E-mail sent to Australian and New Zealand psychologists 6/6/06

Dear Colleague

Please note this is not a commercial spam message. We appreciate your time taken in reading further.

I am e-mailing selected psychologists in the southern hemisphere to give you the opportunity to become aquainted with a new kind of academic website, one that can be edited by us all and which opens up enormous potential to improve our discipline's knowledge management.

Using the software behind WikiPedia, we have been given permission to buildthe Psychology Wiki for the knowledge domain of psychology. You can find it here: http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page

From the front page you will find links to help and orientation sections, to get you started and to the Community portal which shows some of the highlights.

We are one of the major sources of psychology information on the internet with over 8500 pages which have been accessed by more than 14000 people.

With the joint collaboration of scholars, practitioners and users around the world we hope to build an academic resource in which all areas of psychology research and practice are reviewed and covered to a high academic standard. The goal is to document all the significant references in psychology and to link them either to full text or summaries on the academic databases. In this way we hope to improve the knowledge management within the science and to cut the cost in both money and time of accessing our evidence base.

In this way we hope to develop a indispensible, free hypertext textbook that can be the basis of teaching in the discipline. In addition lecture notes and education support materials can be archived and shared.

The organisation of the site means that once people edit, under an account, all their contributions can be credited to them for CPD purposes.

Please pass this notification on to other staff and students who might be interested.

Generally we recommend that people set aside half an hour to explore the site and to follow the simple instructions for contributing. By then the potential should be clear.

Please remember we have only been going 4 mths and there is much to do to upgrade the material to academic standard. If you think an article is inadequate then feel free to improve it. The more of us actively involved the more we can accomplish.

Some people have been deterred from supporting the site because of the advertising. However please note that the software and server facilities for the site are provided on an advertising financial model by technical staff at Wikia. Neither the Psychology Wiki founder nor contributors have a financial interest in the site, this arrangement safeguards our editorial, academic and professional independence. The issue is addressed here: http://psychology.wikia.com/wiki/Psychology_Wiki_FAQ

Thank you for your time.. Please help make this project a success.

Yours sincerely

Dr Joe Kiff Consultant Clinical Psychologist BPS No 31068