4 ms·

The things I talked about all involve heavy peer-review, from a much wider audience instead of a few academic referees. Academic papers are definitely not good

The things I talked about all involve heavy peer-review, from a much wider audience instead of a few academic referees. Academic papers are definitely not good learning materials, unless one is already familiar with the subject area. You would be hugely irresponsible if your taught a class simply by pointing your students to academic papers. By contrast, for the sorts of projects I listed, there is more structure on the background for understanding a particular document, and even without explicit structure, hyperlinks make the entire mass of content easier to navigate and teach yourself with, instead of having to spend minutes digging out a reference. This is from personal experience of reading both academic papers and working with those sorts of projects, though granted I have more in the latter. Good tools lower the cost of creating good documentation, meaning that more positive incentives can have higher priority. If current tools are "fine" then the OP would have used them to publish a paper instead of writing a series of blog posts.

javert 13y ago
> The things I talked about all involve heavy peer-review, from a much wider audience instead of a few academic referees. The academic peer review process basically curates the literature by filtering out the majority of submitted papers, which often are low quality, cover something already done, etc. So, it's somewhat a different beast. More importantly, though, > Academic papers are definitely not good learning materials, unless one is already familiar with the subject area. That's right, because a lot of the cutting-edge research is really hard stuff that takes years of study to really understand. The point isn't to educate, it's to advance the knowledge of a small group (other researchers) that specilizes in a narrow area. Hopefully, those people (or their students) will eventually distill that knowledge into something usable by others (e.g. software). The point _can't_ be to educate (in general), because the stuff is just too hard. That's just the way research is. (If it's good research.) I don't think the OP's experiences are typical: He needed to publish blogs because his work had immediate impact. That is rare overall in academia, including in CS. Most of the good work that is done will _eventually_ end up in a product, but it will take time. But it's worth noting that the OP _also_ publishes papers. Really don't think there is a tool problem there, though there is always room for improvement.
- infinity0 13y ago
  > The academic peer review process basically curates the literature I don't know why you keep talking about the academic peer review process. The things I mentioned have their own peer review processes too and it's for the same purpose as you said. > The point isn't to educate, it's to advance the knowledge of a small group (other researchers) that specilizes in a narrow area. This is a poor excuse, and from experience, quite insincere. Nearly everyone links to academic papers in non-academic settings as "references" to communicate with a wider audience, and nearly no-one re-writes an academic paper afterwards for it to be more understandable. > the stuff is just too hard Nothing is "too hard". I can understand RFCs perfectly fine, even an RFC that I have completely no background in. I cannot say the same thing for academic papers. > Most of the good work that is done will _eventually_ end up in a product, but it will take time. This is also just wrong. You seem to be blindly asserting that academic papers somehow magically get turned into documentation that is more easily understood by a wider audience. This requires either academics to re-write their own papers (this nearly never happens), or for someone non-academic (like me) to come along, understand the paper, then re-write it. My entire topic in this thread has been that the latter is grossly ineffective, and that other avenues are much more effective, but unfortunately not used in the academic world.
  - deleted 13y ago
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  - nooneelse 13y ago
    > ... and nearly no-one re-writes an academic paper afterwards for it to be more understandable. Survey papers would seem to fill that role. They are a useful step for information moving from being on the research frontier to being in a textbook.
  - javert 13y ago
    I produce academic papers for a living, and when you call me "insincere" for claiming that the audience of these papers is other experts in an extremely narrow field, you're just proving that you're not listening to me. > Nothing is "too hard". Well, lots of things are too hard for me. I don't read papers in quantum physics, biochemistry, or pretty much any specialized field of science. And I don't even try to read papers outside of my subfield. Because I don't have the years of expertise necessary to understand them. That's just the way the world works. Things are hard. > You seem to be blindly asserting that academic papers somehow magically get turned into documentation No, I didn't say that they get turned into documentation. Go look at what I said.

javert 13y ago

> The things I talked about all involve heavy peer-review, from a much wider audience instead of a few academic referees. The academic peer review process basically curates the literature by filtering out the majority of submitted papers, which often are low quality, cover something already done, etc. So, it's somewhat a different beast. More importantly, though, > Academic papers are definitely not good learning materials, unless one is already familiar with the subject area. That's right, because a lot of the cutting-edge research is really hard stuff that takes years of study to really understand. The point isn't to educate, it's to advance the knowledge of a small group (other researchers) that specilizes in a narrow area. Hopefully, those people (or their students) will eventually distill that knowledge into something usable by others (e.g. software). The point _can't_ be to educate (in general), because the stuff is just too hard. That's just the way research is. (If it's good research.) I don't think the OP's experiences are typical: He needed to publish blogs because his work had immediate impact. That is rare overall in academia, including in CS. Most of the good work that is done will _eventually_ end up in a product, but it will take time. But it's worth noting that the OP _also_ publishes papers. Really don't think there is a tool problem there, though there is always room for improvement.

infinity0 13y ago
> The academic peer review process basically curates the literature I don't know why you keep talking about the academic peer review process. The things I mentioned have their own peer review processes too and it's for the same purpose as you said. > The point isn't to educate, it's to advance the knowledge of a small group (other researchers) that specilizes in a narrow area. This is a poor excuse, and from experience, quite insincere. Nearly everyone links to academic papers in non-academic settings as "references" to communicate with a wider audience, and nearly no-one re-writes an academic paper afterwards for it to be more understandable. > the stuff is just too hard Nothing is "too hard". I can understand RFCs perfectly fine, even an RFC that I have completely no background in. I cannot say the same thing for academic papers. > Most of the good work that is done will _eventually_ end up in a product, but it will take time. This is also just wrong. You seem to be blindly asserting that academic papers somehow magically get turned into documentation that is more easily understood by a wider audience. This requires either academics to re-write their own papers (this nearly never happens), or for someone non-academic (like me) to come along, understand the paper, then re-write it. My entire topic in this thread has been that the latter is grossly ineffective, and that other avenues are much more effective, but unfortunately not used in the academic world.
- deleted 13y ago
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- nooneelse 13y ago
  > ... and nearly no-one re-writes an academic paper afterwards for it to be more understandable. Survey papers would seem to fill that role. They are a useful step for information moving from being on the research frontier to being in a textbook.
- javert 13y ago
  I produce academic papers for a living, and when you call me "insincere" for claiming that the audience of these papers is other experts in an extremely narrow field, you're just proving that you're not listening to me. > Nothing is "too hard". Well, lots of things are too hard for me. I don't read papers in quantum physics, biochemistry, or pretty much any specialized field of science. And I don't even try to read papers outside of my subfield. Because I don't have the years of expertise necessary to understand them. That's just the way the world works. Things are hard. > You seem to be blindly asserting that academic papers somehow magically get turned into documentation No, I didn't say that they get turned into documentation. Go look at what I said.