[gmx-users] GROMACS Wiki

[David van der Spoel]

Dallas B. Warren wrote:
>> It's a good idea, but I don't think it will help a great 
>> deal. The main 
>> problem with frequently-occurring questions is that the 
>> askers haven't 
>> read the manual, the man pages, the web page, the FAQ or searched the 
>> mailing list archives. In context, a Wiki would just be one 
>> more thing 
>> for them not to read :-) I remember back in December 2005 I 
> 
> Yes, for sure.  And you see that in pretty much any community like this,
> whether is is "professional", "academic" or "hobby".  They all struggle
> with similar issues.
> 
> Suggestion is to provide somewhere that information can be collected
> together by pretty much anyone, distributing the load off the developers
> who have much more important things to be doing.  Like making the code
> faster :-)
> 
>> That said, there are frequently occurring questions whose 
>> answers are in 
>> the above documentation sources, but not easy (or apparently easy) to 
>> find. It would be nice to be able to say when someone couples ions to 
>> temperature baths independently "see 
>> http://www.gromacs.org/wiki/should_i_couple_a_few_ions_to_a_he
>> at_bath". 
>> Also being able to put one's mailing list answer up there straight
> away 
>> would be useful.
> 
> Yes, that is what I was thinking it would help out with.  Common
> question is asked on the emailing list, one of the people who respond,
> writes up a response which can then be added to the wiki, arranged in an
> easy to find location.  Material is easily updated in the future, more
> details added, links to things etc.
> 
> No idea if it would help, but it is a good option out there available.
> There are then all the issues with abuse of the wiki and all those admin
> related things.  But there are ways to fix things like that.
> 
>> It does require someone to take some charge of the organisation of the
> data on it, however.
> 
> Certainly does.  Notice the hand up offering to give back to the GROMACS
> community right here :-)
> 
> Catch ya,
Dallas,

I appreciate your initiative, and certainly development of gromacs would 
be helped by having better online resources. Some time ago we had a 
similar discussion, and there Erik L. argued against splittring of 
information resources, which also is a serious point. The mailing lists 
should remain the main source of communication, however I still think 
there is room for more and better information. As I see it what would be 
needed most is:
- better FAQ
- howtos for different topics
- complete tutorials
- more test sets

In all these things the format is less of an issue than the content. The 
current website runs on Joomla and selected registered users can edit 
parts of it.

Just read Erik's answer (that happens when you run away in the middle of 
writing an email).

Bottom line then is that we'll start something...

-- 
David.
________________________________________________________________________
David van der Spoel, PhD, Assoc. Prof., Molecular Biophysics group,
Dept. of Cell and Molecular Biology, Uppsala University.
Husargatan 3, Box 596,  	75124 Uppsala, Sweden
phone:	46 18 471 4205		fax: 46 18 511 755
spoel at xray.bmc.uu.se	spoel at gromacs.org   http://folding.bmc.uu.se
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