The new user page

First, you need to register with the site. Click "register" on the home page, and pick a username. For "Passcode to register," please email openstimadmin@transcenmentalism.org. The idea is to prevent spambots, etc. from altering the wiki. In your email, please send in the following information:

Name — email address — website — other contact info
BACKGROUND/EXPERTISE:
DID: what you've done in this field before
DOING: what you're doing currently (experimenting, etc.)
WILL DO: what you'd like to do
THOUGHTS ON WHAT WE NEED NEXT: you really need to x!
I LIVE AT: if interested in sharing devices/building local community
INTERESTED IN MEETING OTHERS LOCALLY FOR SHARING: if interested

The group is of course open to all; please feel free to forward the passcode to people who you think will make useful and creative contributions to the project. To register, pick a username, enter a password twice, followed by your email address.

The OpenStim project launched officially at a highly-interactive Saturday afternoon session hosted by Ed Boyden at Foo Camp, in Sebastopol, CA, on Aug. 26, 2006. Within 48 hours the original content had been organized from its primitive web-and-paper-melange into this interactive Wiki. Model equations, coil designs, and — most importantly — new members (ranging from hardware hackers to therapists, and many of whom had heard about OpenStim from blog posts and word-of-mouth) began appearing on the site.

That's really it; the project is pretty new, but growing fast! We believe the site will fulfill a number of fascinating and unmet purposes, but of course the long-term evolution is hard to predict. Amongst the clear initial purposes of the OpenStim Project, however, are
a) the creation of a cheap, safe, noninvasive, human brain stimulator,
b) the facilitation of information exchange between people wanting to trade ideas, devices, and experiences, and
c) a forum for discussing such technology and its possible greater impact on humanity.

Now you can log in. Once you've entered the Wiki, you'll see how it's laid out — on the left is the menu bar, and in the main area is the text.

The menu bar indicates the main features of the Wiki, which include
- a calendar for coordinating things (not currently used for anything, but as things get more complex we can use this tool)
- "MyTiki": a personal set of pages for messages, notes, and a task list (not currently used for anything, but as things get more complex we can use these tools)
- "Image Galleries": image uploading/browsing (necessary for putting a picture into a wiki entry)
- "Directory": URL favorite indicating/browsing
- "File Galleries": file uploading/browsing
- "FAQs": Frequently Asked Questions (not currently used for anything)

The text of the wiki itself is currently split into several parts. One of the first things you might try, is editing Part II, The people and their plans and putting in your personal information, and then volunteering to tackle something, or to think about something. Hopefully talking about our interests and expertise in Part II may be useful in getting things going; I will try to facilitate updates and do garbage-collecting about once a week, in addition to working on my parts.

Part III lists the different parts of the project. (This division of thought itself is quite flexible, at this stage.)

Parts IV and V describe protocols for using the device, and reporting forms for indicating experiences and effects. In this way, people can try experiments on creativity, intelligence, happiness, etc. and report to the rest of the group their findings. By detecting trends in the data, it's possible we'll collectively realize some significant patterns in how to use these brain stimulators, and figure out even more powerful combinations of ideas.

Those of us who are interested primarily in trying out devices, and not in building them, should try to coordinate with others who are building them, and team up. (Please put your location information, and if you're looking to share your device with others, or to borrow a device from another, in The people and their plans.)

Editing the wiki is easy. Once logged in, you can click on "edit" at the bottom left of the page. Now you can alter the page's contents. There may be symbols in the text that indicate when a piece of text is bold, or italic, or underlined — instead of memorizing all the codes, you can simply click on the word "Quicktags" to the left of the text window, and use those buttons to format the text you enter. I highly recommend that you click "Preview" and review your work before "saving."

If you have not worked with Wikis before, I recommend you try editing the "sandbox" first (halfway down the menu, right above the bold words "Image Galleries"). This is a test wiki page, so that you do not have to worry about ruining data. I highly suggest you try inserting images into sandbox text. Try looking at the example pages we've already put up there.

Also at the bottom of every Wiki page is a button labeled "history," so that you can track the evolution of the page. This means that we can always go back to an older version of the page, if only for reference purposes.

We have built this community around a Wiki. On first blush, this may seem somewhat risky, because any member can edit any content — and even destroy content (temporarily, since everything is of course backed up and reversible). However, we think that this level of trust may be beneficial and helpful. That said, users who persistently abuse other users, or vandalize information repeatedly, will be barred from making edits. A community must be able to trust each other, but a community that does not self-police will eventually fall apart. If you do see suspicious behavior or vandalism please fix the problem, and alert the Site administrator at openstimadmin@transcenmentalism.org.

Note that everything is protected by the Creative Commons license. So anything uploaded to the site can be used by anyone in the world, as long as the user credits the authors, and distributes any derivative works in a similar way.

There is also a mailing list, which you can sign up for here. I suggest that we make changes directly to the wiki, and then simply send a short message like "Ping! Check out the new holder design." In that way, we will at every stage in the project have an organized repository of information.

We have a SourceForge account now — but while things are in the amorphous, brainstorming stage it's probably too early to migrate there, and would be better to explore things in wiki format.

PLEASE READ the Disclaimer before taking any actions based on the information here located!

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The text and graphics of this site are released under a Creative Commons license unless otherwise stated. You are free to copy, distribute, utilize, or display the works, or even to make commercial use of the works found herein, as long as you give attribution for your use of that information, in the context of whatever derivative works or products you create or devise, to the OpenStim Project, and release your works under an identical license. For administrative queries please email openstimadmin@transcenmentalism.org.