Cap'n Refsmmat

I meant an educated audience as authors and editors, to help make the articles complete. The idea is to be detailed and understandable for laymen (i.e. curious people), and I'm still working out the writing style guidelines to help make that possible. However, if you know nothing about a particular subject, please don't go making an article about it. That was my point--experts make the articles nice and detailed. edit: remember, I don't know much about science myself, but I can still contribute.

Sayo wasn't even originally an admin--Fafalone (a friend of blike's) was, and then Sayo was made into an admin, and Fafalone left because of it. Ah.

blike uses the ads to help pay for the server. The rest is paid by him. He's not using the site for profit. Okay, but your use of "she" in reference to a company scares me.

Not enough to pay the server bills, as far as I know. And you can be sure of this how?

Those are all pyramid schemes--the money that new members pay goes to the ones that have already registered. Investing in them, or creating them, is illegal.

About four days.

The other question is "Why bother?"

The article mentioned, with the suitable maths included

Because I intend for WiSci to be of better quality and of better detail than Wikipedia. I've already worked out a peer-review process, and I have other ideas to help ward away vandalism. Given that WiSci will attract a more educated audience (I hope) I think it will also have better detail than a wikipedia article. ecoli: of course, and that's your job. On another note, the WiSci IRC channel is up! It's at irc.blackcobalt.net #wisci

1. Yes. If you want to start a new discussion there, hit the little + button by the edit button at the top. 2. No. Check the FAQ for a better coverage on that.

As blike mentioned in the announcement, here's the discussion thread. Feel free to talk about anything related to WiSci, although I would prefer you put it on the Community Portal there. If you don't know what WiSci is, visit http://www.wisci.org.

I agree. Wikipedia is suffering because it is far too "loose" in its policy. That is why I'm trying to set up a peer-review system as well.

Indeed, so I have heard. I think I may do that on WiSci, but I'll really just wait to see how things turn out. Perhaps you can start a discussion on the Community Portal about that.

I'm not quite sure about that idea--it would detract from the "wiki" standpoint. IP addresses should be sufficient. Also, I don't want this to be a complete duplicate of SFN's members--both should be independent of each other.

This is why I suggested that others will help me create the policy. I'll start a draft soon, and I'll let you create a few additions for it if you'd like.

Could a mod move this thread to Announcements, please? After all, it is sponsored by SFN.

All right folks, I've been getting this together for a while now and I think it's ready for the public to take a look at. Long long ago, blike created a wiki called OpenScience for SFN users to fill up with scientific encyclopedia entries. It died off quickly (webhost didn't want the extra database) but now that SFN is larger, we've decided to try again. And this time, it's named WiSci. I'm asking all of you users to come and help make new articles at http://www.wisci.org. Be sure to read through the style standards and such (linked on the main page) before writing an article, of course. I'd also like a few users to help creating the policy and some templates for common use (stub templates, etc). If you show that you're valuable for the wiki (make good articles, help out a lot, etc) then I'll set up the nominations for the next sysop to help administrate. So, for the moment, I would be glad if people simply came, expanded the current articles (they're rather rough) and helped create the categories system. I'd also like people to expand on the style guide (see Wikipedia's for inspiration) and help me create a formal policy. Also, please see http://scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=17472 for another request. http://www.wisci.org/wiki/Main_Page Thanks!

Hmmm... I don't know if it would fit in very well with the MediaWiki skin.

I'm saying that they may have meant something else when they said "day." And there weren't days until God created everything and said "let there be light", because days are measured in rotations of the earth, which supposedly didn't exist for a reference point until God created it.

That's assuming that the "day" they used is the same as what we mean when we say "day," and that's hard to tell. For example, many people in the bible lived 900+ "years". If we assume that a "year" is a lunar cycle, that makes much more sense--around 75 of our years.

It's hard to believe a website that both goes against current science and is so amateurishly written.

It's good, Meti! I'll wait for a few more candidates before putting it up, though. The idea is to create a more detailed set of articles than Wikipedia, and also to host content useful to SFN (member guides, help pages, etc).

That looks great! Just a few suggestions: Make the background transparent instead of white (you'll have to save it as png instead of jpeg) Perhaps lighten it up a bit... the contrast between the bright white in the center and the dark blue outside isn't good for a logo Include the text "WiSci" in it somewhere Looking good! If anybody else has an idea, feel free to pitch it in. I have no specific requirements, just be creative and make it look good. Nothing excessively bright or dark (to fit in with MediaWiki) and you should be fine.

I'm in the process of assembling and getting ready WiSci, a science wiki (sponsored by SFN) for SFN users to participate in. I'm looking for volunteers to help get the policy and a few articles together. PM me or post here if you'd like to help. Also, I'm looking for a logo for WiSci. It should be something fitting the MediaWiki default theme (the theme you see on Wikipedia) and be around 135 by 155 pixels. Preferably something sciency like the SFN logo.

Wait, was that exasperatedclaims.com or josephnewman.com? I can't tell.