Dundee Dental Students Set Up New Wikipedia Editing Team
Dental students and members of teaching staff from Dundee University have set up a Wikipedia editing team in a bid to make information published in the popular website more accurate.
The group of dental students and staff members will become the first of its kind in the UK. After an initial meeting and a brief introduction to editing, almost all those in attendance decided to sign up to be part of the editing team. Dental students decided to take the plunge after becoming increasingly disillusioned with the inaccuracy of information published on the site.
The group will work on a voluntary basis and editing tasks will be fulfilled alongside studies.
Professor Nicola Innes, Associate Dean of the dental school and professor of paediatric dentistry, said that the students came up with the idea of tackling the issue and the project soon attracted a lot of interest.
Students were unhappy with the information available on Wikipedia and they wanted to do something to enable people to access accurate information online. A lot of the text was inaccurate and there was often a strong bias, as snippets had been uploaded by manufacturers trying to promote their products and services.
Student Nour Geres explained that most medical information is up to date on Wikipedia, but dentistry lags behind and this new project is a means of providing the public with current pages that are also accurate and informative. The students believe that people have a right to access accurate information and the editing team will work hard to ensure that this is the case going forward. Examples of pages they will be working on include a guide to root canal treatment.
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