I would like to discuss about the issue of negative/positive comments on myExperiment, quoting a statement from another mail:
A few years ago some people from the University
of Amsterdam organized an user-trial on CiteULike, a web servive of
social bookmarking for scientits.
-
http://cf.uba.uva.nl/nl/projecten/academic_social_referencing.pdf (it's a pdf)
One
of the results of the study was that some people were scared of using
the web service, because they were afraid that their comments could
offend other colleagues, who could take revenge when they will be their
peer-reviewers. It's on page 8, the 3rd point; and there are other
statements on that in the rest of the document.
This could happen to myExperiment also.
Let's say you publish a workflow, but I think there is an error on it. There are some possibilities:
-
I don't tell you about the error. You live happy, but later you notice
that all of your results were wrong. Other people that have used your
workflow, also have had wrong results.
- I tell you about the error and you fix it. Everybody is happy
-
I tell you about the error, but you get mad at me and don't fix it. Or,
I put a positive comment on somebody else's workflow saying that it is
better.
Later, I submit a paper to a journal using a different
workflow, and you are my peer reviewer. You are still mad at me and
give me negative comments, saying that I should have used your
protocol, because you are anonymous, and you think I am an incompetent.
In the meanwhile, people can always see my negative feedback on your workflow, and decide whether I am rigth or not.
- I send you a personal comment, but you don't like it, and decide to don't change the workflow.
In
the time we discuss about it, people will continue using the protocol,
but without knowing that it can possibly contain an error.
Honestly, I though you were already sensible about this problem
that affects any social web network for scientists, and I wasn't
expecting such a rude answer for a negative feedback.
So, what will be your policy about negative comments on myExperiment?
Are you going to allow them? Are you going to explain this issue to your users, so they can understand the problem and maybe be less prone to go angry? Or put some kind of moderation (having someone in charge of
moderating comments)?