On 27 July 2010 11:56, Amir E. Aharoni <amir.aharoni(a)mail.huji.ac.il> wrote:
A friend of mine woke up in the middle of the night
with a belly-ache.
He googled it (in Hebrew) and the first result was the Hebrew
Wikipedia article about appendicitis. The symptoms matched, so he went
to the hospital and it indeed was appendicitis.
Wikipedia may have saved his life and this story may make a good
testimonial video - but are we sure that we would want to do it in the
light of [[Wikipedia:Medical disclaimer]]?
I'm not at all sure we should. We shouldn't be encouraging people to
diagnose themselves using Wikipedia. What if your friend had found the
article on indigestion and found that his symptoms seemed to match
(the symptoms can be pretty similar) so just went back to bed?