Letters

Although the growth of Wikipedia as an important source of information has proven to be a mixed bag, there is little indication that its role as a destination for those seeking information will diminish anytime soon. According to the New York Times, Wikipedia was ranked fifth among all websites as of February 2014, “with 18 billion page views and nearly 500 million unique visitors a month.”

As the New York Times also indicates, some medical professionals are increasingly thinking of Wikipedia as a source for educating the lay public, and as a training tool to help medical students build jargon-free communication skills. However, the drawback of Wikipedia's open platform is that accuracy problems can lead to poor quality control and misinformation. These issues have motivated some medical schools to offer college credit to edit Wikipedia pages for accuracy and legibility in order to improve the quality of information that is pertinent to their discipline.

Make Psychoanalysis Understandable to the Public

Other health professions are similarly taking notice of the ways Wikipedia might be used to build relational bridges to the public. In view of this situation, a task force for psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychology on Wikipedia was created by the past president of the Division of Psychoanalysis (Division 39) of the American Psychological Association, Frank Summers, and is being cochaired by Lewis Aron and Ari Pizer. The broad aim of the task force is to inform interested graduate students and early career professionals about the importance of Wikipedia as a source of information on psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic psychology. It will also provide assistance to keep entries relating to these topics accurate, up to date, and at the highest levels. The hope is that this will stimulate and enable a wide network of participants who can then openly and democratically work together or separately to edit all relevant Wik