http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/list/17.page JForum - http://www.jforum.net
"There are about 25,000 genes in the humane genome. We have 9,000 articles," said Andrew Su, one of those behind the "Gene Wiki" project from the Genomics Institute at the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego, California.

"Our goal is to provide a uniform starting point for all genes," he said, noting that afterwards it was up to other scientists to add information and keep it up to date, as happens now with Wikipedia entries.

"The entire community will generate content and also oversee that content."[/quote]

My concerns are that wiki's generate content from their community. Who is verifying the "Gene Wiki" for accuracy? Would a scientist trust "Gene Wiki"?

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Gene Wiki is not offically released - although the 7500 Wikipedia entries are available through wikipedia.

Researchers [u]plan[/u] to create a library of human genetics, with entries on the workings of individual genes, and make it available for anyone in Wikipedia rather than in an obscure academic format.

Authors of the "gene wiki" say they have created 7,500 Wikipedia entries on different genes and are editing another 650 already existing entries.

The group outlined its aims this week in a paper published on the Public Library of Science's online journal, PLoS Biology. The eight authors are from the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation in San Diego, San Diego State University and Washington University in St. Louis.
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I know that I do look at wikipedia articles to obtain some basic information regarding topics of general interest (history, popular culture, etc.), but not for scientific topics. To obtain accurate, scientific information on scientific topics, I only trust peer-reviewed articles, such as those available on PubMed. Would it not be better to deposit these genetic articles on a site like PubMed, and allow only the posting of comments/proposed updates/proposed modifications of articles, rather than their open modification? This would allow the original authors to determine the merit of the proposed changes, and modify the articles accordingly, allowing the articles to remain complete and current, while maintaining their trustworthiness.]]> http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/preList/107/328.page http://www.the-scientist.com/community/posts/preList/107/328.page GMT