Comments on: Is massively collaborative mathematics possible?

By: ScienceBlogs Channel : Technology | BlogCABLE.COM

ScienceBlogs Channel : Technology | BlogCABLE.COM — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 16:25:11 +0000

[...] fairly difficult problem. You can read details of the project in three of Michael’s posts: here, here and here so I won’t attempt to describe it in any detail in this post. What’s [...]

By: Michael Nielsen » The Polymath project: scope of participation

Michael Nielsen » The Polymath project: scope of participation — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:29:07 +0000

[...] I’ve mentioned before, over the past seven weeks mathematician Tim Gowers has been running a remarkable experiment [...]

By: A quick review of the polymath project « What Is Research?

A quick review of the polymath project « What Is Research? — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:15:39 +0000

[...] A quick review of the polymath project Filed under: Uncategorized — vipulnaik @ 12:15 am In an earlier blog post on new modes of mathematical collaboration, I offered my critical views on Michael Nielsen’s ideas about making mathematics more collaborative using the Internet. Around the time, Timothy Gowers, a prominent mathematician, was inspired by Michael Nielsen’s post, to muse in this blog post about whether massively collaborated mathematics is possible. The post was later critiqued by Michael Nielsen. [...]

By: Cameron Neylon

Cameron Neylon — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 14:10:28 +0000

Michael, you’re definitely hitting the big time. See this

By: yet another math2.0 proposal | neverendingbooks

yet another math2.0 proposal | neverendingbooks — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 19:13:46 +0000

[...] Nielsen compared Gowers’ approach to long established practice in the open-source software [...]

By: Nathaniel Thurston

Nathaniel Thurston — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:37:45 +0000

The meatball wiki was up, but now it’s down again. Does anyone know how to make a more-reliable mirror? Would such a mirror be permissable?

By: Nathaniel Thurston

Nathaniel Thurston — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 10:26:39 +0000

Michael – thanks for the information. I’m planning to find out what I can about online community building (starting with the meatball wiki).

My sense is that a better online index to the available information may be called for. If so, I’ll need to make such an index as an early step in jump-starting the community I’m trying to build, and I think it would be fun to collaborate with you (and others if there is sufficient interest) in the creation of that index.

By: Michael Nielsen

Michael Nielsen — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:25:58 +0000

Nathaniel – I don’t think it’s factually correct. Going back to, e.g., Usenet and many other online communities, it’s been quite common for such communities to have a code of conduct or rules of engagement. Now, these weren’t for the most part collaborative communities, but I think a lot of that spirit has passed over to many collaborative online communities. For example, many wikis are self-aware from quite early on in their lifecycle. One of my favourites examples is the now sadly defunct meatball wiki, which was a wiki about wikis, and which had a very sophisticated self-awareness from very early on. (I’d give you a URL, but I’m having trouble reaching the site at the moment – just Google it, it was still up as of a couple of months ago.)

With that said, I do think this “self-awareness” as you aptly name it is a fascinating phenomenon, and perhaps even necessary for success in a large-scale collaboration. I’ve occasionally thought it’d be fun to write a book about online community-building.

By: Nathaniel Thurston

Nathaniel Thurston — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 13:04:44 +0000

From http://virtualteatime.blogspot.com/2009/02/introspection.html

“What interests me most about Timothy Gowers’ experiment, is massively collaborative mathematics possible? is that to my knowledge it’s the first example of a collaborative effort that is collectively self-aware. To be a little more concrete, he began by proposing a set of ‘rules of engagement’, and the discussion began by discussing those rules. Every collaborative community has such rules, but typically they aren’t actively discussed.”

Michael, I’d be very interested to hear what you have to say about this assertion of mine.

By: Jacques Distler

Jacques Distler — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 00:45:15 +0000

Just putting a bunch of Tiddlers up on the Web is certainly not sufficient.

A list of the available options is here. That page says, in part:

TiddlyWiki was not originally designed for multi-user collaboration; the single-file paradigm makes concurrent editing a challenging issue.
However, there are various solutions enabling TiddlyWiki to be used as a collaborative platform.

The only solutions (of the ones listed) that I have played with are the WebDAV solution and (someone else’s installation of) ZiddlyWiki.

The latter was the only one (IMHO) vaguely suitable for multi-user collaboration. But Zope is a bear to set up …

It’s not yet something I’ve thought much about; it’s on my mind because I’ve just started to experiment with git.

I am intrigued by the idea of the same content being available in multiple places (my laptop, say, and on a publically-accessible website), and being able to merge changes from these multiple sources.

DVCS’s like BZR/Git/HG are tailor-made for that. But there are other operations — desirable in a Wiki application — for which they might be rather slow. (I admit I haven’t really tested this, though.)

If I were collaborating on a book, however, a DVCS would be the way to go!