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

[Reshma Shetty]

Hi Dan and Bryan,

First off, welcome to OWW and thanks for your emails.  See my comments below.

On Feb 8, 2008 6:03 PM, Bryan Bishop <kanzure at gmail.com> wrote:
> On Friday 08 February 2008, Dan Bolser wrote:
> > 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.
>
> I also recommend #bioinformatics.

OWW doesn't have an IRC backend but that's a good idea.  Perhaps one
of you could bring it up at the next steering committee meeting?  (See
below.)

> > 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
>
> Here's my take on this, and I do not mean to intrude, but it seems that
> OWW is more geared towards professors and labs and the marketing has
> been in _that_ more than anything else. I bet Drew is off trying to
> convert more professors as we speak. And that's why it's
> restrictive ... maybe it's some private funding going into all of these
> labs or something.

The biggest reason why OWW doesn't allow for anonymous edits is spam
control.  Although the OWW community is very active and vibrant given
how young the site is, we didn't feel ... especially in the early
stages ... that OWW community had enough bandwidth to cope with the
wiki spammers.  In fact, OWW has actually imported sites like
Wikiomics (formerly at http://wikiomics.org/wiki/Main_Page now at
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Wikiomics) that *were* open to anonymous
edits but became so spam-laden that the spam outcompeted the "good
content".  Certainly Wikipedia has successfully managed to to have a
user community that can respond quicker than the spammers.  However,
most OWW users are more interested in spending time sharing useful
content than removing spam.

FYI, all of OpenWetWare's past and current funding sources are listed
at http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:Support
OpenWetWare's funding has *no* impact on the account policy.

> > 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.
>
> Yep. Put me off for an entire year.

You're right that OWW is probably discouraging some folks from
contributing because of the effort involved in user registration.
However, part of the mission of OpenWetWare is to encourage
researchers in biological science and engineering to share and be more
open in their work.  An important part of the culture in research is
taking responsibility for your work and receiving credit for your
work.  Hence, the steering committee adopted a policy where usernames
reflect a person's real name.  See
http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:Username_policy for more
background.

> > 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.

Thanks for the feedback.  Perhaps a topic for the next steering
committee meeting ... see below.

> I can't help but promote my own somewhat relevant wiki over at:
> http://biohack.sf.net/wiki/

Looks cool.  The more people freely sharing content in biological
science and engineering, the better!

> > 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.

We have been considering using Semantic MediaWiki as well and are
thinking about deploying it on a trial basis on OWW.  We're still
figuring out how to make best use of it for OWW.

> Btw, there seems to be some weekly(?) teleconferences, but I haven't
> been let in on this yet.

The OpenWetWare steering committee meets once a month simultanously by
phone conference and in the online chat room.  See
http://openwetware.org/wiki/Steering_committee

The steering committee is an volunteer group of OWW users that guides
the overall direction of the site and represents the voice of the user
community.  Anyone is welcome to join so do join in :)

Thanks,

Reshma