Imedwiki:Principles

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Imedwiki intends to be an encyclopedia of integrative medicine.

It starts bilingual, german and english. but may be extended in the future. Like on wikipedia every language has its own pages, that may be connected to those of other languages, but they are no direct mirror.

Integrative medicine is based on a scientific approach and a plurality of perspectives. This aims to be a place of dialog, interest in different medical cultures and knowledge.

Like wikipedia it is open for everyone. Unlike wikipedia there is no anonymity and everyone intending to commit is expected to create an user account with his or her real name. The user page should contain some information about yourself.

Wiki principle

Imedwiki is a wiki. This means that

  • all users work together on the content
  • Each page can be edited - above each article there is a bar with an "Edit" tab

Scientific nature

Articles in Imedwiki should be subject to scientific discourse. What science is is dealt with by the philosophy of science. The concept of science has been described and defined differently over time and by different people. Part of the task of Imedwiki will be to present the concept of science in integrative medicine. It is important to maintain an openness in order to be able to include different perspectives, as well as not to fall into arbitrariness.

Pluralism of perspectives and paradigms

A wide variety of perspectives can be adopted in relation to an issue. Perspectives on a matter are often based on core assumptions, paradigms. These are principles that are assumed to be certain and justify a certain approach. One example from medicine is the machine paradigm. Different complementary medicine approaches interpret medical phenomena from their different contexts using different terms. The aim of Imedwiki is to illustrate these different perspectives in relation to specific issues and to describe the underlying cultural contexts and paradigms.

Relationship to other wikis

Relationship to Wikipedia

Imedwiki is strongly oriented towards Wikipedia. There are differences in two respects. Firstly, Imedwiki is a specialist wiki for integrative medicine, i.e. a platform with a specific specialist focus. Secondly, the understanding of paradigm pluralism differs from Wikipedia's understanding of a neutral point of view. This is not so much the case in principle, but in the specific implementation. In principle, the neutral point of view (NPOV) on Wikipedia is intended to enable the presentation of facts from a variety of perspectives, as long as these are described neutrally. This is basically almost congruent with the approach of perspective or paradigm pluralism on Imedwiki. In reality, however, it is much more difficult to present complementary medicine content on Wikipedia, even if it is purely neutral and factual. There are many reasons for this and it would be good to explain them in detail at a later date. However, the difficulties that arose, particularly in the English-speaking world, ultimately led to the decision to establish a platform that refers more clearly to the NPOV than is implemented in Wikipedia, so as to enable the various facets of integrative and complementary medicine to be presented in their respective characteristics. Often, the observations of integrative and complementary medicine are supplements to those of conventional science. As a result, articles from Wikipedia are sometimes imported and supplemented. These articles are provided with a corresponding module that notes the import and contains a link to the original page. If linked content cannot be meaningfully included on Imedwiki, then a link to the respective lemma on Wikipedia is recommended, which should then be marked with an appended link symbol. For example, medicine leads to the article Medicine on Wikipedia. The symbol is automatically attached to every link to Wikipedia.