Comments on: Notes on Medpedia’s changes

By: blog.e-healthgr | Medpedia, ιατρική εγκυκλοπαίδεια τύπου wikipedia

blog.e-healthgr | Medpedia, ιατρική εγκυκλοπαίδεια τύπου wikipedia — Wed, 24 Sep 2008 19:28:54 +0000

[...] Notes on Medpedia’s changes, davidrothman.net [...]

By: David Rothman

David Rothman — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 03:14:04 +0000

Michelle, I think Knol will be about as (un)successful as Squidoo.

By: Michelle

Michelle — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 19:28:03 +0000

David, I agree with everyone of your concerns. Scott said it much better than I could though.

Another one to keep an eye on is Google’s Knol. It too requires little in terms of authorship credentials. Authors can “Verfiy” themselves by submitting their credit card or phone number.

By: T Scott

T Scott — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:35:21 +0000

Coincidentally, I was interviewed this morning by a reporter from the Chronicle of Higher Ed for a story on medpedia that she expects will run sometime this month. What I told her was that I thought it was a very interesting and worthwhile experiment, with a lot of potential, but that maintaining objectivity, currency, and clear sourcing would be critical issues. The first question that she asked me was “is it necessary” and we ended up talking quite a bit about MedlinePlus. I said I thought that it’d take awhile before medpedia could become as comprehensive and useful as that source but I’d be happy to see them give it a try.

I’m not too bothered by the advertising-supported angle, depending on how it’s handled, but that’s definitely something to keep an eye on.

Incidentally, there is a medipedia.com (note the “i” between the “d” and “p”) that’s already up and that fails all the usual tests for evaluating a good health-related website. There’s bound to be some confusion between the two, unfortunately.