Hi Tim Yes it is web-based. (Their iOS app works pretty well).
Is it slow ? Well it depends. If you consider the situation where a ccp4bb poster has a specific question... "How do I determine the resolution of my data..." On the CCP4BB you get a number of posts of the following types in response: answers (some good, some blatantly incorrect). some arguing some debating somehow a topic about his-tag purification sneaks in with the same subject title, somehow a topic about someone's plans to visit a conference We can all agree that sifting through this information on a mail program is inconvenient, frustrating though sometimes amusing. Wiki-approach: The advantages of the wiki approach is that you don't get redundant information, you can be as comprehensive as you want, you can use hyperlinks to reference for more content, multiple users can edit so there's some content curation. However, the wiki style is not really oriented to questions and answers.. it's subject oriented. If someone were to ask you a question about resolution at a seminar, you don't start with a diatribe of bragg's law and breaking waves on the beach. You start with a simple but comprehensive answer. As the questioner, I have a specific question and I want an answer, hopefully a reliable one. If I want backstory/supporting information, that's fine, but it's secondary to getting a reliable answer. Quora (in its basic sense) focuses on people asking questions and other people providing answers. It uses the 'crowd' (ideally more knowledgeable peers) to determine what answers are 'good' and should be 'upvoted'. You can invite experts (also other 'quorans') to answer specific questions by spending quora credits (which you earn by getting followers to the questions you ask, by providing answers which garner upvotes from other quorans, by answering a question that someone asked you to answer). These mechanisms are used by Quora to curate content, determining what are interesting questions to put on people's feed (those with the most followers), and what are 'good' answers (those with the most upvotes written by reputable people). Can this system be manipulated? Absolutely, but provided you have answers from trusted/known peers, you can have some idea on how good a particular answer is. However, I assume most of us are scientists and are skeptical of any answer given to us. Is this the best solution? Of course not, however, I think Quora might be a competitive solution. Surprisingly, there are NO ADS on quora which tells me that they're early stage or have yet to succumb to investor's expectations, i.e. it's a fun time to be a quoran. (Disclaimer) I don't work for Quora and they don't give me money. Cheers, F On Feb 13, 2014, at 1:19 PM, Tim Gruene <t...@shelx.uni-ac.gwdg.de> wrote: > Dear Francis, > > could you elaborate how something like Quora (what is it) would save you > time compared to en email based? From what I gathered at wikipedia, > Quora is web based, and in my experience web based services usually > follow Wirth's law: they are slooooow. > > Cheers, > Tim --------------------------------------------- Francis E. Reyes PhD 215 UCB University of Colorado at Boulder ----------------------------------------------
