Wiki4CAM

[[Image:Wiki4CAM logo.png|165px|right|thumb|Saving the world from evidence-based medicine since 2008.]]{{altmed}}
'''Wiki4CAM''' ('''Wiki for Complementary and Alternative Medicine''') was a tiny wiki, owned by Manish Bhatia, dedicated to protecting [[alternative medicine]] from the [[scientific method]]. While the website made it clear that [[skeptic]]s need not apply,<ref name="a_note_4_sceptics">[http://archive.ph/k5ZDl Wiki4CAM: A note for skeptics]. Archived from the original at wiki4cam.org.</ref> the site was predominantly a [[RationalWiki]] outpost, enjoying low to moderate use by only a few editors. The site was supported in part by Hpathy.com, a website dedicated to promoting [[homeopathy]], which was supposedly also at work optimizing Wiki4CAM's search engine presence.<ref name="why_do_we_need_wiki4cam">[http://archive.ph/LLY3o Why do we need Wiki4CAM?] Archived from the original at wiki4cam.org.</ref> Large amounts of the content also concerned [[Ayurveda]].

After 2011, there was very little activity on the site, and it ultimately went offline in 2015.

==About the owner==
Wiki4CAM was owned by Dr. Manish Bhatia, aka "Dr. B", an [[India|Indian]] [[homeopathy|homeopathic]] practitioner and the owner of Hpathy.com and various other [[woo]]-promoting websites. He was also known to panic about the fact that (gasp) skeptics of homeopathy say it doesn't work (because it doesn't).<ref>[https://web.archive.org/web/20071207105529/http://skeptico.blogs.com/skeptico/2007/12/diluting-the-pr.html Diluting The Profits]. skeptico.blogs.com, 2 December 2007.</ref> As a result, he created sites like Wiki4CAM to protect homeopathy and alternative medicine in general from skepticism and the scientific method, which might get in the way of 
profits
 his attempts to help people.<ref name="a_note_4_sceptics" />

==Differences from Wikipedia==
Wiki4CAM was set up to counter perceived [[bias in Wikipedia]]. In this respect it is similar to dozens of other [[wiki]]s out there on the Internet. Wiki4CAM stated that Wikipedia's open policies led to its "gaining political views," and that editors have gone out of their way to "discredit and disrepute nearly all alternative medicine as unscientific." As [[Wikipedia]] must be A) [[Neutral point of view|neutral]] and B) verifiable, this is hardly surprising. [[Pseudoscience]], by the site rules, cannot be written as if it was 100% verifiable and real. Wiki4CAM also claimed to be a "true knowledge base" for alternative medicine, whereas Wikipedia is biased due to "skeptical intervention."<ref name="why_do_we_need_wiki4cam" />

==Articles of note==
While Wiki4CAM struggled with [[Poe's Law]] and deleted some real classics such as "tree therapy"<ref>[https://www.deancameron.com/close-minded-skeptics/ Close Minded Skeptics], deancameron.com.</ref> and "flame detox,"<ref>[https://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/08/14/naughty-skeptics-naughty-bad-skeptics Naughty skeptics! Naughty, bad skeptics!] scienceblogs.com, 14 August 2008.</ref> a few articles remained worth mentioning, for all the wrong reasons:

{| class="wikitable"
|-
| style="width: 20%;" | [http://archive.ph/amEr3 Urine Therapy]
| That's not lemonade, [[Fun:Star Wars|that's a space station!]] Although its "Criticism by mainstream medicine" (which was re-titled as "research" in September 2008) section is about as fair as you can get. See also [[urine therapy]].
|-
| [http://archive.ph/nbjEJ Space Therapy]
| The suspense is totally killing us. For some reason, a lot of Wiki4CAM seems to be like this…
|-
| [http://archive.ph/zYAF0 Wand] 
| "A wand is a thin rod used by a magician..." [[Penis|And here we thought it was]] — oh well, never mind.
|-
| [http://archive.ph/xUEP1 Natural health]
| A good wiki article should always ''start'' with the title… and end with the title. And have the title in the middle, of course.
|-
| [http://archive.ph/yXjQI Homeopathy]<br />[http://archive.ph/KJj2H Alternative medicine]
| Copied almost wholesale from Wikipedia, including all of the ''evil'' criticism they complain about. By 2010 they had finally finished stripping the criticism.
|-
| [http://archive.ph/KJj2H Measles]
| If you want information on treating a dangerous disease like [[measles]], but don't want the treatment to help, they've got your back.
|}

Amidst the Wikipedia copying and stub-fest were a few solid bastions of wacky CAM rhetoric. The [[Wiki4CAM: Myths about homeopathy| Myths about homeopathy]] offered some great reading, including the fact that homeopathy is not just [[water]] but water that has been [[Succussion|''shaken just right'']].

==Activity==
Despite heroic attempts to the contrary, Wiki4CAM appeared to have died on arrival, being edited only about [[Homeopathic#No_active_ingredient|10<sup>-430</sup>]] of the total hours available in any given week (which means its potency is greatly enhanced). The only activity in May 2011 was a couple of site administrators puttering around once or twice a week. The one stop CAM shop of the future needed some serious injection of ''caring,'' for which no homeopathic remedy yet exists. Although it's not easy to tell when it happened, Wiki4CAM gave over ''a lot'' of its space to Google-ads based advertising, which may have been a last ditch effort to get the cash needed to host the site.

In 2011, account creation at Wiki4CAM was disabled.

The last substantive edit to the site was in November 2011, and the last edit was in February 2012.  On 7 January 2014, an admin deleted two useless pages and turned a user who had made only one edit into a bureaucrat so he could mess everything up. In October 2015, the site became dysfunctional, and later went permanently offline.

==External links==
*[http://archive.ph/YAEf4 Wiki4CAM] (archive snapshot)
*[http://www.hpathy.com/ Hpathy.com]

==References==
{{reflist}}

{{keyword|wikikey=Wiki4CAM}}
{{template:wikinav}}

[[Category:Alternative medicine promoters]]
[[Category:Wikis]]
[[Category:Webshites]]

Categories: Alternative medicine promoters, Wikis, Webshites