OpenWetWare:ProjectDevelopment/Linking of OWW content

Description

Create a mechanism on OWW that, at a first level, helps you to easily aggregate and organize content you’ve created or want to follow (i.e., a simple tool that makes it super easy to develop and organize links to pages within OWW) and, at a second level, allows you to link the content according to relationships that are meaningful to you. In other words, eventually create your personal semantic linking structure within OWW.

"My Links" is an infrastructure improvement, a button on a page that when clicked, adds a link somewhere else on the site without you going there. how it decides the page to add the link to, etc, depends on how the tool is being applied. (e.g. it could be hardcoded -- "add this protocol to MyProtocol", "add this link to MyDashboard" or it could be user selected "add this link to <dropbox of options>" or "add this link to <fill in blank with freetext page name>"

Suggestions/Refinements of the idea (from Barry):

1. The "Add link to - " dropdown list with an option for "my protocols" should also link to the page from the community protocols page, i.e. anything a user marks as being a "my protocol" should automatically be added to the community list at the same time. 2. If you are on a User: page, there should be a dropdown option for "add to my friends". Maybe this should be an option on any page? 3. Another option in the dropdown list might be "pages I've visited recently". Recently visited pages are the pages I am most likely to want to add a link to. For example, think about when I am collecting thoughts and links on RNA extraction at Barry Canton/RNA extraction. As I search the wiki and find more relevant links I'll likely want to keep on adding them to my RNA extraction page so I'd like that to show up in the dropdown list. 4. As a related idea, include a drop down list of the 5 pages I've visited most recently (basically cleaning up Austin's extension) so that they are available for easy linking/retrieval.

Challenge or opportunity the development project answers

1. Helps users to organize information
2. Helps users to develop networks and relationships among OWW content (i.e., from OpenWetWare to OpenNetWare)
3. Helps users to develop networks and relationships among OWW users (i.e., social networks & communities)

Examples of what could be done or how it would work

• Click on the “track” icon to automatically add the page or the section of the page to your user page (to start), and perhaps later to a user-specific database (not sure that this second stage is needed).
  • Something really simple would go a long way. For example, being able to highlight or click text and then click a "link me" button, which could bring up a selection menu listing main sections of the user's home page would be terrific.
• A three-dimensional map of your connections to content on OWW. Can be autogenerated based on parameters you enter into the “draw my connections” tool.
  • Are there any examples of tools like this being used productively?
• Your tracked information could be arranged as 1-dimensional (a list of links), 2-dimensional (links + people and networks), and 3 dimensional displays (visual displays, like the “map of the market).

Why the project should happen now

Already, it is difficult to keep track of your own OWW content, let alone content of interest to you that is generated by others. As OWW grows, and as new tools get developed (e.g., Project Notebook) this problem becomes worse.

Who are the immediate customers?

1. OWW users who can't keep track of their own entries (e.g., Drew can't find his project notebooks)
2. OWW users who want to develop content networks (e.g., protocols)
3. OWW users who want to develop community networks (e.g., social, teaching, you name it)