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Biomedical articles on MEpedia - purposes and pitfalls
Biomedical articles on MEpedia - purposes and pitfalls
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- Thread starter JaimeS
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Hi @JaimeS and @JenB. I have a dilemma.
I applaud the effort and intention that has led to the creation of MEpedia. I have used it myself sometimes to find a reference. And that I think it its strength - as an accessible source of links to other existing resources and short pieces on key personalities and events.
While I have some misgivings about the intended broader scope of MEpedia, I'll leave those for another thread.
My dilemma is this: since this subforum opened I have started to look more closely at MEpedia and am coming across things I could criticise or suggestions I could make. However, I am reluctant to do so because I have observed that when people make suggestions they are, understandably, invited to learn how to edit MEpedia and make the alterations themselves.
I suspect that I am not alone in drawing a line at taking on another task for my already overstretched ME brain. I simply don't have the head space to hone accurate input for MEpedia or for learning another bit of technology, however simple it is. For my health and because I have caring responsibilities too, I have to restrict my contribution to the ME world to helping out on this forum.
My question to you both is, do you welcome suggestions and constructive criticism of the content of MEpedia from people who are not willing or able to actually implement those suggestions, or would you rather restrict it to people who can actually carry their ideas through to MEpedia pages?
I applaud the effort and intention that has led to the creation of MEpedia. I have used it myself sometimes to find a reference. And that I think it its strength - as an accessible source of links to other existing resources and short pieces on key personalities and events.
While I have some misgivings about the intended broader scope of MEpedia, I'll leave those for another thread.
My dilemma is this: since this subforum opened I have started to look more closely at MEpedia and am coming across things I could criticise or suggestions I could make. However, I am reluctant to do so because I have observed that when people make suggestions they are, understandably, invited to learn how to edit MEpedia and make the alterations themselves.
I suspect that I am not alone in drawing a line at taking on another task for my already overstretched ME brain. I simply don't have the head space to hone accurate input for MEpedia or for learning another bit of technology, however simple it is. For my health and because I have caring responsibilities too, I have to restrict my contribution to the ME world to helping out on this forum.
My question to you both is, do you welcome suggestions and constructive criticism of the content of MEpedia from people who are not willing or able to actually implement those suggestions, or would you rather restrict it to people who can actually carry their ideas through to MEpedia pages?
It is very unlikely that any constructive criticism about specific pages posted here would get implemented unless in the context of a conversation (like the thread @Hip started on non-cytolytic infections) where someone is explicitly asking for feedback and taking responsibility for implementing the changes. We simply don't have the capacity. And if it's about more than one page (i.e., if you're seeing multiple things across many pages) I think it would be hard to follow.
An intermediate step is to hit the "Discussion" tab on the relevant pages and add any comment/feedback there. I think feedback given there is much more likely to be implemented because now it's part of the work flow. Whenever I am editing a page, I go and look at what's been written on the discussion page. (I also frequently paste links on the Discussion page when I read something interesting but don't have the time or capacity to immediately add it to the page.) So if you don't have the capacity to edit a page, but you do have the capacity to critique it, that's where I'd paste the critique. There's no guarantee the change will be implemented immediately (unless you do it yourself) but that's one way of at least making sure that is is logged and available to a future editor.
It's hard to say at this early stage, but I think a great use of this sub-forum is a one page per thread approach where people gather around and try to improve a page. Some folks may only offer suggestions which is fine as long as there is at least one person who is willing to implement them. Or to discuss new editing projects, e.g., "Let's start a project on the autonomic nervous system" that might lay out all the pages that should be created and/or improved and divvy up work. I posted about the Epi page (which I've already done a fair amount of work on) because I was explicitly looking for more people to contribute to it and help me finish it, but did not volunteer to make those changes myself.
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Hip
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thanks, @Jen, that's very helpful.
TiredSam
Committee Member
When I was a child and our black and white telly broke down I assumed it must have been clogged up with dead cowboys.This sounds so much like my earliest experiences of radio (or "the wireless" as it was then). I still recall my feeling of awe at how so many people could squeeze into it, and remember being bitterly disappointed when my Dad opened it up to change a valve (remember them?), and these fascinating tiny people were nowhere to be seen.
Barry
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Given we strive for accuracy avoidance of ambiguity, I think the following needs a clarification:
My bold to show suggested edit. Not sure if, in this context, it should be ME/CFS or CFS/ME.
https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Esther_Crawley
Although Ref 4 does not explicitly spell out the context of its rankings, it is nonetheless very obvious.
"Since 2006, Professor Crawley has been awarded £2.3 million in grants by various bodies to study CFS/ME and is the second highest funded researcher (into CFS/ME) in the UK."
My bold to show suggested edit. Not sure if, in this context, it should be ME/CFS or CFS/ME.
https://me-pedia.org/wiki/Esther_Crawley
Although Ref 4 does not explicitly spell out the context of its rankings, it is nonetheless very obvious.
@JaimeS maybe consider installing a more mobile-friendly skin. This doesn't require changing the default, but it allows users to select a custom skin if they would like.
I don't think Jaime Seltzer reads this forum now, so if you want to get a message to her about this you probably need to contact her via MEAction or whatever means the MEPedia editorial managers use to communicate with editors.
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Thanks for doing that @forestglip.
Also slightly random, but does anyone know if there is a way to see the most viewed me-pedia pages per certain time period (such as past month or year)? (Without having to mess with the API). I’m only able to find an “all-time” most popular pages page.
Also slightly random, but does anyone know if there is a way to see the most viewed me-pedia pages per certain time period (such as past month or year)? (Without having to mess with the API). I’m only able to find an “all-time” most popular pages page.
I think that would be really useful, but I don't think so, and I'm guessing it's probably not even possible with the API. But I asked on the HitCounters extension talk page. I'm pretty sure that's what MEpedia uses for PopularPages and it seems to be the only page view tracking extension available.
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
Hopefully you get a reply. A lot of me-pedia is outdated, and there are very few people helping to improve it, so that data is crucial to set priorities on what to improve.
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
@forestglip I think we could technically brute force the problem.
I created a custom url that shows a list of every single me-pedia page including the views: https://me-pedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PopularPages&limit=5000&offset=0 (takes a while to load since its got thousands of lines)
We could create a script that goes through it every month comparing to the last months results and outputs the most viewed pages per month
I created a custom url that shows a list of every single me-pedia page including the views: https://me-pedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special:PopularPages&limit=5000&offset=0 (takes a while to load since its got thousands of lines)
We could create a script that goes through it every month comparing to the last months results and outputs the most viewed pages per month
Good thinking!
I'll have to think about how to host the script. The best option would probably be AWS or Google Cloud, but that will take some learning to figure out how to make it work.
Easier would be to run it on my laptop, and it auto uploads the monthly views somewhere. Although maybe even daily and weekly would be good too. But then I'd have to make sure my laptop is on every day, which is why AWS would be better.
Yann04
Senior Member (Voting Rights)
I have a github pages site with an okay me/cfs related url I could host on, not exactly sure how, but the script could possibly be automated using github actions
Oh, I didn't know Github Actions can run scripts directly, I thought it was just for triggering other services like AWS to run scripts, but I just checked and that seems to be the case. Yeah that'd be a lot easier. If I have some energy later today I'll look into it.