Synthetic Biology StackExchange

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Jacob Beal

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Mar 18, 2021, 12:13:47 AM3/18/21
to DIYbio
Hi, folks:

I wanted to get in touch with the DIYbio community because there's an initiative going on that I think a lot of folks here may be interested in.

As you might already know, pretty much everybody who programs makes use of StackOverflow, which provides well-curated answers for programming questions, and the rest of the StackExchange network does this for all sorts of other subjects, from math, physics, and chemistry to travel, cooking, and personal finance. 

A group of us are now looking to do the same for Synthetic Biology: we think it could use a good, universal database of questions and answers. We've already passed the early stages of defining the site, and now just need to demonstrate a critical mass of people committing to participate in order to get a beta site launched.  

I think this is likely to be of particularly great interest for the DIYbio community, due to the strong spirit of information sharing and helping one another that tends to be strong in DIY circles.

If you agree with us that this is a good idea, can you come help make it a reality?
- Pass this invitation along to other folks in your community or other communities
- We also have a community-building Slack: people can email me for an invitation

I think this site is going to make a major difference to the synthetic biology community, and I really hope you'll be able to help make it a reality!

Thanks,
-Jake Beal
(Scientist @ BBN Technologes; Chair - iGEM Engineering Committee; SBOL Steering Committee)

Marc Juul

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Mar 18, 2021, 3:57:17 AM3/18/21
to DIYbio
On Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 9:13 PM Jacob Beal <jake...@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi, folks:

I wanted to get in touch with the DIYbio community because there's an initiative going on that I think a lot of folks here may be interested in.

As you might already know, pretty much everybody who programs makes use of StackOverflow, which provides well-curated answers for programming questions, and the rest of the StackExchange network does this for all sorts of other subjects, from math, physics, and chemistry to travel, cooking, and personal finance. 

A group of us are now looking to do the same for Synthetic Biology: we think it could use a good, universal database of questions and answers. We've already passed the early stages of defining the site, and now just need to demonstrate a critical mass of people committing to participate in order to get a beta site launched.  

I think this is likely to be of particularly great interest for the DIYbio community, due to the strong spirit of information sharing and helping one another that tends to be strong in DIY circles.

If you agree with us that this is a good idea, can you come help make it a reality?

I like the idea of something like this existing but I would hope that we as a community value open technologies.

I know that StackExchange at least licenses user-contributed content using an open license so it could be worse, but even if the data can be exported, importing to a different platform would be non-trivial. There's also issues around potential tracking of user behavior / sale of user data and what seems like an inevitable sale of the entire platform to Microsoft[0] given their past acquisitions. Let's try to build some resilience to corporate co-optation into this proposed community from the beginning. Moving a large active community to a different platform once it's already going seems likely to fail.

I would be happy to get a self-hosted Discourse and a Mattermost instance set up, find a competent sysadmin and set up a monthly recurring donation system where people can contribute to pay for the hosting and sysadmin's time.

The quick option if we just need Discourse is to pay for their hosted option. They offer 50% discounts to nonprofits and again I'd be happy to set this up and then migrate to self-hosted if it becomes relevant.

I also just realized to my horror that the first link on diybio.org now links to a Facebook group. Does anyone really think this is appropriate? Who made this decision? It does not seem in line with the code of ethics linked not much further down the page. Facebook is a company that directly works against open access to technology. Even if we as a community only care about open access to biotechnology there is no open access to any technology without open access to the internet.

--
marc/juul

Cathal Garvey

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Mar 18, 2021, 4:12:15 AM3/18/21
to Diybio
Excellently put Marc. Platforms should be chosen to align with the principles and culture of the communities.

Stackexchange embeds, at the basest level, the toxic idea of "meritocracy", such that new users cannot even engage fully, and the corporate focus on "original content" means that user answers that link to fuller information elsewhere are often censured, in favour of on-site answers.

To use Stackexchange, one must make an account with a US-based company and sign a contract that may not respect your rights or the laws and norms of your home country. This means a lot of people will be missing, and you'll not know why.

Discourse, hosted or not, is a more humane way to get the same kind of searchable, efficient Q&A, it's an open platform, and community norms can reign instead of corporate ones. I believe the entity is still US based but it doesn't appear to be surveillance capitalist, at least.

I'd say "if it isn't broken, don't fix it", but TBH this list is hosted by Google, who are an aggressive and abusive violator of human rights, and it's also hosted on a platform that Google seem to hate and don't maintain. Google have a strong pattern of suddenly cancelling things that don't earn them billions, and right now the DIYbio.org annex of this community seems to be entirely focused on this list, and... Facebook

Maybe a change is needed. But a new USA Surveillance Capitalist platform isn't a good change.

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18 Mar 2021, 07:57 by mar...@gmail.com:
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Jacob Beal

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Mar 20, 2021, 1:57:40 AM3/20/21
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Hi, Marc, Cathal:

Everybody gets to make their own choices about where to draw their boundaries with respect to the systems that they choose to engage with. Personally, I am comfortable with the level of openness and resilience afforded by the CC-BY licensing on StackExchange. If you disagree, you are certainly free to build your own forums.

Anyone who is comfortable with StackExchange and wishes to join our effort there, however, has a welcome extended from the community that we are trying to build.

Thanks,
-Jake
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