Is there enough demand to consider adding a "Science and Scientific Computing" special interest group? Macs have always been fairly visible in academic research, and the discussion topics are similar, but fairly tangental to something like the Mac coding subforum.
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"Science" special interest group?
- Thread starter FluJunkie
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I like the idea in principle, but it might lead to others wanting a special interest group of their own. For example, I'd like to see a special interest group in medicine, but the demand for that would likely be small!
Do you mean like science in general or computers in science. I'd be interested in the former.
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The subset of the general MR population capable of putting forth something useful and/or relevant in a science forum is much too small to merit a separate forum.
OP, I can definitely appreciate your point of view. One thing that's always interested me is how professionals make use of OS X in their workplace.
For example, as a law student, I'd love to know about the limitations, benefits, etc of using a Mac in legal practice (and prior to law school, I would have loved to know about using a Mac in law school). I'm sure doctors, engineers and others have similar questions or thoughts to share. The trouble is, I have no idea where I'd put such a thread beyond "Community Discussion." The problem with that forum is that it is very broad, and any questions about Mac usage in a particular field would be more Mac rather than community based.
Or perhaps there are other sites out there specifically tailored for this purpose and we should turn our attention there instead. Either way I think some input from the powers that be would certainly be helpful.
For example, as a law student, I'd love to know about the limitations, benefits, etc of using a Mac in legal practice (and prior to law school, I would have loved to know about using a Mac in law school). I'm sure doctors, engineers and others have similar questions or thoughts to share. The trouble is, I have no idea where I'd put such a thread beyond "Community Discussion." The problem with that forum is that it is very broad, and any questions about Mac usage in a particular field would be more Mac rather than community based.
Or perhaps there are other sites out there specifically tailored for this purpose and we should turn our attention there instead. Either way I think some input from the powers that be would certainly be helpful.
They can't produce complete and useful sentences in the iPhone forums either yet those still exist.
The majority of people here are geeks, and geeks like science.
Not really sure what my opinion is. I can imagine there being quite a lot of users who would use the separate subforum if it was launched but there is always the issue of perhaps having too many subforums or it being filtered too finely when it could all belong in one section, for instance.
That's a good counterpoint.
That's a good counterpoint.
This is an Apple site, not a science site. There is a justification for having iPhone forums on an Apple site. There isn't a good justification for having a Science forum on an Apple site. At least, nobody's put forth a good one yet.
Just because someone is interested in gadgets does not mean they're interested in any of the science behind it.
Any science discussion will probably just get hijacked and sent off to the Wastela...err, PRSI in the first place. I'll start; let's talk about the science behind global warming.
http://www.apple.com/science/
I believe I didn't make myself terribly clear. Not terribly interested in random discussions of science, or even the science behind Apple products. More...the use of Apple's in research. Their interests, especially in terms of performance, are vastly different even than other pro-users.
CalBoy's idea is also a good one - if there isn't enough volume for "Macs in Higher Ed", is there enough volume for "Macs in the Workplace?".
Not really. Unless you care to elaborate based on your own professional experience, this is not what I've seen in the scientific sector. When a lab or organization uses Macs it tends to be localized to a particular group and almost never runs OS X natively. But admittedly my experience is limited to the US National Labs, JPL, and CERN.
Again, just because there are Macs in science doesn't mean creation of a "Macs in Science" forum will lead to any productive discussion about it. Look at how dead the Distributed Computing forum is now.
"Macs in the Workplace" threads pop up every now and then, but they're in the vast minority.
Whether or not the use of a Mac is localized to a particular group isn't really here or there - a lone graphic artist in a Windows-based office is equally localized. If a single user, or lab group, uses a Mac and the rest of the university doesn't, what does that actually matter for the poster?
In fact, that localization *is* a topic of discussion - the need for a Mac to "play well with others" has a much more expansive definition of "others" for most university settings.
My experience is contrary to yours - the Mac users in academia I know are keen to use OS X natively as much as possible, though admittedly many of them have a terminal window up as well. But 90% of what I do can run natively in OS X, and that number would be 100% if SAS would just come out with a Mac version, or I could be bothered to go learn STATA.
In terms of differences between most power users - Grids and other "server" type infrastructure becomes important to people whose training is frankly, not in that area (I for example, was busy getting degrees in biology), multithreading is something you *can* do, rather than just griping that Adobe/Apple/Whoever hasn't implemented it well yet, and the UNIX side of the machine will probably be seeing heavy use.
True, but that's kind of why sub-forums exist in the first place, no? So that low traffic threads don't simply vanish off the main pages?
That being said, the question was whether or not it would generate enough traffic to be justified. The answer to that may very well be no.
I think the reason why new sub-forums are created is when there is a relatively big number of threads in other sub-forums that are similar and not really related to the topics of the sub-forums. If there are many threads about Science and Apple in current forums, then it might be worth it to create a new sub-forum that is dedicated to that topic.
For example, the creation of OS X Lion sub-forum made sense because it is a topic that is a bit different from normal OS X discussions since currently it's mainly speculation. It is pretty easy to separate normal OS X discussions (mainly troubleshooting and questions) and speculation of future OS X. This makes it easier for people to navigate and find threads. Otherwise Lion discussions might have conquered the whole OS X sub-forum. Lion is also a hot topic so it gets a lot traffic, meaning that it's not a dead sub-forum.
I haven't seen any threads that would belong to Science and Apple sub-forum. You need to have something to start with. Making a new sub-forum and wishing that someone comes in and makes a thread doesn't make much sense. Just because there isn't a sub-forum for every topic about Apple doesn't mean that there should be.
This doesn't sound like a topic that would generate a lot interest and discussion. If you really want to talk about this, go and make a thread to Apple, Industry and Internet Discussion. That should be a good start at least. There are topics such as Hackintoshes that show up every now and then but there still isn't an own sub-forum for them.
For example, the creation of OS X Lion sub-forum made sense because it is a topic that is a bit different from normal OS X discussions since currently it's mainly speculation. It is pretty easy to separate normal OS X discussions (mainly troubleshooting and questions) and speculation of future OS X. This makes it easier for people to navigate and find threads. Otherwise Lion discussions might have conquered the whole OS X sub-forum. Lion is also a hot topic so it gets a lot traffic, meaning that it's not a dead sub-forum.
I haven't seen any threads that would belong to Science and Apple sub-forum. You need to have something to start with. Making a new sub-forum and wishing that someone comes in and makes a thread doesn't make much sense. Just because there isn't a sub-forum for every topic about Apple doesn't mean that there should be.
This doesn't sound like a topic that would generate a lot interest and discussion. If you really want to talk about this, go and make a thread to Apple, Industry and Internet Discussion. That should be a good start at least. There are topics such as Hackintoshes that show up every now and then but there still isn't an own sub-forum for them.