycotoxin Information Resource]

With a foundation or government site "Official Site" is acceptable:

* American Heart Association: [http://www.americanheart.org Official Site]

For a business or personal site that may not have a motto or mission, it is acceptable to use "Homepage":

* Cleveland Clinic: [http://my.clevelandclinic.org/default.aspx Homepage]

In most cases, the more descriptive the link text, the better. For a list of examples of sites linked to their homepages, see OrganizedWisdom's TOP 100 Health Resources.

• Multiple Links

In cases where you want to link to more than one page on the same site within a single section, you can put multiple links with one lead-in, like this:

* Mayo Clinic: [http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fibrous-dysplasia/DS00991/DSECTION=causes Fibrous Dysplasia: Causes] | [http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fibrous-dysplasia/DS00991/DSECTION=complications Complications]

Which will look like this on the WisdomCard:

• Mayo Clinic: Fibrous Dysplasia: Causes | Complications

• Video
• If you find a video that contains really good wisdom about your topic, we have the ability to embed it in a WisdomCard. The basic format is
• {{#ev:service|id}}

Where:

• "service" is the name of a video sharing service (generally "youtube").
• "id" is the identification number of the video to include

Be sure to include the "|" divider in between service and id.

Example: {{#ev:youtube|vMBn-hdA3e8}}

Step 4: Add Research Notes and News

The "Research Notes" section goes at the top of the WisdomCard and is the first thing users see. It also shows up in search results. Because it's so important to get this right, we've provided separate pages on Great Research Notes and Fast Facts. Please review these as you craft your first Research Notes, and return to them frequently to refresh your memory on your second and subsequent Research Notes. Reviewers may ask you to go over these pages to make sure your Research Notes meet our standards.

News Headlines

Watch the video: Adding the RSS News Feed

We include a News section on each WisdomCard -- "5 Latest Headlines About {{PAGENAME}}". We're using Topix as our news source, although if the results are better at Google News, please use the best results you can find -- all you have to do is grab one URL and paste it into the template twice. Here's how:

• Go to www.topix.com
• Type your topic into the search box
• At the far right side of the address bar you'll see a little orange logo that will say "Subscribe to this page..." if you mouse over it.
• Click on this logo and copy the new URL.
• Paste it into the News code where it calls for a URL. The result will look something like this (using "lymphedema" as an example):

• • ==5 Latest Headlines on {{PAGENAME}}==
  • <rss number=5 desc=off>http://www.topix.com/rss/search/article?x=0&y=0&q=lymphedema</rss>
  • * [http://www.topix.com/rss/search/article?x=0&y=0&q=lymphedema More {{PAGENAME}} News from Topix]

Step 5: Favorites, Warnings, and Dates

Use the code below to include graphical icons next to links that should be highlighted. When people scroll over these images on the WisdomCard, they will be able to read the Warning text you include along with the icon.

What do our icons mean?

Guide Favorite - Guides place this next to their favorite links or to highlight exceptional wisdom or inspirational sites. Please choose at least one Guide Favorite in the top two sections of each WisdomCard. You may pick up to five Guide Favorites anywhere on the WisdomCard.

Warning! - Guides flag links that include information that is controversial, sensitive or sponsored by a biased source/company.

Scroll down to reach relevant content - Use this if the content referenced is not near the top of the page or at an anchor tag.

PDF - We try to avoid PDFs whenever possible, but sometimes great information is only available as a PDF, so please warn users that they're about to open a PDF.

Free Registration Required - We try to avoid sites that require the user to join to read articles, but sometimes the sites are too good to leave out, like eMedicine or Medscape.

Video - Obviously this is not needed when we embed videos, but it's nice to let the user know if they're about to click on a site that will be showing them a video.

In Memoriam - To honor bloggers or wisdom from patients who have passed away.

To include anyone of the 5 icons, simply paste the appropriate code after each deserving link. There should be a space between the closing bracket of the link and the warning icon. Please only use one Warning Icon next to a link.

• {{toppick}} Guide Favorite

• {{Warning}} Controversial
• {{Commercial}} Commercial Site
• {{Pharma}} Site created or sponsored by pharmaceutical maker
• {{Unknown}} Unknown Source/Author
• {{PDF}} PDF
• {{Scroll}} Scroll down to reach relevant content
• {{Mature}} Graphic content suitable for mature audiences
• {{LawFirm}} Page created/sponsored by law firm
• {{Registration}} Free Registration Required
• {{Video}} Video

• {{Inmemoriam}} In Memoriam

Dates

When including news stories (other than in the RSS feed) or individual journal articles, please add the article date. Our formatting for that is {{linkdate|Jan. 10, 2008}} and should follow the link, outside the closing square bracket. Be sure to leave a space between the closing square bracket and opening bracket of the date link. For example:

* Medical News Today: [http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/60334.php Meningitis and Encephalitis Cases Caused by Different Bacteria] {{linkdate|Jan. 7, 2007}}

We are using AP style for dates, which means you abbreviate the longer month names: Jan., Feb., March, April, May, June, July, Aug., Sept., Oct., Nov. and Dec.

Step 6: Add Related Searches

Include no more than 10 related searches on each WisdomCard. Enclose each health topic in two pairs of square brackets. Be sure to put each condition on a separate line with an asterisk in front of it, just as with the other sets of links.

For example:

* [[Diabetes]]
* [[High Cholesterol]]
* [[Insulin Pump]]

By including the names of all of the other relevant WisdomStubs and WisdomCards , your related searches section will have approximately 8-10 links: WisdomStubs that correspond to the the full WisdomCard topic, the actual full WisdomCard itself, and other related full WisdomCards.

The reason for doing this is so users of the site will be much more inclined to visit all of the other WisdomCards that are being created. As a result, they will go deeper into the site, visit more pages, and hopefully learn even more along the way!

Here's an example of a good related searches section:

• Related Searches: (total 8-10)
• Miscarriage -------------------------------------->Full WisdomCard topic
• Placenta Previa---------------------------------->Additional Related WisdomCard
• Threatened Abortion--------------------------->Additional Related WisdomCard
• Miscarriage at 6 Weeks Symptoms---------->Stubs from the corresponding overall main topic
• Bleeding After Miscarriage
• Spontaneous Abortion After Fetal Heartbeat
• Odds of Miscarriage After 8 Weeks
• Treatment of Ectopic Pregnancy
• Returning to Work After Miscarriage
• Causes for Early Miscarriages
• Conceiving a Baby After Miscarriage

Step 7: Check Your Work!!

• Are the Research Notes interesting, informative and well-written?
• Are there 5 links in the 5 Great Resources section?
• Is every link relevant to the section in which it appears?
• Click each link. Does it go to the correct site?
• Is there a mix of resources, with some more technical (such as eMedicine or UpToDate) and some written more for the average person?
• Are all links authoritative and reliable?
• Is everything spelled and formatted correctly?

When your WisdomCard is ready, click "Submit for review" at the bottom. Our reviewer team will get back to you with feedback within 7 to 10 days. Do not claim new WisdomCards until after you receive this feedback -- it won't save any time if you claim more cards but then have to go back and correct the same mistakes on all of them.