WiSci is crap and shouldn't be

[Dak]

because i didn't think 'the wisci discussion thread' would get as many views

 

This article is scan-readable for your convienience. For my own learning, any feedback as to the the effectiveness of the scan-readability, in this thread or via PM, would be appreciated

 

OK, first off: WiSci (ws) has the potential to be good. yes, wikipedia (wp) is cool, but it's not geared up entirely to science so suffers from certain failings (as far as science articles go) that ws could inprove -- plus, being scientists and what-not, we should be able to be innovative and push the 'wiki' technique to interesting new places.

 

And SFN having a wiki offers more than the potential to have an encyclopedia.

 

But, in all honesty, ws is a bit shitty at the moment. There are a number of reasons for this, primarily lack of active editors, but whatever the reasons, the result is that the articles are small, innacurate, or mirrors of wp articles.

 

The purpose of this thread is to bring together alot of comments, critisisims, suggestions etc. about ws, and for the discussion of those comments etc, and the addition of any others, and general discussion re: improving/recovering ws.

1. About wikis

2. Suggestions reguarding ws -- encyclopaedic content

3. Suggestions reguarding ws -- non-encyclopaedic content

4. Suggestions reguarding ws -- getting more editors.

5. Do Stuff!

 

{{{{{{{{{{1. About wikis}}}}}}}}}}

 

Before starting, i'd like to address certain points that a small number of people seem to be getting confused about, i.e. what exactly wikis are; or, more specifically, how they work.

 

Wiki comes from a hawaiian word meaning 'quick'. They are designed to allow the quick creation of content by many people corroborating in a joined effort.

 

How it works is that an editor does as much or as little as he/she wants, and then leaves it. Someone else will then come along and add, again, as much or as little as they want. After enough time, the small additions to the article add up into one, big article.

 

The same is true for quality. If a mistake is made, it will eventually get caught by someone else and fixed. If someone plain and simple can't be arsed to check a fact, it's actually more usefull for them to write the article (possibly with an error) and then have someone else, who may not have the inclination to wright even a small article from scratch, notice the error and fix it.

 

The same is true with style -- if you dont know/can't be arsed to put in formatting style, then just put the article in without: someone else, who may not be knowledgable enough/arsed to wright the article will format it.

 

Wikis: do as much, or as little, as you want -- even if what you do is a little crappy -- and it'll all sort itself out in the end and everything will be fine

 

The only critisisms levelled at ws that i've heard that i think are invalid are ones conserning the shortness, innacuracy, and/or otherwize bad-quality of the articles. It's true that the end result of a finished article can be better/worse depending on how exactly the wiki is handled, but, at the moment, all of the articles on ws are in the process of being written, wiki-style. This means that, yes, they will be short, and yes, they will have in accuracies, and, yes, they will be all-round crappy.

 

The reason that they stay in this mid-creation state for so long is the lack of editorial input, due to the small membership, which is a problem that will dissapear if and when ws gets going properly.

 

IMO, then, whinging about the lack of high quality articles on ws is retarded, as you are whinging about unfinished articles. please bear in mind that the only reason that the articles stay in a crappy state for so long is that the lack of editors = slow creation process = stay in incomplete form for a long time.

 

That being said, all other critisisims levelled at ws are, imo, valid.

 

Below is a collection of suggestions, comments, and critisisms reguarding ws, collected from variouse people from both ws and sfn.

 

Obviously, not all these ideas are mine. Many are amalgamations of more than one person's ideas. I've added my own thoughts to some. None are credited, as i didn't think it'd be neccesary, but if anyone sees their idea in here and wants it credited to them, PM me.

 

The aim is to spark discussion as to what direction ws should take, how to jump-re-start ws, and hopefully regenerate interest in the project.

 

Please feel free to comment on the below points, add your own suggestions/critisisms/whatever, and, if so inclined, use ws

 

 

{{{{{{{{{{2. Suggestions reguarding ws -- encyclopaedic content}}}}}}}}}}

 

Aim: Establish the aim of ws. Some people have expressed confusion as to the exact aim/purpose of ws.

 

A more significant effect of this problem follows:

 

Target audience: It has been mentioned that our target audience has not been adequately established. Some articles are critisised as being so complicated as to be unusable by anyone other than someone who is allready an expert in the field; others have been critisised as being simple to the point of uselessness. At least one article that possibly leaned too much on the simplistic side was blanked and replaced by one that possibly leaned too much on the over-complicated side, solving nothing and wasting both authors time (the first writing an article that isn't displayed, and the second writing an article that didn't really inprove the situation).

 

Part of the problem is that, even with a target audience of 'scientist' in mind, it's hard to guage the level of complexity at which we should write. for example, if i, personally, look up something to do with molecular genetics, i'd probably prefer something quite complecated; if i look up, say, plasmodial slime moulds, i'd like something with hefty content, but not too complecated (i'm not a protist expert, so if it's too complecated i might not understand); if i look up something mathematical, i want it presented really simply or i'll be completely incapable of understanding.

 

Most scientists would find themselves in similar positions: they'd want complex articles for their own narrow field, moderately complex but not too unfriendly articles for their broad field, and gentle articles in sciences outside their field.

 

If nothing else, the inconsistancy of level of complexity in the article reduces the possibility that people will use it for a resource. if half the articles are too complicated/simple, they're less likely to return.

 

A possible solution would be to formally descide what level of technical content an article should have to be of maximum use.

 

Another possible solution follows.

 

Multiple versions of articles: Another possible solution would be to have multiple copies of the same article. Possible versions, for example, could be:

 

Layman: for members of the non-scientific public. Very simple/no science as such, just explaining the consept in a way that non-scientists can understand.

Simple: for scientists who aren't good in this area: to give them a functional understanding, if they only need a low level of knowledge in this area, or for advanced school-kids/lower uni students etc.

Normal: Normal level. quite complicated, aimed at someone who is quite knowledgable in this area. possibly for BSc students.

Extended: more detail, for people who allready have a deep understanding in the area, eg BSc students thinking of going into this area for a career. PhDs should find this usefull, but a PhD in this field shouldnt be neccesary to understand the article.

 

The articles could be stored in blah/article/expert etc, and accessible via buttons in the main skin.

 

As for wrighting the different articles... that would be extra effort, but could be made easyer by formalising the process, eg the 'normal' version gets wiki'd first, then peer-reviewed, then the 'expert' and 'simple' versions get wiki'd by adding/removing information (respectively) from the 'normal' version, and some minor re-wordage. That way, rather than righting x articles, you'd write 1 and then modify it a few times; still extra effort, but not as much as it seems at first glance.

 

The idea could be extended further, incorporating some other ideas in this post:

 

Brief: a short, consise overview for people in a rush.

Facts: list of associated facts to act as a resource. long lists of facts are usefull, but often aren't included in an article.

FAQ: see later suggestion.

etc

 

Stop inporting from wp: The following is a summary of the reasons behind this suggestion:

 

it makes our articles look crap by contrast.

it demoralises editors: why spend so long creating/editing our own articles when someone else is just plonking ready-made wp articles in that make ours look underdeveloped?

editing wp articles on ws sucks, if all your doing is changing them to match ws standards. that's why it doesnt get done. they get inported, not edited to meet our guidlines, and thus dont reach peer-review stage (whereas ones on wp still get actively edited, meaning an article is actually worse off once it gets inported to ws)

if editors want to edit wp articles they'd go to wp

encorages readers to go to wp

ws should be different, espesciallly from wp. Its our stated aim. they are our main competition. if people have a choice of going to wp or ws, and ws is seen as pretty-samey to wp but with a smaller user base (ws will never have a larger base than wp), it's unlikely that people will chose ws. if we are significantly different, they might.

ws won't even be second choice. it's theoryoretically possible that, if somone can't find what they want on wp, they might check ws to see if the ws article exists/is better/has the info they were looking for, but only if ws articles are not wp clones.

 

The other school of though on this is that when ws gets up and running properly, the inported articles will benifit from the peer review process and ws's (future) reputation for accuracy, and that accuracy -- not neccesarily uniqueness -- is the goal. Also, it adds content quickly.

 

Allow unregistered editing of certain pages: such as discussion pages, feedback pages etc (for feedback purposes, obviously)

 

more refference sheets: pretty simple suggestion: more sheets of raw data (periodic table, Tm, /\Sr, etc) -- ws is, after all, a refference encyclopaedia.

 

more out-linking: Link out to further refferences, tutorals, lists of FAQ, specialist search-engines, companies that provide related equipment etc in articles, presumably so that ws can be used as a one-stop resource, or a first-stop in a long line of investigation.

 

Wright articles by need: Determine need for articles by how often the information is requested/question asked in posts on SFN, having a more promenent 'request an article' feature on ws (possibly SFN thread), or just assess the need for articles ourselves, so that ws contains more genuinely usefull and in-demand content.

 

This was suggested as an alternative to using the number of missing wikilinks technique, but could also be used as well as, so that the wiki grows to meet demand as well as in the normal wiki way.

 

review policy: Variouse people have suggested reviewing all/part of the ws policy. It has to be said that most of the policy as written down isn't the policy that is actually followed.

 

The reasoning for this request is generally to be found in the 'aim' and 'target audience' sections, although also some of the other suggestions will, if followed, neccesitate a review and change of the current policy.

 

Easy feed-back for non-editors: For example, an 'I dont understand this article' button that will, at one click, submit a vote to re-review the article, allowing crap ones to be flagged up.

 

Alternatively, an 'i dont understand/like/whatever this article' link to a page on ws that non-members can edit, so that readers can easily leave feedback that can be used to flag which articles need attention.

 

Question asking section For readers to ask questions about articles or scientific questions in general, to:

 

establish need for articles

highlight areas of our articles that do not sufficiently meet many users needs

establish need for FAQ entries

 

Portals: The category main page to act as an introduction to the field that the category covers. similar vein as 'guides', below

 

Not sure what to call this one: This is a rather odd amalgamation of ideas, but:

 

If each article had some meta-articles associated with it, eg:

 

if chromosome had

 

chromosome/meta/def, which was a succinct definition (2/3 paragraphs)

 

chromosome/meta/suc, which was an uber-succinct (1/2 centance) definition

 

chromosome/meta/tran, which was a litteral translation from latin/greek into english of the name

 

and so on, then you could get info from the ws search box by typing in the following:

 

chromosome: article on chromosomes

def:chromosome: pop-up js thingy with a succinct 2/3 paragraph definition of chromosomes

suc: chromosome: pop-up js thingy with 'chromosomes are segments of the genome; found in the nucleus (eukaryotes), or the one chromosome in the nucleolus (prokaryotes).

tran:chromosome: pop-up js thingy with 'coloured bits' (or whatever chromosome translates into).

field:chromosome: pop-up js thingy saying 'genetics; biology; cytology' (based on the categories)

 

other examples might be:

 

syn:gene (js pop-up saying 'loci')

ant:cation (js pop-up saying 'anion')

ppl:genetics (serch-page showin darwin, dawkins, watson, crick, etc)

 

 

allowing ws to hold more, and easyer to retrieve, data. more useful, basically.

 

From a tech pov, i'd guess they could mostly be done using meta-articles, probably after peer-review and peer-reviewed themselves, or by assesing article data (like category), or by linking to other resorses (online synonym searches for example)

 

Article FAQ section: Each article to have an FAQ section, to answre questions that readers still frequently have after reading the article and that can't easily be addressed in the article itself.

 

{{{{{{{{{{3. Suggestions reguarding ws -- non-encyclopaedic content}}}}}}}}}}

 

It has been suggested that ws (or at least the mediawiki install) be used for other purposes than strictly encyclopaedic articles. In fact, the letter re:aQoO is allready a non-encyclopaedic use to which ws has been put.

 

All of these suggestions could be kept seperate by categorising, or by plonking them on wisci.org/NotTheEncyclopaediaBit/ (obviously a better name than that tho).

 

Note, also, that non-encyclopaedic uses of ws would make the site 'busyer', and possibly attract new editors that might contribute to the encyclopaedic sections.

 

Here are some of the suggestions:

 

SFN FAQ: For all those questions that get asked time and time again, ad nausium, on SFN, or just those ones that get asked quite alot and require alot of effort to answre, an article could be made in the style of question:answre, that can be linked to in future occourances of the question on SFN.

 

Technical FAQ: How-to on certain scientific technicues etc.

 

Guides: Such as 'an introduction to quantumn mechanics', to act as a beginners introduction to science.

 

The term 'beginner' could be relative, e.g. it could mean school-kid just starting science, or a BSc student just mooving into a certain field/technique.

 

ExperimentWiki: http://www.scienceforums.net/forums/showthread.php?t=21942

 

experiments.

 

BSRebuttal.wiki: Like talk.origins, but in wiki form, 'cos wikis rule.

 

The logic is: Talk origins is useful, ergo BSRebuttal wiki would be useful

 

State-of-the-art: Like reviews, or the current events section of wp. detailing recent advances in a given field. Might attract PhDs, both as editors and readers.

 

Similarly:

 

News: Like our news section, or wikinews. Might be easyer to accomplish in wiki form. Could generate a periodical newsletter, for emailage.

 

General 'as needed' tool for SFN: it's been suggested that, should a SFN project ever be easyest to do on a wiki, ws should be used for the project.

 

The logic is: SFN (well, blike) has a wiki. wikis rule. SFN should use the wiki. cos wiki's rule.

 

This has allready been done (see: letter re: aQoO).

 

From the back-lash from the letter, if this is the way that ws is to be used (as a useful tool), it should be made clear in the policy that it will, occasionally, be used as a tool.

 

 

{{{{{{{{{{4. Suggestions reguarding ws -- getting more editors.}}}}}}}}}}

 

Clearer policy/style guidelines: It has been suggested that the current layout might scare new editors off by making it hard for them to figure out what they should/shouldnt do re: editing.

 

If new editors have one, succinct, 'what kind of articles go here/style guidelines/articles guidelines', prefferably very short and scan-readable, then we might get more new editors.

 

'Export to ws' sticky on SFN: so that if anyone sees a thread/post that would do well as a stub, article, FAQ etc on ws, they can post a link to it in the sticky, so that an editor can copy/paste onto ws, thus turning all SFN members into potential ws editors.

 

Would be polite to PM the author asking permission first.

 

Letter re:aQoO letter re: aQoO

 

This is actually very near completion now. Once it gets done, i believe cap'n will post links to it on other forums, canvasing for PhD signatories (if it's good enough).

 

which could obviously attract people to ws, as well as any hoo-hah the IDers make.

I basically just wanted to remind people that it's there and on the point of completion, and we want to do a good job (a benifit would be the advertising for ws). any inprovement suggestions go here or in this thread please

 

Focus on crap wp articles: If we focus on finding crap wp articles and writing decent versions for ws, there will be a two-fold benifit:

 

People will be more likely to check ws if they can't find something on wp, thus increasing readers (and so, theryoretically, editors).

 

Wp might end up with a few articles with 'this article was originally imported from ws' tags = advertising.

 

Allow unregistered editing:

 

against: vandalism goes up

for: editing goes up too.

 

{{{{{{{{{{5. Do Stuff!}}}}}}}}}}

 

As i said, ws still has potential, imo, to be quality. It's floundering, and may or may not mature at some point. It really could go either way i feel.

 

Planning might help push ws down the 'mature' path, espescially if the planning results in more editors or more unique qulities that would attract people to ws.

 

Also, whilst ws is small and pretty inactive (i.e. now) will be the best time to impliment any changes -- if we descide to take a slightly different path later, when it's bigger and more busy, it might be harder to impliment.

 

Having said that, i'll leave you with a paraphrase of Atheist's advice:

 

Just do it, or it wont get done. Planning is good, but at the end of the day what'll get ws working is if people just get on there, make stubs, make minor improvements, and generally actually do the editing and what-not.

 

As i said at the beginning, the nature of wikis is such that even if your contribution isn't 100% great (slight inacuracies, short article, spelling/punct/gramma/typo mistakes, unformated etc), the contribution is still very useful, so any one who is interested should get editing.

 

comment/discuss away

[GutZ]

Would you really want someone like me to "contribute"? I mean really...

 

If I do something like that I want to know what I am talking about, I can't "just do it".

[insane_alien]

woah that thing still exists?

[ecoli]

of course. I try and update as often as I can. But, I get into modes in different forums (or other websties), when I forget about it for a while and then remember and post like mad.

I think SFN is the only website I'm relatively consistent with.

[silkworm]

I always wondered why you didn't redirect your efforts into strengthening Wikkipedia's scientific content. Better science in a location accessed more by the general public is an INCREDIBLE service to everyone involved.

[Severian]

To be perfectly honest I have never been a big fan of Wikis. Since anyone can post on them they are quite often rather inaccurate, or hold rather biased views. That is fine in itself, but people have a tendancy to attribute them with more authority than they should really have and that is a bit dangerous.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

WiSci aims to have a peer-review process resulting in an article having a static "reviewed" version for all to use, while there is a "live" version that can be edited.

[ecoli]

WiSci aims to have a peer-review process resulting in an article having a static "reviewed" version for all to use, while there is a "live" version that can be edited.

 

a noble aim, but do you have a good peer-review board in mind?

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

No board, just people - although I may make a "trusted" group that would have to check every article as well.

[Dak]

Yes, i missed that from the list.

 

It's been suggested that we need to reveal/develop our peer-review process.

[ecoli]

No board, just people - although I may make a "trusted" group that would have to check every article as well.

 

IS making several peer-review groups a part of your plan? An expert on biology, for example, may know nothing about physics, of course.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

It is now

[Dak]

I assume that we're going to chose people who aren't stupid enough to not notice their own limitations

[ecoli]

I assume that we're going to chose people who aren't stupid enough to not notice their own limitations

 

You used the tougue, but you certainly speak the truth. You don't want the site to suffer from people's cockiness.

 

I know a few people who think that they are so smart and science-y, but barely know eonugh to fill a teacup. But, you'd never know it just from listening to them talking about themselves.

[DrCloud]

I don't know anything about WiSci, and I, per the suggestion, read the OP only by scanning it. Maybe this was addressed there and I missed it -- if so, my apologies. (And if I did miss this by scanning the OP, then maybe the scanning suggestion isn't such a good one.)

 

I'm an editor in an as-yet not-public effort called Encyclopedia of Earth that is using the Wiki approach, and I'm giving it a go despite my contempt for the general quality of Wikipedia "information."

 

What persuaded me that the EoE was potentially useful was two things: first, there are content editors, whose credentials have been vetted by a board of senior editors, who are ultimately responsible for the accuracy of articles in their areas. And, second, everything is attributed (although not necessarily publicly) -- that is, nothing is anonymous. This allows easy identification and banning from write privileges of "vandals" and other such sorts.

 

Now, a problem with this is that it's proving difficult to get the thing spun up. We content editors face the daunting challenge of writing the initial articles in our areas or (conversely) having no content to edit until people emerge who are willing to have their names attached to what they contribute.

 

Maybe there's a middle ground that WiSci could take both to ensure credibility and to maximize participation. But I'm of the opinion that anything anonymous is simply not credible. HPH

[herpguy]

I have very little time so I only scanned the OP.

 

I voted "because no one else does" and "imported articles from wikipedia".

 

My take on WiSci is that it has potential, but needs a major clean-up. Perhaps deleting every article and starting over?

[Dak]

^even tho i put alot of effort into editing the wp inports, i'd actually agree to deleting all WP INPORTS.

 

not the others, tho. slightly dodgy content is better than none-atall imo

[CPL.Luke]

to make the wiki more popular it would be wise to talk to other science forums and get them to make some commitment to it.

 

as it stands there are only going to be a few dozen editors on wisci and thus you will never get a large enough user base to even come close to a notable reference work.

[ecoli]

as it stands there are only going to be a few dozen editors on wisci and thus you will never get a large enough user base to even come close to a notable reference work.

 

excellent idea. I know that silkworm runs the rather successful sciencechatforum.com Perhaps you could work something out with him.

[5614]

I feel mean and I really respect those trying to get WiSci to become a big hit, but IMHO wikipedia is God and it's not even worth trying to recreate it.

 

This is very similar to my view on the whole Google vs MSN vs Yahoo.... Google rules, MSN and Yahoo are wasting their time.

 

So sure, I've read that ws and wp have slightly different aims, but I say we should contribute to the already vast wp rather than try and create a new version aka ws.

 

If you think wp is missing something then talk to the wp admins about it, create new pages with the "missing" information. I just feel that if I wanted info from a wiki I would go to wp. The only thing that would change that would be if ws was bigger. Bigger than the (at time of posting) 1,257,648 (only English) pages offerred by wp... it just won't happen.

[ecoli]

@5614 -

 

Take a lot at Mooey's Experiwiki thread. Perhaps if we integrated something like that into Wisci, it would become more valuable.

[CPL.Luke]

you know I wonder if we know a few people who could post on the university boards about this. Most technical schools have some sort of forum system where people can discuss various topics related to their fields. If anybody here has access to one of these boards then we could try and get some of the undergrad crowd in on the editing

[ecoli]

you know I wonder if we know a few people who could post on the university boards about this. Most technical schools have some sort of forum system where people can discuss various topics related to their fields. If anybody here has access to one of these boards then we could try and get some of the undergrad crowd in on the editing

 

yup, I have a few boards I could post Wisci too, and hopefully people would come. But, I want to know the future of the site before I do that.

[CPL.Luke]

well it seems that in order to sufficiently sepperate wisci from wikipedia it should be made to a technically very high standard, and that there should be articles on experiments with exact procedures and possibly sample data. This section could be expanded to include experiments from the highschool level on up so that science teachers at all levels could come to wisci and find fun demonstrrations, labs, and explanations for their class.

 

We should allow a bit more personality in the articles as well as long as it helps illustrate the point a bit better, after all were explaining facts here, were not trying to provide an encyclopedic balanced view.

 

 

an example of this would be the way feynmann used to lecture, just the right amount of wit to make it interesting and not to much as to obscure the point.

 

We should really be trying to advertise the project to people who are already at the university level ie. by hitting science boards where their is a high percentage of undergrads (not that we want to pass over any other boards however). We should advertise it as something where if someone just completed a lab than they should write an article about it. Since alot of these undergrads are going to be doing a lab write up a week we could get alot of very useful articles out of such a pattern.

 

 

in order to make wisci a worthwile project that would eventually be actively used, we have to look at things wikipedia can't do because of its encyclopaedic nature. I think the above are just a few of the things that we could be doing to make wisci a resource for the science minded, a one stop shop for labs, experiments, common discussions, explanations, shortcuts, anything that would be useful for a scientist.

 

We should also work on making a few general templates for how an article about an experiment should look, or how an article about a common explanation for some phenomena should look.

 

If we can make a few of these templates and then make a few good articles (one for each general article type) combined with a good introduction to what wisci is and who its for (its for scientists and the science minded, it should be highly technical) then all we have to do is spread the word around, principally to as many skilled people as possible.

 

note: wikipedia has pretty much covered all of the introduction articles one would ever need, one of the principal things that wikipedia can't do like wisci can do is get highly technical and highly informative, to the point of to much information. We can have data tables and graphs and all of that, wikipedia can't do that. Wikipedia also can't really have an article on how to explain phenomena to students like wisci could, wisci can have analogies and diagrams and whatever else you can think of to help illustrate the point.

[CharonY]

To be perfectly honest I have never been a big fan of Wikis. Since anyone can post on them they are quite often rather inaccurate, or hold rather biased views. That is fine in itself, but people have a tendancy to attribute them with more authority than they should really have and that is a bit dangerous.

 

That pretty sums up my position, too. Especially if there is no expert board looking into the subjects, especially if one wants to create more detailed entries than available already in wikipedia. I am sorry to say this, but the majority of essays or reports written by undergrads (which supposedly are the majority here) that I get are inaccurate at best.