Monday, September 15, 2008

Concurrency column for the October issue of the BEATCS

I just posted the instalment of the concurrency column for the October issue of the Bulletin of the EATCS. The article, entitled Formalizing operational semantic specifications in logic, has been contributed by Dale Miller.

I strongly recommend this article not only to the standard readership of the concurrency column, but also to those readers who normally focus on logic in computer science and on programming languages amongst others. By publishing it, I feel like I am killing at least three birds with a stone.

Enjoy.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think it would be a good idea to improve the representation of our part of science in Wikipedia. Suitably edited, the "Concurrency Column" posts would make good Wikipedia entries.

What do you think?

Luca Aceto said...

This is an excellent idea. For some time, Uwe Nestmann and I have been discussing the possibility of setting up a dedicated wiki for concurrency theory, but this project is still in the "real of ideas", to put it Platonically. We had not thought about using the existing Wikipedia page and build on it.

Thanks for suggesting this possibility. I will see if this can be made to work.

Anonymous said...

Great. I think it's increasingly important that process theory, or more generally the semantics of computation, does a good job at communicating its achievements to the outside world. Increasingly, outsiders will use Wikipedia as first port of call to find out about us.

Setting up a dedicated wiki is good, but I think it must be linked in some form with Wikipedia, given the later's importance, which is likely to increase, as the quality of articles goes up.

Unknown said...

Yes, it would have to be linked with related Wikipedia entries.

Actually, these issues have first been discussed on the "moca" mailing list in August 2006. Some Wikipedia authors/editors of those entries (like Hans Hüttel, Allan McInnes, ...) pointed especially at What Wikipedia is not to make clear that Wikipedia entries alone would not allow us to serve all the intended information.

In case of interest, consult the "moca" List Archive.

Anonymous said...

Hello Uwe, I agree, Wikipedia cannot represent everything that ought to be known about process theory/semantics. But I'm convinced that Wikipedia (or successors of Wikipedia) will be a primary source of information for most things, the first place to look if somebody wants to find out about something like process theory. In particular, funding organisations will look at Wikipedia when we ask them for money. It would therefore be advantageous if our field looked good and professional in Wikipedia. The "Concurrency Column" articles are well-written and edited. Why not make them easier to access for the general public?

About a dedicated process theory wiki, what do you propose it should contain? Semanticists are a bit shy and don't like public discussion of work (in progress). Mostly, they like to present finished work (i.e. papers).

Anonymous said...

Here is a relevant initiative from the other side of TCS. Semanticists should follow suit!

Anonymous said...

There's slashdot discussion on the subject.

Anonymous said...

There's now a biology journal that requires authors to add a wikipedia article to accompany submissions. Sounds like a good idea!

Additional discussion here.

Anonymous said...

Some more discussion on requiring wikipedia articles with a journal submission is here.