Wikipedia clean up

[Bryan Bishop]

The wikipedia articles are still awful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biohacking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DIYbio

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biopunk

At least that last one is somewhat less awful. Anyone want to take cleanup duty?

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Michael Turner]

I do Wikipedia cleanups sometimes. Even decorations, like photos. On
request, I recently cleaned up

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PechaKucha

I'm Yakushima at Wikipedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Yakushima

But it would help if you could be specific about the changes you'd
like to see and the priorities you have for them (ideally ratified on
by senior members of this list, in the case of the DIYbio article at
least). Then the chore would fit better into my busy schedule, and
would feel like less a chore and than a community service.[*]

Regards,
Michael Turner
Project Persephone
1-25-33 Takadanobaba
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 169-0075
(+81) 90-5203-8682
tur...@projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

---

[*] I mean the *good* kind of community service, not the kind that a
judge would sentence you to hours of, when convicting you of a
misdemeanor.

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[Nathan McCorkle]

I've never heard anyone on here discussing printable hip
replacements... it sounds like a bad idea anyway, seeing as how poor
3D printer plastics fair in strength. Most joint replacements are made
of titanium, etc... Who put that in there?

It also has really old info scattered throughout, and doesn't mention
anything of the years of FBI interaction we've had

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--
Nathan McCorkle
Rochester Institute of Technology
College of Science, Biotechnology/Bioinformatics

[Michael Turner]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 6:45 AM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've never heard anyone on here discussing printable hip
> replacements... it sounds like a bad idea anyway, seeing as how poor
> 3D printer plastics fair in strength. Most joint replacements are made
> of titanium, etc... Who put that in there?

I could find out, but it's probably not worth the trouble. Bad
articles often attract even worse contributions. Good articles exist,
and stay good, because good editors toss out bad contributions before
they can snowball.

I've deleted the entire section.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DIYbio&diff=514734971&oldid=499771665

and noted the problem on the Talk page

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:DIYbio#Questionable_.22Examples.22_section

Note that the Talk page has an interesting and possibly very useful
list of references that are much better formatted (and probably more
thoroughly vetted) than the footnotes the article carries at this
point.

Keep the suggestions coming.

Regards,
Michael Turner
Project Persephone
1-25-33 Takadanobaba
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 169-0075
(+81) 90-5203-8682
tur...@projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 8:22 PM, Michael Turner
<michael.eu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I've deleted the entire section.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=DIYbio&diff=514734971&oldid=499771665
>
> and noted the problem on the Talk page
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:DIYbio#Questionable_.22Examples.22_section

I did a small edit over here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Biohacking&oldid=514720128

Here's 180+ biohacking references that should be incorporated:

http://diyhpl.us/~bryan/papers2/diybio/citations.txt

The "two types" stuff should probably go, because it doesn't make
sense. I find it hard to believe someone wrote "In this context,
biohacking refers to mixing and matching genes and characteristics
from different species." What?

[Michael Turner]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 6:45 AM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:

[snip]

> It also has really old info scattered throughout, and doesn't mention
> anything of the years of FBI interaction we've had

I cleaned up a cite of an FBI story on video, in the bibliography on
the talk page.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Talk:DIYbio&diff=514737780&oldid=514737462

Regards,
Michael Turner
Project Persephone
1-25-33 Takadanobaba
Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 169-0075
(+81) 90-5203-8682
tur...@projectpersephone.org
http://www.projectpersephone.org/

"Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 8:27 PM, Bryan Bishop wrote:
> The "two types" stuff should probably go, because it doesn't make
> sense. I find it hard to believe someone wrote "In this context,
> biohacking refers to mixing and matching genes and characteristics
> from different species." What?

In fact, the three articles should probably be merged. The three
articles (Biopunk, biohacking and DIYbio) are practically synonymous.
The biopunk article is rather peculiar, because it describes a
"subculture within a subculture" which isn't really true, it's the
same culture and the same people. The news refs back this up for at
least the past 10 years.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:00 PM, Michael Turner
<michael.eu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> There is no biohacking outside DIYbio membership? If, in Wikipedia

There is no DIYbio membership. DIYbio the organization itself is
rather unnotable save for the massive amounts of news coverage people
on this list generate. DIYbio the concept is as just as blurred with
"biohacking" and "biopunk" and "amateur biology".. they are all the
same thing.

> notability terms, there's a notable main exemplar organization for a
> practice that is, in itself, notable, they are at least *candidates*
> for separate articles.

Makes sense to me.

>> The biopunk article is rather peculiar, because it describes a
>> "subculture within a subculture" which isn't really true, it's the
>> same culture and the same people.
>

> If that false distinction were disclaimed in an independent reliable
> source, it's something you could use as the basis for a claim of
> equivalence. Or if there's a quote from some reasonably notable figure
> in the movement saying they are they same, it could be reported in the
> article as a quote.

I don't understand. There's no primary source that says there is a
distinction in the first place. From what I recall happening, Patrik
got upset about diybio.org using a mailing list, and registered
biopunk.org because he wanted to use forums to communicate with

people.

>> The news refs back this up for at
>> least the past 10 years.
>

> Do they do so directly or indirectly.

Go read them. In one article I'm called a biohacker, and in the next
I'm called a biopunk or whatever.

> How about a merging of the articles "biopunk" and "biohacking," with a
> redirect from biopunk to biohacking?

I think that would be a very sane change.

[Bryan Bishop]

On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:39 PM, Michael Turner wrote:
> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:06 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote:

>> On Wed, Sep 26, 2012 at 9:00 PM, Michael Turner wrote:
>>> There is no biohacking outside DIYbio membership? If, in Wikipedia
>>
>> There is no DIYbio membership. DIYbio the organization itself is
>> rather unnotable save for the massive amounts of news coverage people
>> on this list generate. DIYbio the concept is as just as blurred with
>> "biohacking" and "biopunk" and "amateur biology".. they are all the
>> same thing.
>

> OK, let me try to think of an appropriate overarching category,
> something a little more elevated than "hobby." Unfortunately, there's
> already a category on Wikipedia for "Biopunk"
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Biopunk
>
> and NO category for "Biohacking".

I understand that Biopunk is well known in the science fiction
circles. But the citations in the biopunk article are referencing
biohacking, biopunk, amateur biology, do-it-yourself biology, which
all blurs together. Still, that doesn't mean that biopunk is the word
that is all-encompassing.

>>>> The biopunk article is rather peculiar, because it describes a
>>>> "subculture within a subculture" which isn't really true, it's the
>>>> same culture and the same people.
>>>
>>> If that false distinction were disclaimed in an independent reliable
>>> source, it's something you could use as the basis for a claim of
>>> equivalence. Or if there's a quote from some reasonably notable figure
>>> in the movement saying they are they same, it could be reported in the
>>> article as a quote.
>>

>> There's no primary source that says there is a
>> distinction in the first place.
>

> Thanks. I'm just asking what basis there would be for drawing
> distinctions (if any) between article topics. Suffixes "-hacking" and
> "-punk" can have significant effects on discourse -- or not. I'm new
> to all this, so the distinctions or lack thereof are not so clear to
> me.

It is possible that -punk could refer more to the science fiction
genre, but I find that a little harsh.

> To cite a precedent: there are hackers interested in computer security
> issues in general, going back to the late 1970s if not earlier. But
> then you also had the "cypherpunks," a movement that arguably peaked

Sure. The cypherpunks were a very specific group of people. You could
name all of them. Well, you could name all of them if it wasn't for
their anonymous email addresses. (Additionally, you could probably
count some cryptography peeps not explicitly on the cypherpunks
mailing list as being in that crowd as well. But overwhelmingly, their
mailing list and that group of people are what people refer to when
they say cypherpunks these days. A few of them are floating around on
this list, too.)

Since the original author of bitcoin has chosen to remain anonymous,
the article could probably conjecture that the author was a member of
the cypherpunks group. But it's also possible that there is no
connection to those folks at all.

>> From what I recall happening, Patrik
>> got upset about diybio.org using a mailing list, and registered
>> biopunk.org because he wanted to use forums to communicate with
>> people.
>

> And that gave "biopunk" shinier coinage as a term? I'm not sure of
> your point here.

Sorry, yes, that is what I was trying to communicate. But at the same
time, I should also point out that Marcus' book is titled "Biopunk"
and talks about biohacking the whole time, and not the subset of
science fiction referred to as biopunk. So these terms are definitely
all intertwingled.

>>>> The news refs back this up for at
>>>> least the past 10 years.
>>>
>>> Do they do so directly or indirectly.
>>
>> Go read them. In one article I'm called a biohacker, and in the next
>> I'm called a biopunk or whatever.
>

> And what do you call yourself?

Any of those terms would work for me. I am not picky about myself. I
am just trying to figure out how to make the articles less awful - and
a merge seems to be the right thing to do, given the lack of
distinction. However, I don't know how to handle the science fiction
genre issue.

>>> How about a merging of the articles "biopunk" and "biohacking," with a
>>> redirect from biopunk to biohacking?
>>
>> I think that would be a very sane change.
>

> I've put a merge tag into the biopunk article. It's a little weird to
> merge an article into a smaller article, and googling on "biopunk"
> gets more hits than "biohacker". Moreover, "biopunk" seems to be an SF
> subgenre now. But sanity trumps everything (Wikpedia's "IAR - Ignore

I think a biohacking/biopunk article would have most of the same
content already featured on the biopunk article relating to
do-it-yourself biology, without the language trying to mark a
political difference between gene hackers and gene hackers. It's
possible that the SF genre should be a separate article ("Biopunk
(science fiction genre)"), but I'm not sure. I mean, we could just
stuff everything into one, and say the SF genre article was hijacked
by DIYbio peeps, but that seems rude. :-P

[Cathal Garvey]

I don't think Biopunk should be merged, but as pointed out; the
description of Biopunk is basically that of "biohacking", and they
should not be synonymous.

Biopunk: A sci-fi trope and a political-ish skew of biotechnology.
Biohacking: An activity describing advanced biology techniques applied
outside of a commercial or academic context.

Biopunk's article should discuss the fictional and real-world dimensions
of offgrid/outlaw/antiestablishment biotechnology, Biohacking/DIYbio
articles should concern themselves with activities, methods, individuals
and events, with reference where appropriate to the Biopunk article (and
V/V).

...in my opinion.

--
www.indiebiotech.com
twitter.com/onetruecathal
joindiaspora.com/u/cathalgarvey
PGP Public Key: http://bit.ly/CathalGKey

[Bryan Bishop]

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 7:54 AM, Cathal Garvey <cathal...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Biopunk's article should discuss the fictional and real-world dimensions
> of offgrid/outlaw/antiestablishment biotechnology, Biohacking/DIYbio
> articles should concern themselves with activities, methods, individuals
> and events, with reference where appropriate to the Biopunk article (and
> V/V).
>
> ...in my opinion.

Huh? So when did outlaw biology fork from biohacking?

[Nathan McCorkle]

Michael, please try to keep discussions separated by their main
idea/theme. You can simply copy/past the subject from the wikipedia
clean up thread, into a reply for something from another thread. This
helps us keep track of common themes in the google groups internet
cache, searching, etc. Someone reading about wikipedia clean-ups next
year might never see your replies in the 3d printing thread.

In short to respond to you, using non-biological materials in DIYbio
is essential. If it's not biological it's equipment, whether it's a
gel box or a 3D printed tumor or a 3D printed hip/fingertip/ear
structure. We are discussing microcontrollers in another thread, we've
discussed spectrometers a lot before and that's electronics and
optics. Biology is just a patterned arrangement of chemicals, they
intake and excrete chemicals. Chemicals are essential for biology and
DIYbio.

I consider transhumanism to be part of DIYbio too, discussions of
ad-hoc eugenics (prenatal testing???, partner compatibility tests)...
most anything I think about could be construed as DIYbio because I
think for myself and I'm bio.

But we need a little more distinction than that. I think DIYbio is
about ad-hoc and self-organised scientific collaboration having
something to do with learning experimenting with or hacking biology
and/or biological systems.

On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 11:09 PM, Michael Turner
<michael.eu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 3:42 AM, Patrik D'haeseleer <pat...@gmail.com> wrote:
>> On Thursday, September 27, 2012 6:30:29 AM UTC-7, Michael Turner wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>> > http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-18677627
>>>
>>> ... which is about giving up on biology as a medium for 3D printing,
>>> because the cells die, and going with something not alive.
>>
>>
>> Might want to read that again - sounds like you completely missed the point
>> on this one.
> [snip]
>
> No, I read it through twice. 3D printing of *cells* doesn't work (yet,
> anyway). So they do 3D printing of something that isn't alive. I got
> that the first time. And it was done in a clinical/formal lab setting.
> The problem remains: does *all* 3D printing of non-biological stuff
> that COULD be used for DIYbio count as DIYbio, wherever it's done, for
> whatever purpose, by whomever, with whatever funding?
>
>> Now, you could argue whether this belongs in a DIYbio wikipedia article,
>> since the technique was developed in an academic lab.
>
> Is any DIYbio practitioner actually doing this outside an academic or
> industrial lab?
>
>> ... It's definitely within
>> the spirit of biohacking in the sense that it uses some great out-of-the-box
>> thinking (aka "hacking") and uses some very cheap and accessible tools from
>> the maker culture (reprap 3D printer). But it's still done by professional
>> scientists (if you count the grad student who probably thought of this
>> hare-brained idea as a "professional scientist"), ...
>
> The whole first project for my NPO here in Japan is based on a
> hare-brained idea from a grad student who funded his work on
> Kickstarter. So I have no particular prejudices there.
>
>> ... and likely with some sort
>> of research funding support.
>
> THAT's where one might start drawing the line, I think.
>
>> There's nothing to stop a dedicated DIY team
>> from replicating this though, and we've seriously considered doing so in the
>> BioPrinter project at BioCurious.
>
> If you can affordably use 3D printing to make some substrate (as in
> the above case) or a custom lab equipment component for your DIYbio
> projects, that contributes to a body of DIY practice, regardless of
> how many millions of public/private dollars went into the original
> invention of the technique.
>
> But remember where this started. A hip joint made out of 3D-printed
> metal? (I respond to your complaint about my "harping", below.)
> Implanted by a professional? Operating under an actionable code of
> professional ethics, on top of a body of government regulations? In an
> institutional (clinical) setting? (They aren't doing hip replacements
> at home or in educational community centers, last I checked.)
>
>> Here's another example of a borderline case of what you might or might not
>> consider DIYbio / biohacking, depending on which definition you adhere to.
>> Russel Nyches, who is doing a PhD at UC Davis, has been developing some
>> really cool tools using 3D printing and Arduinos, including a 3D printed
>> bead beating adaptor that mounts onto a Craftsman automatic hammer, custom
>> 3D printed 96-well plates, and a wireless, tweeting Arduino based pH
>> monitoring platform.
>>
>> Again, you could argue that this is all part of his "job" (i.e., being a
>> grad student and getting a PhD) and therefore not DIY. But I think you'd be
>> missing out on a lot of really interesting development within the broad
>> spectrum of DIYbio if you took that narrow an interpretation.
>
> There's already a way, one that's Wikipedia
> policy/guideline-compliant, to not "miss out" on this kind of thing. I
> would have no problem with citing, and quoting from, Nyches'
> publications in a Wikipedia article about DIYbio -- IF he gives credit
> to the DIYbio movement where it's due.
>
> In fact, I'd love it if there were a whole article section on any such
> phenomenon. If DIYbio is a kind of "spin-off" from institutional
> biotech research, it should also get credit for any "spin-in" that
> happens. But on Wikipedia, credit has to be [[WP:V]] - verifiable from
> reliable sources. Just saying, in effect, "Hey, looky! Some people in
> some labs are doing some stuff that we did first!", in a Wikipedia
> article -- you can't do it. That's [[WP:OR]] - "original research",
> which is not allowed.
>
>> PS: Stop harping on the 3D printed hip replacement. I think most people here
>> agree with you that this was not a great example of DIYbio.
>
> Perhaps most would agree, but where's the vote tally? If some of the
> more interested list members joined the Talk page discussion for
> Wikipedia's DIYbio article, we could determine whether your intuition
> about their feelings was correct, by relying on a Wikipedia editorial
> process. If there were significant differences of opinion on that Talk
> page about what's within scope, and no Talk page article consensus
> emerged, we could even subject the discussion to long-evolved
> processes for settling matters.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines#Disputes
>
> Look: I know I sound like the old joke: "I'm from the government, and
> I'm here to help." But articles get good on Wikipedia, and stay good,
> only because of a degree of formal process, evolved by volunteers --
> DIYgov, if you will.
>
> I'd love for DIYbio and other related articles to reach Featured article status.
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Featured_article_criteria
>
> But note the stringent requirements of section 1. We can all easily
> point to articles on Wikipedia that flunk 1(a)-1(d). As for 1(e),
> well, when you have people on this mailing list asserting that DIYbio
> ethics only apply to biohackers who don't want to violate them
> (rendering the concept of "ethic" utterly vacuous) the stage is set
> for getting biohacking articles listed in another place instead:
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Lamest_edit_wars
>
>> .... I seem to remember a story of someone who
>> 3D printed part of his own anatomy from a cat scan, and then brought the 3D
>> print to his doctor - I think that would definitely qualify as DIY + bio,
>
> Only if you conflate medicine with biology. Medicine is not a science
> -- as several doctors I know will firmly assert. It's a profession.
> Nor is it a branch of engineering. It *uses* techniques and
> technologies inspired by a branch of biology called medical science.
> But perhaps not as much as it should.
>
>> even though in the end it still involved a real MD to interpret the results.
>
> ... an MD who probably did the diagnosis seat-of-the-pants, rather
> than rely on scientific criteria. Expert systems built in the late 80s
> outperformed most doctors when programmed for diagnosing specific
> ailments. Doctors rejected them as an infringement on their
> professional judgment.
>
> Medicine is not a science. It is not engineering either.
>
> The guy who 3D-printed his own tumor or organ from CAT-scan data
> didn't necessarily know the first thing about biology or biotech.
>
> And home CAT-scanners aren't on the horizon in any case.

>
> Regards,
> Michael Turner
> Project Persephone
> 1-25-33 Takadanobaba
> Shinjuku-ku Tokyo 169-0075
> (+81) 90-5203-8682
> tur...@projectpersephone.org
> http://www.projectpersephone.org/
>
> "Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward
> together in the same direction." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
>

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[Michael Turner]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 12:58 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Michael, please try to keep discussions separated by their main
> idea/theme. You can simply copy/past the subject from the wikipedia
> clean up thread, into a reply for something from another thread. This
> helps us keep track of common themes in the google groups internet
> cache, searching, etc. Someone reading about wikipedia clean-ups next
> year might never see your replies in the 3d printing thread.

Next year? In which case, they're very likely get the thread about
cleanups by searching on terms that will *also* turn up the
medical-device printing thread. So they won't miss much unless they
aren't looking very hard in the first place.

What I don't want to see: blowups on the Wikipedia talk pages, from
people who would say, "But we came to a consensus on the biomed 3d
printing thread -- didn't you read it?" Unless I contribute my
dissent--and keep eliciting points from others that should make it
obvious that you have no consensus even among those who disagree with
me--they would have a point. (Not a very *good* point, perhaps. But a
point.)

> In short to respond to you, using non-biological materials in DIYbio
> is essential.

I know you don't intend to insult me, but I'm perfectly aware that
biology and biotech use non-biological materials. This is a fact about
me that you could divine simply by reading what I've written so far.

> If it's not biological it's equipment, whether it's a
> gel box or a 3D printed tumor or a 3D printed hip/fingertip/ear
> structure. We are discussing microcontrollers in another thread, we've
> discussed spectrometers a lot before and that's electronics and
> optics.

The fact that you discuss microcontrollers -- and apply them --
doesn't make microcontrollers a DIYbio topic on Wikipedia. You use
e-mail. We're in fact using e-mail right now. Does that put e-mail
clients and servers within scope of DIYbio? What *isn't* DIYbio?

> Biology is just a patterned arrangement of chemicals, they
> intake and excrete chemicals.

You mean, "without chemicals, life itself would be impossible"?

Yeah, I know. I learned that from Monsanto's exhibit at Disneyland in
1964, where they used that famous (now infamous) tag line. It was all
over TV, too. I was 9 years old. And haven't since forgotten.

> Chemicals are essential for biology and
> DIYbio.

And we're even MADE of chemicals! Wow, trippy. I have to go lie down now.

*Sigh*

Is the 5th grade science lecture over yet? I don't fit in this school
desk very well, being 56 years old and of normal height.

> I consider transhumanism to be part of DIYbio too, discussions of
> ad-hoc eugenics (prenatal testing???, partner compatibility tests)...
> most anything I think about could be construed as DIYbio

"Part of" Oh? Do you have the permission of all (or even a majority)
of transhumanists to categorize their whole movement as a subcategory
of DIYbio, on Wikipedia? Or to say that transhumanism is a branch of
the DIYbio movement? (Hm, that gets the chronology backwards, a bit.)
Or ... well, whatever do you mean by "part of"? It has to be something
I can translate into encyclopedic terms and structures, because that's
what I'm editing: an encyclopedia.

> ... because I

> think for myself and I'm bio.

Thinking for yourself is not, ipso facto, thinking clearly. This is a
mailing list. You can say whatever you want. I have to contend with
what other experienced Wikipedia editors will want to do -- and
they'll quote policies and guidelines back at me, if they have a case
against me. They are mostly a pretty systematic bunch when it comes to
semantics. You don't have to worry about semantics much in this case,
any more than an astronomer really has to worry about whether the
masses want to call Pluto a planet or not -- Pluto will still be
Pluto, when the dust settles. Scientifically, it's still the same
object under study. You can just do what you do, without caring much
about what words mean. What I do is edit Wikipedia. Which, believe it
or not, has a government. With, like, *rules*. *Guidelines*.
*Policies*. *Structure*. *Management*. *Process*.

> But we need a little more distinction than that. I think DIYbio is
> about ad-hoc and self-organised scientific collaboration having
> something to do with learning experimenting with or hacking biology
> and/or biological systems.

Really? OK: then put that in the DIYbio article. I can't. If I copied
your wording from this list, it would be copyright infringement. If I
paraphrased you, then cited your e-mail, it might be a violation of
the reliable sources criteria.

If YOU edit it into the article, however, you're in the fray, and will
have to take responsibility for your own word choices. Then you can
fight the people who think it's not necessarily scientific work at
all. After all, maybe some people want to do DIY biotech projects to
make stuff on a purely recipe-following basis without understanding
much of what they are doing. And maybe they want to say they are doing
DIYbio. And about that guy who 3D printed his own tumor and took it to
his doctor? He might also be an editor on Wikipedia, and he might
insist stridently that what he did *wasn't* actually DIYbio. Not at
all. No way.

It could get fun. In a certain conception of fun, anyway. :-(

[Nathan McCorkle]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Michael Turner
<michael.eu...@gmail.com> wrote:
>And about that guy who 3D printed his own tumor and took it to
> his doctor? He might also be an editor on Wikipedia, and he might
> insist stridently that what he did *wasn't* actually DIYbio. Not at
> all. No way.

I never argued against 3D printed stuff not being DIYbio, I specifically said:
"'I've never heard anyone on here discussing printable hip

replacements... it sounds like a bad idea anyway, seeing as how poor
3D printer plastics fair in strength. Most joint replacements are made
of titanium, etc... Who put that in there?"

I realize wikipedia has guidelines, etc... I haven't read them all,
and haven't brushed up in a while but if you know them then great! I'm
glad you're watching the articles to correct my accidents, hopefully
fitting the knowledge into the guidelines.

I can't predict what your education background is, sorry if you felt
like a kid, but you made some kiddish remarks when I posted about
needing piezo ejectors not heat expansion print heads for printing
cells. All I knew about you before you said you were 56 and heard some
Monsanto catch phrase as Disney (land or world) was that you are
living in Japan.

[Michael Turner]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 1:59 PM, Nathan McCorkle <nmz...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 12:44 AM, Michael Turner

> I never argued against 3D printed stuff not being DIYbio, I specifically said:

[snip]

I wasn't referring to you. I was referring to someone else's apparent
belief that it qualifies. And the problems these sorts of issues
create in preventing edit-warring over Wikipedia articles.

> I can't predict what your education background is, sorry if you felt
> like a kid, but you made some kiddish remarks when I posted about
> needing piezo ejectors not heat expansion print heads for printing
> cells.

[snip]

OK, I'll put you down as "unable to infer an approximate education
level despite reading quite a few paragraphs from the person that were
written at something like graduate-student level."

It's alright. I suffer from mild red-green colorblindness and a
lower-than-average ability to distinguish faces. Nobody's perfect.

[Lisa Thalheim]

Dear Michael, and everyone else,

first, thanks for taking the time to try and align the sentiments
about necessary changes here with Wikipedia policies and such.

Concerning the content (and now I'm going to wildly throw together
bits from this discussion):

* DIYBio, biohacking, biopunk, and amateur biology, I think, are not
interchangeable. You could try to construe them as slightly different
aspects of a larger concept, but I'm not quite sure what that would
be.

* It might be a good idea to keep "Biopunk" as a separate article,
since it is also a literary genre - something that neither biohacking
nor DIYBio are. Personally, I would really like to see this
literary-genre-thing kept out of the biohacking and DIYBio articles,
simply because the conflation of fiction and fact in biohacking/DIYBio
is already enough of a problem (especially in media representations).
Suggestion for a change to the Biopunk article: Focus it on the
literary genre and mention that "biopunk" is sometimes also used to
denote activities of biohacking (link to biohacking article)?

* The DIYBio article isn't that bad the way it is as of today.

* The biohacking article is pretty awful indeed. Put in very general
terms, the changes I'd want to make to that one: Expand the paragraph
on the "first meaning" of biohacking and make it a bit more solid and
less hand-wavy. In particular "In this context, biohacking refers to

mixing and matching genes and characteristics from different species."

really needs to go. "Mixing and matching genes and characteristics
from different species" is plain old transgenic genetic modification
and engineering, and equating "biohacking" with this is just factually
wrong. The paragraph on the "second meaning" of biohacking is also
still pretty mushy. It does belong in the article, though, just like
the separation of the "two types" of biohacking - people on this list
may not identify much with the self-tuning and body modification
aspect, but the term "biohacking" _is_ used to refer to it, so an
encyclopedic article should cover both these uses. One other aspect
that may belong in an article on biohacking is "Biohacking in art" -
after all, artists have engaged in using/subverting biotech long
before the DIYBio thing took off, see Eduardo Kac (the Damien Hirst of
bioart, as he was once called), Luke Jerram, the Critical Art Ensemble
or pretty much anyone whose name is in the book "Tactical
Biopolitics". Including some of this is justified, I think, since
artists have started using the term "biohacking" to describe their
work [citation needed]. Hackteria may be one example here.

* Transhumanism isn't a part of biohacking in the sense of a
"belongs-to" relation, but it is in the sense of an "overlaps-with"
relation. I don't see that transhumanism is a big topic in either
DIYBio or biohacking, but it has come up here on the list, for
example. Some of the mails sent to this list by someone named
"Reason", promoting a clearly transhumanist agenda, may serve as
references.

And just because I'm in the mood for some nitpicking, some remarks on
terminology (responding to Bryan):

I don't think that DIYBio, biohacking, biopunk, and amateur biology
are all the same thing. Amateur biology, in particular, is much older
than biohacking or DIYBio. It's a fairly different culture made up of
fairly different people, and is rooted more in the Victorian idea of
the "gentleman scientist" rather than the 20th century's hacker
culture. I also don't see flocks of amateur ornithologists and amateur
entomologists scrambling to join up with the biohackers. Apart from
the fact that amateur biology and biohacking have very different
underpinnings - socially, historically, and culturally - I'd find it a
little distasteful to unilaterally appropriate this culture.

[Michael Turner]

On Fri, Sep 28, 2012 at 3:53 PM, Lisa Thalheim <ltha...@googlemail.com> wrote:
[snip intro]

> * DIYBio, biohacking, biopunk, and amateur biology, I think, are not
> interchangeable. You could try to construe them as slightly different
> aspects of a larger concept, but I'm not quite sure what that would
> be.

I agree. The current article makes DIYbio sound like an affiliation
("DIYbio was founded by Mackenzie Cowell and Jason Bobe.[1] DIYbio is
a network[2] of individuals...").

My sense of biohacking is that biohackers need not partake of the same
network, even if the overlap might be 85%+ at this point. Language
barriers, for example, might make equating the two nonsensical. So I
see a case for separation as well.

I agree with you about biopunk -- it's both an identity and a fiction
genre (and a theme/trope in art as you point out below). Simply
writing in a fiction genre doesn't qualify you for the same identity
-- e.g., William Gibson coined (but hated) the term "cyberpunk" and
described the fictional depiction of cyberspace as an "abomination."
Biopunk cries out for a separate article as well. Maybe two articles
-- you could have a disambiguation page, and have each point to the
other. Admittedly, the last time two biopunk articles were proposed,
it didn't go well:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Biopunk#Split

But with what you say below about biopunk as a term in the plastic
arts and in artistic body modification (if that hasn't since become
yet another full-blown plastic art), maybe the case for a biopunk
split is better than it was. Anyway, I've taken down the "merge" tag
for the biopunk article.

I agree with what you say below about amateur biologists -- some
who've had species named after them might shrink in horror from all
three terms.

Finally, what IS the overarching concept? I can't put my finger on it.
It's not Wikipedia's job to do that anyway.

> * It might be a good idea to keep "Biopunk" as a separate article,
> since it is also a literary genre - something that neither biohacking
> nor DIYBio are.

OK, I've removed the merge tagging.

> ... Personally, I would really like to see this

> literary-genre-thing kept out of the biohacking and DIYBio articles,
> simply because the conflation of fiction and fact in biohacking/DIYBio
> is already enough of a problem (especially in media representations).

Perhaps literary genre could kept to mere mentions. If mentioned in
due proportion, the media might clean up its act a little, since the
media reads Wikipedia too. For example, I've just added "biopunk" and
"DIYbio" in a See Also section for the article on biohacking.

> Suggestion for a change to the Biopunk article: Focus it on the
> literary genre and mention that "biopunk" is sometimes also used to
> denote activities of biohacking (link to biohacking article)?

The biopunk article has a section on biohacking. It's quite small, but
-- being the first section -- also prominent. It links to the
biohacking article. The concerned editors might be persuaded that this
is not good. The article seems to enjoy lively collaboration by
editors who know their craft. They might be only too happy to get any
current confusion shipped off to another article.

> * The DIYBio article isn't that bad the way it is as of today.

Thanks to others here. All I did was remove something problematic,
which is now on the talk page in a form that might germinate a number
of other improvements.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:DIYbio#Questionable_.22Examples.22_section

Please feel free to make suggestions on that page, even if you don't
want to sign up as an editor. (Or are you one already? It looks like
*two* of the people doing the work -- Nathan and Bryan -- are already
named Wikipedia editors, which in my haste I didn't notice at the
time.)

> * The biohacking article is pretty awful indeed. Put in very general
> terms, the changes I'd want to make to that one:

[snip]

Wow. When I have an afternoon free. Or somebody. I've copy-pasted all
that to the Talk page for biohacking and formatted it for itemization.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Biohacking

> * Transhumanism isn't a part of biohacking in the sense of a
> "belongs-to" relation, but it is in the sense of an "overlaps-with"
> relation.

Yes, some of the first inklings of (biological) transhumanism will
entail (where they haven't already) self-experimentation, some of
which might require biohacking in the present sense of term.

> .... I don't see that transhumanism is a big topic in either

> DIYBio or biohacking, but it has come up here on the list, for
> example. Some of the mails sent to this list by someone named
> "Reason", promoting a clearly transhumanist agenda, may serve as
> references.

Well, maybe. To the extent that mailing lists can be used as
references at all. Which depends on how. If Reason represented a
minority opinion, definitely not. If a notable person in DIYbio said
something about this, however, and it was on a mailing list, it might
be within scope for quoting at least. Wikipedia guidelines have had to
evolve in another hacker "genre" - software - under pressure of the
reality that so much of what's definitive goes on in mailing lists.

> And just because I'm in the mood for some nitpicking, some remarks on
> terminology (responding to Bryan):

[snip]

Bryan?

[Nathan McCorkle]

It appears the Biohacking article has gone down the drain, far down...


--
-Nathan