|
|
Post by Anna on Apr 26, 2016 4:51:11 GMT
First an aside: jseering, regarding "why are we trying to create more collaborative work online in the first place? Innovation is cool I guess."--Actually, that was kind of my first thought with all of this week's readings. Been feeling kind of anti-collaboration/innovation/optimization recently. Feeling that we can sometimes (often?) miss out on a lot of personal gain and self-fulfillment by ignoring our own gus and instead ever seeking the wisdom of others/the crowd. I wonder what is the authors had chosen a subreddit, or a Slack channel, or a Github repo, or a wikipedia page as the basis for their community project. What would have been gained or lost? I'd like to hear others thoughts. Okay, but that said, to respond to sciutoalex 's idea of using a non-blogging online venue for the project--I'm really not familiar with Reddit, but thoughts on Slack, Github and Wikipedia: Slack: I think the channels feature could also be really useful in terms of organizing content, but then it could quickly get confusing as to where to post content, even for more experienced users. (Eg for a much simpler example, I often am not sure where to post in the two Slack channels I'm a part of-- random vs general vs literature vs event, for example?). I think there might be some purposeful occlusion as well-- eg maybe experts start a channel and only invite other experts to the channel. Though, maybe this wouldn't be a bad thing. Github: I think this might actually be the best option? I think if anything, there could be some design improvements to Github to make the whole experience in general a little more user-friendly. I think steps have already been made to improve this. For example, I think the Mac GUI is already pretty straightforward and easy to use. (Though I also have only barely used Github, so I'm not a great source). Wikipedia: Hm, I guess I don't know yet how valuable the arguments are-- I suppose that would be the main difference b/t Github and Wikipedia. I think in some ways it would be less intimidating for novices to make changes to Github, because the discussion pages might make the amount of knowledge needed to participate seem overwhelmingly large. (?) |
|
|
|
Post by stdang on Apr 26, 2016 5:07:37 GMT
Q1: The advantages outlined by Gowers are applicable to sciences and other fields as well. Why do you think we don't see online collaborations for other academic fields?
I wonder if the nature of math makes it more conducive for a more centralized collaborative forum. In math, the objective is to identify higher levels of abstraction for any given class of problems and then to establish some algorithm to solve the problems. This has lead to the identification of a limited set of problems that are largely holy grails of mathematics and welcome the collaborative intellect to attempt to solve them. On the other hand, many other fields are more prone to increasing diversification and segmentation. Science and engineering disciplines are interested in looking for more data within specific contexts and being able to characterize and understand the phenomena that explains and/or utilizes the data. This natural segmentation incentives individuals to leverage the work of others but also to carve their own niche out in the growing wealth of knowledge.
|
|
|
|
Post by anhong on Apr 26, 2016 6:25:17 GMT
Q1: The advantages outlined by Gowers are applicable to sciences and other fields as well. Why do you think we don't see online collaborations for other academic fields?
There are other crowdsourcing applications that are really successful and are helping with other scientific fields. For example, Fold.It helps with decrypting protein structures for biology. GalaxyZoo helps with labeling the universe for astronomy. However, those projects do not require users to have expertise in that area, and tasks are decomposed into micro tasks. For expert crowd collaboration, I think research projects such as the Flash Teams are beginning to transform how we test ideas quickly, without huge investments to start, similar to the idea of Amazon Web Servers to boost the productivity of startup companies.
The problems we see from the Polymath project is also common in other online collaboration projects such as Wikipedia. Newcomers are very hard to understand the long edit and discussion history to make new contribution. A better workflow or visualization could help with these problems.
|
|
|
|
Post by xuwang on Apr 26, 2016 6:44:46 GMT
I agree with steven that the nature of math may make it for conducive for collaboration. I think this could apply to problem solving which group members know there's a definite solution, but for more fields, collaboration may not mean to solve a problem, and people don't even know whether there's a solution. For example, the examples given in the turktopia study paper, where people are asked to write an essay, or come up with a plan (more complicated ones), this kind of collaboration may be harder, because the goal is unclear. And I would assume the leader will play a more important role in this kind of collaboration.
And for the problem with newcomers, it's usually hard to welcome newcomers into a new community. I think probably for these projects, existing members or leaders could design some simple tasks which newcomers are able to do to help newcomers get involved.
|
|
|
|
Post by judithodili on Apr 26, 2016 8:35:24 GMT
RE: Why do you think we don't see online collaborations for other academic fields?
I'm not sure this is necessarily true. Computer programming for example has platforms like stack overflow - nowadays you can pretty much learn anything you want about computer programming without stepping foot into a class... I'm pretty sure it's the same for at least some types of medicine. For fields where nothing is set in stone, and things are always evolving, I generally expect a large online presence.
RE: Is it true collaboration? The threads are limited to 100 comments, which forces the participants to build from previous comments (also evidenced by referencing of earlier comments). In contrast with the Linux project where a larger group contributes to the project without necessarily having to follow the ongoing thread (or active branch in development terms).
Absolutely - the platform can certainly be improved, but it is collaboration nonetheless.
RE: Entry barrier for newcomers is not a new challenge. Have you seen such a problem in your research area? If so, what are some common approaches to solving such a problem?
I don't think I buy this "barrier for newcomers" at least in HCI, people generally go to their particular research areas, and I feel like we know each other through papers/conferences anyway so I feel like it should all feel "familiar".
|
|
Qian
New Member
Posts: 20 
|
Post by Qian on Apr 26, 2016 10:05:47 GMT
RE: Why do you think we don't see online collaborations for other academic fields? I'm not sure this is necessarily true. Computer programming for example has platforms like stack overflow - nowadays you can pretty much learn anything you want about computer programming without stepping foot into a class... I'm pretty sure it's the same for at least some types of medicine. For fields where nothing is set in stone, and things are always evolving, I generally expect a large online presence. There are many more convincing example of successful collaborative problem-solving in academic fields, i.e. stack overflow and github. I also believe that they share many of the phenomenons and problems reported in these paper. I wonder how and why other less successful platforms failed -- "Design lessons" identified in this paper, forums, site wikis and thread limits, are fairly common in today's online space. Do they really promise crowd-sourcing success?? |
|
|
|
Post by Amy on Apr 28, 2016 13:01:30 GMT
Barriers to Entry:
I don't think Joseph's solution of not letting new members post will be beneficial in the long run. If new members aren't allowed to do anything, why will they stay? How will they become invested in the community? I'm interested in Jocelyn's idea of mentoring and small tasks. There has to be some sort of environment set up where new members can learn the community norms without being afraid to "fail", or at least where the established community members aren't worried about them "failing"
|
|
|
|
Post by mrivera on Apr 29, 2016 14:48:45 GMT
To Cole's point: "Paul Graham came to Pittsburgh a few weeks ago to speak at an innovation summit and said something like "You don't get innovation by hosting innovation summits." I wonder if that is true online as well." I don't think I agree with that claim. Innovation can come through people with diverse expertise and interests coming together and sharing ideas. Clever ideas aren't always produced by closed off communities >  |
|
