In December of 2008 Alex Jadad and I published had an editorial on the definition of health in the BMJ. The purpose of this article was to stimulate discussion on the definition of health, first proposed by the WHO in 1948. We felt it was time to re-visit this issue. One of our ideas was to use a blog to support the collaborative discussion and building of a new definition. We wanted to provide a mechanism in which anyone, regardless of where they were located or what their interest in health was to participate in this endeavor. In the summer of 2008 we tried to edit the Wikipedia entry of health to open up the discussion in advance of our anticipated editorial publication on the definition of health. Instead of supporting our efforts we were informed that this was not the place for such a discussion. Fair enough we though and moved on.
Turns out this has happened to others (Nitpicking Wikipedia’s Vulnerabilities, Edit Wars in Medical Wikipedia). In fact Wikipedia even has a page dedicated to the lamest edit wars (ours is not listed, I guess we gave up too quickly). Oh ya, the current entry for health at Wikipedia now cites our editorial in BMJ. Go figure.
