Avaliação da qualidade da Wikipédia enquanto fonte de informação em saúde

The Wikipedia is an online, free, multi language and collaborative encyclopaedia, currently one of the biggest data sources in the web. There, it is possible to find information from different areas, from technology to philosophy, including health. As an health related data source, it is not only used by general public, but also by professionals as well. One of the reasons for such, is that, apart from the content of the articles, it includes external links for additional data sources as well. The open nature of Wikipedia contributions, specifically in health context, raises safety concerns, as such data is being used to make decisions. Thus, and considering possible consequences, it is very relevant to evaluate the quality of the information herein. This subject has been previously addressed by several studies, considering different metrics. In this work, a set of predefined metrics will be used to evaluate que quality of the information, such as autorithy, completeness, complexity, informativeness, consistency, currency and volatility. An additional set of first level measurements, and metrics based on them will be used, focusing in the health area. The definition of these metrics resulted from the analysis of other previously defined ones, which have already been applied to Wikipedia. This set of measures and metrics was then evaluated based on a proposed dataset, consisting of health and medical, english, articles, previously evaluated by the WikiProject Medicine. In the last stage, with the objective of evaluating differences in the quality of the information, the proposed methodology was applied to other languages. Specifically, it was applied, when possible, to articles available in languages with over than one hundred million native speakers, and also in Greek, Italian, Korean, Turkish, Perse and Hebrew, for its historical tradition. As a result, this work contributes to the clarification of the role of Wikipedia in the access to health, specifically the access to health information in different languages. The proposal consists of a set of measurements and metrics to infer the quality of Wikipedia health related articles, plus an analysis regarding the differences in the quality between different languages available in Wikipedia

The Trouble with Knowing: Wikipedian consensus and the political design of encyclopedic media

Encyclopedias are interfaces between knowing and the unknown. They are devices that negotiate the middle ground between incompatible knowledge systems while also performing as dream machines that explore the political outlines of an enlightened society. Building upon the insights from critical feminist theory, media archaeology, and science and technology studies, the dissertation investigates how utopian and impossible desires of encyclopedic media have left a wake of unresolvable epistemological crises. In a 2011 survey of editors of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia, it was reported that 87 per cent of Wikipedians identified as men. This statistic flew in the face of Wikipedias utopian promise that it was an encyclopedia that anyone can edit. Despite the early optimism and efforts to reduce this disparity, Wikipedias parent organization acknowledged its inability to significantly make Wikipedia more equitable. This matter of concern raised two questions: What kinds of knowing subjects is Wikipedia designed to cultivate and what does this conflict over who is included and excluded within Wikipedia tell us about the utopian dreams that are woven into encyclopedic media? This dissertation argues that answering these troubling questions requires an examination of the details of the present, but also the impossible desires that Wikipedia inherited from its predecessors. The analysis of these issues begins with a genealogy of encyclopedias, encyclopedists, encyclopedic aesthetics, and encyclopedisms. It is followed by an archeology of the twentieth century deployment of consensus as an encyclopedic and political program. The third part examines how Wikipedia translated the imaginary ideal of consensus into a cultural technique. Finally, the dissertation mobilizes these analyses to contextualize how consensus was used to limit the dissenting activities of Wikipedia's Gender Gap Task Force. The dissertation demonstrates that the desire and design of encircling knowledge through consensus cultivated Wikipedias gender gap. In this context, if encyclopedic knowledge is to remain politically and culturally significant in the twenty-first century, it is necessary to tell a new story about encyclopedic media. It must be one where an attention to utopian imaginaries, practices, and techniques not only addresses how knowledge is communicated but also enables a sensitivity to the question of who can know