Tuesday, January 12, 2016

#Wikipedia - #Recovery and #mental health

Recovery is not a method. According to Anthony it is a vision. Anthony describes the origin of recovery and it has not much to do with the 12 step program of Alcoholics Anonymous like the Wikipedia article says.

Even when you know all these things, starting to make changes is a daunting prospect. The article does not invite you learn more about recovery, it lacks focus and trivia like a possible etymology detracts from the subject. It becomes too long to read.

However, changing a Wikipedia article is frightening. Even when information is manifestly wrong, there is all the baggage required before you can edit an article. When I wanted to "fix" an incorrect link, I wanted to preserve the fact that the link was not a red link. I removed the #redirect and it was "wrong". I wrote a minimal stub, I even included a source and it was "wrong". The article is destined for deletion so the problem is likely to remain. Apparently nobody cares, I informed about the issue on talk pages; it took me already too much ..

I remember the days when it was welcomed to be brave.

The coverage of mental health is sub standard. My question is how to improve this. The question why it needs improvement is easy and obvious. The prevalence of mental health is such that high quality information is extremely relevant. When people are to recover, they have to rely largely on their own resources, their own ability, their own sense of self.

Working on Wikipedia articles is not my cup of tea. Working towards an editathon on the subject is. It will still have the same amount of stress but it will not be my stress. It will be real Wikipedians and people knowledgeable on the subject who will together make a difference.
Thanks,
       GerardM

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