[OWW-Discuss] Announcing PDBWiki

[Dan Bolser]

On 08/04/2008, Austin Che <austin at csail.mit.edu> wrote:
 > "Dan Bolser" <dan.bolser at gmail.com> wrote:
 >
 >  > Dear OWW,
 >  >
 >  > Following the recent discussions about the proposal to 'wikify'
 >  > GenBank, I would like to ask for feedback on our 'PDBWiki' project.
 >  >
 >  > PDBWiki is basically an open experiment towards a wiki-style system
 >  > based on the Protein Data Bank (PDB). There is one page per PDB entry
 >  > where users can add annotations but editing the source data is
 >  > currently not allowed.
 >
 >
 >     pdbwiki sounds great!
 >
 >     I also just saw this:
 >     http://ecoliwiki.net/colipedia/index.php/Draft_letter_to_Science_about_wikifying_genome_information
 >     Should OWW/pdbwiki sign on to the letter?


The letter is interesting, and makes some very good points. I think it
 would be a shame for OWW not to get on board with this kind of
 'awareness' exercise. Currently there are a lot of opinions,
 expectations and prejudices surrounding the whole idea of 'community
 annotation'. The more scientists who have hands on experience with
 wiki (for example), the better we will be able to move towards
 improved database systems in biology and bioinformatics.

 For us the idea was to start small and to keep things practical.
 PDBWiki simply provides a system whereby free-text community
 annotation can be applied to each database entry. It will be
 interesting to see how this approach pans out.


 Dan.



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