Universal health care peaking round the corner again

[daedalus]

I am for Socialized Health Care. I believe that people are stupid and do not prioritize their needs properly. They will spend $300 on a haircut but not $300 on health insurance premiums. Thus, everyone should be taxed just a little bit more (and also the $50b a month from the Iraq invasion should be repurposes) and we develop a roboust and well funded socialized health system.

I am a very big fan of the Israeli system.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_care_in_Israel
http://www.mfa.gov.il/MFA/History/M...ealth Care System in Israel- An Historical Pe
http://www.physiciansnews.com/spotlight/698dv.html

I also believe that the private insurance companies should be allowed to continue and supplement care.

Perhaps you are on to something, bstone.

Karaya, I do not mean to say that wikipedia is the bible for all information, but i do get upset when ignorant people claim that 70 % of wikipedia is bull, and many many professors (esp English) have tried to tell me that. I would never write a college paper using only wikipedia, but as you have, I use it as a guide. It is a generally very accurate guide. BTW, do you know who I am? I am the smoking man, and I tell you to trust wikipedia for all you will ever need to know jk.

Veneficous however, is also on to something. It would be reckless to rely on wikipedia for medication information if you were to integrate what you found into clinical practice as a paramedic or other healthcare professional.

 

[Shishkabob]

Go to a college and use Wikipedia as a source on a paper, and see what the teacher does.


I use wikipedia to look up things that I want to know about quickly, but have never and will never use it as a source.

 

[bstone]

Go to a college and use Wikipedia as a source on a paper, and see what the teacher does.


I use wikipedia to look up things that I want to know about quickly, but have never and will never use it as a source.

I wrote a 15 page paper on reliability in wikipedia. Want to see it?

 

[PapaBear434]

I wrote a 15 page paper on reliability in wikipedia. Want to see it?

I use it as a jumping point, most of the time. It's like a card catalog of the internet. Most things there will lead you to links of actual, credible sites you CAN trust.

 

[bstone]

Wikipedia is Generally Reliable

In a recent Internet Relay Chat among volunteer editors of the English language Wikipedia, Wikipedia was said to be filled with 85% of articles being malarial swamps and 15% beacons of light and hope. What is the real truth about Wikipedia and its articles? Wikipedia, claimed to be the largest and fastest growing encyclopedia in the world, was founded by James Wales in 2001 (“Wikipedia History”). Wales created Wikipedia as a hobby project in addition to his commercial ventures of running commercial pornographic websites. Originally written exclusively by Wales, he quickly opened up editing to registered users and encouraged editing in a collaborative manner. In the past several years, Wikipedia policies have been amended to allow for editing of articles by anyone with an Internet connection. One need not be a registered user to contribute content and discussion to the encyclopedia. The open nature of Wikipedia, and the huge number of articles, has brought much criticism to the project for containing inaccurate information, unchecked vandalism of articles and hoax articles. Conversely, the sheer number of volunteer editors and casual browsers who take time to revert vandalism, add content and sources allows for a rapidly expanding project which provides for increased quality. Contrary the some critics, most articles on Wikipedia are generally reliable and contain verifiable facts.
In 1996, James Wales founded a company called Bomis. Bomis was created to be an Internet content provider and hosted various websites. The most popular and visited websites hosted on the Bomis servers were the pornographic sites (Freebase.com). In 2001, Wales and Larry Sanger founded Wikipedia. Wikipedia was designed to be a test project to help develop content for a larger project called Nupedia. Nupedia was an online encyclopedia which was meant to be free and with the articles written by experts in their respective fields. A wiki is a piece of software which runs on a server. Wiki software allows many people to work collaboratively on a set of articles. On a wiki, there exists a heading tab which allows one to view a variety of information. This is an example of such a heading used on a normal Wikipedia article:

Clicking on the various tabs will bring up different screens of information. The “article” tab displays the main content of the article. The “discussion” tab contains notes and conversations left for collaborating editors regarding content on the article. “Edit this page” displays the raw data that makes up the “article”. “History” shows every single revision to the article, no matter how minor, and allows for comparison between any two versions of the article. Nupedia, however, was not designed on the wiki platform, but rather subject to peer review and expert leadership (Freebase). In the first year of production, Nupedia only succeeded in creating twelve new articles. In order to assist in development of more content and articles, Wales and Sanger decided to add the ability for community-developed content to Nupedia in the form of a wiki. Rather quickly, however, there was significant community dissent regarding this manner of content. Thus, the wiki section of Nupedia was spun off into its own project, called Wikipedia, on January 10, 2001. Originally, Bomis was hosting the servers which contained the content for Wikipedia. As Wikipedia grew in popularity and due to the downturn in the Internet economy of the early 2000s, Wales decided to create the Wikimedia Foundation. The foundation is a registered not-for-profit with a headquarters in San Francisco, CA and hosts all of the computers, servers and paid employees of the Wikimedia Foundation. In addition, the foundation is responsible for raising all of the funds required to continually operate and improve Wikipedia and associated projects.
James Wales serves as the Chairman Emeritus of the Wikimedia Foundation and serves as the defacto editor-in-chief of Wikipedia. Below Wales exist a variety of official, quasi-official and non-official positions which volunteers are able to achieve in order to assist with Wikipedia. Among the official positions are Steward, Bureaucrat and Administrator. Stewards are the highest among these official positions as their rights and privilidges and have the ability to delete and censor edits. As well, Stewards are able to promote editors to the Bureaucrat and Administrator positions. Bureaucrats are editors who have been selected to become highly trusted users in an individual wiki and have access to less technical ability than that at of Stewards, but greater than that of Administrators. Bureaucrats can promote editors to Administrator or Bureaucrat status, have all the same responsibility of Administrators and can technically overrule them on issues pertaining to policy. In addition, Bureaucrats are responsible for interpreting results of community discussions/votes for which users are promoted to Administrator and Bureaucrat status. The last official position, which by design is the most frequent and numerous, is that of Administrator. Administrators are volunteer editors who have spent a great deal of time editing and adding content to individual articles, participating in discussions regarding deletion of articles and have demonstrated strong knowledge of Wikipedia policies and guidelines. There are currently over 1500 Administrators. Volunteer editors must usually be very active for several months before applying to go through a ‘Request for Adminship’. In such a request, the user is subjected to several dozen questions which judge their knowledge of Wikipedia guidelines and policies. In addition, any registered users of the community is able to vote ‘support’, ‘oppose’ or ‘neutral’, with the option of leaving a statement. Often this leads to a great deal of discussion regarding the user, the votes and frequently leads to changes in a vote. In the end, an Administrator, Bureaucrat and Steward are promoted after an examination of the votes reveals a clear consensus of support. At times, the threshold of consensus is subject to liberal interpretation which can lead to many extended debates. In the end, however, promotion of a user is usually based upon strong community consensus.
In addition to Stewards, Bureaucrats and Administrators, there exist at least two Wikipedia committees made up of users which are official. These are the Arbitration Committee and the Mediation Committee. Both committees were created in 2004 by Wales as methods to help with the increasing number of major disputes and debates which were stalling the progress of article creation. The Arbitration Committee consists of ten active users who are the de facto supreme court of Wikipedia. When all manners of dispute resolution fail to resolve debates on content of interpersonal editor issues, the Arbitration Committee is able to pass binding decisions. Such decisions can be specific to content of a particular article, an interpretation of policy, creation of new guidelines and policy, discipline and admonishment of individual or groups of editors, temporary blocking and outright banning of users who persistently violate the rules of Wikipedia. Members of the Arbitration Committee are voted in for a three year term, confirmed by the rubber stamp of James Wales and then identified to the Wikimedia Foundation. While a non-administrator is able to run for a position on the Arbitration Committee, all current members are Administrators and no non-admin has ever been successfully elected. Recently, the Arbitration Committee has been heavily criticized for several decisions passed, including one decision in which a trial was held in complete secrecy without the defendant even knowing he was on trial. This has generated a tremendous amount of criticism of the Arbitration Committee, including calls for reform and resignations. The Mediation Committee consists of fourteen users who are self-elected by other Committee members and lead by a chair. The charter of the Mediation Committee is specific to content disputes, while it is specifically excluded from investigation and determining policy, guideline or inter-personal editor issues. Mediation Committee members serve for an indefinite period of time (“Wikipedia” Mediation Committee”).
Among the few quasi-official committees in Wikipedia is the Medication Cabal. Lead by only two formal chairmen, the MedCabal claims that all users, editors and administrators are members of the MedCabal. This Cabal states, “The Mediation Cabal is a bunch of volunteers providing unofficial, informal mediation for disputes on Wikipedia. We do not impose sanctions or make judgments. We at MedCabal are not at all official and are just ordinary Wikipedians. We facilitate communication and help parties reach an agreement by their own efforts.” (“Wikipedia: Mediation Cabal”).
These formal and informal governing structures of Wikipedia are the basis and methods in which the several hundred active Wikipedia volunteer editors are able to maintain order and continue to add articles, content and resolve disputes.

 

[bstone]

Wikipedia has several different classifications of articles. They are Featured Articles, Good Articles (also known as A Class Articles), copy edited articles (also called B and C Class Articles) and non-copy edited articles (also called Stub and Start articles) (“Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment”). Featured Articles have been thoroughly edited, sourced, expanded and deemed to live up to most scrutiny. Good Articles have been extensively edited, sourced and are considered to quite literally be in good condition. Project Rated Articles are those which have support from a particular project on Wikipedia and have been assigned a level of importance as well as a quality assessment. Copy edited articles are those with a small to moderate amount of information, usually with many references and sources and have often been copy edited for content, tone and readability. Lastly, non-copy edited articles are those which have not had any sort of copy edit review, assessment, or adoption by a project and are often in very poor non-encyclopedic form. To the casual observer, this represents a system in which certain articles are quite reliable and continues in a descending order or reliability from most to least.
Wikipedia has recently been the subject of various media reports. Some of these reports have either been highly supportive of Wikipedia as being generally reliable and others have been very critical. Beginning with the most critical a Scottish news source, Scotsman.com News, recently ran an article which described high school school students failing their exams at an increasing and alarming rate. The author describes, “The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information…” (McLaughlin). This illustrates that the information being taken from Wikipedia and being used in for school reports and for exam preparation. However, the topics in which these students are taking information from is riddled with so many errors that the students are receiving failing marks on homework and exams. In response to this Wikipedia states, “While Wikipedia articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less well monitored, articles may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information.” (“Wikipedia:Verifiability”). This brings up interesting and valid points. The first is possible vandalism to the articles in which these students were accessing. The Scotsman.com News does not include a list or topic in which these students were attempting to write about, thus an examination of possible vandalism is impossible. Vandalism is an endemic problem on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia servers do not require people to register an account before being able to alter and edit a page. However, a related policy about Wikipedia vandalism states, “Repetitively and intentionally making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia will result in a block or permanent ban.” (“Wikipedia:Vandalism”). Thus, Wikipedia does indeed have an official policy as to how it deals with vandalism. Those who vandalize Wikipedia can be blocked for short periods of time, extending longer or outright banned from the project altogether. The other main issue is the insertion of false or misleading information into these articles. While, again, the exact articles which were used for this high school issue are not available for review or comment making it impossible to ascertain for certain. It certainly is possible, at least in theory, that fellow students may have gone to the relevant Wikipedia pages and quite simply changed the information to be inaccurate. Some students with a competitive nature can conceiveably do such a thing. Other students with a more vindictive nature might do similar. This brings up the interesting issue of reliability and verifiability of Wikipedia. An official policy of Wikipedia says, “Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source.” (“Wikipedia: Reliable Sources”). While it is clear Wikipedia has such a policy regarding verifiability and reliability of information, the question must be begged is if this followed.
While Wikipedia has gotten a great deal of criticism for it’s perceived lack of reliability, a systematic study of Wikipedia by the journal Nature has concluded that Wikipedia articles are generally reliable. As quoted in USA Today, “Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that relies on volunteers to pen nearly 4 million articles, is about as accurate in covering scientific topics as Encyclopedia Britannica” (Goodin). Nature had fifty scholars and experts in various scientific areas assigned 42 articles within the area of their expertise. The scholars were not told of the source of the articles, but were instead asked to review the content and make comments regarding the reliability, lack of context or confusion in content. After thorough review, Nature concluded that while each Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica had errors, these errors were the exception and not the rule. As stated by Nature, “The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.” (Giles ). However, due to Wikipedia’s dynamic nature and speed of editing, as Nature describes, the editing and reliability for these articles could be quickly and easily improved, as well as adding or removing content for clarity. The Nature article wrought the ire of Encyclopedia Britannica who wrote scathing and very critical response to the Nature article in which they indicated that the Nature process was flawed, inconsistent and Encyclopedia Britannica stood by their authors and called for a complete retraction of the Nature article (“Fatally Flawed”). In a response letter, Nature stated, “We do not intend to retract our article.” (“Nature's responses”).
Additionally, there have been more attempts by other peer-reviewed journals to ascertain the reliability of scientific articles on Wikipedia. First Monday is a collection of free, peer-reviewed journals about the Internet. In a paper published on their website, it is stated, “The results show an increasing use of structured citation markup and good agreement with citation patterns seen in the scientific literature though with a slight tendency to cite articles in high–impact journals such as Nature and Science. These results increase confidence in Wikipedia as a reliable information resource for science in general.” (Nielsen). Thus, by virtue of these two scholarly examinations of scientific articles on Wikipedia, one can assume that such articles are generally reliable.
Utilizing the same method as First Monday, a single and randomly chosen Featured Article, Good Article, Copy Edited Article and non-Copy Edited Article will be examined to determine reliability. The references of each randomly chosen article will be examined and assessed for accuracy and use of professional and academic sources. This method should be sufficient in order to see if the general trend in Wikipedia is to accurately and appropriately attribute information using reliable sources. An associated policy of Wikipedia regarding so-called reliable sources states, “Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.” (“Wikipedia:Reliable Sources”) While this may be a Wikipedia policy, the so-called ‘malarial swamps’ often contain improper, little or no references.
The randomly selected Featured Article is List of counties in Arizona (“List of counties in Arizona”). This article is well developed with many images and charts. It gives a clear and seemingly objective history of the counties in Arizona, including years formed, populations, county seat and a brief history of each county. Included in the descriptions are links to full articles on each county, which contains more information. Despite being a Featured Article this article only contains six separate references. While some of these references are used more than once in the article, there remains only six sources total. The following is a copy of the references used:

Upon investigation of the first source published by Higginson Books and review of the company’s website, it was determined that this publishing house allows for self-publishing of books and advertises for a 6-8 week turn around on submitted material. Wikipedia’s Verifiability policy states, “Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, knols, forum postings, and similar sources are largely not acceptable.” (“Wikipedia:Verifiability”). Thus, this first source may not be considered reliable according to some. (Author’s note: this issue has been referred to the appropriate Wikipedia forum, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_counties_in_Arizona#Higgins_Books.) Scarecrow Press, which published a book used for several references, is an industry known publishing company and is considered very reliable. The rest of the sources are government sources, which are also considered to be reliable. In summary, the sources utilized for references are by-and-large reliable and acceptable, however at least one seems to violate Wikipedia policy. How this went on undetected is unknown and concerning. However, it would seem that most of the references used were done appropriately and were well selected.

 

[bstone]

Wikipedia has several different classifications of articles. They are Featured Articles, Good Articles (also known as A Class Articles), copy edited articles (also called B and C Class Articles) and non-copy edited articles (also called Stub and Start articles) (“Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment”). Featured Articles have been thoroughly edited, sourced, expanded and deemed to live up to most scrutiny. Good Articles have been extensively edited, sourced and are considered to quite literally be in good condition. Project Rated Articles are those which have support from a particular project on Wikipedia and have been assigned a level of importance as well as a quality assessment. Copy edited articles are those with a small to moderate amount of information, usually with many references and sources and have often been copy edited for content, tone and readability. Lastly, non-copy edited articles are those which have not had any sort of copy edit review, assessment, or adoption by a project and are often in very poor non-encyclopedic form. To the casual observer, this represents a system in which certain articles are quite reliable and continues in a descending order or reliability from most to least.
Wikipedia has recently been the subject of various media reports. Some of these reports have either been highly supportive of Wikipedia as being generally reliable and others have been very critical. Beginning with the most critical a Scottish news source, Scotsman.com News, recently ran an article which described high school school students failing their exams at an increasing and alarming rate. The author describes, “The Scottish Parent Teacher Council (SPTC) said pupils are turning to websites and internet resources that contain inaccurate or deliberately misleading information…” (McLaughlin). This illustrates that the information being taken from Wikipedia and being used in for school reports and for exam preparation. However, the topics in which these students are taking information from is riddled with so many errors that the students are receiving failing marks on homework and exams. In response to this Wikipedia states, “While Wikipedia articles generally attain a good standard after editing, it is important to note that fledgling, or less well monitored, articles may be susceptible to vandalism and insertion of false information.” (“Wikipedia:Verifiability”). This brings up interesting and valid points. The first is possible vandalism to the articles in which these students were accessing. The Scotsman.com News does not include a list or topic in which these students were attempting to write about, thus an examination of possible vandalism is impossible. Vandalism is an endemic problem on Wikipedia, as Wikipedia servers do not require people to register an account before being able to alter and edit a page. However, a related policy about Wikipedia vandalism states, “Repetitively and intentionally making unconstructive edits to Wikipedia will result in a block or permanent ban.” (“Wikipedia:Vandalism”). Thus, Wikipedia does indeed have an official policy as to how it deals with vandalism. Those who vandalize Wikipedia can be blocked for short periods of time, extending longer or outright banned from the project altogether. The other main issue is the insertion of false or misleading information into these articles. While, again, the exact articles which were used for this high school issue are not available for review or comment making it impossible to ascertain for certain. It certainly is possible, at least in theory, that fellow students may have gone to the relevant Wikipedia pages and quite simply changed the information to be inaccurate. Some students with a competitive nature can conceiveably do such a thing. Other students with a more vindictive nature might do similar. This brings up the interesting issue of reliability and verifiability of Wikipedia. An official policy of Wikipedia says, “Material challenged or likely to be challenged, and all quotations, must be attributed to a reliable, published source.” (“Wikipedia: Reliable Sources”). While it is clear Wikipedia has such a policy regarding verifiability and reliability of information, the question must be begged is if this followed.
While Wikipedia has gotten a great deal of criticism for it’s perceived lack of reliability, a systematic study of Wikipedia by the journal Nature has concluded that Wikipedia articles are generally reliable. As quoted in USA Today, “Wikipedia, the encyclopedia that relies on volunteers to pen nearly 4 million articles, is about as accurate in covering scientific topics as Encyclopedia Britannica” (Goodin). Nature had fifty scholars and experts in various scientific areas assigned 42 articles within the area of their expertise. The scholars were not told of the source of the articles, but were instead asked to review the content and make comments regarding the reliability, lack of context or confusion in content. After thorough review, Nature concluded that while each Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica had errors, these errors were the exception and not the rule. As stated by Nature, “The exercise revealed numerous errors in both encyclopaedias, but among 42 entries tested, the difference in accuracy was not particularly great: the average science entry in Wikipedia contained around four inaccuracies; Britannica, about three.” (Giles ). However, due to Wikipedia’s dynamic nature and speed of editing, as Nature describes, the editing and reliability for these articles could be quickly and easily improved, as well as adding or removing content for clarity. The Nature article wrought the ire of Encyclopedia Britannica who wrote scathing and very critical response to the Nature article in which they indicated that the Nature process was flawed, inconsistent and Encyclopedia Britannica stood by their authors and called for a complete retraction of the Nature article (“Fatally Flawed”). In a response letter, Nature stated, “We do not intend to retract our article.” (“Nature's responses”).
Additionally, there have been more attempts by other peer-reviewed journals to ascertain the reliability of scientific articles on Wikipedia. First Monday is a collection of free, peer-reviewed journals about the Internet. In a paper published on their website, it is stated, “The results show an increasing use of structured citation markup and good agreement with citation patterns seen in the scientific literature though with a slight tendency to cite articles in high–impact journals such as Nature and Science. These results increase confidence in Wikipedia as a reliable information resource for science in general.” (Nielsen). Thus, by virtue of these two scholarly examinations of scientific articles on Wikipedia, one can assume that such articles are generally reliable.
Utilizing the same method as First Monday, a single and randomly chosen Featured Article, Good Article, Copy Edited Article and non-Copy Edited Article will be examined to determine reliability. The references of each randomly chosen article will be examined and assessed for accuracy and use of professional and academic sources. This method should be sufficient in order to see if the general trend in Wikipedia is to accurately and appropriately attribute information using reliable sources. An associated policy of Wikipedia regarding so-called reliable sources states, “Articles should be based on reliable, third-party, published sources with a reputation for fact-checking and accuracy.” (“Wikipedia:Reliable Sources”) While this may be a Wikipedia policy, the so-called ‘malarial swamps’ often contain improper, little or no references.
The randomly selected Featured Article is List of counties in Arizona (“List of counties in Arizona”). This article is well developed with many images and charts. It gives a clear and seemingly objective history of the counties in Arizona, including years formed, populations, county seat and a brief history of each county. Included in the descriptions are links to full articles on each county, which contains more information. Despite being a Featured Article this article only contains six separate references. While some of these references are used more than once in the article, there remains only six sources total. The following is a copy of the references used:

Upon investigation of the first source published by Higginson Books and review of the company’s website, it was determined that this publishing house allows for self-publishing of books and advertises for a 6-8 week turn around on submitted material. Wikipedia’s Verifiability policy states, “Anyone can create a website or pay to have a book published, and then claim to be an expert in a certain field. For that reason, self-published books, newsletters, personal websites, open wikis, blogs, knols, forum postings, and similar sources are largely not acceptable.” (“Wikipedia:Verifiability”). Thus, this first source may not be considered reliable according to some. (Author’s note: this issue has been referred to the appropriate Wikipedia forum, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:List_of_counties_in_Arizona#Higgins_Books.) Scarecrow Press, which published a book used for several references, is an industry known publishing company and is considered very reliable. The rest of the sources are government sources, which are also considered to be reliable. In summary, the sources utilized for references are by-and-large reliable and acceptable, however at least one seems to violate Wikipedia policy. How this went on undetected is unknown and concerning. However, it would seem that most of the references used were done appropriately and were well selected.

 

[bstone]

The randomly selected Good Article selected was Believers (“Believers”). This article is about a Japanese manga comic strip and documents the experiences of three people, two men and one women, left stranded on a desert island off the coast of Japan. The characters are only known by their code named of “Chairman”, “Vice-Chairman” and “Operator”. In the references section there are two references, as below:

The lack of additional references, according to the Discussion Page, is not due to poor editing but rather due sole to the lack of such sources existing. The first reference cited is a magazine called Pulp Magazine. Clicking on the link for this reference revealed that no such webpage exists. Several Google searches revealed no additional sources for this article. (Author’s note, this was also reported to the relevant Wikipedia noticeboard, here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Believers#Reference_no_longer_exists). The second reference is for a book published by a large Japanese publishing company called Shogakukan Production Co. This book thus has the backing of a large and well known publishing company, which allows one to assume and assess the reliability of such a source as being strong. Soon after the dead reference was reported to the appropriate editors of Wikipedia, it was revealed that this article had previous been approved as a Good Article in 2006 but sometime in March 2008 it was removed from the this category. Currently, the article is internally listed as “Start Class”, which details an article as having little content and few or no references. However, the article header still clearly states that this article remains as a Good Article. Moreover, this article is still listed as such in the official Good Article list of Wikipedia. This type of contradiction makes for extensive confusion. (Author’s note: It was not until I spent two hours consulting with other veteran Wikipedia editors on an IRC channel that this was fully revealed. To date, the article still remains in this contradictory status, however.) While this manner of contradiction and confusion is frustrating, a quick and informal search of other Good Articles does not reveal such topical contradictions. However, the Believers article was selected at random and thus it was assessed. In the end, the information on the Believers article is not seemingly inaccurate and at least one of the references is from an industry known publisher. Thus, despite the confusion, the Believers can be considered an article which is generally reliable.
The copy-edit article which was selected at random was A Coruña (“A Coruña”). This article is about a large city in northwestern Spain. This city has a long history and many landmarks. The Wikipedia article is filled with photos, images, charts and is well edited. The reference list includes:

The first reference, a pronunciation guide, is a very old document from the mid 1800s. It seems to be an authority on pronunciation and thus considered reliable. This is a Spanish language history book from the publisher Biblioteca Gallega. Due to its language there is no accurate way to easily determine reliability. Interestingly, reference four comes from the Encyclopedia Britannica. Whereas Wikipedia and Encyclopedia Britannica have not always had the best of relationships, Wikipedia does entrust E.B. to be a reliable source and high quality. Finally, the last reference of Xunta de Galicia is a Spanish-language governmental website. It must be noted that at the time of access, this article was subject to a “semi-protection” by Wikipedia administrators. According to available logs, the article was locked in April 2008 due to vandalism of the article by a non-registered user. Semi-protection allows editors who maintain Wikipedia accounts to continue editing but prevents brand new accounts or those without such accounts to edit a semi-protected article. When the author approached a Wikipedia Administrator regarding the lengthy protection period, the administrator removed the block and stated that it should have been automatically removed, yet was not due to failure to set an auto-expiration date for the lock. In summary, this article makes use of references which are not immediately accessable to non-Spainish speakers and other encyclopedias. The use of non-English references casts a shadow of concern which would cause at least some parts of this article to be located in the malarial swamps of Wikipedia. However, the lengthy protection of this article demonstrates that Wikipedia administrators and editors are constantly on the look out for inappropriate edits and vandalism. As a result of this, random disruption to articles can not only be reverted but the articles can be protected in order to maintain reliability.
The final article to be assessed for general reliably is Brégnier-Cordon (“Brégnier-Cordon”). Brégnier-Cordon is a commune in eastern France. This article contains no references or sources. It is only one line long in content and has not been expanded or copy-edited. The article contains one map showing the location of Brégnier-Cordon and includes information regarding population, the mayor, population and land area. However, no historical information or local notability is discussed. The only information which would require references would be the vital statistics, however no such references are in this article. As a result of the utter lack of sourcing there is no confident way to determine the general reliability of this article. These sorts of “stub” articles that are not copy-edited are poor in quality and cannot be considered to be reliable.
Wikipedia exists and grows solely due to the volunteer efforts of thousands of people around the world. This collaborative effort to codify vast sums of human knowledge is an ambitious goal, but not without many hurdles to overcome. Among those hurdles are creating articles which are appropriately and properly sourced, combating vandalism and deliberately false edits and maintaining verifiability and a neutral point of view. While Wikipedia has demonstrated that it has the ability to produce high quality and highly reliable science articles it struggles with general reliability of non-copy edited articles. Articles of general reliability include Featured and Good articles. Copy edited articles not of the Featured or Good variety are difficult to assess for reliability. With more time, more volunteerism and effort Wikipedia articles will continue to improve, become more reliable and be a true source of human knowledge.




















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“Wikipedia:Vandalism.” Wikipedia. 22 July 2008. 22 July 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Vandalism>.
“Wikipedia:Version 1.0 Editorial Team/Assessment.” Wikipedia. 6 Aug. 2008. 7 Aug. 2008 <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Version_1.0_Editorial_Team/Assessment>.

 

[karaya]

Don't you think a link for all of this would have been sufficient? We seem to be getting off topic here. This was a thread about Universal Health Care, but seems to have drifted into a Wikipedia history lesson.

 

[bstone]

Don't you think a link for all of this would have been sufficient?

oy, you're right, sorry

 

[Melbourne MICA]

At first, Melbourne, I thought you were somewhat serious about opening a discussion on Universal Health Care, which you've devoted some extensive time on this subject in a previous thread. But, now you start a new post on this thread with an absolutely irrelevant opening paragraph that contained the above comment.

Just what are you really doing here? Opening some intelligent, thought provoking conversation about Universal Health Care? We all seemed to have been fooled by believing that was your intent, because it is clear you have an agenda and you just couldn't resist advancing it a notch here with your ludicrous and obtuse analogy.

Firstly no agendas Karaya. We had a similar discussion as you'll recall last time and I make the point that those who argue about where their taxpayer dollars are spent should look closely at where they are already spent and then decide if spending them on a health system for everyone is such a bad alternative.

(On the military thing perhaps not the best analogy to draw though we could get bogged down on debate about the worlds biggest arms dealers and who gets their weapons and for what they are used, foreign policies of various countries and how their military are used and why if you like. Though I am surprised you find the idea such a thing happening is ludicrous).

So I will make the following points relative to some of the arguments against universal health care already put here.

The first being who deserves it - "why should you have to have your money spent on such and such, smokers, drinkers, obese people...." - more than a few posters have used this argument. This whole arguemnt becomes a convoluted maze too easily used to avoid spending on anyone and to ensure money stays where it currently is. (I'll let you decide who's got all the health dollars at the moment).

Making value judgements on groups, classes, categories or even individuals on any basis including medical gets us nowhere and has the whiff of prejudice about it. Besides as I understand it that's exactly what private health insurers are doing now. Looking for ways to deny claims seems to be the stock and trade of some (many/most?) for-profit health insurers. And there are many excuses that can be used if you have a good legal team writing the contracts.

Value for money and competition also comes to mind.

What do you really get for your private health insurance dollar? Private cover is limited both by the desire of the insurer to avoid giving cover against items of the greatest cost over the longest time and by the size of the premium the customer is prepared to pay. If premiums are too high customers go elsewhere and smaller insurers can't compete thus you end with with the market dominated by the biggest mega players. United Health Care group has around 22million customers and Anthem about 28million as eg's

As premiums rise customers drop away pushing them up further. The higher they go the less affordable they become. At the same time the remaining providers tighten their claims portfolio even further. With the advent of managed health in the 19080's (HMO's) as I understand it this is precisley the problem as the underwriters sought to tighten the belt with the expansion of services.

This link talks about market share implications.

http://content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/reprint/23/6/11.pdf

So it costs more and you get less and less for your dollar. At the same time these insurers (their majority shareholders in fact) are raking in billions with the reduced competition pooling the money in their favour.

Now a universal system has the following benefits as I see it

* It isn't reliant on competition
* It can continue to run irrespective of economic circumstances (for the most part)
* It is centrally regulated so its the same across the board
* It includes care measures not influenced by profit motive
* It doesn't disciminate on any basis (if it did this would breach a governments own consitutional provisons or laws)
* It can be means tested (where a tax or levy is the payment provision) so the poorest pay nothing and the richest the biggest levy.
* It can be applied to all hospitals no matter where you are in the country (ie items of care are rebateable everywhere even at a private hospital, clinic, pharmacy etc)
* It can inlclude elective and day procedure services.
* It can include a system of prescription product subsidy like our PBS here. (This is a biggy - huge expenditures on drugs for patients - food or medicine stuff?)
* Can include direct provision of service as well as insurance funding rebates eg public teaching hospitals with A&E services and many other outpatient services
* Public hospitals can participate directly in R&D with taxpayer funding guaranteed
* Where a concordat is reached and provisions agreed upon, public systems also include the very best physicians and surgeons who must proivde a porportion of their time in the public system whilst also able to make money from private clients outside the public system as well.

There's plenty more. Like any system it depends on how well it is run and managed, there are problems inherent to it but at the end if the day when crunch time comes or even for minor ailments you don't have to destroy the family budget to care for your family.

Hope that convinces you I don't have some secret agenda Karaya?

Cheers

MM

 

[karaya]

Hope that convinces you I don't have some secret agenda Karaya?

Nope, not at all. Why can't you just stay on topic about this thread's topic, Universal Health Care? Why can't you make your points without injecting what is obviously your political agenda on a matter totally unrelated to this discussion?

How could anyone who claims they have no agenda make the following statement while responding to who should get Universal Health Care?

Should pts with mental illness, illegal immigrants, convicts like murderers and pedophiles, the soldiers wounded in that secret military raid that blew up "terrorists" but killed 50 children in the process all get universal free health cover +/- health insurance?

I could have thought up a thousand examples and done so without coming across with such an out of balance and extremist example as yours. I do have my politics like everyone else, but I do make every effort to keep my agenda out of the conversation at hand, unless of course it is in fact itself the conversation at hand.

No, your little "subliminal" messages I still find quite ludicrous as to how they relate to this thread, including the comment about "the worlds biggest arms dealers." You seem to be stuck in one gear.

However, I will shift gears here for a moment. I did find your last response on Universal Health Care insightful and thought provoking and worthy of my time to digest and consider your points. Well done!

I may not completely agree with your Universal Health Care views, but you clearly have given me some points to consider and I'm sure others will too. It is too early to fully grasp what the full details of a proposed Universal Health Care by the President, but I'm sure as that unfolds, more discussions here will ensue.

 

[enjoynz]

Melbourne MICA just a matter of interest as far as health care in Aussie goes.
What Medical services do you get for your tax payers dollar?

I had started a post in the EMS Lounge about the US healthcare system not long before you did yours,
and later posted a link as to what we get for our dollar in NZ.
Just wanted to see the comparison.

Cheers Enjoynz

 

[daedalus]

Don't you think a link for all of this would have been sufficient? We seem to be getting off topic here. This was a thread about Universal Health Care, but seems to have drifted into a Wikipedia history lesson.

I think bstone kindly provided us with his own original work, I do not think that the document was available by link.

 

[JonTullos]

Let me first say that I respect all opinions and I don't hate on someone because of their feelings on whatever subject. Now... I am not for universal health care. Simply: There's no such thing as a free lunch. Somebody has to pay for it and guess who that will be. Here's a hint: Contrary to what some say, it won't be the rich. My taxes would go up up up up. Basically I'd be robbed at gun point in order to pay for someone else to have health care. Granted, I would need it eventually but I might go to the doctor three or four times a year, if that. I think the system does need some clean up but I don't want Big Brother getting involved beyond regulation and oversight. Besides, you hear the horror stories out of Canada and European countries all the time. I know we have our share but I don't think we should get to that point. I also don't want Uncle Sam telling me what kinds of procedures I can and can't have and how long I'll have to wait for them. If I wanted to be a socialist I'd move a socialist country. No thanks.

 

[Ridryder911]

Let me put it simple.

The Government handles your MVR and driver license. Do you really trust them with banks and health care?

R/r 911

 

[Melbourne MICA]

Subliminal messages

Nope, not at all. Why can't you just stay on topic about this thread's topic, Universal Health Care? Why can't you make your points without injecting what is obviously your political agenda on a matter totally unrelated to this discussion?

How could anyone who claims they have no agenda make the following statement while responding to who should get Universal Health Care?


I could have thought up a thousand examples and done so without coming across with such an out of balance and extremist example as yours. I do have my politics like everyone else, but I do make every effort to keep my agenda out of the conversation at hand, unless of course it is in fact itself the conversation at hand.

No, your little "subliminal" messages I still find quite ludicrous as to how they relate to this thread, including the comment about "the worlds biggest arms dealers." You seem to be stuck in one gear.

However, I will shift gears here for a moment. I did find your last response on Universal Health Care insightful and thought provoking and worthy of my time to digest and consider your points. Well done!

I may not completely agree with your Universal Health Care views, but you clearly have given me some points to consider and I'm sure others will too. It is too early to fully grasp what the full details of a proposed Universal Health Care by the President, but I'm sure as that unfolds, more discussions here will ensue.

Look I appreciate the positive remarks and certainly hope it gives pause for thought. For all we know you may well have and be living under a universal health scheme within a couple of years. If you do you may well be asking we who have lived under them for years more questions in the near future.

But your comments about my hidden agendas and subliminal messages are off the mark and not fair. Last year I spent inordinate amounts of time praising the US, its role and importance in Western society. I also spoke of the US's role in directing health care and other agendas because of your size and influence. Some of the guys in this thread and last years are always talking up Americas dominance in research, drug developments etc etc.

Now I will not divorce the idea of where public money is spent from conversations about universal health care. It is fundamental to the question. And the cost of universal health care for 320 million people will be huge.

Where our governments spend reflects the vested interests and philosophical positions of all concerned. If you want me to say I despise the idea that public money is overspent by a country mile on weapons and egregious foreign policy I will and it is. This includes weapons sales the most opaque area of all.

If we are to complain about cost then how can we separate the trillions of dollars spent and made on arms sales, oil, wars etc from the equation? All these things are interlinked with each.

Last year I said about 1% of the military budget redirected could support a universal health system. This still holds true -the exact figure probably needs to be adjusted but the premise is correct.

Indeed many of the arguments about "socialized" health systems are ideological and philosophical as much as the arguments for. Like last year I make the point the large vested interest groups including the very wealthy shareholders and companies raking in obscene sums of money have no interest in change and actively fight against it using lobbyists, the media, the politics of the right through GOP congressman and senators etc- it happened in the mid nineties with the Clinton health package. It can (will?) happen again.

I would speak with utter conviction and passion my belief that we owe it to ourselves and each other to insist that our money is spent on things we believe in, are right and reflect our values. Sometimes, even often this means confronting unpleasant truths - and yes in my country as well.

I'm disappointed you would think I am playing some nasty little game given the efforts I made last year to be thoughtful and non partisan though I still appreciate your feedback and will take my fair share of polite criticisms on board. If I'm wrong I will do my best to admit up front.

Drop me a private line if you like and I'm happy to discuss it further.

I hope this reply contains some stuff still on topic. That's why I started it - it was such a great thread last year it was worth revisiting and judging by the passion of the debate I think it still is.

Cheers ^_^

MM

PS I forgot to comment on the "extreme" examples I made convicts, illegal migrants etc - perhaps bad examples but the point was to highlight the fact that when you start picking and choosing who fits and who doesn't things get ugly - this is pefect fodder for fundamentalists -play on prejudice and loathing - marginalised groups etc - by the way I have some links to articles on deficiences in health care assigned to hispanics including illegal migrants as an example. Sorry I got caught up in the other comments.

MM

 

[ffemt8978]

While I don't trust the government to do anything correctly, I'm against Universal Healthcare for the reasons that were listed by Rid and other.

I also believe that Universal Health care undermines two of the core values of this country. Freedom of Choice, and Personal Responsibility.

The freedom to choose your own medical care, and your own medical care providers, and the responsibility of accepting the consequences (good and bad) for your choices.

Once our government gets involved, we will be on the classic slippery slope. The government will start to mandate certain behaviors and practices in an effort to reduce the costs associated with medicine. Then they'll go on to make certain habits, recreations, and other things that are deemed unhealthy illegal.

 

[Sasha]

The government will start to mandate certain behaviors and practices in an effort to reduce the costs associated with medicine. Then they'll go on to make certain habits, recreations, and other things that are deemed unhealthy illegal.

How do you figure? I don't think that's the case in countries that already have it.. Canada, England, Poland, just to name a few!

 

[ffemt8978]

How do you figure? I don't think that's the case in countries that already have it.. Canada, England, Poland, just to name a few!

Because they don't have our political system. It is not an accurate comparison without that.