编辑维基词条,赚医学院学分
Medical students at the University of California, San Francisco, will be able to get course credit for editing Wikipedia articles about diseases, part of an effort to improve the quality of medical articles in the online encyclopedia and help distribute the articles globally via cellphones. While professors often incorporate Wikipedia work into classes, hoping that student research can live on online, the university and others say this is the first time a medical school will give credit for such work.
加州大学旧金山分校(University of California, San Francisco)的医科学生已经可以通过编辑维基百科上有关疾病的文章来修得学分；此举旨在帮助维基百科提高医学文章的质量，并帮助他们通过手机把这些文章在全球各地传播。一直以来，大学教授虽然没少在课堂上让学生在维基百科做文章，以此希望他们的研究能延伸到网上，但是据该大学和其他一些人士透露，一所医学院为这样的工作给出学分还是头一次。"We as a profession have our corpus of knowledge, and we owe it as a profession to educate the lay public," said Dr. Amin Azzam, a health sciences associate clinical professor at the U.C.S.F. School of Medicine who will teach the monthlong elective course in December.
“作为一门专业学科，我们有自己的知识语料库，而作为专业人士，我们有责任向民众传授这些知识，”加州大学旧金山分校医学院(UCSF School of Medicine)的健康科学临床副教授阿敏·阿扎姆医生(Dr. Amin Azzam)表示。这门选修课于去年12月开课，为时一个月，而阿扎姆医生是这门课的授课老师。
The course is open to fourth-year medical students and was scheduled for a month when many travel the country for interviews to arrange their residencies, so they need the flexibility to work remotely, Dr. Azzam said. Three students have signed up for the course, but he said that this time was really to test whether the concept was worthy.
他还表示，这门课的开设对象是大四医科学生，课时一个月；因为很多学生要在全美四处奔走，参加住院实习的面试，因此需要一定的机动性来远程参与课程。目前，已经有三个学生选了这门课，但是阿扎姆医生说，这一次还只是为了试验一下这个理念是否可行。
He said he could envision such a course being required for students as they begin studies and must immerse themselves in the details of how the body works, and, at times, stops working.
他说，他能预见这样一门课程成为学生的必修课，因为他们开始学习后，必须全然投入于了解人体运作——时不时，还有人体停止运作——的各种细节。Wikipedia editing will force students to think clearly and avoid jargon, he said. "We do a great job in helping them talk to doctors, but we don't do as good a job in helping them speak to the public," he added.
他说，编辑维基百科能够促使学生清晰地思考，避免晦涩的术语，“在教导他们和医生沟通方面，我们做得很好，但是在让他们和公众交流方面，我们做得还不够。”他补充说。The students' editing will be part of Wikiproject Medicine, which focuses contributors on the 100 or so most significant medical articles, including those on tuberculosis and syphilis, but especially on those important articles that need the most editing. (The project lists more than 350 active editors, many of whom cite an advanced degree under the header "medical qualification.")
这些学生的编辑工作也将成为维基医学项目(WikiProject Medicine)的组成部分；后者让投稿人集中于一百来篇最有意义的医学文章，包括有关肺结核和梅毒的文章，但同时把重点放在最需要修改的重要文章上。（该项目已征集了350多名活跃的编辑人士，其中大多数在“医学资历”一栏下面都表示自己具备高等学历。）These articles are submitted to a group from Translators Without Borders that produces medical articles for Wikipedias in languages spoken in countries that often lack high-quality medical information. Examples include an article in Javanese on dengue fever and one in Hindi on urinary tract infection. Creating these high-quality medical articles fits neatly with efforts by the Wikimedia Foundation to make deals with cellphone carriers to provide Wikipedia content free of data charges, especially in the developing world where cellphones are often the only connection to the Internet.
这些文章会再给提交给“无国界译者联盟”(Translators Without Borders)的一个小组，由他们把这些维基百科的医学文章翻译成其他语言，尤其是那些缺乏高质量医疗信息的国家语言，譬如一篇有关登革热的文章就被翻译成了爪哇语，而一篇有关尿路感染的文章也被翻译成了印地语。维基媒体基金会(Wikimedia Foundation)也一直想与手机运营商达成协议，让维基百科的内容在手机上免流量费查看，尤其是在发展中国家，因为那儿的人们通常只能通过手机上网，而编撰这些高质量的医学文章与维基媒体基金会这一努力十分契合。"If we want to get high-quality information to all the world's population, Wikipedia is not just a viable option, but the only viable option," Dr. Azzam said.
“假如我们想向全世界传输高质量的信息，维基百科不仅是一个可行的选择，而且是唯一可行的选择，”阿扎姆医生说。He credited one of his former students, Dr. Michael Turken, 32, a first-year resident in internal medicine at Stanford Hospital and Clinics, with helping to conceive of the course.
关于这门课的酝酿，阿扎姆医生表示他要感谢自己从前的一位学生——32岁的迈克尔·特尔肯医生，他现在斯坦福大学医院诊所(Stanford Hospital and Clinics)内科部担任第一年住院医师。Dr. Turken said the importance of Wikipedia's medical information became clear to him a couple of years ago when a friend asked him how long H.I.V. tests could give false negative readings.
特尔肯医生说，他是从几年前开始意识到维基百科提供的医学信息有多重要，当时他的一个朋友问了他一个问题，那就是HIV测验给出的假阴性读数可以持续多久。A Wikipedia entry said two weeks, and "that didn't seem right," he said. "I checked with the literature, and it is up to 28 days, based on the test." He made the change, then looked at how many people read the article a month — often tens of thousands. Rather than be offended at the open access to Wikipedia pages, Dr. Turken said he found it "very reassuring that it is a collaborative effort," with many people checking what is written.
当时维基百科的一条记录说是两个星期，但特尔肯医生表示：“那好像不太对头。我查了相关文献，根据测验来看可以长达28天。”于是，特尔肯医生对这条维基百科的内容作了改动，然后观察了一下一个月里有多少人看到这篇文章——结果是成千上万人。对于维基百科这样开放编辑权限的做法，特尔肯医生并没有觉得不妥，而是认为正因为有这么多人来查看而使得它“非常可靠，因为这是众人合作的成果”。Dr. Azzam said the details of the course were still being worked out. He said he planned to see the students for two days at the start to plot the writing and editing requirements, then track their work on Wikipedia. While some might fear that his students would cut corners, Dr. Azzam said: "I am working with medical students — professionals in training — who are highly motivated. I'm not worried about them slacking."
阿扎姆医生表示，这门课的具体细节还待完善，但他透露，他在课程一开始拿出了两天的时间和学生会面，并制定编写（维基百科内容）的具体要求，然后通过网络在维基百科追踪他们的成果。至于有些人担心他的学生可能会“偷工减料”，阿扎姆医生表示：“我的授课对象都是医科学生，他们是接受培训的专业人士，目标明晰动力十足，我才不会担心他们偷懒。”
