Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-04 Thread Bod Notbod
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:00 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: FAs are frequently all but unreadable to the casual reader. How feasible would it be to add intro clear to casual reader? I realise some topics are just never going to be that clear ... particularly with the tendency for

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread Bod Notbod
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:03 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: All that's happened is that the professionally produced material had some specific attention towards making it readable. The Wikipedia AFAIK doesn't have any formal processes to check that, so far as I know. Is it

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread Charles Matthews
Bod Notbod wrote: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 2:03 AM, Ian Woollard ian.wooll...@gmail.com wrote: All that's happened is that the professionally produced material had some specific attention towards making it readable. The Wikipedia AFAIK doesn't have any formal processes to check that, so

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Lindsey
I think the study does an excellent, if only implicit, job of picking up a growing thread about Wikipedia quality, and one that I have often observed in my own research of Wikipedia. Professionally-written articles (in this case on cancer) are very clearly and explicitly written with the

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Gerard
On 2 June 2010 12:42, David Lindsey dvdln...@gmail.com wrote: So, then, why are we trying?  Why do the best Wikipedia articles look more and more like (poorly done) journal literature reviews full of technical terms and requiring substantial background knowledge to understand?  I, for one,

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Gerard
On 2 June 2010 14:10, Charles Matthews charles.r.matth...@ntlworld.com wrote: We should undoubtedly stick to doing one thing well. And our thing does appear to be collation. I'm happy for WP's cancer coverage to make it into the same sentence as the NCI's. It argues that some very serious

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread Bod Notbod
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 1:22 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: The best articles are the creation of algorithmic and judgement-impaired FA/GA review processes. You get what you measure. How to measure good writing? What do you mean by algorithmic? And what do you feel needs changing

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Gerard
On 2 June 2010 18:00, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: FAs are frequently all but unreadable to the casual reader. How feasible would it be to add intro clear to casual reader? I realise some topics are just never going to be that clear ... particularly with the tendency for FAs to be

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Gerard
On 2 June 2010 15:27, Bod Notbod bodnot...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 1:22 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: The best articles are the creation of algorithmic and judgement-impaired FA/GA review processes. You get what you measure. How to measure good writing? What do

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread Andrew Gray
On 1 June 2010 23:06, Nathan nawr...@gmail.com wrote: The problem is the fundamental issue of rapidly changing content; a snapshot analysis will never give you a good grasp of an article (or all of Wikipedia's) general reliability, because any article can be perfectly accurate in one minute

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Lindsey
Yes, Intro to X articles would be nice. There are a handful floating around, such as http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introduction_to_general_relativity, but often attempts to create such articles are criticized as content forks, which is unfortunate. On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:00 PM, David Gerard

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread David Gerard
On 2 June 2010 18:51, David Lindsey dvdln...@gmail.com wrote: On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 6:00 PM, David Gerard dger...@gmail.com wrote: FAs are frequently all but unreadable to the casual reader. How feasible would it be to add intro clear to casual reader? I realise some topics are just never

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-02 Thread William Pietri
On 06/02/2010 10:01 AM, David Gerard wrote: FAs are frequently all but unreadable to the casual reader. How feasible would it be to add intro clear to casual reader? I realise some topics are just never going to be that clear ... particularly with the tendency for FAs to be about

[WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-01 Thread Keith Old
Folks, The LA Times health blog Booster Shots reports: http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/booster_shots/2010/06/three-cheers-for-wikipedias-cancer-info-well-two-and-a-half-cheers.html As it turns out, information on Wikipedia can largely be trusted, at least as it pertains to cancer. That should

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-01 Thread Nathan
The problem is the fundamental issue of rapidly changing content; a snapshot analysis will never give you a good grasp of an article (or all of Wikipedia's) general reliability, because any article can be perfectly accurate in one minute and horribly misleading in another. Any article about

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-01 Thread Ray Saintonge
Keith Old wrote: The researchers write in their study's abstract, to be presented at the current annual meeting of theAmerican Society of Clinical Oncologyhttp://chicago2010.asco.org/: Although the Wiki resource had similar accuracy and depth to the professionally edited database, it was

Re: [WikiEN-l] Three cheers for Wikipedia's cancer info (or two and a half)

2010-06-01 Thread Steve Bennett
On Wed, Jun 2, 2010 at 7:53 AM, Keith Old keith...@gmail.com wrote: The researchers write in their study's abstract, to be presented at the current annual meeting of theAmerican Society of Clinical Oncologyhttp://chicago2010.asco.org/: Although the Wiki resource had similar accuracy and depth