Laron,

It's a good thought. However the web site I already setup
http://www.animalgenome.org/bioinfo/projects/ato/dev/ coupled with
the mailing list "atoteam@animalgenome.org", which has all mails
archived, viewed by threads or by subjects or by authors, was to
serve this purpose.

Besides, the SourceForge.net web sites/functions Jie just got in
action also serves similar purposes.

Wiki is a nice web sharing tool but it requires everyone to be
familiar with its editing formats. Another possible downside is it's
hard to trace back a topic track following up a versatile changing
history thread with an evolving ontology development because anyone
can change anything on a wiki site.

I am planning a trip back to Ames around July 13-18 (not decided
yet). Maybe it's a good time we can have a few issues well discussed
then? (I am starting to through things into my "to-do" list. Please
alert me your items of interests. I hope to visit with everyone.

Zhiliang

At 03:58 PM 6/13/2006, you wrote:

>Team,
>I have attached a document which explains my recommendations for
>dealing with suggestions from the research community. LH

---
Dealing with Suggestions to the Ontology  LaRon Hughes
In a recent email from Marcos Ramos, a student of Max Rothschild, he 
indicated that the he had a concern about the categorizing on traits 
in the pigqtldb.  It is highly probable that once the ATO ontology is 
developed, there will be some disagreements among the community on 
naming and categorizing conventions.  Therefore, a system will need 
to be set up that will allow discourse about these problems.
I recommend that a wiki (a collaborative website that allows 
postings) be created that will be composed of experts in the 
respective fields (e.g. pig, cow, chicken).  Each expert would be 
able to post an email to the wiki and as a result an email would be 
sent to the other experts.  This would allow other experts to view 
suggestions and respond, thus, allowing a consensus for solving 
conflicts.  Conflicts that are not resolved through the experts would 
need to be remedied by the judgment of the activity coordinator.
Once each portion of the ontology is completed, I suggest that there 
be a two week period when experts can have access to the wiki and 
discuss any problems or conflicts.  Once this period is complete and 
a working version is committed, I suggest that we continue to have 
this type of system to handle editing issues.