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Like any community site there is a serious chicken and egg problem. Even more so in academia where there is a very engrained sense that research and discussion
by jpallen 16y ago
Like any community site there is a serious chicken and egg problem. Even more so in academia where there is a very engrained sense that research and discussion should happen behind closed doors. I can't imagine academics wanting to discuss their opinions too openly for fear of it coming back to damage their reputation later. If you could foster an academic community which was more open it would have a positive effect on the whole of academia, but then we're talking about changing an institution not just building a community.
I notice that you have made a point of being able to change the anonymity of a comment at any time. I think this is one way to help with fear of damaging reputation so good job with that.
I've got quite a few thoughts on the problem and ideas to go about tackling these issues. I don't know if they'll ever come to anything, but I'd love to bounce them around with people working in this area. My email address is in my profile if you'd like to chat.
- kvh 16y agoI agree on all your points. This is my attempt at getting a foot in the door--focusing on computer scientists, who have proven more open to these kind of changes; keeping things anonymous but attributable; making the site useful (hopefully) to practitioners and folks outside of academia, etc. We'll see if it is enough. I'd love to hear your ideas, I'll definitely follow up with an email. Thanks.
- _delirium 16y agoEven more so in academia where there is a very engrained sense that research and discussion should happen behind closed doors. I can't imagine academics wanting to discuss their opinions too openly for fear of it coming back to damage their reputation later. There's an increasing amount of it happening, but in a fairly decentralized way (which isn't necessarily a bad thing), organized around various researchers' blogs. Certain areas have slightly more centralized community-hub type discussion forums as well, like Lambda the Ultimate for programming languages research.
- lutorm 16y agoin academia where there is a very engrained sense that research and discussion should happen behind closed doors That has not been my experience. You must be in a different academy than I am.
- jpallen 16y agoYes, different fields will have different styles. Perhaps my language was too strong but I meant that people generally don't like to publish (make public) their current research ideas until they have something well formed and complete.