Cochrane has been a great partner for wiki editors in the field of medicine and for Wikipedia's public image in general. I edit Wikipedia's medical articles and do outreach to health organizations to invite them to edit Wikipedia articles. Many organizations already imagine that Cochrane is the standard for conservative and non-controversial health information, and when I mention that Cochrane itself has a wiki partnership, the fact of that collaboration goes a long way toward persuading other organizations to be involved in editing wiki. JenOttawa has been a great go-between for explaining Wiki to Cochrane and Cochrane to wiki contributors. These kinds of collaborations are invaluable for developing Wikipedia with the best possible source material. Blue Rasberry (talk)16:38, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
As encouraging as this article might be, I am concerned that it generates more publicity than actual content additions. Please don't get me wrong, I use Cochrane all the time. I was a little confused about this announcement between WP and Cochrane because Cochrane's content was accessible before the partnership. I am also taking a look at the list generated here by Jen to see what I can do to help. The first link I opened and evaluated was about evidence that was inconclusive and it stated that more research was needed resulting no relevant information that could be added to a WP article. Editors are viewing this Cochrane to-do list at rate of 5 views per day. This was calculated by subtracting the number of total edits (which, of course are counted as page views) from the total page views since the creation of the list. Admittedly, this may not be the best way to evaluate the impact of the list and our partnership with Cochrane. Only five editors have edited the page to indicate that they have added or evaluated the content of the Cochrane articles listed on the page. I guess what I am saying is that more eyes have read this Signpost article than have given the Cochrane list a look. The results have been better with another project of Jen's and the WikiEd Foundation. Student editors have added more medical content in a week's time than the five editors working on the Cochrane list have added in the past 111 days. I have another theory. It is a rare thing for a medical editor to create content that is listed in a 'to-do' created by another editor. Very little collaboration occurs between WP medical editors to improve medical content unless you count reversions, removing vandalism, fascinating talk page discussions, deletions and disappearing references when content is merged. Our problem is not accessing Cochrane reviews - our problem is retaining medical editors and creating a positive environment for those who want to add content. I can explain it from another perspective: medical editors are so busy fighting vandalism and updating information it is difficult to expect them to add content based upon the list generated by Cochrane. I remain positive and will do what I can to incorporate Cochrane reviews on our list, but I am not optimistic about the partnership actually improving medical articles. Sorry to be a party pooper. Best Regards, Barbara (WVS)✐ ✉ 22:30, 6 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
I review a lot of edits to medical articles, and have seen an up tick in new editors added good summaries of Cochrane reviews to Wikipedia over the last couple of years. The effort to update articles via that list is just one effort via Cochrane. IMO Jen and Cochrane have been doing an excellent job. Doc James (talk · contribs · email) 07:25, 13 February 2018 (UTC)[reply]
← Back to Special report