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Mickey Kosloff › Likes
On writing papers - http://occamstypewriter.org/rpg...
Mickey Schafer, Martin Fenner and Mickey Kosloff liked this
Is this the same person? -- http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed... -- I always like to know whether the person telling me how to do my job can in fact do it themselves.
- Bill Hooker
I'm pretty sure that is not the same Grant R, Bill. If you look at his (abandoned) NN profile, you will find a completely different list of papers. http://network.nature.com/profile...
- Lars Juhl Jensen
No is the is the simple answer to that. More structural stuff. His written a lot more at F1000 and the Scientist recently if you want examples (not papers obviously). I'd certainly rate him as one of the better and definitely more flexible writers I know. He ran courses on this for students in Sydney I think.
- Cameron Neylon
My comment there: "Maybe that’s not what you’re saying, but I’d guess that enthusiastic writing will not be the same as scientific writing. In other words, could it be that the kind of writing you’d like to see does not belong in scientific papers? Exaggeration often helps to make the point: “I did a PCR and we got this totally awesome band at 500kb, while in the control it was at...
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- Björn Brembs
@Bill, your comments freaks me out a bit -- my whole job entails teaching people (mostly in the med sciences) how to write then publish...while I've published once in trade, I've yet to publish in an academic journal. But I've helped lots and lots of folks over the years develop papers into publishable units (and write essays that got huge fellowships, and once even, a letter that got a child a visa to leave China after 2 failed attempts by the parents). So, am I qualified?
- Mickey Schafer
In response to the post itself, I have recently found that I pass along editorials and letters written by the editors of journals for the kind of things they have to deal with -- then reverse engineer for students what that means for writing. Interestingly, while mechanics are still an issue, most of the problems have to do with making sense, not making style. Not everyone can write with style; but I will contend with my last dying breath that anyone can learn to write competent prose:-).
- Mickey Schafer
@Mickey, I was mostly responding to the tone of the piece, which got up my nose. I don't write papers with editors in mind, I write for readers -- as you say, the point is to make sense; style is rather beside the point imo. (On the other hand, I haven't written a real paper in years, so I'm not one to be throwing stones here.)
- Bill Hooker
The delay in sharing research data is costing lives : Nature Medicine : Nature Publishing Group - http://www.nature.com/nm...
Sean Barrett, Yo Joe. No, go slow., Mickey Kosloff and 2 other people liked this
Josh Sommer's article.
- Michael Nielsen
Is this particular one now behind a NPG paywall?
- Graham Steel
How about research about reducing human breeding rate significantly? That will save a lot of lives also.
- ZN Moment
I remember now:- http://friendfeed.com/science...
- Graham Steel
Not a million miles away from this is:- http://mcblawg.blogspot.com/2007...
- Graham Steel
OK - funny web developer humor made my morning - logged in to #UCDavis purchasing system and message says "My, you're up early Jonathan"
Kubke, Mickey Kosloff, Heather Piwowar and 3 other people liked this
This would have been even more cooler if it had been a soundbite #Hal
- Graham Steel
NASA delays satellite launch; maybe it got covered with too much arsenic? - http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic...
Mickey Kosloff, Shanthi Bradley and Björn Brembs liked this
Authorship & Conflict of Interest (cartoon) - http://vadlo.com/cartoon...
sushant, Benjamin Tseng, Marcos Marado and 9 other people liked this
Brilliant!
- Egon Willighagen
The referee version: "Conflict of interest statement: Reviewer of this paper's future depends on the promotion of the research field of this study."
- Egon Willighagen
+1 Egon
- Claudia Koltzenburg
Very good, Egon !!
- Graham Steel
What about this disclaimer: "No postdocs or graduate students were harmed during the making of this study"...?
- Cesar Sanchez
@Cesar. Oh, but that is already common practice...
- Egon Willighagen
RT @PLoS: Wikipedia want to know why scientists do (or do not) contribute to their site http://survey.nitens.org/...
Claudia Koltzenburg, Mickey Kosloff, Björn Brembs and Mike Chelen liked this
Parallels my wondering whether I should get out of academia...so I can do more and better science... from @kubke: http://buildingblogsofscience....
Daniel Mietchen, Meryn Stol, John Dupuis and 7 other people liked this
I'm not sure that academia doesn't lead to good science. Rather, the environment is not always to ones liking. And for some it can be difficult to do good science in that environment. For others, it's not a problem
- Rajarshi Guha
I agree with Rajarshi, up to a point. I think the systems we had in place are no longer valid and have resulted in either a sense of complacency, false entitlement or sheer lack of understanding of what it takes to get science done. If academia is essentially limiting your need to explore and discover (which the system ensures it does) then we have a problem
- Deepak Singh
I've seen a lot of this "Science sans academia" meme recently (http://www.nas.org/polArti... http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011...) but I'm still puzzled by how it might be made to work sustainably and independently of academia. Is there anyone who's actually proposing something workable, or better still a way of hooking up these like-minded individuals?
- Dan Hagon
Dan, I don't have your answers but I have been thinking about the same questions (and I left academia 18 mo ago). Kubke says "it is not business that I am not into: it is the traditional business models I don’t like and I don’t fit in" -- and I think there is at least part of the answer. Imagine if a biotech type business answered not to a thousand faceless shareholder factions, all...
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- Bill Hooker
@Bill Hooker hits the point I think. What/who are we compromising 'for'. Big pharma? That is not for me. Big journal publishers? that is not for me. Scientific secrecy? That is not for me. But I don't seem to be given a choice, given the current assessment measures. So I wondered whether we could learn a thing or two from companies like Catalyst IT whose products are open source...
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- Kubke
It has to be a mix. There is no one way. Making money is a good thing. It encourages innovation, and it's good in the long run. The reason there has been so much innovation in internet technologies and sequencing instrument technology is that there was a profit to be made (the same goes for semiconductors, etc. On the other hand, there is a need for scientific discovery with no profit...
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- Deepak Singh
@Deepak innovation is also driven by giving away for free - as I think you can see from our discussions here, what do we imagine we will be able to discover when taking any capitalist glasses down - for some change?
- Claudia Koltzenburg
@kubke: thank you for your blog post! "are the academic systems open enough to embrace that change?" I think this is an interesting question vis-a-vis your (defensive?) statement "I don’t have an intrinsic problem with science being commercialized. It is the ‘for money’s sake’ that does not engage me." seems to me that one generation of flashback might bring up a few points here: I have...
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- Claudia Koltzenburg
[disclaimer: pushing again over the edge] I see this "no apetitite for risk" that Deepak mentioned in majority of _discussions_ like this one since 2008. Is anybody here willing to actually step out and try anything in practice? Anything, maybe only on a side, such as forming non-profit, starting open consulting, starting co-working space for science nerds, or whatever else (OK, maybe...
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- Pawel Szczesny
@Claudia Not sure I understand you well. Just like business models, there are different ways to commercialise. For example, should a medical school do research to try to find a cure for cancer? I think yes. Should those findings be commercialised? I think yes, it should be available. Should the University be doing that commercialisation? I think no. I think Nat Torkington says it best:...
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- Kubke
Having said that, I am all for the universities 'giving away for free'. I started Uni under dictatorship and as we were shifting to democracy there were massive discussions/movements about the 'roles' of universities and their research for society. We fought hard to keep unis free, autonomous, and for them to be a 'community asset'. I still hold those values. If a University patenting a...
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- Kubke
@Kubke, thanks, re "But I dont see a problem with providing the basic research for it to be possible" my question is if funding that is driven by profit interests should go into Universities, be this for "basic" or any other research. In my opinion, generally speaking, as soon as the for-profit rationale enters the University, many academic concerns as expressed in Mertonian Ethics (or...
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- Claudia Koltzenburg
I was actually thinking along a different slant to be honest. Mostly that the amount of time I spend trying to get (or argue for) money would be better spent working in a place with some clear resource level and a clear strategy to achieve goals I'm interested in. Absolutely take Pawel's point about taking risks tho, the follow up tweet in response to @new299 I said that security and...
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- Cameron Neylon
And in response to @kubke's original comment: What is it about academic that hinders "good science" (or at least lets me get on with what I want to do and am good at)? The business model.
- Cameron Neylon
@Cameron do you think that academia has spinned off to a point of no return though? Or could the 'business model' be changed to optimise the use of your (our) time?
- Kubke
Some of you might be interested in Open Source Drug Discovery http://www.osdd.net/
- Ruchira S. Datta
I think there might well be shifts backwards and forwards over the next decade. Things are so up in the air here in the UK its hard to tell where things will land. But at the moment there is more interesting and focussed innovation happening in the commercial sector here. I think I'm a little different to you in that its the hard focus that business (including perhaps big business)...
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- Cameron Neylon
@Cameron It was exactly that 'hard focus' that came through in the talks at webstock that got my head spinning.
- Kubke
Cameron is exactly right - the more I look around me, the more I see exciting innovation coming out of industry rather than academia. In academia, you need to have already done most of the rearch that you are applying for a grant for. Reason? Metrics and perceived usefulness. To beat the old Oscar Wilde adage to death - we currently know the price of everything and the value of nothing....
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- Nico Adams
I was about to link to some of the same blog posts as Dan, as this seems to be a recurrent theme (at least within my networks) at the moment. Pawel mentions why don't we take a few more risks? My personal response is that I'm worn out already running the treadmill - I have no energy (or time when I have energy) to start anything creative (or even write job applications) any more beyond...
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- Anna Croft
interesting discussion! one question: how about assessment measures, e.g., @Bill Hooker: do you think those outside academia sound a nicer tune for your creativity than those you heard when still in academia? e.g., @kubke, can you imagine any assessment measures that would not throw obstacles on your road and maybe even power you not only to create but also to follow your best ideas? @anyone else?
- Claudia Koltzenburg
@Claudia, there are wins and losses -- the need to fulfil investor expectations does limit what you can do, but I've found business to be rather more receptive to new ideas than academia. That's just my experience though, which is more years than I like to think about in academia but only 18 mo in industry. I am still at the stage of looking around and trying to get as thorough an understanding of the business world as I (like to think I) have of academia.
- Bill Hooker
I've definitely found business to be more receptive of new ideas, but I'd like to reiterate that the correct answer is a mix. You need to change funding and expectation models in funding agencies, the VC community, etc. We need to keep the option of monetization open while welcoming and encouraging true commons (not the "academic" only concept which assumes that only academics do science, and kills the ability for one or two smart people to do something cool).
- Deepak Singh
@Deepak, re "not the "academic" only concept which assumes that only academics do science" - interesting reservation about the commons concept you see as dominant, could you point me to any proof thereof, should be highly interesting to look into this issue; I also liked your term "expectation model" (new to me) - so what is yours re true commons more specifically, maybe?
- Claudia Koltzenburg
A commons in my mind is data and/or software with permissive licensing CC0/PDL/Apache, that allows people to leverage data and code for building new, more useful stuff. Anything low level (raw data, precompetitive data, core algorithms and code) are ideal for this. Expectation model is equivalent to a long term outlook, something I have really learned to appreciate in my current job....
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- Deepak Singh
@Claudia I am trying to incorporate alternative measures in my academic performance reviews - force the system to evaluate me for what I consider more valuable. For example, I dont report on my H-index or citation rates alone, but also on changes on H-index and citation rates over time. Is a paper cited in a pattern that is different from expected? I am asked to report on IF of...
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- Kubke
Really nice discussion. I've worked on both sides, at a startup and academia. The short answer is that there is no panacea and both have trade offs. The key is to put yourself in a position that minimizes the amount of off-target work necessary to do the things you are good at. My approach has been to try and surround myself with collaborators with complementary skill sets. This can be...
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- Brad Chapman
@kubke: sei grandiosa :) "and try to force the change of focus from within" <-- my applause! this strategy of yours is certainly worth its own extended blog entry plus discussion "force the system to evaluate me for what I consider more valuable" +1 - @all: has anyone seen a personal strategy explained this well? if yes, please point me to it
- Claudia Koltzenburg
if there are upsides for leaving academia, what do people perceive to be the downsides? @Rajarshi, while I like the relaxedness of your individualist approach, I fear there is more to say about @kubke's initial questions in political terms, do people feel this is one of the keystones: "a long term outlook, something I have really learned to appreciate in my current job" (@Deepak) - does this chime in with "security"?
- Claudia Koltzenburg
btw, which countries and fields are we talking about? countries with English as (one of the) official language(s)? STM fields only?
- Claudia Koltzenburg
@Brad, sounds sensible to me :-) has this been easier to achieve in academia or without any "academic rationale" behind daily work?
- Claudia Koltzenburg
Tenure or startup aren't the only choices and even within the academia one can find quite a lot of flexibility (if you're... flexible enough). The real reason for my question above wasn't to convince anybody to quit job or something like that - it was to encourage exploration of possibilities/models/approaches Deepak mentioned. Such exploration doesn't happen on a large scale yet, so we don't have many success stories.
- Pawel Szczesny
@Claudia well, of course it is still possible I am not given 'tenure' as a consequence :)
- Kubke
@Kubke if tenure is what you are aiming at, maybe let us prepare some nice and effective grassroots open science action to support you publicly in case of need :-) has anyone seen this done before? would certainly be a test of the flexibility of "the system" - @Pawel, yes, "encourage exploration of possibilities/models/approaches" and test the flexibility on all sides [nice neoliberal speak, eh?] and care look at the potential losses, too
- Claudia Koltzenburg
@Claudia When I was applying for jobs I 'followed the rules' and nothing happened. Ready to leave science I said what the hell and did a CV that "i" liked and valued- got the job. Questions during interview were interesting. So sticking with it. One of the talks at webstock was about 'blogging rules' and how one may be surprised what happens when one breaks them in order to be more authentic.
- Kubke
"what is it about academia that hinders 'good science' and why cannot that be changed from within?" -- given this discussion, including of course Pawel's [pushing over the edge] -- why be so sure it cannot? ;-)
- Claudia Koltzenburg
This (or at least the abstract :)) looks useful wrt this discussion: http://www.sciencemag.org/content...
- Dan Hagon
from Android
Goodbye academia, I get a life. – blog.devicerandom - http://blog.devicerandom.org/2011...
Carl, Christopher Fields, Claudia Koltzenburg and 15 other people liked this
"Until not so long, I thought that it was worth it. It was something that I had never questioned so far. I wanted to be a scientist since when I was five. I had done everything to become a scientist. I was a scientist in one of the top universities of the world, in one of the top five research groups on the subject. I had won a personal fellowship to fund myself. Most of my self-esteem, of my very concept of self-realization, relied on myself being a scientist. The very idea of quitting academia was a synonim of personal failure." That right there is the engine of the pyramid scheme.
- Bill Hooker
from Bookmarklet
I've heard more senior scientists dismiss this attitude as a 'typical cynical postdoc, not skilled/smart/hard working enough to make it to tenure'. These same senior scientists were junior scientists in a very different time, usually before the huge expansion of the number of available PhD candidates, where the ratio of supply to demand of graduates wasn't nearly as imbalanced. This...
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- Andrew Perry
Re: the pyramid scheme that BH and AP bring up -- I completely agree and want to add one additional point: its not just that an untenable economic situation has emerged which grad schools sweep under the rung -- its that the community itself seems to look down on those who leave academia to join industry/business or publishing or something else entirely. High rates of failure at achieving tenure at impressive school X would be ok if young students/scientists felt they had viable alternatives
- Benjamin Tseng
I agree Benjamin - I've noticed that in many academic institutions career options outside that system are rarely discussed openly, and leaving academia is considered failure (even if someone leaves to do something arguable more useful). Granting bodies usually want to encourage collaboration between industry and academia through special funding opportunities (eg, the ARC Linkage grants...
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- Andrew Perry
some more comments here: http://ff.im/ylQGj and I agree with Andrew .. thats why we should fight against even the language that is used (i.e. "quiting science")
- Pedro Beltrao
Never knowingly understated | Naturally Selected - http://blog.the-scientist.com/2011...
Graham Steel, ReaderMeter, Mickey Kosloff and 8 other people liked this
"overstating conclusions of research is positively correlated with impact factor."
- Björn Brembs
from Bookmarklet
No surprise there.
- Bill Hooker
fwiw Higher impact journals are more likely to have stronger data sharing policies, and data sharing policies are correlated with actual data sharing. So perhaps some of this overstatement could/would be detected through reanalysis? Better situation than if the data-sharing trends went the opposite way, in any case.
- Heather Piwowar
sorry, I missed it. The misrepresentations were in the media. yeah, well.
- Heather Piwowar
I just hate it that after hours of debugging the problem seems to be in someone's elses code, rather than mine...
Mickey Kosloff liked this
"Conflict of interest: Reviewer of this paper's future depends on the promotion of the research field of this study." http://friendfeed.com/twisted...
Benjamin Tseng, Mickey Kosloff, Sandeep Gautam and 2 other people liked this
You know your graduate student is frustrated when… #lifeinthelab - http://bytesizebio.net/index...
sushant and Mickey Kosloff liked this
Steve Koch, Mickey Kosloff, Shanthi Bradley and 2 other people liked this
It just depends on how you wear the bikinis...
- Egon Willighagen
+1 Egon :-) rofl
- Claudia Koltzenburg
You can get a sense from stats what the data look like in all their glorious detail, if it's done right.
- Mr. Gunn
And now.... >>A Musical Interlude<< http://is.gd/uH6q4k
- Graham Steel
ok heres the stat'sunder the bikini.. its 36-24-36
- Peter Dawson
Impacting our young. - http://www.mendeley.com/researc...
Mickey Kosloff, Kubke and Björn Brembs liked this
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America (2010). Volume: 107, Issue: 50. Pages: 21233-. Eve Marder, Helmut Kettenmann, Sten Grillner et al. Published using Mendeley: The bibliography manager for researchers
- Mr. Gunn
I read that as *eating* our young...
- Bill Hooker
Of course, how do you keep the system running without feeding it fresh meat?
- Mr. Gunn
Letter Re Software and Scientific Publications – Nature - http://blog.stodden.net/2011...
Mickey Kosloff liked this
Anonymous speaks: the inside story of the HBGary hack - http://arstechnica.com/tech-po...
Nick Boucart, Mickey Kosloff and Aaron Sterling liked this
About the preservation of databases - http://scientopia.org/blogs...
Mickey Kosloff, John Dupuis, science3point0 and 7 other people liked this
Very important topic. Unfort, many funders are willing to pay for startup but not maintenance. So, while it may be that the PI gets bored, I'm guessing just as often they would like to keep the db up but have run out of alternatives themselves.
- Heather Piwowar
"Funders should ask about preservation plans for these things." Yeah, though sometimes it is premature to know the scope of what is needed and the best business model to pull it off at the time of the initial project proposal. Personally I think funders should welcome proposals for ongoing db support as part of their investment portfolio.
- Heather Piwowar
yep. the funding is for the building, not for the ongoing maintenance.
- Christina Pikas
if it was worth building, then it should be worth considering how it can be preserved or even mothballed. I'd just like to see NASA take care of their stuff.
- Christina Pikas
Interesting, D. I'd never have considered going to the library for this, but you are right, it may be part of the way forward.
- Heather Piwowar
I know, right?
- Heather Piwowar
Hi, just jumping hastily into this conversation here, perhaps out of context, but some libraries are archiving datasets and databases, if not on their own, then in collaboration with data archives. Look to the IASSIST organization for the data librarians and other data professionals who are talking to each other about this. Also, institutions that are members of ICPSR can encourage the...
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- Kristin Partlo
i would be interested in the details about NASA, christina. my knowledge of NASA is that they have open archives for almost everything *they* produce but very weak support for PI produced data (with support quickly going to nill with decreasing dataset size). we are experimenting with dataverse for the smaller sets, where the "we" is a coupling of our librarians, our research staff and the dataverse team.
- August Muench
i was looking for some nasa database and it was unavailable due to funding - I can't remember which one it was, if I can find it, I'll add it.
- Christina Pikas
I only saw one reply on the ML yet... is that correct? I'll reply to all shortly...
- Egon Willighagen
I posted about this: http://www.science3point0.com/sociald.... I think like others mentioned we need to get more feedback from researchers on priorities for preservation of databases. I looked at the NAL list Egon referenced and I'm not sure which are are the biggest and most heavily used (note I'm not a biologist, so perhaps that's why.)
- Elizabeth Brown
@Elizabeth... it's common that the scientists order books and suggest journal subscriptions... I can see the same mechanism work for DBs...
- Egon Willighagen
@OldWhatshername: no, I have not spoken about this with 'my' library yet... I have been hopping around institutes recently, and just started at a new one... they are very progressive, and will certainly look into whom to talk to here at the KI library!
- Egon Willighagen
I'll blog asap...
- Egon Willighagen
Letter Re Software and Scientific Publications – Nature « Victoria Stodden - http://blog.stodden.net/2011...
Mickey Kosloff and Cameron Neylon liked this
Sweden Solar System - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki...
Bill Hooker, Matthew Todd, Pawel Szczesny and 5 other people liked this
Human DNA in bacterial genomes? Yes? No? Maybe? - http://pathogenomics.bham.ac.uk/blog...
Nils Reinton, Mickey Kosloff, Pawel Szczesny and Björn Brembs liked this
Real bioinformaticians write code - http://nsaunders.wordpress.com/2011...
Mickey Kosloff and Egon Willighagen liked this
"...in assembly." :-)
- Noel O'Boyle
... after they etch their own chips
- Rajarshi Guha
Mickey Kosloff, Graham Steel, Steve Koch and 2 other people liked this
is this surprising? isn't it an automated email?
- Rajarshi Guha
yup, that's what I thought....
- Graham Steel
Compare to some other journals who shall remain nameless, where you don't get any acknowledgment until a decision has been made, months after submission.
- Mickey Kosloff
Aah, OK, That'd suck. Don't know why they wouldn't send an ack - it's automated after all!
- Rajarshi Guha
Humans draw the LINE at Gonorrhea. Not that it helps. | Byte Size Biology - http://bytesizebio.net/index...
Ruchira S. Datta, sushant and Mickey Kosloff liked this
Friendfeed feels friendly. Twitter doesn't.
Mickey Kosloff, Micah, Björn Brembs and 5 other people liked this
I've noticed that, now that I'm back on Twitter (more or less--there's still very little I want to say that seems to work better at 140 characters there than at 140 words here).
- Walt Crawford
Yeah. I like Twitter, I like its wide scope and wide network. But it is not Friendfeed. Long live Friendfeed! sigh, oh yeah.
- Heather Piwowar
sssh, don't tell everyone, they'll all just come to friendfeed and ruin it. repeat after me "I keep getting a horrible computer virus from friendfeed, avoid friendfeed at all costs"
- Blake
No need for that, Blake. If a few discussions about metadata and research metrics don't scare them off, they probably belong!
- Mr. Gunn
Turn any campus map into a Chemistry Treasure Hunt: http://pubs.acs.org/doi... (subscriber only at Journal of Chemical Education, sorry...)
Mickey Kosloff and Yo Joe. No, go slow. liked this
Mmm... can I just forward your post to References Wanted?
- Egon Willighagen
:) I couldn't possibly comment.
- Matthew Todd
from Android
Playboy pleasure palace provides pneumophila? | Byte Size Biology - http://bytesizebio.net/index...
Ruchira S. Datta and Mickey Kosloff liked this
I wonder what take home message the participants took out of this.....
- Mickey Kosloff
Rule of thumb for revising manuscripts: for every point the reviewer raises, change something, anything in the manuscript.
Geoffrey Hutchison, Mickey Kosloff, Graham Steel and 4 other people liked this
True. :)
- Pawel Szczesny
Or: restate your original argument in even more confusing language, changing nothing, and hope they don't notice.
- Bill Hooker
LOL
- Graham Steel
See all your Facebook friends again - http://www.sciencetext.com/see-all...
Mickey Kosloff and Björn Brembs liked this
I wish we all moved to S3.0 - using #FF becomes frustrating.
TagzBook, Iván Abrego, Mike Chelen and 20 other people liked this
Do you think it is ready? To me, it still lacks the compactness that a FF page has... and the ease in making comments...
- Egon Willighagen
Layout is a matter of CSS (I think we could convince Mark to at least change it if not to make it customizable for users), inline comments are working fine (although there's no cool AJAXy thing that promotes comments in realtime). The real issue is that activity is relatively small, so I keep coming back to FF. I think S3.0 has a potential to grow beyond FF and become an online _working_ space in addition to aggregator. But that's not going to happen if people are elsewhere.
- Pawel Szczesny
I thought it only aggregated blog posts. Does / can it aggregate other streams?
- Rajarshi Guha
It works out of the box for Twitter, Flickr, Youtube and some other services. Not sure about other stuff, such as generic RSS (generic RSS works for groups, so probably I cannot find some options). If you look at Buddypress roadmap http://buddypress.org/about... (used at S3.0) the future looks even more promising.
- Pawel Szczesny
The main thing I complain about S3.0 in terms of usability is speed (or rather lack of it).
- Pawel Szczesny
Surprisingly, I 'liked' this idea :) I agree with Pawel in terms of activity. If everyone used S3.0 in the same way they use friendfeed it would be a lot more functional. I agree that ff is better in some respects, but I still think that S3.0 offers you a lot more control and way more options, so it can be an online_working_space. FF is all talk. S3.0 is all action. You can currently...
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- science3point0
Mark, thanks for the update. Given the meme "move away from things you cannot control" spreads across this community (Neil's case comes to mind immediately) I hope it's finally the time to reconsider S3.0 as a platform of choice, given we could contribute to and influence the development in one way or another.
- Pawel Szczesny
Speaking from one of the "overlap communities," the disadvantage is that you won't have overlap communities--e.g., the librarians who are somewhat interested in science matters and have scientist acquaintances. Maybe that's a good thing; maybe it's not. I've learned a lot from the overlap.
- Walt Crawford
Mark and me just created a Google Group "Wordpress for Scientists". This group is about many things, but why not also discuss how we can improve BuddyPress (the social networking tool built on top of Wordpress) to make it better for scientists?
- Martin Fenner
Good having this discussion, especially when people start leaving FF.
- joergkurtwegner
I agree with much of the above. I'm ready to move to S3.0 if it came a little closer to FF...
- Björn Brembs
The S3.0 page says you are supposed to sync your feeds "only if they contain scientific content". I don't even know what that means.
- Bill Hooker
Also, further to Walt's comment -- I'm not interested in a FF replacement that feels to non-scientists as though they are not welcome. I don't care whether it's rational or not, if I hear from, e.g., library colleagues that they wouldn't join a site called "science three point oh", then I'm not going there either. We've seen enough "Facebook for scientists" attempts; I thought we'd mostly agreed that that is a guarantee of failure.
- Bill Hooker
what is S3.0?
- Iphigenie
Joelle, have a look at http://www.science3point0.com
- Pawel Szczesny
Bill, Walt, I hoped librarians, geeks, bloggers and whoever is here would move as well. If you don't like the branding, I think it's not an issue to setup all-smart-people3point0.com ;). I would rather have all people move instead of leave, so let's discuss S3.0 or whatever else might be build before the community disassembles itself (if you haven't noticed, there was issue with comments yesterday and today search didn't work again).
- Pawel Szczesny
Not to put pressure on Mark: if you agree on having "unbranded" (non-science-whatever) site, I have some spare space on one of a dozen hosting plans I bought and potentially I could setup a mirror with a bit of help.
- Pawel Szczesny
The "branding" issue can be overcome in various ways -- if we could get core members to use the site, communities might follow, and you could always point alternative names (URLs) to the same domain and alter the front page branding. I do think it's a big deal though. I'd also really like the ajaxy thing that promotes active threads, and I'd like a formatting option that took out all...
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- Bill Hooker
And while I'm trying to offer solutions instead of just whine about problems -- Mark, is there any need for funding? E.g. would it be useful to you to be able to hire some developer time? I am skint as always but I could chip in a bit.
- Bill Hooker
See this http://science3point0.com:9000/jtzHevF... and add your comments and wishes. Let's try to keep this thread alive for long enough so everybody would drop in, say hello and express their opinion.
- Pawel Szczesny
Should we start a gap analysis on Google spreadsheets? What do people want and what are technical solutions? I think hosting is our smallest problem, but more if we as a crowd are willingly to make it happen, together. Whatever we are after, I would hope not anyone is trying to lift this alone, we have to share workload.
- joergkurtwegner
I think the Google Doc suggestion sounds very productive, joergkurtwegner!
- Björn Brembs
Hi everyone, sorry having a busy weekend. I'll happily set up an unbranded mirror. If people dont want to add their comments because it seems like a facebook for scientists, or that it has the wrong name then thats up to them. I'm sure everybody knows by now that S3.0 isnt set up to make money. Some dev time would be good but I wouldnt want to take donations which may give people the...
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- science3point0
I think this latest comment clarifies things: Indeed, S3.0 *is* intended to be narrow, thus the "knitting pattern" slap. Which is just fine. I wouldn't be on S3.0, and frankly wouldn't feel welcome there. So some of my crossover interaction with scientists would cease, if they stop using FF, which might be a good thing, or not. Pawel, I think your hope is directly contradictory to science3point0's aim. I'll stick with FF.
- Walt Crawford
Ok, so we now have the ability to add any rss feeds you wish :) See: http://bt.io/GfNR I'll keep working to give everyone what they want. Pawel, the ff alternative for all general subjects is now very easy to do. Let me know if you want to go ahead with this etc on the etherpad :) Thanks a lot, Mark.
- science3point0
Nice!
- Egon Willighagen
I think both Walt and Mark are right, and I don't think any slaps were intended. I agree with Walt that you can't approach the value FriendFeed created if you try to define it ahead of time. I'm pretty sure I didn't know I was in love with library scientists when I joined FF. I would hate if S30 excluded or scared away a subgroup that I do or would interact with. On the other hand, you...
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- Steve Koch
With lots and lots of money, I would want to buy FF and it's entire community. Then I would want to add in features like S30 has, and, more importantly, have direct communication with the developer(s) (Mark) to tirelessly add and fix features as we need them. I differ from Mark in that I'd want to invite the entire planet. People can be noisy talking about both science and knitting....
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- Steve Koch
I have to say that "knitting pattern" comment smacks of a rather different attitude than the one I see when Mark is working his ass off for nothing, soliciting feedback and acting on it in a concrete fashion, to create a valuable resource for the open science community. Since actions speak louder than words I'm going with the benefit of the doubt and assuming something got lost in translation there.
- Bill Hooker
I also think Steve has the right idea -- loosen the restrictions and watch who turns up. It's not likely that knitters will take over the site, unless there is a real connection between open science and knitting -- in which case we all benefit. If, as seems likely, the initial core community is drawn from FF Life Scientists and related rooms, then I'd expect the tenor of the place to continue much as it is -- so long as everyone feels welcome.
- Bill Hooker
Mark, thanks! I think Steve noticed an important point - real FF replacement that would attract large (well, not that large, a few thousands) amount of people is going to create a major headache of maintaining the site. And I don't think we can effectively share the workload and I don't want to put that on a single person (unless paid, but that's not going to work either, at least not yet). Obviously I wanted the cake and to eat it too, but I don't have resources to build and maintain a real FF-replacement.
- Pawel Szczesny
I've added my immediate desires to the etherpad. Would of course most like FF itself to grow rather than wither, though. Buying FF seems unrealistic (anybody here BBF with B. Gates?), but getting FB to donate the code to a group of scientists who would then apply for an international, collaborative grant with all the FF code as 'preliminary data' seems more realistic, albeit also rather...
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- Björn Brembs
That was exactly what I was just writing, Bjoern. If only resources are the issue, we should apply for them. I think we could get a solid representation of 6-10 countries, which might be enough.
- Pawel Szczesny
However, if we can get funding, I would rather see super S3.0-FF combo instead of another FF - things like Etherpad, group wikis, etc. are great addition.
- Pawel Szczesny
I agree that any new site should of course develop new functionality beyond keeping the tried and tested ones. This would clearly include cooperative writing, easy referencing (think, e.g., Mendeley functionality), data display (e.g., MatLab or R functionality) and so on. See our rejected grant here: https://docs.google.com/Doc...
- Björn Brembs
Great, let's push it then. Anybody interested in participating in such grant? Mark, what's your opinion? I've already sent an email to my contact on EU funding to see if we fit anywhere within existing programs.
- Pawel Szczesny
Hi everyone, this is brilliant. Firstl, I would like to apologise to all of those who took offence to the knitting comment I think something was lost in translation. I also love librarians and there are a lot of them on S3.0, none more prominently than one of our top bloggers Beth Brown. It is a difficult one to explain so I'll try not to mess it up again. S3.0 has a lot of the...
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- science3point0
Something to reconcile science and knitting: http://www.ted.com/talks... - really worth the time!
- Daniel Mietchen
So Pawel's up for a grant and so am I, despite my prior experience. Who else?
- Björn Brembs
Im happy to help in any way I can too Bjoern.
- science3point0
Came across this yesterday...wonder whether it might help? http://cordis.europa.eu/fp7...
- Cameron Neylon
Another one for submeta? (http://www.submeta.org/Home...)
- Bill Hooker
I think we have two options - small directed grant for setting the site and something much bigger which would also cover outreach, maintenance and what not. Not sure what's your opinion, but I would opt for both: applying for small grant to Submeta/OSI (any other options?) which we could later use as "preliminary data" for something bigger (let's say EU international grant). I don't...
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- Pawel Szczesny
Marius, Convore has the same issue as FriendFeed - we have no control over it. Even if it's working (so far), there's no guarantee that's going to be true in the future.
- Pawel Szczesny
I am interested in supporting grants, on the other hand am I an industry person and I guess we all know that I do not think I can make this fly when asking for additional internal company funding. Second, I personally would be in favor of creating a not-for-profit organization with all consequences. Then, third, we put a treasurer in-place and go for money fishing via 'PayPal,...
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- joergkurtwegner
@Mark - Can we talk about this on Saturday, the 12th in London? Anyone else around?
- joergkurtwegner
Marius, to continue your metaphor, there are cases when driving a car is better than using public transportation. It might be that most of you don't need a car. Given very little interest in collaboration on a grant for FF-like platform, I would assume it's even true. But as for me, I would rather invest time in a service I can ask somebody to add a feature for me (let's say generic RSS feeds) and have it available reasonably fast (see Mark's responses above).
- Pawel Szczesny
Joerg, that's why I thought about applying for a bigger grant as well - substantial amount of money could be then devoted to maintenance. But non-profit sounds fine as well.
- Pawel Szczesny
Marius, one more thing - if the consensus is to move to Convore (which is likely given the answers so far), I won't argue with that. Personally however, I won't be an early adopter :).
- Pawel Szczesny
OK, OK, I registered... I won't complain about missing features (compared to FF) but settings really made be laugh :) "Email me when: Someone mentions my name (not yet implemented) I've missed a week of messages (not yet implemented)" Let's see how it develops.
- Pawel Szczesny
Music/Video interlude Time:- (not the one I was looking for, but ) http://www.youtube.com/watch...
- Graham Steel
Joined convore, just to see what happens there. I really like jkw's idea for a nonprofit, since seed money could carry it through to the point where the userbase (ads, fees) would be enough to support it indefinitely. I'm assuming here that it would not cost a huge amount to set up or maintain -- e.g. approximately one salary plus ?? for bandwidth/hosting/etc. Anyone have any better guesses as to actual numbers?
- Bill Hooker
When considering web platforms, how about StatusNet? It is open source and supports true realtime updates through Orbited http://status.net/wiki.... The best feature of Friendfeed is the conversational aspect, the import options are only to get things started. Also Identi.ca users with less specialized interest could subscribe to people on S3.0 without having to create a new account.
- Mike Chelen
Im happy to go with any platform depending on whether we have somebody in the group who is well versed in operating it. With regards to @bills question, I think the main thing to cover would be hosting and then any extra funding we can get for dev/outreach would be a bonus.
- science3point0
Perhaps we've already discussed this and tabled it because we didn't have the developer talent available, but if we want all the friendfeed features, why don't we just use the friendfeed framework: http://bret.appspot.com/entry.... The two dealbreakers for me are site slowness and lack of useful discussion features like those we have here. A system built on that, running...
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- Mr. Gunn
science3point0: Would it be helpful for someone to setup a free hosted account through http://statusn.net or even a self-hosted instance? Either should be possible, though realtime plugins might require additional work.
- Mike Chelen
Mr. Gunn: How about integrating Tornado with WordPress or StatusNet? There would probably be other users that would also like to use those combinations of services and might get involved.
- Mike Chelen
Are we missing the obvious? One of us just make a billion dollars and fund this stuff? Begin
- Steve Koch
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