Mastodawn

#ResearchNotes #MetaResearch #Altmetrics

Ok, giving this a go!

Today's idle thought is that the Mastodon Migration particularly of #AcademicTwitter is a fascinating experiment in the cultural dynamics of validation and evaluation in the academy

Several requests running to help track mentions of papers here because "it's important to track" (cf https://ecoevo.social/@jby/109306899685024946) but also people celebrating the return of actual conversations and less broadcasting.

These are in tension...

(1/n)

Jeremy B. Yoder 🖖🏻🌿🏳️‍🌈📈 (@[email protected])

Content warning: Meta-don, culture clash

ecoevo.social

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

#ResearchNotes #MetaResearch #Altmetrics

Communities are figuring out practice as they go, while communities that have been here longer are (very patiently!) explaining why things are as they are.

Going to be fascinating to watch and see whether academia's desperate need for quantitative validation and competition wins out over systems designed for more local conversation which are what we *claim* to want...

(2/2)

Lucy Montgomery (She/Her)Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon is it possible for academics to want secure jobs and money for research AND meaningful community/conversations? Surely the obsession with quantitative validation and competition reflects insecurity/defensiveness/demands of metrics driven systems/scarce resource environments?

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

@LucyMontgomery_

I think it's hard for people and particularly groups not to internalize the external validation (extrinsic vs intrinsic) and then the rhetoric and the practice diverge (as we've seen) as cognitive dissonance sets in

I'm fascinated that both ends are surfacing very strongly here and maybe (just maybe) the structures here help the better angels to win out? Make it possible to hold that space?

Chris Long Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon What strikes me about the #fediverse model for #Macademia or any other online community is how it opens a range of opportunities for those of us who are serious about aligning our practices with our values. #ValuesEnacted

@cameronneylon #macademia <--- really want this to be a thing 😅

Bryan Lawrence Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon is it only about tracking? I see the use of “doi searching” as a way to find and engage in conversations, not to be a metric! It’s just a special case of hashtagging for me.

Richard Van Noorden Nov 8, 2022

@bnlawrence @cameronneylon Exactly, for me it's simply about being able to hashtag a research paper so as to find conversations about it (where tooters want those conversations to be found and so have used hashtags). Not metrics.

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

@richvn @bnlawrence Finer line than you might think between numbers and optimising for visibility with goal of appearing In Nature News :-)

More seriously “where they want to” is doing a lot of work. Arguably discoverability across twitter is what enables a lot of the most toxic characteristics. What you’re suggesting would work if there was very consistent signalling but context collapse seems a significant risk and something the platform is designed against?

Bryan Lawrence Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon @richvn

Possibly, but if you can do hashtag searching (although I haven’t worked out to get boolean hashtag search working), then when you *choose* to make something discoverable you are making a statement that you want to be part of a *conversation*.

There is no way anyone can metricise “like"s on this platform, so that leaves measuring boosting, but surely that will likely play out differently if something is disccoverable. It’d be the conversation that matters surely?

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

@bnlawrence @richvn Two things strike me

1. Want to have a conversation with who? Hashtags arise from communities who may use them for boundary signalling (like jargon)

2. Conflating the technical consequences of an action with intention. If the platform does something, it doesn’t mean that’s what was intended and there’s a lot of nuance here in terms of platform capabilities

More generally there’s a lot to work out between tech and intention and culture

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

@bnlawrence @richvn I mean these are very old issues (do I recall arguing with you about 15 years ago about reposting public posts in other places?) but they’re playing out anew and that’s what I find fascinating.

It’s a new opportunity to have these conversations and try to figure out something that resolves the tensions differently and perhaps with different driving incentives than maximising ad clicks?

Bryan Lawrence Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon @richvn

Taking those in reverse order:
- Yes, there is a lot to do and think about in terms of ways of working and behaving. I think part of that is about setting out aspirations.
- Again, agreed, & it may not do what was intended by the user or the platform itself. Needs experiments, iteration & patience. What is not possible now might become so.
- People *may* do many things, but one might be to want to find people talking about something of interest to them and join in.

Bryan Lawrence Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon @richvn

I would argue that’s what people are doing when then they put hashtags in their introductions. They’re saying “find me here” and “follow me” to “engage with me” and let me “engage with you”. When I talk about a paper here, I want to be able to discuss it with like minded people (but yes, I guess there is also a bit of “look at this beautiful thing”, but how does making that discoverable change things?)

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

@bnlawrence @richvn Agreed, I see no issue if intent and result is to make something discoverable and set up a conversation. I’m not against that, its where I came from personally

I’m really just cautioning against the assumption that we would want that means other do, especially given the platform seems deliberately engineered to behave differently. And I’m interested whether scholars take advantage of those new functionalities to have different conversations

Bryan Lawrence Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon @richvn

Actually, this does make me think that whatever solution is anticipated for making dois discoverable, it also needs to avoid making it impossible to talk about a doi without making it discoverable.

That’s too many double negatives: the solution needs to support talking about dois without making them discoverable AND talking about them with a discovery mechanism (hashtag).

Mike Taylor 🦕Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon @bnlawrence @richvn You can't have a discussion about a paper at all if you can't find where people are mentioning it.

Cameron Neylon Nov 8, 2022

@bnlawrence @richvn I think that last one is key. My impression is that this platform is designed from the perspective that any given user does not have the right to discover and insert themselves into a conversation even where it is “public”

This is very different from twitter/other social media where “public” means a flattened out global scope and “privacy” is achieved through encryption. There’s a more intermediate level here, in part tech in part practice/culture

Bryan Lawrence Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon @richvn

Well I think it depends on what the expectation is around hashtags. My reading of their usage here, is that by putting a hashtag on something you are doing exactly that: making the thing you are talking about something you are inviting others to engage with.

Mike Taylor 🦕Nov 8, 2022

@bnlawrence @cameronneylon @richvn My understanding, too. The only technical role of hashtags is to be searchable, so why would you ever use one if you were NOT inviting people to discover your post (the conversation that it's part of)?

Dr. Emily Dolson Nov 10, 2022

@mike @bnlawrence @cameronneylon @richvn So is the main challenge here basically coming up with a convention for translating dois to hashtags? And then people just have to choose whether or not to use the hashtag?

Sorry if someone has already suggested this, but would it work for the convention to be something like:

1. start with the letters doi (since hashtags can't start with numbers
2. the rest of the hashtag is the doi with all punctuation removed

Bryan Lawrence Nov 10, 2022

@emilydolson @mike @cameronneylon @richvn Sadly, I think there’s an issue with dois: https://github.com/mastodon/mastodon/issues/19992

Dots and slashes break hashtags · Issue #19992 · mastodon/mastodon

Steps to reproduce the problem I was trying to hashtag the DOI of a scientific research paper so that others could discover conversations about it. I posted: #10.1098/rsos.201617 Trying another way...

GitHub

Richard Van Noorden Nov 10, 2022

@bnlawrence @emilydolson @mike @cameronneylon if everyone adopted the convention of doi + the doi with all punctuation removed, that would work as a hashtag. Bit of an effort.

Mike Taylor 🦕Nov 10, 2022

@richvn @bnlawrence @emilydolson @cameronneylon It's a nasty hack to work around a simply missing feature. I would be disappointed if that was the best solution we could come up with.

Mike Taylor 🦕Nov 10, 2022

@emilydolson You could do this, but inviting people to do manual edits on their DOIs is cumbersome and error-prone. I would much rather they were just supported.

Mike Taylor 🦕Nov 8, 2022

@richvn @bnlawrence @cameronneylon 100% agree. When one of my papers is published, I want to see what people are saying about it. Are they getting the point I wanted to make? Did I explain it clearly enough? Do they have data points that I missed? Are they having new and relevant insights? Who else is working on similar stuff? Could there be opportunities for new collaborations?

It's pretty reductive to write all that off as an obsession with metrics. It's how you GET discussion.

Aileen Fyfe Nov 8, 2022

@cameronneylon Also a curious exercise in rebuilding a community. I feel that we've all migrated alone, and are now desperately trying to meet up again.
I've been impressed by the helpful responses I've had from people already here, but totally unknown (I think) to me.

Alan Sill Nov 13, 2022

@cameronneylon We have a survey going on at https://survey.hpc.social to give the opportunity for community input for folks interested in High Performance Computing and related fields for conditions of a new HPC-oriented instance. Would appreciate a boost and additional replies from any who have questions or would like to volunteer to help. Thanks! #HPC #mastodon #survey

P.S.: Congratulations on being mentioned by #Nature! https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-03668-7