[Protein-crystallography] xtal-log activity

[Cathy Lawson]

>    BTW, it seems that the ccp4bb is much more active on discussing protein
>crystallography. I wonder how much this xtal-log forum is active !

Dear Jorge,

The xtal-log bulletin board has not so active in the past few 
years.  It is easy to see this by looking at the storage size for 
each month's correspondence on the xtal-log archive page: 
http://www.bio.net/bionet/mm/xtal-log/.  When I took on the job of 
moderating in 2001 there had already been a significant reduction in 
use,  in part because of spam problems, but also because other 
crystallography bulletin boards (e.g., for ccp4, cns, o) welcome "off 
topic" posts.

However, there is good news:

The xtal-log bb continues to actively used by a number of scientists 
to post job opportunities, conference and software announcements, 
currently reaching more than 150 e-mail subscribers.  I would 
therefore say that it is still a very appropriate place to ask 
questions about protein crystallography.  To reach a larger set of 
experts, I would suggest cross-posting with one of the other bbs.

Moderation has become super easy.  The bionet bb's were changed over 
from MRC to the group at Indiana in June 2005, and better moderation 
software was implemented.   They must have a terrific spam filter 
because nearly all the messages that come to my attention are 
list-appropriate.  Also, I always promote good posters  to 
"automatically accept" status.

So ... bring on the crystallography questions!

best wishes,

Cathy






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Catherine Lawson
Laboratory for Structural Biology and Bioinformatics
Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology
610 Taylor Road
Piscataway, NJ 08854  USA
http://roma.rutgers.edu
http://rutchem.rutgers.edu/~lawson
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