Talk:Letter to Science about wikifying genome information
Contents
Suggestions from GMOD call
- Emphasize that the onus is on the community, not on Genbank
- Other things that would aid community annotation via journal article structured tagging (beyond scope of this letter?)
- Look at WikiPathways
- Bioinformaticians should try to build things for the community
- Discussion of wysiwyg/rtf editing.
Signing support?
Where do signatures of support go? I am confused about 'signing off on the letter' and the list of authors... If I want to show my support, where should I sign? --Dan 04:22, 10 April 2008 (CDT)
- I added my name to the list of signatories - I realize this may not be appropriate, as I am not really a contributor to EcoliWiki. Please remove me if this is the case. --Dan 10:49, 10 April 2008 (CDT)
The key point of the letter...
The key point of the letter seems to boil down to the following statement:
"David Lipman’s fears that "It would be chaos" are widely shared. These fears need to be balanced, however, by recognition that the expertise of individual curators is unlikely to encompass the collective, albeit intermittently applied, expertise of the larger scientific community (including the 250 signers of the Bidartondo et al. letter)."
However, the above sentence is very bloated, leading to the key point of the letter (if I surmise correctly) being lost in a sea of syntax and clauses. I see that this sentence in particular has been highly edited in the page history, which suggests that it is indeed a key sentence.
How about...
"David Lipman's fears that "It would be chaos" are widely shared. However, we believe that these fears should be balanced by recognizing the fact that the expertise of an individual curator is unlikely to fully encompass the collective expertise of the larger scientific community."
I asked my wife to check the above version (she studied English at University). She has corrected the grammar (pluralizations etc.) so the above version is 'proper English' (FWIW).
The "we believe" part makes it clearer that this is indeed the key point of the letter.
I think the "albeit intermittently applied" clause is covered later in the paper with the sentence "So far, the biggest problem is not chaos, but lack of participation", which is perhaps the second key point of the paper.
The "(including the 250 signers of the Bidartondo et al. letter)" clause is redundant IMHO.
- Actually this number fits into a sentence near the end of the paper... I realise the significance of this number better now, so having it at the end is not optimal... Still, overall I feel it looks good. --Dan 16:46, 10 April 2008 (CDT)
I guess I'll 'be bold' and stick my version in ... this is wiki after all ;-)
--Dan 10:20, 10 April 2008 (CDT)
- Indeed. Your changes are appreciated, Dan. --JimHu 01:04, 12 April 2008 (CDT)
"support an arms length relationship"?
I don't like this phrase... I am not sure why... it seems that it isn't a very precise term, and therefore should be avoided. I read this wikipedia:Arm's length principle, but it didn't help convince me that the phrase is being used correctly - in fact it seems that this precise usage is in fact incorrect in the current context. For example, "A simple example [of an arm's-length transaction] is the sale of real property from parents to children." What has that got to do with one site linking another?
I am not so sure about this relatively minor point, and I can't think of a more precise way to say what is implied, so I am not making any changes. Just a point for discussion. --Dan 10:55, 10 April 2008 (CDT)
Any news?
I guess I am too impatient ;-)
- --Dan 04:14, 28 April 2008 (CDT)
