Ed, I very much agree with you. We've all had to learn that questions posted to ccp4bb and the ensuing discussions take on a life of their own. Once one posts a question on ccp4bb, there's no such thing as "steering" the direction of the discussion on the ccp4bb and there's no such thing as the equivalent of screaming "Stop! Stop! Stop!" on the ccp4bb.
Also, I don't believe people simply woke up one day and posted irritating or mean comments to ccp4bb. Ed was spot on for why some folks reacted the way they did to the post so let's acknowledge that as well. I didn't get the impression that any of the replies suggested that students stop posting questions. There are many many students on this BB who are in small institutions without even the minimal help at arm's length and who get tons of help from posting questions to the ccp4bb. That situation is not all that distant in my own memory and I suspect for many other experts on this BB. But posting 10MB attachments and getting the entire ccp4bb community to crowdsource towards problem solving is all good, but only to a certain degree. It may be great to get things done quickly with the collective intellect of the ccp4bb but there comes a point when the correct answers may get fed back at such a rapid speed that if one doesn't go back and try to figure stuff out for oneself, including the reasons/theory/logic behind the answers/solutions that the community has posted, it may be to the detriment of one's own learning, especially if one is in the early stages of learning the subject matter. Cheers, Raji On Thu, Mar 28, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Ed Pozharski <[email protected]>wrote: > On Thu, 2013-03-28 at 12:15 +0000, Tom Van den Bergh wrote: > > I think this is a good time to end the discussion. > > As a general comment, discussions on boards like ccp4bb often digress > and take direction different from you original intent. I may understand > your desire to try to control the situation, but if people on this board > feel that the questions of data sharing, student training, netiquette > and proper choice of resolution cutoff are worthy of further discussion > (that may not have much to do with specifics of your original request > for assistance), it is their right too. > > What may have caused some extra grief is this unfortunate turn of phrase > in your original post > > "Could you try some refinement for me, because this is first structure > that i need to solve as a student and i dont have too many experience > with it." > > It goes a bit beyond the usual "my R-values are too high what should I > do" question and may be instinctively construed as if you expect someone > to actually do your work for you (I am sure that is not what you asked). > So a bit of a vigorous reaction that you received likely results from > misunderstanding your intent (albeit posting your data is very unusual > and strengthens the impression) and perhaps misplaced feeling that you > have abandoned attempts to resolve the problem independently too soon. > I did *not* look at your data and therefore I may be completely wrong > here, but it is my understanding that your actual issue was not > realizing there could be more than one molecule in the asymmetric unit. > > More traditional route is to describe your situation in general terms > and offer to provide data to those willing to take a closer look. > > Cheers, > > Ed. > > > -- > "Hurry up before we all come back to our senses!" > Julian, King of Lemurs > -- Raji Edayathumangalam Instructor in Neurology, Harvard Medical School Research Associate, Brigham and Women's Hospital Visiting Research Scholar, Brandeis University
