[WikiEN-l] How's our coverage of medications?

[Carcharoth]

On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 4:56 PM, Oskar Sigvardsson
<oskarsigvardsson at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Tue, Nov 25, 2008 at 5:46 PM, David Gerard <dgerard at gmail.com> wrote:
>> I believe this one has been debated before and was considered to be
>> covered in the nest of disclaimers linked from the general disclaimer.
>>
>>
>> - d.
>
> There's really two arguments here, a legal argument and a moral one.
> Legally, the talmudic list of general disclaimers (which no sane
> person reads) probably covers us, but is that enough? Should we stop
> there?
>
> The moral argument says that we should make sure that people don't
> rely on only our information when it comes to serious decisions with
> serious consequences. I don't think it would be a bad thing at all if
> at the dosage section of an article on drugs we say "Consult your
> physician before taking medication" or on the article on
> nitroglycerin, have a small little disclaimer in the "Manufacturing"
> section saying "It is extremely dangerous to try this yourself if you
> are not a trained chemist".

Trouble is, if you do that for some articles and not others, you leave
yourself (or Wikipedia in general) open to claims that we failed to
"protect" people on the articles where such "in-article" disclaimers
haven't been added, or were removed (by well-intentioned editors, or
even by vandals).

Such "in-article" disclaimers, if they were ever used, would have to
be carefully monitored. It is much simpler to write and maintain a
general "boilerplate" disclaimer that applies to all articles, even if
no-one reads it.

Carcharoth