Carnival of the Infosciences is an idea that Greg at Open Stacks has initiated (although this concept is not new).
The idea is that a different blog hosts communally submitted content every week (that wasn’t put well)…here’s how Gre…

Last month, Clifford Johnson at Cosmic Variance considered the use of group blogs as a research tool.

By the way when I started the site I asked the usual suspects to keep at least a six-month moratory before starting to upload comments on their own theories as usual, and I must report that they have happily honoured the word as if it were an oath.

We shall see.

Thanks for your encouragement, though.

-cvj

So you *are* going ahead with it, I hope, cvj?

I mean, that’s science, right? Let’s put the hypothesis to the test. Anyway, it would be easy to get it started. Someone should………oops.

Seriously, though, I do hope you will give it a try. Nobody has actually claimed that it would do any harm, have they?

(1) I simply don’t agree.
(2) You’re over-reacting. You’re a smart guy, so I will assume that you are over-reacting in this way as a clever demonstration of your earlier point of just why people might be reluctant to put forward ideas on blogs. Brilliant!
(3) You’ve completely misunderstood ad mischaracterised the core of the suggestion, despite how clearly it was explained in the beginning post. Perhaps another illustrative demo? Excellent.
(4) I explicitly asked readers for thoughts about the idea to explore whether to take it further. How could you have not seen that in your characterization of this as a “It would be easy to…. Someone should…” post?
(5) As with many things, it does not have to come down to choosing one model or the other, as you seem to be suggesting. We can have both. Just like there are other sources for research information besides the Archive. So I’m not asking you to give up your blog, (don’t worry! ) I’m just asking if there might be something else we can do as a field as a whole.

Just in case, let me point out (as can be gleaned from re-reading the post) that the suggestion is *precisely* a technological way of enhancing what we already do: talking to each other about ideas. Just like the Archive was a technological way of increasing the speed and connectivity of distributing papers.

Also, about the use of ping-backs and the like for spotting what other discussions are going on elswhere on the web? Come on, you’re joking, right? Now that is a demonstrably inefficient technological fix for something that we can sort out in a better low-tech way: Why have lots of people talking independently on their own soap boxes on their own corner of the park, with a inefficient procedure of each soapboxer having to remember to have hyperlinks (runners, I suppose) between the soapboxes, instead of gathering together in one place and taking turns on the soapbox? Funny stuff, JD.

You have many talents, Jacques, but I did not know that comedy was one of them. That’s good. That’s really good.

Cheers,

-cvj

Thanks for the kind comments. There are lots of models of what a physics research blog could look like. Mine is very different from the String Coffee Table. Most importantly, there are so few extant examples, that I believe we have barely scratched the surface of what’s possible. We need a lot more examples and a lot more experimentation before we can begin to sort out what “works” from what doesn’t. That’s why, even if I liked the idea of a centralized system like the one Clifford is proposing, it seems to me to be terribly premature to hope to choose what format it should take.

Clifford:

Finding the interesting conversations on the web is hardly a problem. How many hours was CosmicVariance in operation before you got your first inbound link (not counting those from Sean and Mark’s blogs)?

The idea of centralizing the conversion in one location goes against the whole point of the web, which is all about decentralization. And, no matter how carefully you engineer the “rules” under which it functions, I fail to see how it could possibly be construed as “more democratic.”

I’m sorry if I’m reacting rather sharply to this suggestion of yours. But there are two tendencies in peoples’ thinking about the Web and the way people use it to interact that really tick me off. The first is the tendency to seek technological solutions to sociological problems. Technology can make it easier for people to do what they otherwise would be inclined to do; it’s rarely effective in getting people to do what they otherwise would not be inclined to do. The second is when someone has what they think is a great idea and says, “It would be easy to … Someone should …”