David Rothman has assembled a comprehensive list of medical wikis which seems to be growing longer every day. He will need to reorder them in categories soon.If you click through the entries on the list, you will notice that many wikis are still in early stage with just a few entries. Many of them will not make it and will eventually fade into oblivion. It is a normal process similar to natural selection. The most popular wikis (with most contributors/readers) will survive.
We have discussed several times with the founders of AskDrWiki that the main challenge for a wiki manager is getting people to contribute. Doctors are busy and few of them have time (and desire) to create quality content for free.
The WSJ Mossberg Solution includes an article about Creating Your Own 'Wiki' Web Site.
Mike Cannon-Brookes has a nice presentation on Organisational Wiki Adoption on SlideShare (link via DavidRothman.net). This may convince your department or hospital to start a wiki, if you do not already have one.
Wikis in Plain English
References:
Why don't more doctors blog? Kevin, MD.
Medical Wikis Proliferate. John Sharp, eHealth.
Which Wiki is Right for You? School Library Journal, 5/1/2007.
WiserWiki was originally seeded with content from John Noble’s “Textbook of Primary Care Medicine” (3rd Edition) provided by Elsevier.
Image source: Arik Baratz, Wikipedia, Creative Commons.
Updated: 01/07/2008
Your post is very true. There is a proliferation of medical wikis now, mine included (www.wikiecho.com). As you have pointed out only the ones with a strong community base will survive. The challenge is in developing that community base. It will be particularly difficult for wikis catering to a niche audience, for e.g. wikiecho.com is meant for cardiologists and echocardiographers who usually do not have much time to contribute to wikis.
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