On 10/7/06,
Edward d'Auvergne <
edward@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Alex, thank you for such a clear and concise description of the CSA
nomenclature, (https://mail.gna.org/public/relax-users/2006-10/msg00020.html
,
Message-id: <481156b20610060807v768437bcw2d58f620652c1a0a@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>),
that was awesome! I was talking to Andrew Perry and he mentioned that
the information content of a number of posts to these lists was of
such a high standard, Alex's CSA description/tutorial being a prime
example, that it would be useful to collate all the information into a
static web page (at
http://nmr-relax.com), possibly in the form of a
FAQ. Alex, would you mind if your post was to used in such a way?
I've started this new thread on relax-devel so that we can discuss
Andrew's idea. A few questions/points I have are:
I wouldn't mind at all. I was thinking, why couldn't it be a sort of NMR wiki where any and everyone can contribute their particular expertise and it can grow to be something very thorough. We could keep a list of topics we'd like people to create/update and could even ask groups to contribute if they'd like. That's what I had thought about anyways.
1. Is a FAQ (frequently asked questions) page the best option? Does
anyone have an opinion or suggestion for an alternative name for the
page? It could however be a FAQ split into sections such as 'running
relax', 'NMR theory', etc.
2. Licence.
The new web page should be placed under some free documentation
licence. This could be the GNU Free Documentation License
(http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or maybe one of the Creative
Commons licences (http://creativecommons.org/icense/?format=text
). As
an example I've created a skeleton HTML file for the FAQ web page at
http://www.nmr-relax.com/faq.html with the HTML code required for the
"Creative Commons Attribution
2.5 License" (it may take a few hours
for the page to appear on the site).
The text of the messages sent to the relax mailing lists is the
property of the person who sent it. For the addition of any
information to the web page, permission from the original author to
licence the text under the chosen licence will probably be necessary.
They could be asked on the list and then their response will be the
written permission (if positive).
3. Attribution.
The web pages you see at http://nmr-relax.com are stored in a CVS
repository (see https://gna.org/cvs/?group=relax
). The original
author of text should be named in the commit log file when the change
occurs.
I personally believe that names should not be added to the web page.
The reason is because the page will become messy as the text evolves
and entries are modified and expanded. People other than the original
author may make significant contributions to an entry. But then there
will be the question of what is significant enough to warrant
inclusion as an author. And what if the editor of the HTML code makes
significant changes? How do you define significant? Because of all
the scales of grey involved, it would be best to avoid these
situations by not having names on the page.
In a wiki format, it would be understood that it's open source/ free information and thus would require no authorship. I haven't worked on one myself, but it would be easy to ask people who know more about them.
Although the names of the original authors will not be visible on the
page, their names will be forever stored in the CVS repository of the
nmr-relax.com web pages. We could add some text at the bottom of the
page which says something like: "The text of this page has been
written by multiple authors. The original text can be found in the
archives of the relax mailing lists. See
http://www.nmr-relax.com/communication.html."
4. Links.
Do you think links to the original post should be included? This
would be a form of attribution for the author, the viewer will be able
to then easily find out who wrote the original text. Again this could
become quite messy after a time.
I think the FAQ/wiki should be stand alone. If someone posts something valuable, you could simply encourage him/her to contribute that to the FAQ/wiki/etc.
5. Editor of the web page.
Should the web page be a free for all where everyone makes changes, or
should there be a single person who makes the changes? The benefit of
a single person looking after the page is that the formatting,
English, etc, would be consistent. This would result in the viewer
having a much better user experience.
I think the benefit of it being a wiki would be that everyone is the contriubtor and the editor. Someone would likely be necessary to check it regularly and protect against spam/vandalism but if other wiki's on the internet are any evidence, things tend to work out in the end. Worst case scenario, if it becomes problematic, updates could be sent through one person as you suggest.
Those are my thoughts. I hope they're useful.
Alex H
Re: The collation of information from the mailing lists into a static web page.