[OWW-Discuss] Hello list! (I'm new)

[Dan Bolser]

Hi,

I am [[User:Dan Bolser]] ;-) I thought I would email the list to say
hello, and to voice some of my initial thoughts and questions about
OpenWetWare!

I think that OpenWetWare is a great project. It has a very nice
website, very good information, very well laid out. Now that I have an
account, I have found even more nice features - I really love the
bibliography management stuff! Its very impressive! The calendar
extensions look very nice too (not yet got into the details).

I also like the chatting feature, but I have yet to meet up with
anyone online at the same time as me. Is this client an interface to
an IRC backend? i.e. do you have an IRC server that I can connect to
with a different client? There are a group of us who hang out in
irc://irc.freenode.net/#bioinformatics and I imagine some who would
love to join the conversation.

The main question about the system that I have is this, I was
wondering why the registration of OpenWetWare is so restrictive - How
come you don't allow freer editing of pages and content? Perhaps you
benefit from having more control over your users and more 'restricted'
content, however, the success of Wikipedia suggests that 'the more the
better'. I know registration is only a few clicks, along with a slight
delay, but that will put a lot of people off. Perhaps you think it is
better to exclude such 'casual' users, but I don't think it is good
policy. I would like to see more 'open' access to all the features of
the site.

I am still exploring the content of the site - there is a lot to look
at, and for a newbie like me, a lot to take in! It is really great to
find such a mature project like this, and I am very much enjoying
moving around the site and finding new content.

One final question about the development of OpenWetWare, do you plan
to (or have you explored) the possibility of using Semantic Mediawiki?
I am thinking of exploring that system in more detail with regard to
some of my own projects (more below), and I would be interested to
know about any plans, experience, or expertise that exists within
OpenWetWare.



About me...

I maintain a 'user contributed database of biological databases'
called 'MetaBase' here;

http://BioDatabase.Org


thanks in very large part to Michael Galperin's  'online Molecular
Biology Database Collection', but also to a core of ace contributors.
I also am trying to build a 'literature wiki' here;

http://Introductome.Org


but that is still very (very) beta. For me, the whole 'wiki' thing was
first introduced by my friend Jong Park, who runs more wikies than you
could imagine from here;

http://BiO.CC


He and his colleagues started the 'open-free information competition'
that gave me the help needed to start MetaBase.

Well... I hope that wasn't too spammy - Just so you know where I am coming from.


Thanks again for the amazing site, I am looking forward to discovering more!

Dan.