What You’re Doing Is Rather Desperate

Notes from the life of a bioinformatics researcher

Wikipedia links in SwissProt

I posted recently on some subtle changes to the SwissProt format. Just noticed another – Wikipedia links in the CC line. From entry Q13315:


CC   -!- WEB RESOURCE: NAME=Wikipedia ataxia telangiectasia mutated entry;
CC       URL="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ataxia_telangiectasia_mutated".

I guess this means that Wikipedia is now an acceptable academic resource for biology.

Written by nsaunders

August 14, 2007 at 1:58 pm

Posted in bioinformatics, web resources

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3 Responses

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  1. Wouldn’t it be better to use the “permanent” link like http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Ataxia_telangiectasia_mutated&oldid=135206761 ?

    That way, the link is guaranteed to point to a version that the Swissprot curator agrees with, and not some future version where the protein is described as being used by koalas to digest donuts.

    Jonathan Badger

    August 14, 2007 at 8:31 pm

  2. I suppose the Wiki(pedia) philosophy is that the latest version is the “best” and that people can always view older revisions. But I agree, as SwissProt is curated, the link should point to what the curator thinks is correct.

    nsaunders

    August 15, 2007 at 12:43 pm

  3. Permanent links would certainly make sense if curators actually checked and corrected the contents of the Wikipedia articles that are being referenced, or if the articles were being cited as a source of information. But since neither is the case, might as well link to the latest version of the article, which is what most people will want to see anyway.

    Eric Jain

    July 7, 2008 at 5:29 am


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