Wikipedia:WikiProject Consumer Reports/projects

Some of these projects are in progress. Some others are active but on the backburner, and could be made more active at any time. Anyone who has questions about any of these things should ask user:bluerasberry.

Collaboration with Wikipedia
Consumer Reports' mission is to deliver information about products and services to consumers as described here in the organization's mission statement. Consumer Reports would like to provide the information the community wants in the way that the community wants to receive it. Since many people are demanding information on Wikipedia, Consumer Reports would like to make more information available through Wikipedia.

Wikipedian in Residence
With an initial grant from the Wikimedia Foundation, Consumer Reports appointed Lane Rasberry as Wikipedian in Residence.

There are two named goals associated with the position:
 * 1) Increase access to the healthcare information produced by the Choosing Wisely program
 * 2) Increase access to information which promotes consumer rights

Because people seek access to information through Wikipedia, Consumer Reports is exploring the option of supporting contributors to Wikipedia in sharing information which it as a non-profit research and publishing organization is sharing.

Share information from Choosing Wisely
Choosing Wisely is a campaign organized by the ABIM Foundation. It seeks to provide consumers and providers of healthcare services with information about health diagnostic procedures. There are certain procedures which physicians frequently recommend despite a lack of evidence-based research demonstrating usefulness of those procedures. Various medical societies compiled lists of five procedures about which they wanted greater public awareness, and the campaign promotes these lists. The information in the lists includes understandable information in layman terms and citations to third-party scholarly research which provide supporting evidence of the claims.

The Wikipedian in Residence position at Consumer Reports is an exploration to determine the circumstances under which the Wikipedia community would be interested in integrating information from this campaign into Wikipedia articles.

Increase access to information which promotes consumer rights
Consumer Reports creates independent third-party reviews of products and services which people buy. The Wikipedia rule about neutral point of view says that manufacturers, producers, and providers of goods and services have a conflict of interest in providing information on their own products on Wikipedia. It might be the case that somehow Wikipedians could use the research produced or collected by Consumer Reports' engineers and scientists to improve articles on products, because Consumer Reports develops tests which determine and differentiate standards of quality in classes of products.

It is not certain how Consumer Reports and the Wikipedia community ought to work together to promote increased consumer rights or increased access to information to consumers, but it is a goal of the Wikipedian in Residence project to find a way. Suggestions are welcome on the talk page.

Campus Ambassador Program
The Wikipedia Education Program has a subset called the Campus Ambassador Project wherein Wikipedian representative ambassadors visit a university and assist a professor and students in replacing a traditional course learning exercise, like writing a report, with an assignment to contribute to a Wikipedia article. In the past, students and instructors who have participated in this program have reported the experience to be useful and beneficial.

The Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports is interested in supporting classes on health-related topics in participating in the campus ambassador program.


 * Meetup/NYC/Medicine October 2013
 * Education Program:Harvard University/Obgyn bootcamp (April 2014)

Librarian training project
Librarians are natural friends of Wikipedia users. The Wikipedian in Residence can train librarians in the New York City area to become Wikipedians and to train their librarians' patrons to become Wikipedians.

Priority in training goes to any library who works in health sciences because Consumer Reports is promoting the Choosing Wisely campaign, and that relates to healthcare. There is no obligation for librarians who receive training to do anything for Consumer Reports, but there is hope that they would consider the utility of using Wikipedia to compliment whatever they were doing before getting training, and that they might become Wikipedians and teach Wikipedia culture to the library patrons.

Organization outreach
There are organizations which have as part of their mission the goal of sharing information about specific issues. Since it is the mission of these organizations to share information as widely as possible, and since these organizations often have uncommon field expertise, then it would be useful for Wikipedia if these organizations would consider which articles on Wikipedia are within their expertise and for them to support the improvement of those articles.

Consumer Reports is particularly interested in increasing the participation of health educators in Wikipedia contribution. These organizations often have a specialty, and perhaps they collect all information about a specific body part, disease, or condition, and when anyone wants information on that topic then they share that information. The Wikipedian in Residence at Consumer Reports position offers training to staff at medical societies in the hope that they will become Wikipedia supporters and direct field experts to improve Wikipedia articles.

Train Consumer Reports staff to use Wikipedia
Consumer Reports' staff include researchers, engineers, reporters, editors, and otherwise experts in the field of providing information to consumers about products and services. Consumer Reports as an institution both creates reports and shares reports by other organizations, and the staff are ideal subject matter experts for promoting the development of articles on Wikipedia which are in the field of their expertise.

A strategy for achieving the goals of the residency is to facilitate the training of Consumer Reports staff to edit Wikipedia articles.

Medical resident outreach
Medical residents are new doctors who are still receiving training under the mentorship of licensed physicians. Since they have already studied to earn medical degrees they are knowledgeable about health, but since their training is not complete they still attend classes.

The outreach:Wikipedia Education Program has demonstrated that in certain circumstances students can learn in a fast and fun way while making contributions to Wikipedia. A project between the American College of Physicians and Consumer Reports is to organize the WP:Health Article Review Project. In this project, medical residents read Wikipedia health articles with their classmates then go to the talk page of those articles and write reviews of them.

This is beneficial to medical residents because it challenges them to improve live article content in a way that teaches them and encourages conversations in their classroom, and it is beneficial to Wikipedia in that the articles get great review by highly trained medical professions.

WP:HOSPITAL
Consumer Reports collects all kinds of data about United States-based hospitals from whatever public reporting processes which exist. CR also is interested in getting more information about individual hospitals onto Wikipedia as part of its non-profit mission to improve patient safety.

It would be nice to find some way to collaborate with WP:HOSPITAL, the WikiProject which is seeking to improve articles on individual hospitals.

Teach Wikipedia culture at Consumer Reports
No one at Consumer Reports is quite sure how a long-term collaboration with the Wikipedia project could work, but since Consumer Reports and Wikipedia both exist to educate the public, staff at Consumer Reports are interested in learning how to become Wikipedians and what it would mean if they did. An initial thought is that experts at Consumer Reports could support existing contributors to Wikipedia whenever they edited articles within Consumer Reports' field of expertise.

An example of expertise at Consumer Reports is that Consumer Reports produces "buying guides". These are explanations of the types of information which is relevant to anyone who wants to make an evaluation of the quality of a product or service. For example, to evaluate the quality of an electrical appliance, one may consider durability, energy efficiency, and the extent to which that appliance is useful. Scientists and engineers at Consumer Reports develop tests and standards on general classes of products which can be used to quantify the quality of products, and would like for consumers to have greater access to evidence-based information which could be used to empower people to make thoughtful decisions. Writers at Consumer Reports are learning about Wikipedia, and experts at Consumer Reports are available to support the public if they want to develop articles within the scope of Consumer Reports expertise.

Support for Wikimedia New York City
Wikimedia New York City is a non-profit organization which serves as the New York City local Wikimedia chapter wherein Wikipedia users may meet and collaborate.

Consumer Reports collaborates with this chapter and the local Wikipedia community because Consumer Reports wants to promote community Wikipedia participation and because this chapter is geographically located near Consumer Reports headquarters.


 * Meetup/NYC/January 2013
 * Meetup/NYC/Consumer Reports October 2013

Media sharing
Consumer Reports holds a collection of images, videos, and audio which relate to the consumer rights movement, product testing, and product safety. Some people at the organization are discussing the legality and feasibility of sharing some of this media on Wikimedia Commons. See also Commons:Template:Media owned by Consumer Reports for the proposed licensing agreement for Consumer Reports' media.

Connect internationally through Consumers International
Consumer Reports is a member of an international organization called Consumers International. Consumers International is a network of consumer organizations with members in most countries which have a consumer movement. Through this organization there is potential for Wikipedians to network with non-profit organizations worldwide. See Category:Members of Consumers International for a list of members.