Re: bsite

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Bryan Bishop

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Jun 4, 2013, 9:00:42 PM6/4/13

to Patrik D'haeseleer, diybio, Bryan Bishop, Ron Shigeta, Joshua Ott, pna...@gmail.com, Benjamin Lack, Ryan Bethencourt, East Bay DIYbio

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <pat...@gmail.com> wrote:

And I've noticed many biologists being reluctant to even edit a pbworks or mediawiki, but they don't seem to have too much trouble with google docs.

That is a curious observation to make.

Could you provide anecdotes (or even more interesting, data..)?

I don't blame anyone for being reluctant to edit pbworks-- that site is bloated and seems to be a commercial product. I don't particularly like mediawiki either, but this is the first I've heard of biologists in particular not liking it. Of course, biologists in general don't seem to like computers anyway... so maybe that has to be discounted from any measured anti-wiki sentiment?

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
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Patrik D'haeseleer

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Jun 4, 2013, 9:25:50 PM6/4/13

to Bryan Bishop, diybio, Ron Shigeta, Joshua Ott, pna...@gmail.com, Benjamin Lack, Ryan Bethencourt, East Bay DIYbio

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Bryan Bishop <kan...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Tue, Jun 4, 2013 at 2:17 PM, Patrik D'haeseleer <pat...@gmail.com> wrote:

And I've noticed many biologists being reluctant to even edit a pbworks or mediawiki, but they don't seem to have too much trouble with google docs.

That is a curious observation to make.

Could you provide anecdotes (or even more interesting, data..)?

Yeah, it is curious to me as well, but then I like wikis, and had done a little Wikipedia editing before I ever started using wikis for work.

I have noticed this in a couple different settings though: both at work, collaborating on large projects with lots of biologists of various stripes and trying to get them to use wikis as a collaboration tool (never happens), and at BioCurious where documentation of projects on the wiki is extremely sporadic and typically limited to one or two people.

Yet everyone seems comfortable using google docs to work on more ephemeral documents, such as when taking simultaneous meeting notes. Perhaps it's simply because the sharing link dumps you directly in an editable document, and you can see other people making changes to the document in real time.

Whatever the reason, a google docs like interface seems to pose less of a threshold to get people to contribute, and I'll gladly use whatever incentive I can to get them to do so...