Suggestion box

edited February 2015 in Announcements
Please discuss any improvements and features you'd like added to biohack.me here. 

Your active moderators, @Jack and I, are presently working to improve collaborate, biohack.me's wiki. We'll be merging relevant threads from discuss over the continuing weeks and asking for relevant info to be contributed. As collaborate is open to all, you can help contribute: find out how at the Rules and Guidelines page.
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Comments

  • I would like to see the ability to create polls in the forums. I imagine that it would be quite useful in a situation like voting on the grinder symbol, and could no doubt be applied to many more topics.
  • A preview button would be nice, especially for those of us who keep forgetting to use the tools rather than just typing HTML....
  • ...or even better, how about allowing HTML code...
  • @Ian: I don't mind that. I like the sites I go to not to be (very) exploitable.
  • Here's an idea; instead of having the chat page simply give the information of the chatroom, how about we embed the room directly on the page?  Or, if we can't do that, we could have it redirect to this page, and that should essentially do the same thing.
  • HTML input *is* actually supported. If you'd rather edit in plain HTML instead of the WYSIWYG editor, click on this icon on the far right in the second column of controls above the text box.

    @Ian, I played around with the applet and didn't find it to be satisfactory for inclusion on the site. If people are interested in joining an IRC chat, they probably already have a client installed on their machine. There are other options, such as a node.js browser-based client, but those options require more time to execute securely.
  • edited March 2011
    I'd be interested in a compiled list of human resources. Knowing who has done what projects, has experience, professional or otherwise and is available for consultation would be extremely valuable. Whether a new thread was started or a wiki article, just having something there would be nice.

    Edit: thinking about it, this could be a double edged sword. It would open up legal liability. Is there anyway this could be minimized? I'd love to contribute to others' projects, but I don't want to be held liable if the project explodes in somebody's face. And I don't want anybody consulting on my projects, whenever I get around to doing them, fearing legal repercussions.
  • edited March 2011

    @Oak I'm wary of adding polls for multiple reasons, least of which is its reduction of discourse to numbers.

    @Unqualified A preview button is available when creating a new post. A preview button for comments might have to be hacked in.

    @Ffaway This could be troublesome legally, even with biohack.me's draft disclaimer.

  • edited March 2011
    @Ffaway
    @SovereignBleak

    I think that this could be really cool if the legal issues could be side steped, maybe if we were to only speak about projects in hypotheticals? "If I were going to install this, I'd probably use XXXX instead of XXXX, hypothetically of course." I don't know if this would avoid the legal issues, it'd be something to look into.
  • @Ffaway

    Forum sites like bluelight.ru and drugsforum.com - both of which are all about discussing drugs - use a method where no one can refer to their own actions or offer direct advice regarding the use of drugs. Instead, a person always refers to a "friend of a friend", or a foaf. "A foaf used 30mg blahblahblah and this is what happened, so perhaps your foaf should be careful."

    I'm not arguing that we should do this, but I figured it was worth noting.
  • Or refer to your protagonist as 'SWIM': 'Someone Who Isn't Me' or 'Some White Ignorant Male'.

    It's definitely something we shouldn't pass up because it might have repercussions, it would be a very valuable resource.
    Maybe, if it's still a bad idea, we could condense it into a list of articles that simply outline procedures, experiments, dosages or whatever in a very clinical way, without mentioning anyone at all.
  • OakOak
    edited March 2011
    Perhaps a good place to start would be to clearly define what is and is not acceptable to post due to legal/safety reasons. From there, we could discuss whether or not it would be appropriate to figure out ways to reduce/remove the risk of discussing certain otherwise-off-limits topics.

    EDIT: Also, @SovereignBleak: Good point. I do wonder if there's a way to keep topics like the discussion of the symbol more organized, though. The wiki would allow for simple organization of the important information, but it looks like a lot of opinions/votes are getting lost in the sea of discussion. Perhaps it's not so bad as to warrant any changes, though.
  • I think there should be more categories for when you start a new thread, it's really pretty limited now so alot of potential topics are just going to end up in other which kind of defeats the purpose of having the categories in the first place.
  • edited March 2011

    I'm not a lawyer; I don't know how many restrictions we need to put upon discourse and I'd prefer not to. We have a draft disclaimer that has yet to go site-wide but I don't know if that protects an individual from writing whatever she wants. If anyone has access to a legal, get in touch with me.

    @Fantomex I open new categories by appeal to my email, sovereign.bleak AT biohack.me, or when I think it's needed, like when @Lukas and his gene-modders joined us or when the first haptics post went up. The fastest method to getting a category opened up is to just post under Other.

     

  • I think @Ffaway is right.  A human resource list would be good.  I don't think we need to worry about legal problems as long as:
    1.  All information/advice given by member is considered a "wiki" type response and not a professional opinion.  Nobody on ask.com is getting sued for their responses as far as I know.
    2.  Any paid work (amateur or professional engineering, surgery, etc.) should be conducted off-site.
    3.  Services should not be actively solicited on the site.  For example, You wouldn't want a member to post something that said "Have scalpel, will travel, $100".  It would be fine for that member to post something in response to another member with wording like "contact me via email to discuss details on how I might be able to help you with a procedure".

    I can't think of a reason not to proceed with a human resource list.  It would also help us to identify potential strategic recruitment areas.
  • My IRC client is having problems connecting to the wutnet server, but, strangely, it connects to other servers just fine.  Is wutnet having technical difficulties at the moment?

    ~Ian
  • Here's a suggestion, for if we decide to put up a group blog again:  we should use something like blogger.com for this.  My reason for suggesting blogger.com in particular is:

    1)  Rather than having one person controlling the blog, we can "add" several people to it, so they don't have to email one person to post something on it

    2)  You don't, however, have to give everyone on the blog admin privileges.  One person (usually the founder) is the "admin," and he can then add "co-admins" but not everyone added to the blog has to be registered as a co-admin.  In this way, we can give several people the ability to post to the blog, but only a couple will have admin privileges.

    3)  Google is pretty good about maintaining their site.  I used to have a blog on MySpace, but when they went through system maintenance last year, all my comments were deleted.  Google, meanwhile, has undergone maintenance several times since I created an account there, with no problems whatsoever.

    I would also suggest that, since we already have @Jack controlling the DNS for this site, and @lichen having created the chatroom, and someone completely different having created the Facebook group, we should have someone else create and maintain the blog.

    ~Ian
  • Wouldn't somewhere on Tor hidden services be the appropriate place to discuss anything that might have legal ramifications? The Firefox Tor Browser is super easy.
  • Just quickly, how about a link list to sites that sell electronics and other hardware?
  • @AxiomaticBadger, there's SO MANY. If you're looking for something in particular, try Farnell, Digikey, or Mouser.
    Take a look at http://www.eevblog.com/2011/01/17/eevblog-139-lets-select-a-dc-dc-boost-converter/ for hints.
  • Since it seems that @spoon has officially dropped out of grinding altogether, and that Selfmodifier has been converted into a programming site, we should create the technical/academic-like side of biohack.me on our own.

    ~Ian
  • @Ian - I don't mind doing helping with that 
  • @Lukas:  Great.  I'll help out however I can with that as well.

    ~Ian
  • Also, I've created another attempt at an official biohack.me blog.  If you wish to contribute to the blog, drop me an email at [email protected], and I'll add you as an author.

    ~Ian
  • edited April 2011
    Ian,

    I suppose that I should have said earlier, but we still have a blog setup, but it's hidden until there's something to put up on it…

    Talk to SovereignBleak if you want to administrate that and we can get something set up.
  • @Jack

    Ah, I should have realized that.  I've actually got a couple things to contribute, so I'll do that in about a day or two.

    Although, I still submit that a blog in which we can have multiple "authors" (such as that provided by blogspot) rather than having to submit something to a single administrator would be pragmatically more beneficial, but I can certainly live with this format.

    ~Ian
  • Ian,

    It's possible to do that with how we have it set up right now, but we haven't had anything to post up, so it's been a bit dormant. Again, talk to Sovereign and we can get it moving along.

    Jack
  • @Jack:  Fair enough :-)

    ~Ian
  • On the earlier topic of resources and group abilities...
    Does anyone else here have a linkedin account?  They have a project app that is pretty straightforward.  I could make a group there if nobody objects.
  • I vote for a linkedin account
This discussion has been closed.