Matthewhelmke

Welcome

I rarely edit, but I do want to help out a bit when I notice issues. I have only created one page, that for a former employer (total disclosure below). --Matthewhelmke (talk) 19:45, 29 April 2013 (UTC)

Old Discussions

Oh, I meant to mention that I intentionally kept the article short and to the point. My hope is that once the page exists that others who have a less direct interest in iPlant will expand the article when/as appropriate (I am employed by iPlant; academic collaborators who work with us would make better sources for more detailed information). Matthewhelmke (talk) 15:30, 15 September 2011 (UTC)

Welcome and thanks for disclosing your conflict of interest. It seems you did some homework and are familiar with Wikipedia guidelines. I would like to help get the iPlant article published, and have experience with the quirky style guidelines. We do need to be careful, since many European research project articles are being deleted for having too much "proposalspeak". I will have some suggestions to remove buzzwords and add some independent sources. For example, plant sciences redirects to botany so might as well say something like "botany (plant science)" to make it clear. The title of course is not correct English. The noun would be "collaboration", and "collaborative" is an adjective, so it would be a "collaborative project" for example. But indeed the sources do seem to call it that! And there are enough other things named "iPlant" by now (though none in Wikipedia yet, and iplant.org seems available?) that using the full name I suppose to be unique is OK. There is an article on collaboratory which seems a buzzword somewhat related, perhaps.

In general, wikipedia articles should have a lead section that supplies context and summarizes the rest of the article. For example, make it clear it is in the United States - this is a worldwide encyclopedia. Avoid technical terms in the lead, and generally put the citations in the main body (at least one per paragraph), not in the lead unless there is controversial statement. This can be separate from a "motivation" section that has details. I would drop the "the world's first" claim for example since it is dubious and promotional. It might be the first to use the cyberinfrastructure term, but, say, Elixer in Europe seems similar. For that matter, Wikipedia is a collaborative effort based on computer technology which includes a Wikipedia:WikiProject Plants started in 2004 (I know, not professional, but where do you draw the line?). The "cyberinfrastructure" term sounds like a trendy buzzword used perhaps because it sounds military enough to get money from Republicans as well as scientific enough to get money from Democrats. But I am not clear what the project really does (my background is a PhD and 40 years experience in Computer Science; so have heard many cycles of terminology invented to get grants). Does it buy computers in a data center? Develop interchange standards? Pay to develop software? Run a web site? Maintain a database? Support actual botany research? Perhaps some of all the above, but need to explain in plain English with wikilinks in the body to relevant terms. Perhaps, say, computational biology is relevant (including related subfields)? Or is it?

Another style issue is that it is in the more "newsy" style. Wikipedia articles need to be "timeless" since they often lie untouched for years at a time. So for example, never say "current" or "former". Just say when each person was what. "From 2008 to 2009 the principal investigator was ....<ref>{{cite ref}}</ref>" etc. For that matter, more on the history seems relevant. For example, I just fixed the Richard A. Jorgensen article to have a full citation to the NSF press release. The solicitation for example should be cited, since the real history seems bo back to about 2006. The TRNS link needs to become a real citation instead of inline link, and citations added to the other sub-project paragraphs. Anyway I can help with some of these after you move to main space. It would also be more likely to survive if there are independent sources for notability. Was it ever covered by the press, for example? I did find this paper which is from Arizona but the biz school. There might be others like that. The other NSF project proposals you list might also be good, but again belong in the body not a lead. W Nowicki (talk) 22:39, 18 September 2011 (UTC)

I spent several hours taking your comments into account and revising the article. I can't promise that I got everything, though. When you have time, I would appreciate it if you could give it another read and let me know how else I may help improve it. Thank you, I appreciate your kind assistance. Matthewhelmke (talk) 19:12, 19 September 2011 (UTC)

It is already much better than most first articles, so I would say move it into main space for any further tweaks. My taste would be to remove the quote from the lead. Probably paraphrase and move it down into the body. For that matter, the quote should be removed from the cyberinfrastructure article too. As you might have noticed, I got distracted working on that one and related articles (and today on Tony Hey who was a person who pioneered some of this technology) which also needed help. Some web citations can be filled out too to avoid future link rot. A few more wikilinks and acronym expansions like GUI, API, DNA etc. are minor. I can do the move if you want to avoid all COI issues, but it seems clean. It does start the clock for a "Did You Know" nomination. I would be happy to work on that, if we can come up with an "interesting hook" to appear on the front page. Once moved we can also upload the logo under fair use rationale, to illustrate a bit. I can do that too since I know the drill. Any chance we could get, say, a screen shot? That might need to be cleared legally, and my experience is asking a lawyer the anser will be "no" so fair use might also apply, not sure. Although Federal funded research is public domain, of course the developers are generally contractors (and state work is not PD, alas). As an aside, I half wonder if they wanted to call it a "collective" but at the last minute thought it might never get past the Republicans in congress. :-) W Nowicki (talk) 23:56, 20 September 2011 (UTC)

I would appreciate your help moving the page and continuing its development, especially to avoid any COI issues. Thank you for the offer. I can get the logo file for you easily. I can also get screenshots for you without difficulty. Our end user documentation is posted on a wiki that is CC-BY licensed (example: manual for the Discovery Environment - https://pods.iplantcollaborative.org/wiki/display/DEman0p4/Table+of+Contents ) and it contains a few images, but they are more focused on the specific details being documented. I won't have any trouble with approval to take new screenshots expressly for Wikipedia (to be licensed CC-BY-SA, of course). The only issue could be that these products sometimes change their appearance, especially as many are still fairly young, so screenshots might become outdated more quickly than is ideal for an encyclopedic style site that wants more timeless style information. Re: the use of "collaborative," I wasn't with the project back then, but it amuses me, too. Oddly enough, the term is used in the NSF solicitation, from which Rich Jorgensen and his team probably parroted back some details to make their proposal more directly fit the NSF's desired parameters...right down to their interesting language choice. :-) Side note: you are being incredibly helpful and I appreciate it greatly. Thank you. Matthewhelmke (talk) 12:54, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

OK I moved and added the logo. It seemed clearly trademarked, so needs to be under fair use. But if we can get anything under create commons license that would be great since it could go into Wikimedia commons and thus be used in non-English wikipedias or other projects. A quick glance shows the "DNA subway" for example both has a cool name for a "hook" and an interesting screen shot. However do not see the licensing status on that one, e.g. manual ? If you can just locate an interesting looking screenshot that is under CC, you can give me the URL and I can upload and add, since I know that drill too. We have a day or two to edit a bit and nominate; the queue is shorter now so backlog not so great. W Nowicki (talk) 21:28, 21 September 2011 (UTC)

I was able to fast-track permission for a few images, probably enough to get things started while I work internally to collect more. See if what I have on this page are useful. Matthewhelmke (talk) 14:55, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

That link does not work for me, it asks for a login. Just one screen shot is what an article of this size fits. Best would be "interesting" but not too busy to get a general imprssion at thumbnail size. I will go ahead and nominate before I forget. We can continue to work on it. For example, I want to merge the History and Background sections into a more chronological narrative (just my peave). And of course thanks for fixing my slip on the main web site! I suppose I was thinking of the "collective" again. There might be other errors as I edit. W Nowicki (talk) 20:04, 22 September 2011 (UTC)

Oops! That was a permissions error on the page. My fault. I have restored public access and you should be able to reach the content page now. I wrote it quickly and failed to notice that the parent page was restricted. Much of our software is just reaching a stage where the UI is becoming stable...but hasn't quite done so; hopefully much more will be stable by the end of the year. Tell me if you think the images currently available are useful or interesting. Our flagship project, the Discovery Environment, will experience significant UI changes between now and the end of the year--I can post screenshots if you think they would be useful, but I hate to do that for things that change so rapidly. You may also find this page interesting; it lists publications by people with a relationship with iPlant. I just noticed the state of the page and will be working soon to standardize the citation formats and add links, but the information seems generally correct.

I found a couple more minor corrections and made them. These are things I would like to change, but either didn't know whether it was the right way to do it here or whether it was a COI: 1) Should we append (iPlant) to the mention of iPlant Collaborative since the short version is used in the rest of the article. We do this with other abbreviations, mostly acronyms, like NSF in the same sentence. 2) I just found out that TeraGrid is being transitioned to a new project name: the Extreme Science and Engineering Digital Environment (XSEDE). The TeraGrid Wikipedia page mentions it briefly, but there is not yet a new page. The main TG website https://www.teragrid.org/ has a news item at the upper left corner mentioning it and sending people to the new website at https://www.xsede.org/ . If I edit the TG page, would you check my edits for me? 3) Apparently, using the term "funding" to refer to funds coming from iPlant to other institutions is a no-no. I just learned this after my boss read the article. He would prefer the term "financial support" be used because, in his words, "iPlant is not a funding agency." You have worked in academia and know that sometimes these silly semantic exercises matter. Your call. :) Matthewhelmke (talk) 13:07, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

1) Just a style judgement call. I did not think so, since I thought it would be reasonably clear to non-technical readers that "iPlant" was meant as the subject of the article. Just like in biography articles we use last names only after the first reference without explanation. But I thought non-technical readers (or, say, those from other countries) might not know who the NSF was. In fact NSF is a disambiguation page, so there are plenty of those, while there is no other iPlant so far. it is also not an abbreviation but just a shortening. For example, after mentioning the National Science Foundation one might unambiguously refer to "the foundation" (lower case) without needing to explicitly say which one. I suppose we could put a redirect from iPlant or somesuch, but these are all nits. Another thing that bothers me is starting sentences with lower case, so I changed some of them to "The project...." for example.

2) Oh yes, please do help on related articles. TeraGrid is quite sad shape. We generally do not write new articles when things change their name, since the articles are supposed to be "topics" and not dictionary or directory entries. So if this is just a new project name we would not. However, it might be a whole new entity (not just a name change), and if it is "independently notable" in the sense that sources talk about it without mentioning TeraGrid, then it should get its own article. Plenty of sourcing work could be done in the curent article. You may find Wikipedia can be an infinite time sink.

3) If there are real errors in the article they sholud fixed ASAP. I see you caught another typo of mine on the funding, for example. I just changed the wording to "support" since that seems accurate without being a weasel word. That paragraph needs sourcing anyway.

I will follow up on the Talk:IPlant Collaborative page on screen shot. If the site is not internationalized, perhaps less important that it get articles in other language Wikipedias. W Nowicki (talk) 17:44, 23 September 2011 (UTC)

The review at Template:Did you know nominations/IPlant Collaborative found an uncited paragraph. I worked on it a bit, but could not find them all. I will be away for a day or so but can check back in later if you cannot dig up citations. W Nowicki (talk) 23:59, 25 September 2011 (UTC)

Thank you for finding those citations. I'm sorry I failed to include them. I know of many internal documents that could cover the missing items, but I haven't yet found any public documents. I'm still looking. 24.255.18.229 (talk) 16:35, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

I hadn't refreshed my browser (or logged in) when I posted the above comment. A closer look at the current page version revealed that you found citations for everything there. Thank you. I'm sorry I was too slow to be helpful with that. Matthewhelmke (talk) 16:40, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Actually I did not, but just commented out the ones I did not find when I ran out of time. If you ever find (or write?) a general article on the history of the project we could cite that for the entire litany. My general preference also was to avoid the (2008-) style because that looks odd to me, but that is just another mild opinion. W Nowicki (talk) 18:07, 26 September 2011 (UTC)

Oh, I see the hidden ones now. We may need to leave them commented out for now. I haven't yet found any documentation that I can make public for these. Maybe some of our collaborators at these sites will be able to jump in...I'll send out some gentle hints. For the (2008-) thing, I don't have a strong preference either way, so we don't have to use that style. I don't think we have ever written a history of iPlant. I think we should. I'll post a link here once something exists. Matthewhelmke (talk) 13:02, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

I am working with coworkers to get a history of iPlant written. I'll post an update here when it is available. Matthewhelmke (talk) 20:28, 27 September 2011 (UTC)

History of iPlant: http://www.iplantcollaborative.org/about/history Matthewhelmke (talk) 19:16, 28 September 2011 (UTC)

DYK for IPlant Collaborative

Orlady (talk) 12:04, 2 October 2011 (UTC)