Wikibody.org AKA Mapping the human body for academic purpose
You know the feeling. You can’t sleep and your brain is working 100 miles per hour, thinking about stuff. That’s what happened to me yesterday (as most days). This time however, I came up with an idea that I’d like to share with you guys even though it’s not a business project per se, but rather a humanitarian one.
I want to map and inventory humans.
Huh? Yes you read it right. I want to have the largest human database in the world. This database would include pictures and statistics contributed by people from all around the world. These pictures and statistics will be used for medical, research and other academic use. Now I don’t want to simply collect human pictures, I want to collect and inventory body parts associated to specific data like age, measurements, ethnicity, diseases affecting a person/body part, country, sex and so on.
Imagine searching for pictures of skin cancer affecting a hand. It is pretty hard to find decent information right now, let alone extra data such as the cancer stage, the size of the affected area, the age of the person and so on. Google images will probably give you very unpredictable results and will point you to a different site every time. Also, if you are a researcher, you will find the statistical data very handy. Which country has the longest feet in the world? What skin tones can you find in Europe? What is the most predominant hair color in Russia? What is the average nail length worldwide? Which country has the highest level of psoriasis? How tall are 9 years old kids in Finland? What if you want to see pictures of warts on a lip? How about pictures of bee stings on a nose?
Of course, all this would be anonymous to the contributor. Not only you wouldn’t be able to find out who the person is, but you wouldn’t be able to reconstruct the person using a series of images.
I think it’s time to have an online, worldwide map of the human body. Think Google Earth for the human body. Think Wiki and the human body. I present you: wikibody.org
I want this project to be just like Wikipedia: a non-profit organization using an open source platform build by volunteers. Sounds interesting? I think it is. I always wanted to start a great initiative like Wikipedia and I guess this project is interesting enough to get started. What I need from you is to help spread the word and get the ball rolling. It’s for a good cause! If you want to contribute part or full time, please contact me at denis@quebecvalley.com
Salut Denis,
great idea to build a wiki, but I’m wondering about your choice for a licence. The sharealike and non-commercial clauses should never be used together, at least that’s the impression I get. Sharealike means “come on down, build with me” yet “non-commercial” means “but there are these conditions since I don’t want you to screw me”. NC SA gets messy real fast, having to obtain, for the next 75 years at least, the permission from all contributors to put a price on the collective work. It still isn’t clear what constitutes commercial usage. A blog with ads, printing out copies and charging for the ink and paper?
Well, I hope you can make the content as free as the gfdl or creative commons by sa allows. And that the project will take off!
@Robin
You have a good point and I must mention that I am not an expert in licensing. Sylvain Carle pointed me in the right direction some time ago regarding my own blog. What I wanted to prevent with the Share Alike is people reselling the material with a different license.
I don’t really care if they resell it actually, but if they resell it with a different license then this would bother not only me but all the contributors. Since I want this project to be as open as possible, I’m open to comments and I appreciate your help!