Thanks Anne.
Anthony Cole <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole>
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 1:44 PM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In answer to the question of the WMF funding
research:
https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Research:FAQ
Risker/Anne
On 8 May 2014 01:13, Anthony Cole <ahcoleecu(a)gmail.com> wrote:
Wow.
Wil - you're going to love WikiData.
Phoebe: I have seen that list of peer-reviewed articles related to
Wikipedia medical content. I've extracted those related to quality and
added more from a couple of database searches I did in January and the
list
of 42 (some are letters and there's a
conference abstract, though) are
collapsed on the WikiProject Medicine talk page now under the heading,
"This thread is notable."
I've read most but not all of those and, as Andreas mentioned, most of
those suffered from small sample size and poor or opaque sample selection
criteria.
Erik, thank you for pointing to the "reviewer" trial. I had read it
before
and I'm glad to have this opportunity to tell
you how much I love it.
There
is a big hole in Wikipedia where expert reviewing
belongs.
I'm presently on the board of WikiProject Med Foundation, but will be
stepping down after Wikimania. I mostly edit medical content. Anne is
right, it is heavily curated. But stuff slips through the net of
patrollers
from time to time, and barely a day goes by
without some howler of a
long-term problem coming to light.
I would like to know - know, rather than rely on my gut feeling - how
accurate our medical content is. To know that, I think the first step
would
be to get an expert on scientific study design to
review the 30-40
existing
studies that address the quality of our medical
content, and tell us
what,
if anything, we can take from that prior work -
essentially what Anne
recommends above, but rather than making my own incompetent and heavily
biased assessment, get an expert to do it.
My own, inexpert, belief is that those studies are (mostly) so hopelessly
flawed that nothing can seriously be generalised from them. If I'm right,
I'd then like us all to consider seriously doing a survey whose design is
sufficiently rigorous to give us an answer.
Thanks for your thoughts and attention everyone.
Anthony Cole <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Anthonyhcole>
On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 11:05 AM, Andreas Kolbe <jayen466(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
> On Thu, May 8, 2014 at 3:41 AM, Risker <risker.wp(a)gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Yes, of course readability analysis is done by automation. I've yet
to
> > find a consistent readability
assessment that doesn't use automation.
> It's
> > not an area where subjectivity is particularly useful.
> >
> > And that was an average of 18 minutes per article, i.e., 36 minutes:
18
>
minutes for the WP article and 18 minutes for the PDQ article. How
long
do
you really think it should take? I read several
of the articles in
under 5
> minutes on each site. Of course, the reviewers wouldn't need to look
up
> the definitions of a lot of the terms that
lay people would need to
look
> at, because they were already professionally
educated in the topic
area,
so
> that would significantly reduce the amount of time required to assess
the
> > article.
> >
>
>
> It took me more than 18 minutes to write the last e-mail in this
thread.
:)
>
> The lung cancer article, for example, which was among those reviewed,
has
well over
4,500 words of prose, and cites 141 references. That's a
reviewing speed of 250 words per minute. I don't know if you have ever
done
> an FA review ...
>
>
>
> > Andreas, you seem to have pre-determined that Wikipedia's medical
> articles
> > are all terrible and riddled with errors.
>
>
>
> And I think you are being needlessly defensive. I have an open mind as
to
what the
results might be. What I am sure of is that neither you nor I
nor
> the Foundation really know how reliable they are. Why not make an
effort
to
find out?
> Realistically, they're amongst
> the most likely to receive professional editing and review -
Wikiproject
> > Medicine does a much better job than people are willing to credit
them.
Yes, and many editors there are sorely concerned about the quality of
medical information Wikipedia provides to the public.
Incidentally, there was a discussion of the JAOA study in The Atlantic
today:
http://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2014/05/can-wikipedia-ever-be-a-d…
A member of WikiProject Medicine is quoted in it, as is the study's
author.
—o0o—
So both sides acknowledge: There are errors in Wikipedia’s health
articles.
And that’s a problem, because people use them.
—o0o—
The biggest weakness to the articles - and
I've heard this from many
people
> who read them - is that they're written at too high a level to be
really
> accessible to lay people. I thought the
point that the study made
about
> > the benefit of linking to an "English" dictionary definition of
complex
terms rather than to another highly technical
Wikipedia article was a
very
> good one, for example. We could learn from these studies.
>
> Indeed, many science articles are mainly written by professionals in
the
> > field (I noted math and physics earlier, but chemistry and of course
a
> > large number of computer articles are
also written by professionals).
> The
> > biggest challenge for these subjects is to write them in an
accessible
way.
> Note, I said "science" - alternative medicine, history, geopolitical
and
> > "soft science" articles are much more problematic.
> >
> > Risker/Anne
> > _______________________________________________
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