Talk:Scientific community metaphor

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

	This article is part of the History of Science WikiProject, an attempt to improve and organize the history of science content on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion. You can also help with the History of Science Collaboration of the Month.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the quality scale.
???	This article has not yet been assigned a rating on the importance scale.

Contents 1 Bad Writing 2 Capitalisation 3 Use 4 Categorization 5 What is the "scientific community metaphor"? 6 Articles for Deletion debate, and neutrality 7 Neutrality disputed?

[edit] Bad Writing

"The Scientific Community Metaphor is an approach to understanding scientific communities by extending pattern-directed invocation programming languages that invoke high-level procedural plans on the basis of messages (e.g. assertions and goals) building on the philosophy, history and sociology of science with its analysis that scientific research depends critically on monotonicity, concurrency, commutativity, and pluralism to propose, modify, support, and oppose scientific methods, practices, and theories."

-Wow now that is some horrible writing. First of all, its a run-on sentence. Break it up. Second, you need to start an article with sentences in PLAIN ENGLISH, not specialized jibber-jabber like "pattern-directed invocation programming languages that invoke high-level procedural plans". Who knows what that means? Maybe some tiny fraction of computer programmers out there? Third, why does it start out "The Scientific Community Methaphor" like its some TV show. Shouldn't it be more like "the 'Scientific Community' is a metaphor that refers to such and such". Wow thanks for a good laugh though!

[edit] Capitalisation

Should this article be fully capitalised? Capitals after the first word are usually used only in proper names or titles of books, but there may be exceptional circumstances. --Charles Stewart 14:55, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Use

Are there any examples of this metaphor/paradigm actually being used? Also, the reference section should be cleaned up. I mean, does Goedel's Theorems really have any relevance? --Maru (talk) Contribs 23:57, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

Wow yeah that reference section is longer than the article lol

It is currently being used. But there are no publications yet. I have removed the citation to Göedel's theorem. --Carl Hewitt 01:46, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

You'll have to forgive this layperson, but if this was first outlined in 1981 (as the article claims), and there still aren't any publications (according to you, who seems to be in the best position to know).... Well, that doesn't bode well for the notability of this subject. Although if it is being used, then that would probably be notable enough. Adding a mention of what it is being used in would help the article a fair bit. --Maru (talk) Contribs 02:37, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

It is just now that the massive concurrency has become available (i.e. Web Services and many-core computer architectures) necessary to make the science and technology discussed in this article highly relevant to the development of computer science. Consequently the published work reported in this article is increasingly referenced in the field and we can expect many more publications in the coming years. Of course there is a delay between when work is done and it is published in the literature.--Carl Hewitt 03:56, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Well... I'm still a bit worried about notability, but I guess it does Wikipedia no harm to keep the article- after all, Wikipedia is not paper. --Maru (talk) Contribs 04:14, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Categorization

I propose the following categories for the article:

• Category:Logic programming
• Category:Artificial intelligence
• Category:Actor model
• Category:Science studies
• Philosophy of science
• Category:Theorem prover languages

Another Wikipedia editor has proposed the following category which I don't understand

• Category:Computer science books

Of course we can discuss the appropiateness of each of the above. Thanks,--Carl Hewitt 03:59, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The CS books category was probably added because of the confusing initial lines:

"The Scientific Community Metaphor was published in 1981 by Bill Kornfeld and Carl Hewitt as an approach to understanding scientific communities by extending pattern directed invocation programming languages"

On Wikipedia, the general practice is to bold books, and leave in normal text or italics articles. They probably didn't notice way down in the references that it was " MIT AI Memo 641.", hence not a book.

Good point. Actually it is bold because of another Wikipedia convention to bold the subject of the article.--Carl Hewitt 04:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Now, the AI cat should probably be removed since I think a few of the other cats are subcategories of AI, and it's best to be as specific as one can.

I have removed the AI cat.--Carl Hewitt 04:48, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The Philosophy of science cat strikes me as unsuited, since while principles and movements such as logical positivism are very important to P o' S, practical descriptions and implementations such as (AFAIK) the Scientific Community Metaphor don't really concern it much.

There are extensive connections to the philosophy of science in the article.--Carl Hewitt 04:53, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

I'm not too sure about the theorem prover language cat- it seems to be based on theorem proving languages, but does it actually prove theorems? That I'll leave to you though. --Maru (talk) Contribs 04:38, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

Book might indeed be an overstatement for an 10 page paper, for which I could only find 27 other papers that cite it. I propose the category Category:Computer science papers. The paper is about the philosophy behind the Ether programming language. An article about Ether would belong in logic programming and/or theorem prover language but an article about an paper about Ether not. The paper does not touch articficial intelligence and the philosophy of science enough to warrant inclusion in those categories. The paper does not report about a study of science. I doubt the papaer is notable enough to justify the existance of an article about it. --R.Koot 05:01, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

How did you readily find 27 papers that cite the article? I wonder how many papers actually cite it.;-)

[1] --R.Koot 07:03, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

The Wikipedia article is actually about the Scientific Community Metaphor which is an extremely important area for Computer Science going forward because of the recent advent of massive concurrency (i.e. Web Services and many-core computer architectures).

The article already says a great deal that touches on the philosophy of science and presumably those areas of the article will be expanded in the future.

Also here is a close connection with the content of the article and much work in the recent 4S conference in Pasadena. The Scientific Community Metaphor is an obligatory point of passage between Science Studies and Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems--Carl Hewitt 06:32, 31 October 2005 (UTC)

[edit] What is the "scientific community metaphor"?

The introduction as it stands is both vague and exceptionally buzzword-laden. It is not at all clear whether the metaphor is a:

• poetic device (probably not notable)
• programming technique for accomplishing interesting CS tasks
• basis of a programming language that may be notable in its own right (Ether)
• tool for understanding the behavior of scientists
• paradigm to steer the behavior of scientists

So, er, what is it? zowie 18:23, 22 November 2005 (UTC)

Thanks for your questions. They are excellent and should be answered in revisions of the article. Regards,--Carl Hewitt 04:10, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for Deletion debate, and neutrality

This article survived an Articles for Deletion debate. The discussion can be found here. The debate identified serious problems in the article stemming from the extensive authorship and possessiveness of User:CarlHewitt, whose work the article discusses. Until these problems are remedied, a tag indicating the non-neutrality of the article should probably remain. -Splash^talk 03:52, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

I would like to thank Splash for his work. Also I admit to extensive authorship in getting this article started. However I do not want to be possessive. Also I have no doubt that the article can be improved. So everyone's suggestions for improvement are welcome.--Carl Hewitt 04:06, 27 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Neutrality disputed?

Can someone say why the neutrality of this article is disputed?--67.134.140.2 23:06, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Based on Splash's comment above, I would imagine that you will find the answer here. --Allan McInnes (talk) 23:43, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

The above link is 25KB! Would anyone care to summarize?--67.134.140.2 00:39, 9 March 2006 (UTC)