ebola cola

1 | Sk

June 26th, 2008 at 7:18 am

WikiFish? That sounds like the Web taking back a bit of its initial purpose of knowledge spreading and sharing. Good news!

2 | Andrew

June 26th, 2008 at 12:24 pm

I like it how every now and again a site is created that is (What he said above). I found it a bit hard to use though and it looks a bit ugly. Sure, design isn’t what it’s up for, but easier navigation would help. Even those that specialise in Marine life and know all of the Science jargon must find it a bit confusing to use at times. 77,441 to go? Before 2009? Now that IS dedication.

3 | Sk

June 26th, 2008 at 2:55 pm

That would be like… 323,734,269.8 species an hour!!! *gets weird looks*

Seriously, though. The problem with scientists is that they will develop high-technology tools (I’m sure that this site has more advanced features than the largest social networking sites put together), and then they won’t care about usability. Something along the lines of “it’s just a tool”: if you need to use it, you’ll learn how to do that.

4 | Andrew

June 26th, 2008 at 3:17 pm

Scientists are normal people too, they aren’t superhuman. There’s nothing scientific about what point I’m trying to put across. I think Scientists in this generation would expect an indexing site of such to be concise and quick to navigate.

I see what you mean though, a lot of research labs at Universitys used to use Unix (Not sure if they do now) and that isn’t the most user-friendly of OS’s, but they seemed to manage. It suited their needs though.

5 | Sk

June 27th, 2008 at 7:14 am

It’s not that. I’m talking of an actual attitude, a way of thinking, that is peculiar to those who, more or less consciously, see themselves as an elite. I know because, to an extent, I’m like that too.

Let’s make a simple example. Let’s say I want to keep a record of the SMS I get: I could make a MySQL database and store the information there. But while a carefully produced application (for general public use) would provide an interface (say a web page) where you can input the number of the sender and the text of the message, I would be content with a textbox where I can type a query.

That’s a sort of user base control: only people who can write an INSERT query can post, and anyway all people I want to post can write an INSERT query.

That site is not meant for the average user to browse into. A marine biologist knows where to find the info he needs, and that suffices. After all, if a hobbist or a casual surfer happened to be there, he would not be interested in that much information.

6 | Andrew

August 19th, 2008 at 2:20 pm

It’s been a couple of months since I last looked at this. Touche, Sk, touche.