By coincidence this just landed in my Inbox:

http://membercentral.aaas.org/multimedia/webinars/how-recruit-citizen-scientists-discovery

So maybe after all Tom is way ahead of the rest of us in his
structure-solving strategy - though I agree with others that his tactics
need to be honed somewhat!

Cheers

-- Ian


On 28 March 2013 14:43, Raji Edayathumangalam <[email protected]> wrote:

> 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
>
>

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