Wikipedia and Medicine January 2, 2007
Posted by Bertalan Meskó in Health, Medicine, Policy and Law, Wikipedia.trackback
In this post, I can’t be objective as I’ve been using Wikipedia for more than two years now, and I became an administrator in October. I would like to show you the relationship between Wikipedia and medical information, to show you how you can join the work in case you’re interested. I can’t cover everything, but it’s worth a try…
As the maintainer of the Medicine Portal, Medicine WikiProject and Medical Genetics WikiProject, I hope I can give you a clear aspect of medical activities.
In the medicine project, we have more than a hundred participants. You can find open tasks here. You have surely heard about the competition between Wikipedia and Encyclopaedia Britannica, but I must tell you the truth. The real competitor is the internet itself. Britannica has been better in verifiability but just so far. Now we have more than 1200 featured articles (many of them are the best works in the net in their topic) and the aim is to have at least 300.000 (the number of articles in Britannica). Before you make a comment on the difference between these numbers, take a look at some of the featured articles, then pick your Britannica from the bookshelf and compare with the same one.
So back to medicine, we maintain a collaboration that is refreshed every week. This collaboration of the week aims to fill gaps in Wikipedia, to give users a focus and to improve an article even to the featured level.
You can also help in rating medicine-related articles. It’s a crucial task as the rating system determines the main fields of work in the projects. Now we have about 1100 unassessed articles. So much to work…
Useful link:
[...] Posted by ncurse in Medical journalism, Wikipedia, About me, Web 2.0. trackback After more than a year of hard work in Wikipedia, now I got a great feedback. Some weeks ago, Brandon Keim, a well-known, freelance science and [...]
[...] I don’t think so. Yes, of course, it’d be more reliable, but it’s not the point. Wikipedia’s medical entries are created and maintained by about a hundred editors (just some of them are physicians, [...]
[...] in Wikipedia: my post on the medical activities in [...]
[...] Web 2.0. trackback I’ve recently got permission to be an author in Citizendum. I’ve already described how the medical part of Wikipedia works. Now, I’d like to present some of the processes of the health issues in Citizendum. First, [...]
[...] awesome site now rave this theory http://scienceroll.com/2007/01/02/wikipedia-and-medicine and give comments [...]
Great read. But I want to know about your opinion regarding two issues involving Wikipedia. One, is that alleged easy access or passes for anyone who may contribute incorrect information to Wikipedia. The second is that move to use the no follow attribute.
Incorrect information: A lot of editors (including me) screen the recent changes in Wikipedia to find and eliminate inappropriate edits. It’s a huge work, but we struggle to defend the rules and guidelines of Wikipedia. (I use VandalProof.)
Nofollow: To be honest, that’s the first time I’ve ever heard about that. After I googled it, I found some interesting material on the subject:
* http://www.searchenginejournal.com/all-wikipedia-links-are-now-nofollow/4288/
* http://blogoscoped.com/archive/2007-01-22-n21.html
What do you think about it?