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FQXi BLOGS
CATEGORY: Blog
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TOPIC: Constructive Suggestions for Improving the FQXi Community Page
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FQXi welcomes your constructive suggestions for how we may improve our Community website. Thank you!
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Hi,
I love the articles here and this site is obviously growing. Perfect for the informed non-scientist who reads a lot.
Where do I register? I looked all over the forums, which only let non-members post where there already is a message.
Keep up the good work!
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Hi Kirsten,
I think the fqxi community site has real potential, being sponsored by an organization that focuses on foundational issues which are important but largely outside the mainstream of "hot topic" research. That motivates my comments...
It seems the crucial question that must be answered before any other is: Who forms the community; what is the target audience? I think you will come to very different conclusions about what improvements are needed if you want to use the site primarily for outreach to an intelligent general audience of lay people, versus making it a site that is oriented toward discussions among active researchers. Currently, the emphasis seems to be on an interested general audience.
If you want to attract a general audience, then it seems worthwhile to look at popular science blogs like "Bad Astronomy" (Phil Plait) and Cosmicvariance. Regular posts (surely more than one per week), with an appropriate mix of information and controversy, together with a simple way for visitors to respond, seem to generate a following. When dealing with foundational issues, there is usually no clear right or wrong viewpoint, so controversy should be easy to generate. Along with this there could be a sidebar of quick news items (with links for more information), links to other organizations, active fqxi members, and reference materials for further study. I think it would help to give a more unified appearance to the main page by having the feature articles, which are now available only in PDF form, be in HTML so that all kinds of contributions have the same format; continuing to have a separate PDF seems very reasonable, but it should be optional from a visitor's standpoint.
If you want something more oriented toward active researchers, then the blog model may or may not be optimal. At a minimum, there would need to be some technically oriented discussion topics and a facility for incorporating equations into comments (ideally in a LaTeX-like form, since LaTeX is what people use to write technical papers). Probably, an attempt to create an open forum where active research topics are heavily discussed as in a collaborative effort would not be very successful; it would likely be too inefficient, and researchers would be wary about having their ideas "stolen," or even showing how far they have progressed on a topic (and thus risk getting "scooped"). But it seems that a forum could still be created that would facilitate discussions of ideas and general technical issues, posting news, and offering each other suggestions for interesting papers and other resources to look at. Ideally there would be a way for potential contributors (not just fqxi members) to register so that they could post topics of their own. My guess is that discussion in a technical forum would require less moderation than in a general forum.
Regardless of the target audience, it seems unlikely that a single site administrator would have the time to do everything herself. So, some thought would be needed to make it mostly self-administering by providing enough facilities that participants can act at least semi-autonomously. The needed moderation of comments would probably need to be done by the administrator. Again, successful blogs can probably provide guiding examples.
It might be tempting to try to accommodate both groups, but I don't think that is likely to be successful unless there are two separate forums. The needs, wants, and level of discussion seem too different. Personally, I think fqxi can make a bigger contribution by facilitating discussions among active researchers than providing a blog for a general audience. Foundational issues are not easy or obvious, and researchers seem to be somewhat scattered, so fqxi could play a useful role in bringing people together if the right kind of forum can be created, one which is flexible and unobtrusive enough. Facilitating useful discussions among researchers also seems more likely to lead to the kind of progress that fits the fqxi mission than popular discussion. I'm *not* arguing against public outreach, since I think that is very important; it's just that perhaps general public participation shouldn't be the main focus.
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It's a fine site for a worthy organization. In terms of suggestions, I would enjoy the articles more if they were moved a slight bit higher on the "difficulty" scale, while still being accessible for the eductated and interested layperson. This is a site which is interesting to people who really want to engage the hard problems.
Best regards,
- Steve Esser
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P.S. I'm sorry for the unintentional humor of misspelling "educated"! Last suggestion: add a "preview" window for comments:)
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yeah, why do you approve garbage posts?? for examples, see some of the blog entries for one of Garrett Lisi's posts 'Pieces of 8'? i was having a lot of fun reading all the discussions from different scientists to Dr. Lisi, but now, at least one of the blogs for E8 is full of trash comments that were approved. really disappointing to see this kind of stuff pemeating science blogs. also, Lisi hasn't commented in a long time - guess he's busy, but someone should still remove the obvious garbage. i only have a masters in math and i can easily tell what's trash and what isn't!
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