User:SOTO/Forum Archive/The Panopticon/@comment-188432-20121202174013/@comment-188432-20121204063754

I kinda like Shambala108's suggestion of Research, because it's sort of a compromise between Study and Theory. Theory connotes to me the. You have a notion and then you set out to prove that thesis.

I should never really have suggested Thesis, because that's not really what's going on in these two old forums. They're much more collaborative, unfocussed, efforts. Discon Index in particular is a free-for-all, with one person offering a point and other people objecting. In software development terms, the Discon Index is the definition of "open source".

Likewise, Timey-Wimey strikes me as a mathematician's chalkboard. One person puts up their order, and then the next person comes by, wipes the slate clean, and reorders things. Meanwhile, dozens of stories languish at the bottom of these pages, unplaced until someone actually reads them, with each of these unplaced stories having the potential to completely upset the existing order.

Ultimately, both of these forums do produce results, but it's the very opposite of the scientific method that's implied by Theory. It's just throwing stuff at the wall to see what sticks. Research seems closer to what it is.

And, happily, doctors do a lot of research, so it's thematically rather neat, as well. :)