Curtis wrote:


Helping others collaborate is a big part of the goals of the Azimuth Project. It might be good to establish some mechanism for scientists to solicit needed help, even if it is just a section of the Wiki for now.



I could hardly agree with you more, I'll just mention two examples of similar efforts:

The nLab is a Wiki used for collaboration and was an archetype for the Azimuth project: nLab.

There is a questions&answers project for mathematicians called mathoverflow that is fairly successful, the archetype for this site is of course stackoverflow for programmers.

John said:


I have been rather disappointed so far in the slowness with which academic scientists have taken to contributing to the Azimuth Project, but probably there are very good reasons for that, and perhaps with thought we can change that a bit.



Why did you expect more interest in the first place? Academic scientists are trained to reserve the spare time they have to spent on their research and avoid any diversion. So far, Azimuth will be perceived by most physicists and mathematicians as a diversion. I think we can get more people interested by helping them with their research.

Here is a dream of mine: Write a simulation of the Navier-Stokes equations in a box with periodic boundary conditions and external forcing, find a way to visualize the results as a 3dim colored animated graphic. Structure the software in a way that is easily understood and extended, and tell people that they can use it to extend the simulation to domains that they are interested in. Tell people that it is even enough to describe what they would like to see and some experienced developer with scientific background will see that it is done. I think this would get some people working on turbulence interested, and it could be used to validate certain modules of GCMs.