Content And The Lack Thereof At Sm.net, The trouble with running a website "on the side" Options

[davidtalaga]

Dear SM.net Users,

And I use that term loosely since there is little for any of you to "use" here at SM.net.

Those of you who have registered and visited, I imagine, did so in the hope that the site would have and provide the type of content and experience that would make it a useful resource for the greater community of single molecule research scientists.

I spent considerable time and effort putting together a site that had many features that would allow it to serve as a place to exchange information, arrange meetings, advertise open positions, and exchange methods and software. The idea was to provide a virtual meeting space that would accelerate exchange of ideas and help accelerate the development of the single molecule field. Having a online community allows for information not present in formal publications to be disseminated. I still believe that there is a valuable role for such a website to play in this and any other field of research.

It is clear that this has not happened, and for that I am principally responsible.

The original site was completely destroyed by hackers shortly after launch. Key elements of the site that were not recoverable and the whole site needed to be redesigned from scratch because certain features of the original site contained the security holes that were exploited to vandalize and ultimately destroy the site.

The new version (SM mark II?) suffered a similar fate. Though the site was not destroyed, repeated vandalism required upgrading software to incompatible versions and elimination of the download functionality. To prevent further vandalism of SM III security measures were put in place that have successfully prevented vandalism. However these security measures made the site, in effect, a closed community without a community.

I write this letter to solicit suggestions as how to make this site more useful. Please reply to this posting with your suggestions for the most important features to be retained or implemented in a new and, I hope, useful SM.net (Mark IV?).

Volunteers to assist with administration of the site would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

David Talaga