[FRIAM] Google M-Labs: Your Personal Traffic Cop - The Channel Wire - IT Channel News And Views by CRN and VARBusiness
http://www.crn.com/networking/212903447 -- Peter Baston *IDEAS* /www.ideapete.com/ http://www.ideapete.com/ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
[FRIAM] Link to Greenhouse Gas Exercise at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Greetings, all -- Trying very hard not to use abbreviations! A link via the New York Times Dot Earth Blog: http://systemdynamics.mit.edu/ghg-exercise/welcome.htm It deals with the bathtub effect relating to climate change, although as Professor Sterman notes, there are applications to other fields, too. Complex Adaptive Systems, indeed. - Claiborne Booker - FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review
Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 28/01/09 07:34 PM: [...] why not have every article published and every article rated by a number of stars, and then everybody could set their browser to the minimum number of stars we are willing to tolerate. Those of us who don't want to be subject to the peer review effect, could simply set their browser to read everything with any stars at all! The problem with this is that a number of stars is uni-dimensional, while the guidelines for reviewers for any given publication are multi-dimensional (and/or vague). You could still project down to one dimension if you have a strong policy of who gets to rate the article, what the criteria are for the rating, and the trump power of the editor's opinion. The ultimate automation would be a multi-dimensional rating measure, though. Then you might be able to get rid of the per-publication policies. I'm imagining a preference- (or query-) controlled modal 5-dimensional 3D space with color and animation. Oooo, we could also implement an automated-profiling-controlled physics for the 5D system so that articles were, say, attracted to you based on your past interests, more elastic where clusters of articles cover much of the same content, coefficients of friction were adjusted based on which region of rating space you were exploring at the time, colors (of the articles) change when your focus shifts from fact to speculation or physics to philosophy, etc. ... or not. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review
Nick, What a great idea. Makes reviewing like recommending, and it gives potential readers a better sense of why someone liked or disliked an article. It really changes the nature of a journal. Rather than selectively publishing only the well reviewed articles, everything would be published along with their reviews. The value of a journal would even more depend on the people they could get to do the reviewing. It would make it more difficult to list one's publications, though. Under what circumstances would one say that a submitted paper had been accepted and published? I guess the journal could still go through its acceptance process. A problem that occurs to me, though, is that often one submits an article with the hope of getting useful comments and with the expectation of having to re-write it. How would those articles be handled? Would the author accompanying the submission with a request not to have the article and the reviews made public? Also, I suspect that some reviewers would not want their entire reviews published online. At least a portion of each review would have to be set aside for the author only. The more I think about it, the more complex but also the more promising it becomes. A very interesting idea. -- Russ On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen, OK, but No matter how many dimensions of judgment you have, it all boils down to a one-bit decision: either you are going to read the sucker or you arent. If one knows who the reviewers are ... knows their tastes, ete, perhaps each consumer could rate reviewers and the program could give a stars by reviewer-weighting customized for each consumer. Software could be provided to do this. Very close to what Amazon provides right now, except that each reader could accumulate his own personal judgments of reviewers, rather than relying on swarm evaluation. I forgot to say: Let's say the journal has an editorial board that rates and comments on articles as they are submitted. Let;s say we start a journal called THE FRIAM JOURNAL OF APPLIED COMPLEXITY. Every article is sent out to five reviewers. So now we have a possiblity of 25 stars, say. Now, the editor passes along the ratings and suggestions of the readers and the author now can make choice. He can carry on publication with a low rating, or he can revise and resubmit to get a better rating. this led to another thought. A group such as this one wouldnt need even to start its own journal. It could just start a rating service of some other publication. We could, for instance, start by rating JASSS and putting the ratings up on the web. The trouble is we wouldnt be rating or seeing the articles that JASSS had rejected. I suppose we could ask JASSS to send us all their rejected articles! I am probably too lazy to do anything like this, but I really like thinking about it. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) [Original Message] From: glen e. p. ropella g...@agent-based-modeling.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Date: 1/29/2009 12:44:00 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 28/01/09 07:34 PM: [...] why not have every article published and every article rated by a number of stars, and then everybody could set their browser to the minimum number of stars we are willing to tolerate. Those of us who don't want to be subject to the peer review effect, could simply set their browser to read everything with any stars at all! The problem with this is that a number of stars is uni-dimensional, while the guidelines for reviewers for any given publication are multi-dimensional (and/or vague). You could still project down to one dimension if you have a strong policy of who gets to rate the article, what the criteria are for the rating, and the trump power of the editor's opinion. The ultimate automation would be a multi-dimensional rating measure, though. Then you might be able to get rid of the per-publication policies. I'm imagining a preference- (or query-) controlled modal 5-dimensional 3D space with color and animation. Oooo, we could also implement an automated-profiling-controlled physics for the 5D system so that articles were, say, attracted to you based on your past interests, more elastic where clusters of articles cover much of the same content, coefficients of friction were adjusted based on which region of rating space you were exploring at the time, colors (of the articles) change when your focus shifts from fact to speculation or physics to philosophy, etc. ... or not. -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com FRIAM Applied
Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review
Maybe in the near future, researchers will publish papers on their web sites and journals would consist of stars (and maybe other symbols) and links. From: friam-boun...@redfish.com [friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of Nicholas Thompson [nickthomp...@earthlink.net] Sent: Thursday, January 29, 2009 4:20 PM To: russ.abb...@gmail.com Cc: friam Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review Russ, What you propose here is actually more elaborate and interesting than what I had in mind. It's what I proposed PLUS behavioral and brain sciences. On my account, nothing gets published until the author is ready; on my account, everything gets published with a rating. On your account, everything gets published WITH a rating AND WITH the last set of reviews. What that means, is that the discussion never gets closed; there is always a wet edge. I like that. I think academics would fall into line. Promotion committees can count stars just as well as the rest of us. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edumailto:nthomp...@clarku.edu) - Original Message - From: Russ Abbottmailto:russ.abb...@gmail.com To: nickthomp...@earthlink.netmailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net;The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Groupmailto:friam@redfish.com Sent: 1/29/2009 2:11:52 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review Nick, What a great idea. Makes reviewing like recommending, and it gives potential readers a better sense of why someone liked or disliked an article. It really changes the nature of a journal. Rather than selectively publishing only the well reviewed articles, everything would be published along with their reviews. The value of a journal would even more depend on the people they could get to do the reviewing. It would make it more difficult to list one's publications, though. Under what circumstances would one say that a submitted paper had been accepted and published? I guess the journal could still go through its acceptance process. A problem that occurs to me, though, is that often one submits an article with the hope of getting useful comments and with the expectation of having to re-write it. How would those articles be handled? Would the author accompanying the submission with a request not to have t he article and the reviews made public? Also, I suspect that some reviewers would not want their entire reviews published online. At least a portion of each review would have to be set aside for the author only. The more I think about it, the more complex but also the more promising it becomes. A very interesting idea. -- Russ On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 12:37 PM, Nicholas Thompson nickthomp...@earthlink.netmailto:nickthomp...@earthlink.net wrote: Glen, OK, but No matter how many dimensions of judgment you have, it all boils down to a one-bit decision: either you are going to read the sucker or you arent. If one knows who the reviewers are ... knows their tastes, ete, perhaps each consumer could rate reviewers and the program could give a stars by reviewer-weighting customized for each consumer. Software could be provided to do this. Very close to what Amazon provides right now, except that each reader could accumulate his own personal judgments of reviewers, rather than relying on swarm evaluation. I forgot to say: Let's say the journal has an editorial board that rates and comments on articles as they are submitted. Let;s say we start a journal called THE FRIAM JOURNAL OF APPLIED COMPLEXITY. Every article i s sent out to five reviewers. So now we have a possiblity of 25 stars, say. Now, the editor passes along the ratings and suggestions of the readers and the author now can make choice. He can carry on publication with a low rating, or he can revise and resubmit to get a better rating. this led to another thought. A group such as this one wouldnt need even to start its own journal. It could just start a rating service of some other publication. We could, for instance, start by rating JASSS and putting the ratings up on the web. The trouble is we wouldnt be rating or seeing the articles that JASSS had rejected. I suppose we could ask JASSS to send us all their rejected articles! I am probably too lazy to do anything like this, but I really like thinking about it. Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edumailto:nthompson@ %20clarku.edu) [Original Message] From: glen e. p. ropella g...@agent-based-modeling.commailto:g...@agent-based-modeling.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.commailto:friam@redfish.com Date: 1/29/2009 12:44:00 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 28/01/09 07:34 PM: [...] why not have every article published and every article
[FRIAM] Where does Friam meet tomorrow?
The non-virtual Friam met at St Johns last week, after several weeks at the Santa Fe Complex. I thought we'd be returning to the Complex tomorrow morning, but Nick thought we'd be continuing at St. Johns. Who wants to break the tie? -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Where does Friam meet tomorrow?
Let's meet at St Johns As for el farol, we can never decide on a night that isn't crowded ;-) On Jan 29, 2009 7:35 PM, Ted Carmichael teds...@gmail.com wrote: Maybe you should go to the bar El Farol? On Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 8:29 PM, Roger Critchlow r...@elf.org wrote: The non-virtual Friam me... FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review
Glen, You raise an interesting information theoretical point. Note that your decision to (3) is not independent of your decision to (1) or (2). Some redundancy here. I am sure there are cases where you start to (3) and then decide that you have to (1) after all. Or vice versa. Nick Nicholas S. Thompson Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology, Clark University (nthomp...@clarku.edu) [Original Message] From: glen e. p. ropella g...@agent-based-modeling.com To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group friam@redfish.com Date: 1/29/2009 2:12:46 PM Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Homeostasis by Peer Review Thus spake Nicholas Thompson circa 29/01/09 12:37 PM: [...] it all boils down to a one-bit decision: either you are going to read the sucker or you arent. Not that I'm argumentative or anything; but it's not just binary. I have at least 3 modes of reading: 1) read and integrate, 2) sloppy reading, and 3) skim. I do (1) when I want/expect to use the content for some task. I do (2) when I merely need to carry some context for understanding or communicating with others. And I do (3) when I want to determine whether I need to do (1) or (2), or when I just want an entry into some topic. So, the decision is, at least, quaternary. And much of which type of reading I do depends on the character of the publication pathway. And this is one of the reasons I hate the way /. and digg work. For whatever reason, I tend to get the most benefit out of obscure articles ... perhaps similarly, I seem to get the most enjoyment out of obscure music. Homogeny seems to be the enemy. If one knows who the reviewers are ... knows their tastes, ete, perhaps each consumer could rate reviewers and the program could give a stars by reviewer-weighting customized for each consumer. Software could be provided to do this. Very close to what Amazon provides right now, except that each reader could accumulate his own personal judgments of reviewers, rather than relying on swarm evaluation. This is a close approximation to what I'd like, except why approximate if you can shoot for the ultimate? If we were to develop a complicated projection from many to one dimensions, we may find that as difficult as implementing the multi-dimensional measure right off the bat. I suppose there would be marketing reasons... a competent funder might demand we start accumulating users immediately via a reducing projection and build out the multi-dimensional rating interface over time. I forgot to say: Let's say the journal has an editorial board that rates and comments on articles as they are submitted. Let;s say we start a journal called THE FRIAM JOURNAL OF APPLIED COMPLEXITY. Every article is sent out to five reviewers. So now we have a possiblity of 25 stars, say. Now, the editor passes along the ratings and suggestions of the readers and the author now can make choice. He can carry on publication with a low rating, or he can revise and resubmit to get a better rating. This would be a nice evolution of the system we currently have. If I were the editor of an extant journal, I might find it attractive. But if I were to start an entirely new publication intent on revolutionizing peer-review, I would be more inclined to adopt a multi-dimensional rating system not based solely on number of stars. Of course, there are all sorts of compromises. Perhaps the stars are colored according to the domain expertise of the reviewer. Or perhaps we have multiple symbols for types of rating (innovation vs. clear communication vs. scientific impact etc.). this led to another thought. A group such as this one wouldnt need even to start its own journal. It could just start a rating service of some other publication. We could, for instance, start by rating JASSS and putting the ratings up on the web. The trouble is we wouldnt be rating or seeing the articles that JASSS had rejected. I suppose we could ask JASSS to send us all their rejected articles! Actually, I'd like to see something like this for hubs like pubmed or repositories like citeseer or the acm's digital library. I wouldn't want it to be publication-specific, though I might want it to be domain-specific. I am probably too lazy to do anything like this, but I really like thinking about it. [grin] Oh ... uh ... what? ... you were talking about actually _doing_ something?!? Umm ... ok ... perhaps I'm in the wrong place... [patting pockets, grabbing jacket, retreating from the room] ;-) -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-222-9095, http://agent-based-modeling.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group
Re: [FRIAM] Where does Friam meet tomorrow?
As Sam Rayburn usedto say, No no's. See everybody at St. Johns. Dede NB: El Farol hasn't served breakfast since they stopped letting the last drunks spend the night on the floor. On Jan 29, 2009, at 6:29 PM, Roger Critchlow wrote: The non-virtual Friam met at St Johns last week, after several weeks at the Santa Fe Complex. I thought we'd be returning to the Complex tomorrow morning, but Nick thought we'd be continuing at St. Johns. Who wants to break the tie? -- rec -- FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
