[OWW-Discuss] Proposal to 'Wikify' GenBank Meets Stiff Resistance

[Austin Che]

> a) grab all the data from the PDB (for example)
> b) stick all the data into a revisioning system
> c) allow users to freely edit the data, including automatic clean up 'bots',
> algorithms, etc., etc.
> d) have all changes automatically emailed to a mailing list for community
> review, approval etc.
>
> Now, once we get to step d, in the time since step a, the PDB data has been
> updated by the PDB. We now need to merge the updated PDB data with our
> independently modified data. (This is where we need to go beyond a simple
> revisioning system).

    That was supposed to be the goal of wikiproteins
    http://www.wikiproteins.org/Meta:Wikiproteins
    Roughly speaking, it does exactly the above. It works with
    databases like swiss-prot and downloads all the data into a
    semantic wiki form allowing edits. The changes made by the
    community can be kept separate from the "authoritative" version
    and periodically it's sent back to the original source for
    updating. At least that's the idea. They collaborate with those
    databases so not all of the databases are resisting this idea.
    
-- 
Austin Che           <austin at csail.mit.edu>          (617)253-5899