I have started a phylogenetics discussion forum at phylobabble.org. The intent is for phylobabble to become an electronic version of the chatter that happens between sessions at meetings, but this version is always there and you don’t have to worry about forgetting things. I also hope that it becomes a place to engage the broader scientifically-interested public, such as students and citizen scientists.

Phylobabble came about because of two events that happened within days of each other: first Joseph Brown posted about how phylogenetics needs a discussion forum. Second Trevor Bedford pointed out the excellent Discourse webapp in an unrelated discussion. Thank you, Trevor and Joseph, and thank you to the early adopters for the feedback, especially Trevor and Michael Landis.

Why? There are a lot of ways to have discussions in an analogous way on social media. However, recently I’ve been feeling that social media was, well, too social for what I wanted. I want a place to nerd out in an anti-social way.

I hope you will join us.

P.S.: I do not yet have a sustainable funding model for phylobabble. It will probably cost $1.2K in AWS fees per year to run, and perhaps more if it becomes popular. If you know some mechanism for supporting it, please let me know.