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Re: Status of the review process

Peter Keller (bsspak@bath.ac.uk)
Fri, 1 Sep 1995 19:33:37 +0100 (BST)


On Thu, 31 Aug 1995, Paula Fitzgerald wrote:

> There is a slight problem, though, in that I am the only one seeing a lot of
> this traffic, as people are still sending  many of their questions or comments
> as mail to me instead of as postings to the list.  I get the feeling from
> comments a couple of people have made that they are new to mmCIF, and don't
> quite understand all of the ins and outs, and consquently they are a little
> shy about revealing their ignorance in front of an audience of experts.

I'd like to reinforce this point:

1) If you post to the list, Paula won't get lots of mails all asking the
same question, and as more people start taking an interest, they can check
the mail archive to see if their points have already been answered. 

2) No-one will laugh at you because you ask a dumb question (besides, the
chances are that it isn't dumb anyway). People will get upset, though, if
you write software which interprets CIF's in a different way from other
programs, because you didn't have the nerve to ask about something which
you weren't sure about. 

3) If you post to the list, people other than Paula can take up points 
that are raised. In this spirit, I think that Herb's question about 
aliases in a save-frame with loops deserves a more detailed answer, and 
I'm posting it to the DDL list. (If you're not on the DDL list, pick it up 
in a day or two from http://ndbserver.rutgers.edu/DDL/mail/index.html).

4) I don't know about the rest of you, but I'd like to have some idea as 
to how many other people are working on this. No-one here at Bath 
understands what I'm doing, and it can get lonely here at times! :-)

Regards,
Peter.

========================================================================
Peter Keller.            \ "We kill the cows to make jackets out of 
Dept. of Biology and      \  them, and then we kill each other for the
    Biochemistry,          \  jackets we made out of the cows."
University of Bath,         \                   --- Denis Leary
Bath, BA2 7AY, UK.           \ 
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Tel. (+44/0)1225 826826 x 4302 | Email: P.A.Keller@bath.ac.uk (Internet)
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