Wikification of Genes – next Effort
Have you noticed, yet, that the wwweb has swollen up like people’s bellies after Christmas? As an example, take the ten thousands of wikis that congest the virtual world. Each of them is an epitome of wisdom (well, let’s face it: most wikis are as superfluous as the fifth leg of an antelope).
Recently, the wiki universe got another member and surprisingly, it could make an impact. “Gene wiki”, a project of Californian researchers around Jon W. Huss (San Diego State University) and Andrew I. Su (Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, San Diego), is an incomplete attempt “evolved out of the existing Wikipedia framework” and “several other gene wikis that already exist [but have a poor] user base and [poor] search engine rankings”.
Check the relevant PLoS paper by Huss et al.
Do we really need this “Gene wiki” thing? Don’t we have enough gene and model organism portals, yet, such as Entrez Gene, Ensembl and Flybase?
In my opinion this “Gene wiki” effort could emerge as a huge success. Flybase and Co. are complex stuff intended for very few experienced scientists, whereas the new born “Gene wiki” baby could attract a more manifold mixture of interested people.
We should never forget: many an interested greenhorn is tomorrow’s researcher.
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