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

Wed Feb 13 13:16:25 EST 2008

OK, I finally got round to replying properly ;-)

On 09/02/2008, Reshma Shetty <rshetty at mit.edu> wrote:
> 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.

I don't think this is a good reason. All you need is a well configured
captcha. The config that I have finally settled on for MetaBase is;

1) Anonymous users are free to edit, but must solve a captcha.
2) 'Regular anonymous users' *eventually* become trusted.
3) Registration requires users to solve a captcha.
4) Registered users *never* see a captcha.

You can play with how that 'feels' here;
http://biodatabase.org/index.php/Main_Page

For me this strikes a good balance between spam restrictive vs. open
contribution policy. However, I take the point about provenance below.

> 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.

I see. That policy is clearly reasonable, and vital when it comes to
sharing of data, however, it is also clearly not necessary (re:
Wikipedia). Perhaps you could try making some areas of OWW 'open' and
monitor the results. Unfortunately I don't have any references, but I
remember hearing about how a community of peers is very good at self
regulation. Of course people could vandalize content, but generally
people don't. Still - its interesting to think about a strictly
'science wiki' in contrast to Wikipedia.

One question for the polls (has it been asked?); how many users /
administrators of OWW are users / administrators on Wikipedia? I find
that people are often genuinely surprised when they learn about the
article review and quality assurance processes that takes place
'behind the scenes' on Wikipedia.

> > > 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.

Yeah, me too. Good to know that you are thinking about it!

> > 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 :)

Sounds good. Not sure if I will be able to make it this time... Any
archive of minutes? I should just check really!

> Thanks,

Thanks for the excellent website!

>
> Reshma
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