`  :Replying here, as I'm not sure I even remember my password at Meta; feel free to cross-post any (or all) parts of it if you think they're relevant.  :While I do have a science/engineering background, I don't feel I know enough about medicine to participate in an explicitly medical project. The person you really want to move heaven and earth to get on board is , particularly if he drops off Arbcom at the end of the year and thus loses the inherent COI; he's one of the very few people with expert knowledge in both the internal workings of Wikipedia, and of current medical custom and practice.  :Some thoughts (possibly more to follow if I think of them): :#What does ``participation and advocacy`` actually mean in theory, and what will it mean in practice? If the project becomes a self-appointing group which parachutes en masse into contentious areas to sway block votes—or is perceived as such—it's likely to meet the same reception as that given to the East European Mailing List or the Article Rescue Squadron. :#How much input do you (plural) envisage this project as having over Wikipedia content? I can easily see it becoming a star chamber which determines Wikipedia's or Wikimedia's party line on contentious medical issues—even if that's not the intention of the founders—and in that case, it will become a prime target for various cultists and cranks. If it has (for instance) twenty active members, I could easily imagine Narconon, the TMers or the big pharma companies getting enough of a foothold to stage a coup. :#What mechanisms will you have for reconciling ``anyone can edit`` and ``keep out the lunatics``? How do you handle the hypothetical situation where a dozen crystal therapists or reiki healers sign up, in sufficient numbers to start swaying votes? :#This thread is only touching one worm from a vigorously wriggling can. How will ``radical transparency`` react with the situation where identifiable individuals are citing each other as examples of sufferers from mental illnesses? When someone uploads an identifiable photo of themselves to illustrate a particular topic, and by the time they sober up and try to take the image down the Free Culture hardliners at Commons have got their mitts on it and refuse to allow it to be deleted as a point of principle? When people are posting accusations of medical malpractice against identifiable medical practitioners? (All these things have actually happened.) :#Some people are already alluding to this on the talkpage; are you going to follow a Teach the Controversy doctrine or scientific orthodoxy? ``Encourage health care providers to use Wikimedia projects and to adopt the values of free culture and open access`` could easily be read as an open invitation to Reichians, chiropractors, ibogaine therapists, acupuncturists and other not-totally-disproven-but-undoubtedly-fringe people to say their piece. If the project is genuinely open to everyone working in health and medicine, it will likely become a free-for-all and the net result will just be that the arguments take place at one remove from the broader community, rather than on the talkpages as they do now. If you do adopt a ``party line`` and only accept contributions from people following medical orthodoxy (as I believe is the only morally responsible path to take), you're adopting a position that's fundamentally at odds with the WMF custom and practice of ``anyone can edit``. (``Anyone can edit`` is not actually written down anywhere in the WMF constitution, and although it appears on the main page and is listed in the executive summary at WP:FIVE it doesn't actually appear on any of the actual Five Pillars—1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and you'd be astonished at how many of the people who cite WP:FIVE as if Larry Sanger carried it down from Mount Sinai on stone tablets, have never bothered actually to read them—but the idea has become so ingrained in the culture that any attempt to ditch it would meet with howls of protest from the Defenders Of The Wiki.) :#A biggie, which nobody appears to have mentioned: almost all the people you're looking to attract have a huge COI, and there doesn't appear to be any discussion of how you're going to handle this. If GlaxoSmithKline offers a dozen people on secondment to write medical articles full time, do you turn them away even though they're almost certainly better qualified to write on the topic than anyone currently active on Wikipedia? How about the National Health Service? How about the CCHR (who may be industrial-grade whackadoodles but are undoubtedly among the world's leading experts in current psychiatric and pharmacological practice)? How about the Followers of Christ? Who will decide who is and isn't a ``health care provider``, and once you open the door to some groups where do you draw the line and why? :#If this project gives ``official approval`` to medical articles, or a status which outside observers could reasonably construe as such, what are the liability issues if an article gives incorrect information which negatively impacts on someone's health? IANAL, but I believe that an oversight panel of this nature could well pull Wikipedia's medical coverage out of the S230 umbrella, and open the WMF up to virtually unlimited liability. Even if it's ultimately determined that S230 still applies, I very much doubt Jimmy Wales has any enthusiasm for that particular test case. :;Executive summary :I support the principle of a de facto regulatory body to monitor and improve Wikipedia's medical coverage, but because it will attract ferocious opposition and controversy, it can only work if you can get an explicit imprimatur from both Jimmy and Sue to overrule ``consensus`` if consensus is leading in inappropriate directions. Because this will make the project one of the most powerful bodies on the internet, a lot of thought needs to go into who can be a member and what the procedures should be for ejecting inappropriate people; until this issue is addressed it's likely the WMF will get cold feet about recognising the project and creating an explicit link which could jeopardise both goodwill and S230 immunity. If the WMF do recognise this project they're likely to insist on such strict controls that you'll find yourselves hamstrung from doing much, while if the WMF doesn't recognise this project it will probably be treated as an inappropriate canvassing group and its members ultimately banned from Wikipedia. –  `