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[Myexperiment-discuss] Re: [MYGRID] yourExperiment


From: Marco Roos
Subject: [Myexperiment-discuss] Re: [MYGRID] yourExperiment
Date: Fri, 15 Aug 2008 11:12:19 +0200
User-agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.16 (Windows/20080708)

Hello all,

Thank you all for starting this thread. It allows me to share some thoughts with you and make some suggestions for myExperiment and Taverna.

Some observations or assumptions:
  1. Most downloads might still be by me (from different locations)
  2. Workflows on top are more likely to be tried, and hence stay on top.
  3. My workflow might not yet be good enough for reuse; I would have expected more questions then. I would rate my workflow 3.5 out of 5: 'reasonable'. I assume not many workflows would get 4/5 or more from me if I would be truly objective. Reusability would be my prime criterium.
  4. It is not trivial to reuse workflows and often persuading to think that building your own is better
    1. It is not trivial to understand other people's work (as it is not easy to annotate properly to make others understand).
    2. You are more in control over your own workflow and you understand it much better. (I wonder: would there be an inverse correlation between how much you understand your own impressive workflow and how understandable it is for others?)
    3. A workflow may do too much, too complicated, to be reused as a component.
  5. For me the social aspects of myExperiment are an essential bonus, but most important functions: registry and publication.
  6. You can't see e-mail contact inspired by myExperiment.
  7. My thesis: myExperiment has not fully matured as long as first-time enthusiasts like me are still on top. ;-)
Ad 3: Paul: your workflow has been successfully reused: how much were you (or mygrid people) actively involved in making that happen?

Some requests to help address these issues:
  1. Expert rating and expert review. You see this also on shopping sites and often are more trusted than user ratings (which could be biased, especially when there aren't many yet). For scientists this is like peer review.
  2. Automatic rating. A number of things can be rated without human intervention, such as the amount of descriptions added to the workflow. This could already be visible in Taverna while you are designing.
  3. Usage notification for workflow creator (cf 'return receipt'), I suggest to add these options to the sharing tab (in addition to science commons).
    1. Allow anonymous usage
    2. Request contact information, but allow anonymous usage
    3. Do not allow anonymous usage, contact information is a prerequisite
    4. Reuse only upon accepted non-anonymous request.
  4. More visible human annotation in Taverna. I want to see immediately if my descriptions are still valid while I'm editing a workflow.
Ad 3. This seems a fair request to me. I do not mind anybody using the workflow that I have put a lot of time and effort in, but I would often like to know who. In some cases I may want the reuse of my work only if we officially call it a collaboration, hence lead to co-authorship (this would be option 4). In other cases it will allow me to offer help. NB I suggest that the message a user (the one who downloads) would get will be very friendly in the sense of 'the workflow creator requests your contact details to provide help and for your feedback'.

In general I think we could think about how myExperiment could actively help stimulate collaboration and reuse (without becoming annoying of course). It will be interesting what BioCatalogue will do, as the threshold for reusing the smallest components might be lower than for larger workflows.

Hope this was useful.

Cheers,
Marco.

Paolo Missier wrote:
this is certainly impressive and well done to Marco, but it makes me
wonder how those numbers square with the number of reviews (0) and
comments (1, by the author) and ratings (2).
If these are real users, doesn't that make for a _lot_ of users who are
not interested in closing the collaboration loop, as it were.

just wondering --Paolo


Paul Fisher wrote:
Marco,

   BioAID_DiseaseDiscovery <http://www.myexperiment.org/workflows/72>
   (v1) [http://www.myexperiment.org/workflows/72]

   *Viewed:* 3045 times | *Downloaded:* 1060 times

WOW!!!!

Well done.

Paul.

-- 

Marco Roos
Faculty of Science
University of Amsterdam
Kruislaan 403, room F1.02
1098 SJ Amsterdam
tel. +31 (0) 20 525 7522
http://home.medewerker.uva.nl/m.roos1 (includes links to social networks)
Note the change of e-mail address to address@hidden

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