# Fund expert editors for the cancer pages of Wikipedia and Wikidata

Source: https://onco.cc/ideas/idea-data-wikipedia-oncology-editors/  
OnCo record `idea-data-wikipedia-oncology-editors` (Idea). Data CC BY-NC 4.0, attribute "Data from OnCo (onco.cc)"; commercial use needs a licence.

## TL;DR

Wikipedia's medical pages receive billions of views and its cancer pages are among the most read, yet they are often out of date on treatment. Funding a standing team of oncology editors and translators, as Cochrane and WHO have done with Wikimedia, would keep them current against living guidelines and add structured trial and drug identifiers to Wikidata.

## Summary

Wikipedia's medical pages receive billions of views; cancer pages are among the most read and are often out of date on treatment. The proposal funds a small standing team of oncology editors and translators (as Cochrane and WHO have done in partnership with Wikimedia) to maintain cancer articles against living guidelines, add structured data to Wikidata (linking to trial and drug identifiers), and measure accuracy over time.

## Fields

- Kind: Idea
- Last checked: 2026-09-08
- Hypothesis: Funded editing will raise the accuracy and currency of the 200 most-read cancer articles to guideline-concordant status and reduce the presence of unproven therapies presented as effective.
- Rationale: Cochrane-Wikipedia and WikiProject Medicine partnerships have improved article quality where sustained; cancer is the highest-traffic area without dedicated funding.
- Proposed test: Audit accuracy of the top 200 cancer articles against guidelines; fund editors for two years; re-audit and compare with untouched control articles.
- Maturity: speculative
- Actor: philanthropy

## Sources

- WikiProject Medicine: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:WikiProject_Medicine

## Connected records

- fronts: [AI & Computation](https://onco.cc/fronts/ai-computation/)
- bottlenecks: [Knowledge reaches practice too slowly](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-knowledge-diffusion/), [Misinformation and unproven therapies](https://onco.cc/bottlenecks/b-misinformation/)

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