So many updates! Bloggin’ and loggin’ about new content
I’ve updated and expanded PainScience.com more in 2016 than the last three years put together. In theory, I’m supposed to blog about updates, telling readers what’s new on the site, but I just can’t keep up: there’s just too many updates! So I’m now blogging about them en masse.
I am also now logging those updates, all of them — no longer just a select few. Readers can now see a list of updates at the end of dozens of featured articles: every correction and new citation, anything added or removed.
Like good footnotes, this sets PainScience.com apart. When’s the last time you read a blog post and found a list of 30 updates and upgrades made to that page over a period of several years? This transparency is in the spirit of the editing history available for Wikipedia pages. Footnotes are more useful for readers, but the update logs are important: they demonstrate an auditable long-term commitment to quality and accuracy. Although they are “fine print,” I think they are more meaningful than 98% of the comments that most Internet pages waste pixels on.
As I get serious about update logging, I also get better stats. Here are some highlights from 2016:
- 110 logged updates
- 46 feature articles updated (of 273)
- 11 completely new articles (~27,000 words)
- 174 new papers in the bibliography (many of them carefully summarized)
- ~100,000 words of new content overall, roughly the same as a biggish novel, bringing the site total to roughly a million
The new articles are:
- Opioids for Chronic Aches & Pains
- When to Worry About Neck Pain … and when not to!
- Does the IT Band Move After All?
- What if You Could Wipe the Chronic Pain Slate Clean?
- Do IT Band Straps Work for Runner’s Knee?
- Painfully Odd Google Searches
- The Trigger Point Identity Crisis
- Trigger Points on Trial
- Complete Guide to Frozen Shoulder
- Icing, Heating & Tissue Temperature
- Zapped! Does TENS work for pain?
Some of the most heavily updated and revised articles are: