Re: Nature: A call for a public gene Wiki

Matthew Cockerill wrote:
> Adding comments does not provide the same motivation as updating the 
> core data.

I guess it doesn't, though I think this would already be much better than a 
feedback form, as far as immediacy and motivation are concerned.

The problem with expecting people to update the core data is that this can 
be quite difficult, at least for anything beyond fixing spelling errors. 
Let's say you are looking at the page for some protein you are familiar 
with, e.g. http://expasy.org/uniprot/P00750. You notice that something you 
know is missing (e.g. pathway). But before you can do anything, you need to 
know:

1. Can this kind of data even be added?
2. If yes, where does it go? What fields do I need to use?
3. What conventions are there? Spelling, use of synonyms etc.

Even if we managed to create some kind of annotation wizard that walked you 
through the entire process step by step, the process would still be far 
more cumbersome and time consuming than editing an article in Wikipedia. I 
wonder how many people would still bother?

What we would probably end up with is a single Wiki section for each 
database entry, where people can add free text content. But in this case 
you might as well have a separate Wiki, right?

Received on Wednesday, 8 February 2006 22:29:19 UTC