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Comment by CodeCube | Hacker News Reader

"A friend of mine who worked in an ER told me Wikipedia is actually used quite frequently"

God help us, God help us all

Yes, surely a random internet commenter is in a better position to understand what is useful than someone who actually works in ER.

It wasn't a comment on the ER doctor's ability to extract value out of wikipedia. It was a comment on the fact that Wikipedia is the wild west. Far as I can tell, most erroneous edits on popular subjects are quickly caught. But I wonder how vigilant those wikipedia editors are on obscure medical topics that require an expensive medical education to truly understand.

I'd feel better about it if Wikipedia was innovating above and beyond the implementation of a wiki ... even if the solution is still crowdsourced. For example I would love to see the application of machine learning to the process of moderation, not unlike what Stackexchange is working on these days (http://blog.stackoverflow.com/2012/08/stack-exchange-machine...).

Circling back to the topic at hand, I would actually love it if "Watson" eventually has all of the data currently available in wikipedia. But with each fact cross-checked for validity against everything else he already knows.

You mean like Cyc? Its not an easy project as facts are not as tidy as you might hope http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyc

Note to self: never edit a medical article drunk again.

You're fine as long as you stick to medical research articles.

My doctor actually Googled my symptoms while I was in the office. It's not actually a bad approach, as he put it any article ranking highly for all of the symptoms and no or few other ones is likely to be relevant.

Wow, reading this makes me wonder if a great deal of family doctors can be replaced by an expert system that can be assisted by a remote doctor in a centralized way. I call it 'Doctor in demand'

Next time you see your GP ask what their typical workload involves. I doubt the remote doctor would even be needed in 90% of cases!

That's a cheap shot. The medical and science articles in wikipedia that I've read in areas where I have expertise are remarkably good. Why not use a powerful, free and fast resource, as long as you're cognizant of its limitations?

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