Evolution of Wikipedia's medical content: past, present and future

Abstract

As one of the most commonly read online sources of medical information, Wikipedia is an influential public health platform. Its medical content, community, collaborations and challenges have been evolving since its creation in 2001, and engagement by the medical community is vital for ensuring its accuracy and completeness. Both the encyclopaedia's internal metrics as well as external assessments of its quality indicate that its articles are highly variable, but improving. Although content can be edited by anyone, medical articles are primarily written by a core group of medical professionals. Diverse collaborative ventures have enhanced medical article quality and reach, and opportunities for partnerships are more available than ever. Nevertheless, Wikipedia's medical content and community still face significant challenges, and a socioecological model is used to structure specific recommendations. We propose that the medical community should prioritise the accuracy of biomedical information in the world's most consulted encyclopaedia.

Keywords: access to hlth care; health education sa; health promotion; inequalities.

Figure 1

Wikipedia total size and editors. (A) Total number of articles in the encyclopaedia (all languages). (B) Total number of articles in the encyclopaedia (in English). (C) Total number of editors making >100 edits per month (in English). (D) The proportion of the top 10 most spoken languages (native + secondary) compared with the size of different language versions of Wikipedia, and usage on the internet as a whole.

Figure 2

Daily pageviews for medical topics. (A) Most pageviews are relatively stable (eg, tuberculosis), while some are highly dependent on world events (eg, Zika virus). (B) Some seasonal illnesses vary cyclically (eg, pneumonia) by the seasons of the Northern Hemisphere, where approximately 90% of people live. All points smoothed by a 7-day moving average.

Figure 3

A summary of article quality across all articles in Wikipedia. Articles are assigned quality and importance rankings. ‘Featured article’ (FA) and ‘Good article’ (GA) are assigned by internal peer review. (A) Total number of medical articles of each quality ranking. (B) Percentage of medical articles at each quality ranking, separated by article importance (excluding unassessed). (C) The total number of medical articles (FA+GA) over time. (D) Overall number of all articles of each quality ranking Wikipedia-wide. (E) Overall percentage of all articles at each quality ranking, separated by articles importance (excluding unassessed) Wikipedia-wide. (F) A comparison between the overall rankings (dashed line) and those of medical articles (blue line). B, ‘B-class article’; C, ‘C-class article’.

Figure 4

Citation metrics for medical content. (A) Total number of external references per Wikipedia medical article for different article qualities (n=10). FA, ‘Featured article’; GA, ‘Good article’; B, ‘B-class article’; C, ‘C-class article’. (B) Absolute numbers and percentage of scholarly articles from three representative high-impact medical journals that have been cited in Wikipedia (up to 13 January 2017). (C) Number of times articles from each representative medical journal have been cited in Wikipedia. (D) Dates when articles are first cited by Wikipedia from selected journals. Lancet, The Lancet; NEJM, New England Journal of Medicine; BMJ, British Medical Journal.

Figure 5

Collaborations between Wikipedia’s medical community and outside partners. An outline of collaborations and interactions between the WikiProject Medicine community, institutions, schools, journals and translators (adapted from reference Shafee et al). CRUK, Cancer Research UK; PLOS Comp Biol, PLOS Computation Biology; Wiki J Med, WikiJournal of Medicine.