Tag Archives: wikipedia

Did you Know?, Information

Wikipedia, Scientists and Biomedical Information

An article in the Sept 2010 issue of PLoS Computational Biology pleads with scientists to use Wikipedia to engage with the public:

For better or worse, people are guided to Wikipedia when searching the Web for biomedical information. So there is an increasing need for the scientific community to engage with Wikipedia to ensure that the information it contains is accurate and current…

For scientists, contributing to Wikipedia is an excellent way of fulfilling public engagement responsibilities and sharing expertise…

In order to help the average scientist to engage Wikipedia, the authors rec’d Ten Simple Rules for Editing Wikipedia. These are good and appropriate rules for all of us.

Information

The risks of using Wikipedia as a source

If you use Wikipedia, please be aware that there are risks to using it as a source (not even counting the risk of upsetting your teacher, who requested that you use it sparingly, if you use it at all).

So says science Journalist Steve Silberman, by way of  Rafe Colburn of r3c.org

If you’re curious about the historical context for the TV series The Pillars of the Earth, Wikipedia is an outstanding resource. On the other hand, if you’re writing a news story about outbreaks of infections caused by drug-resistant bacteria in hospitals, you shouldn’t rely on what you read in Wikipedia. Science journalist Steve Silberman writes about how spurious information sourced from Wikipedia is pervasive in stories about acinetobacter, and why that bad information could cost people their lives.

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One Wikipedia entry = 12 print books. Wow.

James Bridle, of booktwo.org, writes about how one entry in Wikipedia – The Iraq War – turned into a multi-volume set, 12 books in all.  Basically, Mr Bridle, took all the edits to that one entry, made between Dec. 2004 and Nov 2009 and turned them into a 12-volume look into ‘flow of history,’ Wikipedia-style

This particular book—or rather, set of books—is every edit made to a single Wikipedia article,  during the five years between the article’s inception in December 2004 and November 2009, a total of 12,000 changes and almost 7,000 pages.

It amounts to twelve volumes: the size of a single old-style encyclopaedia. It contains arguments over numbers, differences of opinion on relevance and political standpoints, and frequent moments when someone erases the whole thing and just writes “Saddam Hussein was a dickhead”.

It is a rather fascinating concept and posting.  Read it at booktwo.org.  See his presentation on Slideshare.  Or listen to his presentation at Huffduffer [he presented at dContruct 2010].