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Argonne National Laboratory Shuts Down Online Ask a Scientist Program
itamblyn writes In a surprising decision, Argonne National Laboratory has decided to pull the plug on its long-standing NEWTON Ask A Scientist Program. NEWTON is (soon to be was) an on online repository of science questions submitted by school children from around the world. A volunteer group of scientists contributed grade-level appropriate answers to these questions. For the past 25 years, a wide range of topics ranging have been covered, including the classic "why is the sky blue" to "is there way to break down the components of plastics completely into their original form". Over the years, over 20,000 questions have been answered. According to ANL, the website will be shut down permanently on 1 March. There is no plan to make the content available in an alternate form or to hand over stewardship to another organization. When contacted about transferring the repository to another institution or moving to a donation model, the response from ANL was simply: "Thank you again for all your support for Newton. Unfortunately, moving Newton to another organization is not a possibility at this time. Thank you again for your energy and support."
How do you get mod points?
You'd probably know if you read the freakin' FAQ. Also, please don't post "frist psot!" comments, they're considered to be extremely juvenile and bad manners.
"Set a man a fire, he'll be warm for the rest of the night. Set a man afire, he'll be warm for the rest of his life."
Please don't. I'm already archiving the entire site into archive.org right now, and don't want their load to increase to the point they were try to prevent the archiving operation.
And another recent article concerning ANL:
"Public access to the Argonne National Laboratory Software Mirror was closed down as of 1 Feb 2015. ... Many Linux mirrors, not just all of Ubuntu."
http://ubuntuforums.org/showth...
I'm snapshotting it right now. It'll be in the Internet Archive tonight or tomorrow.
Excised from the original reporting was this little snippet:
Representatives for NEWTON indicated that there were a number of reasons for the shut down of the program. When pressed to provide examples, the group sighed in unison before saying, "ELI5."
ELI5 is shorthand for the "Explain Like I'm 5" meme that has spread across the Internet in recent years. "We just can't compete with that," said one of the lead scientists in the program, referring to ELI5. "It used to be that we'd answer stupid questions from children because it encouraged the burgeoning scientists, mathematicians, and engineers to pursue their interests further, but with ELI5 teaching scientifically illiterate adults that it's okay for them to voice their stupid questions too, we simply can't keep up. We're spread too thin."
When asked where individuals seeking answers should go for help, one researcher derisively suggested, "The ELI5 subreddit." Asked what they planned to do with their newfound free time, the group cast a few despondent looks towards one another before collectively breaking down in tears as they wept for humanity.
Being work of the federal government, the site's content is not subject to copyright and is in the public domain. Anyone who wants can legally mirror the existing content. I'm making a copy as we speak.