Medicine in Wikipedia: Reliable Information?
I’ve already talked a lot about the medical articles of Wikipedia and Citizendium. As an administrator, I’d like to provide some useful tips for those who, as a layman or a medical professional, would like to be involved in improving the medical articles of Wikipedia. Second, I’d like to show you how Wikipedia is improving in the aspect of credibility.
So, let’s see some tips on how you can join the medical editorial board in Wikipedia:
- The most visited medicine-related page is Medicine:Portal. Check it out and join me to help maintaining it! Selected articles, images, news, quotes and tasks.
- Work on the articles nominated to become Good Articles!
- You’ll definitely find task or project for your pleasure on the page of the Medical WikiProject.
- If you’d like to work on even more specific articles, then check out the Clinical Medicine or the Preclinical Medicine WikiProjects!
- We always focus on a specific medicine-related article in the Collaboration of the Fortnight.
- Help us how to rate the several thousand articles!
- If you don’t have enough time or the qualification to improve the articles, then wikify those or help how to categorize them. These are the pages that need attention.
- In case you’re interested in genetics, your project is the Medical Genetics WikiProject.
- If you would like to create articles, then check out what others have already requested in the field of genetics or medicine.
Why do I say bravely that Wikipedia is improving in the aspect of credibility and reliability? As I tried to be objective, I chose some of the first entries in the List of causes of death by rate article and determined the number of references and external links in each article now and a year ago. Here is the result:
For me, it proves that Wikipedia is still improving regarding the number of references which is one of the most important aims nowadays in this huge community.
Citizendium, the online encyclopaedia that only selected editors, professionals can edit, is, obviously, more reliable than Wikipedia, but Wikipedia is far more comprehensive than Citizendum. So both should serve as an additional source of information, but never as your last source…
- Why to work in Wikipedia: I’ve been mentioned in Nature Medicine
- Radiopaedia: a wiki for radiology
- Ask Dr Wiki vs medicine in Wikipedia
- Medical wikis: the future of medicine?
- Medicine in Wikipedia and Citizendum
- Why to use Wikipedia: answer for Eye on DNA
- Genetic Wikis
- Wikipedia and the Semantic Web?