An introductory video about how to edit Wikipedia and medicine.
Wikipedia is an encyclopedia and writing is different to writing academic texts — but it is still important to use the best sources. We give secondary sources such as review articles more weight than primary sources. To read up on our guidelines check out:
The Wikipedia Medical Library
The Wikipedia Library is a resource for anyone who want to use Wikipedia or to do research to help expand and improve Wikipedia. Specialised resources for Medical editors coming soon
The Translation Task Force is a global initiative by WikiProject Medicine which has translated over 1900 articles into 100+ languages.
It doesn't matter if your first language is English or Swahili, there are always things you can help out with.
Head over to our project page!
Wikipedia can be a great resource for getting to know a field — and it can give you an encyclopaedic overview of a subject, acting as a spring-board letting you dive deeper. It should however not be used as your only source when performing research, and you should never blindly trust Wikipedia. Over the years quite a literature has been amassed surround the reliability and biases of Wikipedia. To see some of the studies that have been produced on the quality and scope of medical information on Wikipedia take a look at some of the research:
On Wikipedia and Medicine
2016
Writing a Wikipedia Article on Cultural Competence in Health Care. Zhang & Lin Med Ref Serv Q doi: 10.1080/02763869.2016.1152143
2015
Influence of wikipedia and other web resources on acute and critical care decisions. a web-based survey. Rössler et al. Intensive Care Med Exp doi: 10.1186/2197-425X-3-S1-A867
By Wikipedians
2015
Wikipedia and medicine: quantifying readership, editors, and the significance of natural language. Heilman JM, West AG J Med Internet Res doi: 10.2196/jmir.4069
Open Access to a High-Quality, Impartial, Point-of-Care Medical Summary Would Save Lives: Why Does It Not Exist? Heilman J PLoS Med doi: 10.1371/journal.pmed.1001868
WikiProject Medicine was started in 2004 by Dr. Jacob de Wolff as WikiProject Clinical Medicine with the later branch WikiProject Preclinical Medicine. These merged and WikiProject Medicine has since been one of Wikipedia's most active WikiProjects. WP:MED as it is known aims to manage and help in curation of Wikipedia's medical articles. We write articles and discuss all manner of issues on our talk page: WT:MED.
Through the years we've built up a catalogue of sub-projects and task-forces which vary in their activity, you can find some of them at the task force page
WikiProject Medicine is the English arm of an international community of Wikimedia medical projects — more of which can be found through the international WikiProject Med Foundation — on the Meta-wiki.
