Charles Matthews wrote:
Delirium wrote:
As far as I understand, the main stumbling blocks
have been that nobody
can agree on who should make the database, what the process will be for
verifying information, what access policies should be like, who would be
responsible if there were errors in it, what constitutes evidence worth
including, etc., etc. Seems doctors are voting with their feet and
deciding that Wikipedia's attempt at tackling all those is at least
better than nothing.
This (medical info) case is certainly an interesting instance of WP
"undercutting" what people would generally agree was a well-founded
desire to have authoritative information.
I agree the desire for authoritative
information is well-founded, but
you can go too far and have paralysis: since nobody's yet agreed on what
the most perfect, most authoritative source of information would be, we
shouldn't have one at all? Surely building *something* is better, which
is basically what Wikipedia has done, with tentative and in-progress
answers to all those tricky questions of authority and process. Maybe a
medical organization can build something better than Wikipedia for their
field, with more authoritative information and a better process. But
they haven't, despite a decades-long headstart on us in the planning
department. Rather than undercutting, maybe we'll actually stimulate a
renewed sense of urgency to produce an alternative?
-Mark