2015-12-24 08:07:49 <Yu Wu> Yu wants to chat on Hangouts!
2015-12-24 08:11:27 <Yu Wu> hello P13! Nice to meet you. How are you?
2015-12-24 08:12:57 <P13> Hi Yu, I"m good and a "little" outraged by Facebook.
2015-12-24 08:13:04 <P13> What about you?
2015-12-24 08:13:28 <Yu Wu> Oh what Facebook has done to you?
2015-12-24 08:13:41 <Yu Wu> Good good, thanks!
2015-12-24 08:14:50 <P13> Facebook is massively pushing its save the Free Basics campaign, it has got billboards, full page ads and tv commercials.
2015-12-24 08:15:06 <Yu Wu> lol
2015-12-24 08:15:14 <P13> Free Basics is the new name for Internet.org which clearly violates net neutrality
2015-12-24 08:16:05 <Yu Wu> Aha interesting, so they wish they can just change the name and everything else will be changed as well? :D
2015-12-24 08:17:53 <P13> Yeah I guess so
2015-12-24 08:18:36 <Yu Wu> Anyway. Shall we start now or 12 mins later?
2015-12-24 08:18:50 <P13> We can start now
2015-12-24 08:18:57 <Yu Wu> Great! Thanks!
2015-12-24 08:19:47 <Yu Wu> I saw that you own the awesome-* project, and also your organization on GitHub has sever lists, such as awesome-* and awesome-*
2015-12-24 08:20:10 <Yu Wu> I'm wondering what motivated you to do this kind of indexing resources activity? What problems it intends to solve?
2015-12-24 08:21:11 <P13> It helps us in ensuring that the knowledge doesn't get lost when people graduate or leave the team
2015-12-24 08:21:41 <P13> It is helpful when new people join the team, we need to assign them material to study
2015-12-24 08:21:52 <P13> and we can simply point to the repository
2015-12-24 08:21:57 <P13> *point them
2015-12-24 08:21:59 <Yu Wu> Do you guys refer to that list often during your daily work?
2015-12-24 08:22:23 <Yu Wu> Oh you run research lab?
2015-12-24 08:22:41 <P13> I don't run a research lab I used to work with one
2015-12-24 08:23:08 <P13> That was in my second and third year of undergraduate
2015-12-24 08:23:21 <P13> studies btw I'm in my fourth year now
2015-12-24 08:23:55 <Yu Wu> Got it! Why do you guys host those lists on GitHub, rather than say, Wikipedia or blog?
2015-12-24 08:24:43 <P13> One of the reason to github is simply that it trendy.
2015-12-24 08:25:21 <P13> We never considered using Wikipedia and I'm not sure if such content will fall under wikipedia's content guidelines
2015-12-24 08:25:42 <Yu Wu> You mean GitHub itself is trendy or indexing resources on GitHub is trendy?
2015-12-24 08:25:58 <P13> Both of them.
2015-12-24 08:26:27 <P13> It is also pretty easy to use
2015-12-24 08:26:49 <Yu Wu> Did you guys learn from other awesome-* lists to do your own?
2015-12-24 08:28:00 <P13> Yes we follow the same model of other awesome-* lists
2015-12-24 08:28:20 <P13> we created our own because there were none on motion planning and computer vision
2015-12-24 08:28:39 <P13> though some time ago I found a better awesome computer vision list
2015-12-24 08:29:14 <Yu Wu> Is it that you find out that other people were doing awesome lists, and you find out them useful, but lack of the resources you want, so you created your own?
2015-12-24 08:29:47 <P13> yes exactly
2015-12-24 08:30:05 <Yu Wu> Got it ☺
2015-12-24 08:30:13 <Yu Wu> do you use those awesome lists as well?
2015-12-24 08:30:37 <P13> Do you mean other awesome lists?
2015-12-24 08:30:45 <Yu Wu> yeah
2015-12-24 08:30:57 <Yu Wu> you are definitely familiar with your own ☺
2015-12-24 08:31:47 <P13> Yes, I use the awesome-python list by vinta to look for a python library when I need one
2015-12-24 08:32:07 <P13> I have sporadically used other lists to find books and other learning material
2015-12-24 08:32:29 <Yu Wu> Why do you think those lists are superior than search engine?
2015-12-24 08:35:40 <P13> Yes, for example I want to know what to use to make a visualization in python, my search engine is giving me some SO links, some link to Bokeh and vispy
2015-12-24 08:35:50 <P13> but it no way as comprehensive as the awesome list
2015-12-24 08:36:20 <Yu Wu> Oh, so you know that the list is relevant and high quality resources as comparing to search engine, right?
2015-12-24 08:36:26 <Yu Wu> also comprehensive
2015-12-24 08:37:27 <P13> Yes when you know which list to look at
2015-12-24 08:37:42 <P13> and if the list maintainer has done a good work
2015-12-24 08:37:52 <Yu Wu> definitely ☺
2015-12-24 08:38:31 <Yu Wu> So how does collaboration work on your lists?
2015-12-24 08:38:58 <Yu Wu> Anybody knows a certain resource, then send PR, and others examine it to see if it was relevant and good?
2015-12-24 08:40:22 <P13> Yes, except that nobody outside the group have send a PR. though some people have starred it so I suppose they found the list useful.
2015-12-24 08:41:11 <Yu Wu> What are the criteria you used to select/filter the resources?
2015-12-24 08:42:37 <P13> We never tried to filter anything and added everything we know which is useful.
2015-12-24 08:43:05 <Yu Wu> Do you think GitHub supports such practice well?
2015-12-24 08:43:05 <P13> and there wasn't a lot of content to filter on the first hand
2015-12-24 08:43:14 <Yu Wu> interesting
2015-12-24 08:43:31 <Yu Wu> Did you mean on the first hand, it was very hard to select resources?
2015-12-24 08:44:09 <P13> I mean had only a few number of resources to start with.
2015-12-24 08:44:33 <Yu Wu> How did you find those other resources and make the list grow?
2015-12-24 08:45:57 <P13> People tend to find alternate resources in references and hyperlinks when they are working.
2015-12-24 08:47:04 <Yu Wu> Did you capture any drawbacks, difficulties, unsatisfactory parts during your encountering on those lists? Either your own or other awesome lists
2015-12-24 08:49:11 <P13> Curating resources pays well only in longterm, sometimes it become hard to convince people to do it, especially when a deadline is approaching and everyone is on fire.
2015-12-24 08:49:41 <Yu Wu> So convincing other people that it is worth doing?
2015-12-24 08:49:56 <P13> yes
2015-12-24 08:50:08 <Yu Wu> Got it. Any others?
2015-12-24 08:51:02 <P13> let me think ...
2015-12-24 08:51:08 <Yu Wu> no problem
2015-12-24 08:51:41 <Yu Wu> I'm just curious, it is possible that you don't find any other drawbacks ☺
2015-12-24 08:54:31 <P13> Search engines often don't list awesome lists on the first page and it is hard to land on a awesome list for something unless you are explicitly searching for it.
2015-12-24 08:54:58 <Yu Wu> got it! This is definitely something that needs improvement
2015-12-24 08:55:11 <P13> earlier when I typed visualization libraries in python the awesome list was there in the results
2015-12-24 08:55:40 <Yu Wu> Now it doesn't anymore?
2015-12-24 08:56:25 <P13> nope
2015-12-24 08:56:47 <Yu Wu> lol...
2015-12-24 08:57:02 <Yu Wu> OK thanks a lot Harsh! I pretty much covered all I want to ask
2015-12-24 08:57:08 <Yu Wu> do you have any other comments or suggestions?
2015-12-24 08:59:20 <P13> To tackle the problem of finding good lists people have created list of lists and lists of lists of lists like https://github.com/t3chnoboy/awesome-awesome-awesome and https://github.com/jnv/lists
2015-12-24 08:59:40 <Yu Wu> yeah ... I saw that ... but that's crazy ...
2015-12-24 09:01:55 <P13> yeah definitely means that search engines need to improve themselves. And it interesting to note that search engines don't find what's a good resource but often define what's good resource.
2015-12-24 09:02:34 <Yu Wu> Could you elaborate on this a little? What you do mean by search engine define waht's good resoruce?
2015-12-24 09:02:50 <Yu Wu> Did you mean that resources on the first page are ususally perceived as good?
2015-12-24 09:06:30 <P13> It goes pretty much on the lines "What isn't there on the google doesn't exist". Suppose I don't know the existence of awesome lists the first thing I'll do is to search google, if I don't find them there I'll probably never stumble upon them. If I don't stumble upon them this means I can't contribute to them and make them "awesomer".
2015-12-24 09:07:36 <Yu Wu> interesting, I think those awesome lists try to solve this problem to some extend
2015-12-24 09:07:43 <Yu Wu> but definitely not enough
2015-12-24 09:09:26 <P13> yes search engines to a extent create a feedback loop for collaborative project. Collaborative projects needs visibility to grow and search engines gives visibility to what is already visible.
2015-12-24 09:09:54 <P13> Rather I should say they decide what is visible, whatever the criteria is.
2015-12-24 09:10:28 <Yu Wu> got it:) this is really helpful. Thanks again Harsh! I really appreciate your help
2015-12-24 09:10:37 <Yu Wu> If something comes up in the future, can I follow up with you?
2015-12-24 09:11:23 <P13> sure
2015-12-24 09:11:36 <Yu Wu> Great! It has been really nice chatting with you!
2015-12-24 09:11:44 <P13> btw I'm looking for internships for this summer
2015-12-24 09:12:13 <P13> I've been involved with online communities and would like to work on understanding online collaboration
2015-12-24 09:12:32 <P13> Do you have any openings at your lab?
2015-12-24 09:13:20 <Yu Wu> Sorry I currently moved to San Jose, California. But I know that my advisor sometime recruit summer undergraduate interns
2015-12-24 09:13:45 <Yu Wu> https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&q=john+m+carroll&btnG=&as_sdt=1%2C5&as_sdtp=
2015-12-24 09:13:48 <Yu Wu> this is my advisor
2015-12-24 09:14:03 <Yu Wu> You can definitely send him an email
2015-12-24 09:14:24 <Yu Wu> mention that you chatted with me for one of the studies of his lab
2015-12-24 09:14:42 <P13> Great Thanks ☺
2015-12-24 09:15:08 <Yu Wu> no problem, let me know if there's anything else I can help
2015-12-24 09:16:08 <P13> sure, please send the a link when you get this research published.
2015-12-24 09:16:22 <Yu Wu> I will definitely keep you posted
2015-12-24 09:16:50 <P13> Nice meeting you, have a good day, bye