Hi,
Say, what do people think about the idea of creating a PyMOL Wiki to hold
nuggets of information like this? Or is there a better alternative to
Wiki now available?
I (still) think it's a great idea, and bet it would serve as an
indispensible resource to both novice and seasoned PyMOLers! I'm not
sure about a better alternative to the wiki-style model of
information/content-management, but of course there are many flavors of
wiki available since the original WikiWikiWeb
("http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?";)... examples include MediaWiki
("http://wikipedia.sourceforge.net/";, which powers the Wikipedia site at
http://wikipedia.org/); a largely successful Perl-based one known as
TWiki ("http://www.twiki.org/";); and a Python-based one known as ZWiki
("http://www.zwiki.org";). This latter one is currently being used to
power a local Zwiki within our group at UCSD (restricted to our
intranet, or else I'd point to it as an example), and it's underlying
Python base is something called Zope (http://zope.org/). You may be
familiar with Zope in the context of the trendy Plone content management
system (http://plone.org/).
Should the Wiki be free for everyone, or limited to PyMOL sponsors? If
DELSCI spends time and money on a Wiki, then we would pretty much have to
limit it to sponsors in order to complete the value cycle. But then
everyone else would get left out, losing the participation of the broader
community, and the Wiki would be much less useful and effective. That's why
I haven't done this yet.
On the other hand, if the Wiki is open to everyone, it may generate lots of
bandwidth, management, and hosting expenses. We must have a plan for paying
those bills. DELSCI would certainly help, but we might need a dedicated
Wiki hosting fund if this effort really took off.
Going with my usual knee-jerk response, I think that it should be free
to everyone. That's the essential point of a wiki, and is in fact the
best way to ensure its success as a genuinely useful tool. It's true
that it'll likely involve lots of bandwith and expense in terms of
networking resources, but I don't think that it would require too much
as far as management. (The disclaimer on all this is that I'm speaking
from experiences based solely on working w/ ZWiki and minor skirmishes
with TWiki!) Also, it would presumably lighten a lot of the load on
(but not replace ;-) ) the pymol-users mailing list, perhaps freeing-up
some hardware and personnel resources that could be dedicated to wiki
management. (The disclaimer on this is that I've never managed a
mailing list, so this may be a naive opinion!)
1. Are hosting costs (time & money) the reason why no one has started an
independent PyMOL Wiki yet?
I've considered it, but simply haven't had time to dedicate to it.
2. Are there any good free or inexpensive locations for hosting a secure
high-performance Wiki?
Good question...
3. How much administration is involved in running a (potentially)
heavily-used Wiki server? (Assuming that 1,000-10,000+ people immediately
began using this resource as their primary PyMOL reference resource).
I think this'll primarily be a drain on hardware/networking resources,
not so much on human administration. But, then again, I've never been
involved in being an admin for something of that scale (the roughly
30-50 users who access our group's wiki hardly compares!), so I could be
entirely mistaken. Also, as mentioned above my admin-friendly
experiences have been limited to ZWiki.
4. Is this sort of thing best administered by volunteers or by paid
professionals?
Both -- perhaps some initial scouting and testing of it would best be
done by volunteers in order to see if it's something that lots of ppl
are really going to seem to use, and then once that seems to be the case
(i.e., it grows out of control) I think it's better left to paid
professionals.
5. Is there another software project with a successful Wiki that we could
learn from?
None immediately spring to mind, but many of the Wiki projects provide
catalogs of sites using their wiki software -- e.g., MediaWiki's list of
"Sites using MediaWiki"
(http://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Sites_using_MediaWiki), infoAnarchy's
list (http://www.infoanarchy.org/wiki/index.php/Wikis), etc...
6. If the effort is going to be volunteer in nature, then does anyone have a
suitable server with a FAT pipe that could be backed up remotely by us?
Heh... I don't think RoadRunner would be happy if I further taxed the
slim pipe they provide for uploads! :-)
=== pymol-users-requ...@lists.sourceforge.net wrote (on 02/07/2005 08:20
PM): ===
Subject:
[PyMOL] Documentation / Wiki Brain Storming
From:
"Warren DeLano" <war...@delanoscientific.com>
Date:
Mon, 7 Feb 2005 17:44:15 -0800
To:
"'Sabuj Pattanayek'" <sabuj.pattana...@vanderbilt.edu>,
<pymol-users@lists.sourceforge.net>
Is there some kind of pymol
startup switch or environment variable to disable loading
into a stereo window?
Use the -M startup option (forces a mono OpenGL graphics context). Is this
documented anywhere? Hmm no.
Say, what do people think about the idea of creating a PyMOL Wiki to hold
nuggets of information like this? Or is there a better alternative to
Wiki now available?
DeLano Scientific LLC has exactly zero experience in this area, so we need
some advice and help on how to do this right...if at all.
Should the Wiki be free for everyone, or limited to PyMOL sponsors? If
DELSCI spends time and money on a Wiki, then we would pretty much have to
limit it to sponsors in order to complete the value cycle. But then
everyone else would get left out, losing the participation of the broader
community, and the Wiki would be much less useful and effective. That's why
I haven't done this yet.
On the other hand, if the Wiki is open to everyone, it may generate lots of
bandwidth, management, and hosting expenses. We must have a plan for paying
those bills. DELSCI would certainly help, but we might need a dedicated
Wiki hosting fund if this effort really took off.
If you are a Wiki expert and can provide some on advice on this, please
speak up!
1. Are hosting costs (time & money) the reason why no one has started an
independent PyMOL Wiki yet?
2. Are there any good free or inexpensive locations for hosting a secure
high-performance Wiki?
3. How much administration is involved in running a (potentially)
heavily-used Wiki server? (Assuming that 1,000-10,000+ people immediately
began using this resource as their primary PyMOL reference resource).
4. Is this sort of thing best administered by volunteers or by paid
professionals?
5. Is there another software project with a successful Wiki that we could
learn from?
6. If the effort is going to be volunteer in nature, then does anyone have a
suitable server with a FAT pipe that could be backed up remotely by us?
Cheers,
Warren
--
Warren L. DeLano, Ph.D.
Principal Scientist
. DeLano Scientific LLC
. 400 Oyster Point Blvd., Suite 213
. South San Francisco, CA 94080
. Biz:(650)-872-0942 Tech:(650)-872-0834
. Fax:(650)-872-0273 Cell:(650)-346-1154
. mailto:war...@delsci.com
