Wikis Can Educate the World About Osteopathic Family Physicians
A call for osteopathic family physicians writing contributions on Wikipedia.org
By Belinda Bombei
Until recently, Wikis did not receive as much attention from mainstream Internet users as blogs or social networking sites. However, as of April 2007, thirty-six percent of online American adults consult Wikipedia.1
Wikipedia is an online free-content encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Wikipedia co-founder Jimmy Wales has described Wikipedia as “an effort to create and distribute a multilingual free encyclopedia of the highest quality to every single person on the planet in his or her own language.”2
The differentiating quality of a wiki is that it is created and managed by a community of users. A wiki allows multiple users to view and edit the same information from a central Web location. The wiki tracks and saves changes so that you can always revert to a previous edition.3
Though wikis have been slow to take off, the great potential for the field of medicine is evident. Wikis allow osteopathic family physicians the opportunity to collaborate as well as share observations and personal experiences with fellow osteopathic family physicians. Wikis also educate the public.
A Call to Educate
As Wikipedia.org currently ranks among the top ten most visited websites worldwide,4 it provides an excellent opportunity to educate a world audience about the osteopathic family physician profession. The foundation of an encyclopedic entry on osteopathic family medicine has been created at www.wikipedia.org.
As an osteopathic family physician, ACOFP members are the ideal writer to populate the osteopathic family physician entry with factual, non-biased, educational information such as:
• History
• Leadership
• Political Positions
• Osteopathic principles
• References
• OFP Education and Training
• OMT
• Further Reading
• External Links
Note that the content needs to be factual in nature; otherwise, contributions will be deleted from the site by Wikipedia.org.
Seven Steps to become a contributing editor on Wikipedia.org
One Step to become a
contributing editor on Wikipedia.org
Send your factual content to belindab@acofp.org to add to the osteopathic family physician Wikipedia entry. Images and graphs are acceptable to post as well.
The Osteopathic Multi Media Resource Center is online now at http://www.acofp.org/membership/
media/intro.aspx.
Belinda Bombei is the medical editor for tweakmywords.com and has over 14 years of editing experience, including five years of experience editing osteopathic medical articles. She provides suggestions to transform osteopathic medical content from good to outstanding, producing an article worthy of publication and recognition.
References