Popular Sites For Asking Bioinformatics Questions?

Question

[Bio_X2Y]

I was hoping to gather a list of useful sites for asking bioinformatics questions. I've just come across BioStar recently, and I like the fact that almost all questions are answered. Up to now, I've been using two sites:

• http://www.seqanswers.com is an excellent site for general sequencing questions and answers. It is a discussion forum rather than a Q&A, so I find that a significant number of questions go completely unanswered. They've recently added a Q&A component (http://i.seqanswers.com), but it doesn't appear to be catching on.

• http://groups.google.com/group/spctools-discuss is a mailing list for discussing the Seattle Proteome Center's tools (e.g. TPP), but can be used for general proteomics queries.

Some answers summarised:

• http://stats.stackexchange.com is a Q&A for statistical analysis (thanks Pierre)

• The BioConductor mailing list is a good place to go with R BioConductor questions, and also for general help with statistics/experimental design (thanks Daniel Swan)

• http://stackoverflow.com can be used for general programming questions which come up in bioinformatics. Ofter a very fast turnaround (thanks Daniel Standage)

[Larry_Parnell]

This is a fine question, but only half the story: Where would you not go for help? Are they unresponsive? Is it too small a user group/help team? Etc, etc.

[Chris Evelo]

Larry opened a separate question for this, which is here: What Are Not The Popular Sites For Asking Bioinformatics Questions?

[Jonathan Manning]

seqanswers also has a stackexchange-style Q&A site at http://i.seqanswers.com/

[Faheemmitha]

Apparently not any longer.

Answer 1

[Rm]

Why not Biostar?

https://www.biostars.org

Answer 2

[Pierre Lindenbaum]

StackOverflow, as well as some other StackExchange sites, are also some nice places:

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/bioinformatics
• https://bioinformatics.stackexchange.com
• https://stats.stackexchange.com
• etc

[Daniel Standage]

Indeed. Recently, a lot of the bioinformatics problems I have been working on are essentially string search/manipulation problems. When I post questions about that on StackOverflow, I rarely have to wait longer than 5 minutes for several helpful answers.

Answer 3

[Mary]

I think a lot of good places to read and discuss were covered in the "favorite blogs" post. Check that out for some additional places.

Your Favorite Bioinformatics Blog(S) (2013 Edition)

Answer 4

[User 59]

I will reiterate that the BioConductor mailing list is an awesome resource for that particular bioinformatics niche, and not above providing general statistical or experimental design help as well as just support of the myriad number of packages.

[Mary]

Yeah, I was thinking about the dozen other smaller group lists I'm on. But they are often very tool-specific, or such low volume, that it's hard to know if they'd be of use to someone in a general sense.

[User 59]

Yes, I was reluctant to post that myself, but thought that it's as appropriate for array/NGS stuff as SeqAnswers is, which is mentioned in the OP.

Answer 5

[Giovanni M Dall'Olio]

There are a few groups on LinkedIn where you can ask questions, especially about bioinformatics and careers.

I like 'Bioinformatics Geeks', but if you search in the LinkedIn Group Directory there are many more.

Answer 6

[Chris Evelo]

[?]WikiPathways[?] (and [?]PathVisio[?] and [?]BridgeDb[?]) use a mailing list to answer questions. For details go [?]here[?]. The list is actively used by the developing and curation team and active users.

Answer 7

[Samuel Lampa]

There is a Swedish initiative, biosupport.se, that is staffed by hired personnel who will answer questions for Swedish researchers, but the site is open for everybody. The idea was to use the stack exchange kind of website as an archive, so as to avoid repeating the same answers again and again. Quite naturally, the questions will be a bit focused on the computing environment in Swedish academia (such as the UPPMAX HPC center, which most folks in Next Generation Sequencing is using).