Summary

  • An access FAQ preserved in a September 2008 revision describes a colleague from another lab adding a shared-space notice to a group-meeting page.
  • OpenWetWare paired public reading with broad member editing, using accounts, revision histories and social rules to manage participation.

A researcher from another laboratory put a notice on a lab’s meeting page. The issue concerned shared space on the same floor, and the principal investigator used that page to guide the group’s discussion. OpenWetWare’s access FAQ, preserved in a September 2008 revision, presented the incident as a reason to give the neighbours an edit button.

A lab-only permission would have made the notice somebody else’s clerical job. With a member account, the person who knew about the problem could place it directly on the agenda. The website had shortened the journey from knowing something to telling the people who needed it.

The inexperienced person had something to contribute

The project began in 2005 among graduate students in the Endy and Knight labs at MIT, then drew in researchers elsewhere. Its general FAQ, last edited in May 2007, made a second, less obvious pitch for contributors: beginners noticed details experienced colleagues had learned to take for granted. Recording those small obstacles was useful work. Expertise could make a person forget what needed explaining.

The historical permission rule supported both kinds of contribution. Anyone could read; members could edit, with essentially no page-by-page alternatives. An account travelled beyond its holder’s laboratory. The authors worried that finer divisions would leave them running separate lab websites instead of a shared working resource.

Membership still required an application with basic information. Anonymous editing was closed. Login and page histories helped attribute changes, while the FAQ cited limited resources for dealing with vandalism and spam. A personal page had another protection: an etiquette rule asking other members to leave it alone. The software supplied a broad permission; participants were expected to use some judgement.

Even a commons needed a committee

The 2007 FAQ assigned overall direction and the site’s mission to an all-volunteer steering committee of users from several institutions. A board was responsible for long-term sustainability. This put two different jobs beside the edit button: users could contribute to today’s page, while other participants had to keep the place worth returning to.

For material that needed privacy, the access FAQ described separate arrangements. Some Endy lab members ran private wikis on their own computers; other groups used internal sites. Keeping work there meant making a later decision about what to share and moving it across.

OpenWetWare’s authors wanted an easily installed private distribution with a route for publishing material back to the shared site. The FAQ said they lacked the resources to build it. That unfinished bridge is a revealing end to the story. The public website could give the neighbour a pencil immediately. Making private work travel safely into public view still needed someone to build the crossing.