Gerard's beautifully worded message underscores in my mind what a great resource for all kinds of information this bulletin board is. I have many times been impressed by the time people take to answer queries, even if they sometimes seem perfectly "googlable" to me.
As a community we can be proud of CCP4BB!
Bert
________________________________________
From: CCP4 bulletin board [[log in to unmask]] on behalf of Gerard Bricogne [[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Friday, February 14, 2014 10:47 AM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: [ccp4bb] Sister CCPs
Dear George,
Ever since I read your message that gave rise to this thread I have had
a few remarks in mind that other preoccupations have kept me from sharing,
but perhaps there is still room for them among the numerous contributions to
this topic that have been made since.
What attracted me to the field all these years ago was the example of
Max Perutz. In the very early stages of his work he could have said "We have
this dreaded phase problem, and the only way to measure phases (or rather,
phase differences) is by interference - therefore we can't advance until we
have sources of coherent hard X-rays". He could then have reclined in his
chair, feeling absolutely brilliant and extremely important, twiddling his
thumbs while leaving it to physicists and funding agencies to scurry around
to meet his high-minded demands and come up with facilities to produce this
wonderful radiation. However, he reached instead for a modest bottle of a
mercury reagent and, with it, managed to do X-ray interferometry by creating
a reference beam within the crystal by chemical derivatisation, instead of
waiting for that interference phenomenon to be made possible externally by
the use of a coherent X-ray beam. I have never tired of thinking back on
this "glorious messiness" of macromolecular crystallography, stretching
across the five main disciplines and presenting a permanent tribute to the
unity of science - even more so since we became beneficiaries of Special
Relativity through our use of synchrotron radiation.
As a computational methods developer in X-ray crystallography one is
acutely aware from the beginning that these methods' main mandate is to fill
in some (phase) information that experiment wasn't able to capture. Even in
a broader perspective than the strict phase problem, it is clear that any
improvements "upstream", at the level of "wet stuff" or data collection, can
achieve more than all the computational massaging we could ever come up with
- experimental phasing remaining one of the strongest paradigms here, but
with many others such as construct optimisation, or the use of additives or
humidity control to stabilise cell parameters, to name only a few. Seeing a
different pattern of interplay between wet lab stuff, diffraction physics
and computation in each structure determination has been to me and countless
others an inexhaustible source of scientific excitement and joy.
I must therefore say that I relish the heterogeneity of the questions
that come up on this BB, as well as seeing that there is a core of younger
scientists who can answer just about the entire spectrum of questions!
Trying to make a histogram of the recurring topics and to organise
answers in an FAQ on a Wiki is certainly an excellent idea; but I do vote
for the preservation of the mixed-bag nature of this BB, where a strictly
crystallographic or computational question can almost seem off topic in the
middle of the diversity of the others.
"All Things that (eventually) Serve the Diffraction Pattern - and the
Electron Density", to paraphrase David Schuller's motto, should have a place
in the CCP4BB and contribute to retaining its spontaneously holistic vision
of our field.
With best wishes,
Gerard.
--
On Fri, Feb 14, 2014 at 10:15:54AM +0100, George Sheldrick wrote:
> I think that more people read wikis than contribute to them, so this
> 'experiment' (see below) is
> a little biased. On the other hand, it is often easier to put a
> question to CCP4bb than to search
> for the answer in wikis and other documentation, however well
> organized they are.
>
> Kay: can you see how often your XDS wiki (for example) is accessed?
>
> The small number of different contributors to a wiki is however a
> problem. Replying to an email
> is something that has to be done almost immediately and reaches
> instantly a large audience.
> Making a contribution to a wiki lacks the urgency and can be put off
> for a few weeks, and does
> not reward the contributor with immediate feedback or lead to
> controversial discussions.
>
> Perhaps someone should make a list of the questions most frequently
> asked on CCP4bb and
> the most helpful replies that they generated. This could even be
> made into a wiki.
>
> George
>
>
> On 02/14/2014 09:15 AM, Frank von Delft wrote:
> >Seems it's worth thinking about this as an experiment that has
> >actually been done: BB and wiki have been available in parallel
> >for many years now; so where has all the activity happened, where
> >do people go for information - and more to the point, where are
> >other people happy to volunteer information?
> >
> >According to what you say, the experiment has a clear outcome.
> >
> >Even crystallographers are social beings, and thrive on
> >interaction. Wikis don't interact.
> >
> >I should add I'm not at all clear what problem is being addressed
> >here: if I get an email I don't want to read, I make a tiny
> >hand-movement (= hit delete) and it vanishes forever. Are people
> >suggesting we abandon an empirically proven mechanism merely to
> >save me the need for this tiny hand-movement?
> >
> >phx
> >
>
> --
> Prof. George M. Sheldrick FRS
> Dept. Structural Chemistry,
> University of Goettingen,
> Tammannstr. 4,
> D37077 Goettingen, Germany
> Tel. +49-551-39-33021 or -33068
> Fax. +49-551-39-22582
--
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* Gerard Bricogne [log in to unmask] *
* *
* Global Phasing Ltd. *
* Sheraton House, Castle Park Tel: +44-(0)1223-353033 *
* Cambridge CB3 0AX, UK Fax: +44-(0)1223-366889 *
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