states "A complete ZIKV genome sequence [..] was recovered from brain
tissue" (of a fetus whose mother had been infected with Zika virus).
Given that the mass media are currently all over Zika, simple page
view stats are essentially useless for tracking the spread of the
disease - the PLOS Computational Biology article that Anthony has
linked states "Wikipedia data have a variety of instabilities that
need to be understood and compensated for. For example, Wikipedia
shares many of the problems of other internet data, such as highly
variable interest-driven traffic caused by news reporting and other
sources."
However, correlating geolocated view stats or searches with external info like
might be useful.
In addition, if we had some representation of clickstreams for
Zika-related articles in languages spoken in affected areas, this
could help guide the development of Zika-related content in those
languages.
Beyond Wikipedia, there is a page on Wikidata to coordinate activities
around Zika:
.
Cheers,
d.
On Mon, Feb 15, 2016 at 4:24 AM, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 2:58 PM, Leila Zia
<leila(a)wikimedia.org> wrote:
Hey Dan,
On Sun, Feb 14, 2016 at 3:02 AM, Dan Andreescu <dandreescu(a)wikimedia.org>
wrote:
So, I felt personally compelled in the case of Zika, and the confusing
coverage it has seen, to offer to personally help.
Which aspect of the coverage are you referring to as confusing?
Well, so the first reports were that 3500 cases of microcephaly were linked
to Zika in Brazil, since October. If you do the math, with Brazil's birth
rate of 300,000 per year, 3500 for three months is incredibly high. The
number went up to 4400 before it was discredited and the latest I read is
that it's down to 404 [1] and there are claims of over-inflation. That same
article talks about serious doubts that Zika even has anything to do with
microcephaly. In reading around some more about the subject, it seems like
a multi-variate analysis gone wrong.
I can run queries, test hypotheses, and help publish data that could back
up articles. Privacy of our editors is of course still obviously protected,
but that's easier to do in a specific case with human review than in the
general case.
I'm up for brainstorming about what we can do and helping. Please keep me
in the loop. In general, given that a big chunk of our traffic comes from
Google at the moment, it would be great to work with the researchers in
Google involved in Google's health related initiatives to produce
complementary knowledge to what Google can already tell about Zika (for
example, this). I'll reach out to the few people I know to get some more
information.
Depending on what complementary knowledge we want to produce, working with
WikiProject Medicine can be helpful, too.
Cool, yeah, I'm nowhere close to knowledgeable on this, I can data-dog
though :)
[1]
www.cbc.ca/news/health/microcephaly-brazil-zika-reality-1.3442580
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