Wikipedia:Wikipedia Signpost/2013-10-09/In the media

The University of California, San Francisco attracted substantial media attention over its new course offering that will give credit to fourth-year medical students for editing Wikipedia articles about medicine. Fourth-year students at UCSF travel often, which makes the ability to perform work remotely an advantage. Amin Azzam, MD, MA, an associate professor at UCSF and an instructor for the new class, said:

The course is also designed to foster communication skills among medical professionals, and to help them accurately and efficiently share information using everyday language rather than medical jargon. Writing Wikipedia articles will help students in that endeavor. James Heilman, a Wikipedia editor himself (Doc James) and president of the WikiProject Med initiative, told the Signpost that most medical students ‘’use’’ Wikipedia, but the WikiProject would like to see most students contribute to it as well. Time will tell if this class can help achieve that lofty goal.


 * Additional coverage
 * Morning Break: Edit Wikipedia, Get Med School Credit
 * Med Students Earn Credit by Editing Wikipedia Articles
 * You Can Get Med School Credit For Editing Wikipedia Pages Now
 * Medical Students Can Now Earn Credit for Editing Wikipedia
 * Wikiproject Medicine
 * Doctors prescribe better Wikipedia editors – themselves
 * Doctors Decide They Need to Be the Ones Editing Medical Wikipedia Articles
 * Wikipedia Goes To Medical School: UCSF Med Students Will Learn How To Improve Online Encyclopedia
 * Do you trust Wikipedia with your health? Med students aim to make it better

In brief

 * VisualEditor: The Daily Dot (24 September) reported on the VisualEditor woes, as did The Register (25 September).
 * Prize-winning paper: phys.org (27 September) reported that a human factors and ergonomics research paper on leadership in Wikipedia has won the 2013 Human Factors Prize. The research in question was reported on in the Wikipedia Signpost of February 27, 2012.
 * Odessapedia: According to a report (28 September) on Ukrainian news site dt.ua, Odessa is the latest city to place plaques with Wikipedia QR codes on its architectural monuments.
 * Croatian Wikipedia: The Daily Dot (1 October) reported on the fascist takeover in the Croatian Wikipedia. The article features comments by Jurica Pavicic, who is a professor at the University of Split as well as a columnist for Jutarnji, the newspaper that first broke the story.
 * French peace: The Las Vegas Sun (7 October) reported that the French government now seems to have made its peace with Wikipedia, after asking an admin earlier this year to remove an article that the government felt spilt military secrets.
 * Wasting money: The Register (8 October) covered outgoing Wikimedia Foundation Executive Director Sue Gardner's comments on chapter spending. As covered in detail in last week's Signpost, Gardner believes there is a potential for corruption, and said she is "not sure that the additional value created by movement entities such as chapters justifies the financial cost."
 * Wiki-PR sockpuppet army: The Daily Dot (8 October) reported on the Wiki-PR sockpuppeting case. The story was picked up the following day by the San Francisco Chronicle and by German Internet portal gulli.com. For a detailed discussion, see the News and notes in this week's issue of the Signpost.
 * Old Crow Medicine Show: The Daily Dot (8 October) and the Phoenix New Times (8 October) marvelled at Wikipedia's detailed article on Old Crow Medicine Show.
 * Wiki 'Edit-a-Thon' at Brown U. Will Add Entries for Women in Science: An upcoming edit-a-thon at the US' Brown University has been profiled in the Chronicle of Higher Education (9 October).