2012 Web Discussion
From canSAS
- The following is the agenda of work posted under business for canSAS-2012 under the Web Portal topic. Please add comments here:
- define scope, purpose, and goal of portal
- list content type to which such a portal should give access.
- Suggest method for hosting
- ?more distributed or more centralized,
- ?under auspices of a particular facility or SAS commission
- ? .. or both etc)
- Build a working straw landing page prototype
- Build at least 2 or 3 subpages and/or designs on paper
- plan for presentations
- SAS 2012
- SAS commission
There are a number of places on the www with information about small-angle scattering. A portal needs to provide links to relevant information and extra content. The working group needs to find a way to make information readily available in an attractive way for different categories of people that will include scientists curious about the technique but unfamiliar, potential users, experienced users, etc. Some current pages are:
Software for small angle scattering
World Directory of SANS Instruments
BioSAXS data analysis software (EMBL Hamburg)
Wikipedia Small-angle Scattering
SAS Toolbox from LBL - mostly software and on-line calculators
Manfred Kriechbaums's page on small-angle scattering
These pages are examples of what is already available. The challenge is to provide access and to integrate information.
ARR: A challenge is to find a means to keep the portal maintained and updated. We will need some continuing
commitment to this task.
SMK: If you type 'small angle scattering' into Google - what I suspect most people would do in the first instance
if looking for information on the topic - you get a Wikipedia article (which then subdivides into further
articles on SANS & SAXS). Do we know who wrote these articles?
ARR: I agree that people will find readily the Wikipedia articles. I suppose that the 'portal for the
community' should aim to provide further information (some that is not considered suitable for Wikipedia
articles). These topics might include links to software descriptions, lists of conferences, access
to mailing list archives, etc.
SMK: Yes, I agree. I think I was thinking more in terms of 'a portal to the portal'!?
SMK: On a different point, I have been in contact with the IUCr Webmaster. IUCr Commissions, such as the
CSAS, have two sets of pages on the IUCr servers: an "official" page at
http://www.iucr.org/iucr/commissions/small-angle-scattering maintained directly by the IUCr Executive
Secretary, and their own pages, http://www.iucr.org/resources/commissions/small-angle-scattering
maintained directly by the Commission (which has effective autonomy over the content although technically
is subject to scrutiny by the IUCr Executive Committee). Content for the latter is managed using the
web-based package Squiz Matrix (http://manuals.matrix.squizsuite.net/). Authorship rights to the
CSAS's pages are currently vested in the CSAS Chairman. However the IUCr is currently trialing co-existing,
'lightweight', satellite websites (see, for example, http://blogs.iucr.net/) based on Wordpress. Content
on these satellite sites could be promoted as "in association with the SAS Commission". The caveat is that
this is a very new departure, as yet untested, and currently only informally backed-up. The IUCr also
haven't yet made a long-term commitment to maintain these sites.
ARR: Thanks for finding out about the IUCr developments. I see quite a lot of diversity on the commission
web sites. Some even direct to external servers (e.g. the Commission on Electron Crystallograpy goes
to http://www.emzm.uni-mainz.de/iucr_cec/. Other Commissions have quite a lot of material on the IUCr
site. Perhaps someone will be able to find out what the SAS commission plans? At the moment even the
few extra pages are not really recent. For example, there is no link to the proceedings of the Oxford
SAS conference.
ARR: I think that the proposed SAS portal will have to go beyond 'blogs' even if these are a useful addition
to the IUCr site.
PDB: I have a couple of comments regarding the issue of what is the first page of entry on search engine:
*A very important part of any effort at building any site and even more so one that wants to be a portal
is to develop a site in a way that maximizes its SEO score (search engine optimization) There are companies
devoted to that sort of thing as this is a very big deal.
*I agree (I think) with Stephen -- ours should be a portal to the portal in some way (though whether we
ever show up above the wikipedia entry in a search is questionable:-) but as Adrian says the portal we
are discussing should target a very different audience and include much more than an encyclopedic entry
(i.e. be a portal to ALL things SAS)
*The wikipedia entries seem pretty decent, but contributing to these might also be a goal. Not sure how
to find out who originally wrote those pages, but suspect we know them (the community isn’t that big).
Not sure how we find out as it would be nice to work together.
PDB: IUCr and CSAS sites. I believe that Duncan is involved in those efforts as a member of CSAS. Pete Jemian
is also a member of the CSAS I believe. Perhaps we can have them say a few words in a plenary session
about the current status of the CSAS thinking there and where the opportunities might be. As Adrian
suggested at the beginning one challenge will be the long term support which IUCr could perhaps help with
even if just by giving broader legitimacy and thus easier to secure commitment from other SAS sources.
PDB: Another topic dear to my heart which I think the portal could provide is to use the portal to build a
“community” in the true sense of the word. Besides helping to speed exchange of ideas and generating the
interest required to propel the site to the status of a true portal, it could be the source of some of the
effort that would be required to actively maintain it. Of course the difficulty is always in managing that
kind of engagement so that it doesn’t become a free for all that turns people away. That may be too difficult
a task but I think worth thinking about anyway.
SMK: So, if I've interpreted Wikipedia's FAQ correctly, the Small-Angle Scattering page was first constructed in
Oct 2006 by http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Iepeulas. It was then subsequently modified by several people,
the more meaningful names of which are: Tocharianne, Stemonitis (who would seem to be a biologist), Tpikonen
(who would appear to be into X-ray spectroscopy), Booers, Yen Zotto (not sure if that's a real name), Uvainio
(a physicist in Germany), and Alltat (which I think must be a moniker), and someone with an unhelpful ID but
who claims to be a professor and has made a raft of contributions that would seem to suggest they are quite
knowledgeable in physics). Do we recognise any of these user ID's as the names of small-angle scatterers?
ARR: Ulla Vainio is working at DESY since she finished her Ph.D. at the University of Helsinki in 2007.
Her work has involved a lot of SAXS and anomalous SAXS. I think (but am not certain) that Tpikonen
is Teemo Ikonen who was also in Helsinki and moved to SLS at PSI. Several people in Helsinki were
active in maintaining Wikepedia.
