Debate Over P vs. NP Proof Highlights Web Collaboration - NYTimes.com

"Vinay Deolalikar, a mathematician and electrical engineer at Hewlett-Packard, posted a proposed proof of what is known as the “P versus NP” problem on a Web site....In this case...the significant breakthrough may not be in the science, but rather in the way science is practiced. By the middle of last week, although Dr. Deolalikar had not backed away from his claim, a consensus had emerged among complexity theorists that the proposed proof had several significant shortcomings....What was highly significant, however, was the pace of discussion and analysis, carried out in real time on blogs and a wiki that had been quickly set up for the purpose of collectively analyzing the paper. This kind of collaboration has emerged only in recent years in the math and computer science communities. In the past, intense discussions like the one that surrounded the proof of the Poincaré conjecture were carried about via private e-mail and distribution lists as well as in the pages of traditional paper-based science journals....."