Talk:Main Page

Shared Resources

• I'm trying to figure out what we want these pages to be. I think the Materials page is good in that it outlines recipes and info for things that most labs use. However, the Endy lab restriction enzyme list is there. Does this belong here? I think we want some easy way for people to find out if another lab has a restriction enzyme (or other material) they need in a pinch, but realistically you aren't going to go to another institution to borrow it. Same goes for (most) equipment. Also, I noticed some of the computing resources are MIT-specific. Does it make sense to separate some of these resources onto institute-specific pages to clean things up a bit?--Kathleen 16:36, 2 Dec 2005 (EST)

Lab Listings

• The list for labs on the front page is getting a little long. I was wondering what people would think if we removed from the front page those labs that are still just developing their wiki. I think this would highlight those labs that are participitating a lot, while still giving an opportunity for labs still getting off the ground. What do people think? --Sri Kosuri 15:55, 7 Nov 2005 (EST)

• So at what point does a lab earn the "right" to be featured on the front page, and can a lab be removed if they don't meet their "quota" of edits? How many pipet points do I need to accumulate to get my personal page linked on the front page? Maybe a better solution would be to have institutions/universities linked on the front page and links to individual lab pages on institution/university-specific pages. Potentially, "free agents" (or those not specifically associated with a particular lab) could also be included on the institution/university page. This would give some current "orphans" a home so others can find their pages and should help to clean up the front page a bit. --Kathleen 20:59, 7 Nov 2005 (EST)
  • I like that idea (institution home pages) in the long term, however I wonder if there is enough mass to create portals for each school currently. I think sharing the same space is also useful for encouraging contributing to shared resources. That said, it is a little crowded, I think we could at least require that labs have an actual wiki to be linked to from the homepage (rather than just a link to their lab website). --JK

• I actually think the current format is great. It doesn't seem crowded at all to me and I'd rather be able to see all the labs at a glance. If someone wants to make it multiple columns to even it out a bit with the other ones, then that could increase aesthetics. The idea of linking to university pages is unnecessary at this point, although having a page for each university could still be useful. I also agree that linking to labs that don't even have a page on the wiki seems a bit silly (seems to be 2 such labs at this point). --Austin 09:16, 8 Nov 2005 (EST)

I am removing the links off the frontpage to offsite webpages. Even putting up something as simple as the Hu Lab site will be sufficient for now to have front page access. --Sri Kosuri 06:29, 26 Nov 2005 (EST)

• The list of groups on the main page is already pretty long, and the current format is likely to get unwieldy as new labs (like ours!) are added. It also relies heavily on name recognition (i.e., "I am looking for the Silver Lab") and is not very conducive to searching for particular types of information (i.e., "I am looking for resources related to Systems Biology"). How about breaking it up into "Labs by Institution" and "Labs by Research Interest". Here is an example (Categories would link to a page listing labs and other resources that fit):

Labs by Institution

Harvard

IISc, Bangalore

MIT

Texas A&M

UC Berkeley

University of Chicago

University of Delaware

UI Urbana-Champaign

UT Austin

Labs by Research Interest

Cell Biology

Synthetic Biology

Systems Biology

Protein Structure and Function

RNA Structure and Function

Biological Chemistry

etc

Dstrick 12:39, 16 December 2005 (EST)

• Hey Stuart, this is a great idea. Check out the Main Page v2 site maybe you (and others) could start making those changes there. --Sri Kosuri 14:57, 16 December 2005 (EST)

OWW Description

I started a discussion on the ideas page to discuss possible changes to the description at the top of the page. Please post your comments there. --Sri Kosuri 17:50, 17 Sep 2005 (EDT)

OpenWetWare Front Page

I think this page has all kinds of awesome uses. We should try and make it good enough that other labs use this as their day-to-day front page and their "lab" front page is just for the rest of the world to see what they are up to. Some ideas:

1. help section
   • points to info for getting started on editing the wiki
2. groups section
   • lists the various front pages of the participating groups
3. shared technical stuff
   • protocols, equip, strains, etc.
4. news section
   • place to post announcements, i.e. "4 new papers from Sauer lab here are the links", "we added a new group check out the BioEnergy page they want new members!", that sort of thing.

Basically if we set the standard of a shared front door (back door?) we are way more likely to get collaborations. --Jasonk 20:20, 22 Jun 2005 (EDT)

Reorganization

We are going to reorganize this page. This is going to become a replacement for the lab website. The overall structure is going to be place at Main Page v2. Here where ideas for the new structure of our Wiki are being discussed.

World-Writable

We're trying to decide whether or not to make this wiki world-writable (it is currently only world-readable). If you have any strong feelings or thoughts on this matter, please let us know.

After much discussion, we decided on the following plan. We are going to continue to make the wiki writable to registered members of the MIT community. After population of things such as the protocols section and other information, we will move towards making a sister site that will be world writable.

Thanks for your patience.