Just for my interest

[lfinley58]

Hi,

A quick question: When I had recently posted the information on the wood eating pleco papers by D. German, discussion was moved off to another forum and it was stated by (? don't remember) that the Science and Taxonomy forum was for notices and not for discussions. Subsequently there have been some growing discussions under a couple of topics (I just added one such post) in this forum. Is there a fast rule on this or is it just kind of ad lib? Personally I feel that having any discussion on a given Science and Taxonomy topic is best included in the same forum. But I am flexible and will follow posts of interest as necessary. But I would appreciate kind of knowing what to do. Thanks for any comments.

Lee

[Jools]

It's a little ad-lib. Personally I'd keep them in there as anything that gets more folks into that particular forum is good, however Mats is a little more ordered than me.

On the side of the splitters, it is true that the forum is nicer to follow if the discussions are split off as it then tends to follow more of a chronological order. Also, discussions of papers can get really long and get really off topic and so end up being split anyway. So many times as well we see a new paper placing a fish in genus X and sinking genus Y then we have a massive (often repeat) discussion around that.

On the side of the lumpers, it's more work to do the splitting and it could make things harder to find.

Let's have a quick debate here and I'll make a call on it.

Jools

[Shane]

I see both sides to this one.
I like keeping Science News "clean." I also do not think we should imply that any disagreements/discussions on the forums are "critiques" of said article/book/paper. The author should not feel obligated to come to PC and defend their work.

That said, hobbyists have as much right as anyone to discuss and even disagree with peer reviewed publications. This contradiction was why I supported moving discussion away from Science News. It allows the issue to be discussed/debated without making the author feel that they need to defend their name and/or work.

I also see where splitting these discussions is sometimes but not always enforced and can make it a pain to follow a given thread when it is moved. I agree that anything that attracts readership to Science News is probably good.

-Shane

[Bas Pels]

I see both sides to this one.
I like keeping Science News "clean." I also do not think we should imply that any disagreements/discussions on the forums are "critiques" of said article/book/paper. The author should not feel obligated to come to PC and defend their work.

That said, hobbyists have as much right as anyone to discuss and even disagree with peer reviewed publications. This contradiction was why I supported moving discussion away from Science News. It allows the issue to be discussed/debated without making the author feel that they need to defend their name and/or work.

I also see where splitting these discussions is sometimes but not always enforced and can make it a pain to follow a given thread when it is moved. I agree that anything that attracts readership to Science News is probably good.

-Shane

While I agree with the above, I think it would be easier for an author willing to answer questions his or her work has raised to do so where the link to the article was first posted

Now a scientist will have to look the whole Planet Catfish forum over, which in itself would be a good thing, but it might result in less answers

[Jools]

Yeah, now you see why I wanted a debate on this. I'll wait and see if anyone else comments, but also it good to hear other mods views.

Jools

[Carp37]

Whilst I agree that we don't want to upset authors of the papers, I think it's cleanest to leave on-topic discussions in the Science news thread, and split off anything that goes off at too much of a tangent. I submitted a grand total of three papers in my science "career" on gobioid phylogeny, but would have welcomed any non-offensive discussion with other people interested in the topic, as the number of scientists working on a particular group of fish is always very small (especially where taxonomy is concerned), and the number that agree with each other often even smaller! Leaving the thread with the paper at least alerts authors that the discussion refers to their paper, in topic at least if not the interpretation of results. Whether this makes more work for moderators (to check content/perceived tone of posts) might be an issue, however.

[lfinley58]

Hi all,

I know that I don't have a vote on this, but my opinion is towards letting any such discussion stay with the original post. I forget who moved my "wood eating" post but they did provide the links (which was good) to the papers that I had noted. But, to my mind, it still created a fragmented discussion of sorts. At the time I had no further comments to make (on the new thread) so I did not get any notification of the various posts. Not that it was a problem to just go in and follow the thread, but it is nice to get email notification of new posts.

Lee

[Jools]

I know that I don't have a vote on this, but my opinion is towards letting any such discussion stay with the original post. I forget who moved my "wood eating" post but they did provide the links (which was good) to the papers that I had noted. But, to my mind, it still created a fragmented discussion of sorts. At the time I had no further comments to make (on the new thread) so I did not get any notification of the various posts. Not that it was a problem to just go in and follow the thread, but it is nice to get email notification of new posts.

Every one that takes the time to write out their thoughts in a reasoned way has a vote.

Jools

[MatsP]

In Swedish, there is a saying that translates something like this "No matter which way you turn, your ass/arse ends up at the back", which is used in situations like this: Whichever way you look at it, someone is going to be unhappy. I probably should have been more consistent and move/split the other thread(s) too. The main reason I haven't is lack of time - yes, I've been posting here and there, and in the time I've taken to respond to this post, I'm sure I could have moved three

I'm not sure I understand the argument about the original author being less able to follow/discuss the comments. However, perhaps I should have posted a link from the item discussed to the actual thread I moved.

The reason for moving the discussion is basically that (in my opinion, and Jools did agree at the time [at least as I understood it]) that the Science and Taxonomy forum is an "announcement forum", not a forum intended for discussion on the published items. This is my interpretation, not necessarily "how it must be forever".

--
Mats

[Jools]

Yeah, it's a one of those where it's not actually important what the rule is as long as there is a rule.

I kind of subscribe to the view that the T&SN forum is an announcement style one and I supported the splitting of posts from that view. It was however an announcement forum rather more by accident than design. I like the splitting as long as there is a link from the T&SN announcement post to the substantive discussion post in whatever other forum is appropriate for the topic.

ALSO as long as there is someone willing to do it, we're having this discussion because Mats is having a busy time of it at the moment and so others can split the topics too (me included)...

Unless violent objection is forthcoming, let's go with splitting.

Jools

[lfinley58]

Hi,

Jools last post sound ok to me. In the words of J.L. Picard - "Make it so."

Lee