Since about November, 2008, I have been slowly working to improve the Posttraumatic stress disorder article at WikiPedia. It’s been fun, though at times inordinately time-intensive. Much of the article awaits my planned revisions, and I’m the only MHP (mental health professional) working on it, at the moment. As far as I can tell, I’m the only one who ever has. (More about that later…)
A few of the article’s sections are looking rather good. Medication (which took me 3 days!) is great, and Epidemiology is about 90% there. Other sections aren’t bad, but lack adequate references, or need their references checked (people can be incredibly sloppy). Some need a complete rewrite. Overall, the whole article needs some basic reorganization, which it’s about to get.
Wikipedia has enormous exposure on the Internet. It’s among the top 5 most-visited sites on the Internet. Of those, it’s the only one that’s non-profit. Its influence on a large segment of Internet users and various organizations and publications is truly impressive, and well surveyed here.
It’s also enormous. Nine years old, it currently has 14 million articles. Not words. Articles. Whew. Someone has a lot of free time, yes? In truth, I think it’s more about the passions of a small group of individuals, and the desire to share, than about free time.
It’s written collaboratively. You can go write there, if you like, but…you’ll have company. You’ll have to learn to work cooperatively, and to take the time to learn a little of the culture. There definitely are some rules and traditions you’re expected to play along with. Pretty much all good stuff, to be sure, but with some particulars you do need to know.
A certain amount of it appears overly influenced by popular culture, and an almost (heck – distinctly, at times!) adolescent point of view. But, for all that, there are reams of articles there which are very carefully written, meticulously documented, and flagrantly informative, if I may put it that way. A recently published study found its accuracy compared quite well with that of the Encyclopedia Britannica.[1]
When needing some quick information about some serious topic, Wikipedia is often the first place I turn. If nothing else, the references and links at the end of an article will quickly point me to some excellent information sources. But I usually get much more than that.
Still, quality varies broadly, so it’s best that you know a little about your subject before reading a Wikipedia article, so you can filter the rocks out of the humus.
So, when I found that one of my clients with PTSD was reading about it there, I reviewed the article, and I was both intrigued and bothered. Some material in the article was excellent, but other major parts were poorly written, dubiously sourced (i.e., using shabby references), or simply irrelevant. I was annoyed. After some thought, I decided to try to fix it. But…I was totally new to Wikipedia, so I started slowly.
I hung out at the article’s Talk page for a while, and wrote some rather long and detailed answers to various questions. Suitably warmed up, I began contributing to the article itself. Slowly it dawned on me that I basically had no competition. There is only one other health care professional involved with the article, at times, but he’s not a mental health professional, much less an anxiety disorders specialist. So, as it turns out, as long as I do my work according to accepted conventions (write clearly, make sense, and source major assertions with obvious authoritative references), I’m not challenged. And, because of Wikipedia’s exposure and influence, I’m feeling like I’m making a real contribution. At the very least, I can begin to stop worrying about what my clients might be learning about PTSD at Wikipedia!
So why am I so alone, as a major contributor to the article? I can only conjecture. In my personal experience, my MHP peers are a very caring, committed, and somewhat narrowly focused group of folks. Granted, work + family = little free time for many people, but that doesn’t tell the whole story. Many MHPs don’t write much, if anything at all. Many are not exactly enthralled by research-oriented psychotherapy. Few have much interest in community education or outreach issues. So, who’s left? Apparently, not many people at all.
I recently appealed for help on an Internet Discussion list I started some years ago. It has about 200 members, and a number of them are quite serious folks. I got no takers. OK…I guess I’m on my way to being the sole professional source for Wikipedia’s PTSD article. I do hope to have company at some point. It can only work to improve the article. However, I’ll stay with it until it meets my standards, which are definitely demanding. How demanding? Well, my Masters thesis in Counseling Psychology ran 385 pages, and I was told I’d written a dissertation. Didn’t get a Ph.D. for it, though.
Notes
1. Jim Giles (December 2005). “Internet encyclopedias go head to head”. Nature 438: 900–901. doi:10.1038/438900a. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v438/n7070/full/438900a.html.
Thanks. Much work remains, but I’m chipping away at it. Scholarship is hard work! As for Wikipedia’s being addictive, well…yeah. ‘Fraid so!