Nothing to do with physicians this time round, but rather our good friends at Nature Publishing Group. Got this email from Corie Lok earlier today to the admins of the Bioinformatics group at Nature Network (Neil also talks about it)
Just wanted to let you know that membership of your bioinformatics group has broken 400, making it by far the biggest group on Nature Network! Congratulations.
With such a large membership, I thought the time is right to do something in the group to stimulate more discussion in the group’s forum. Do you have any thoughts on how we can do that? What kinds of conversations lend themselves to an online forum that would be important for bioinformaticians? Are there any key people in the field, or authors of recent important papers, that the 400 group members would want to talk to in the forum? Perhaps we can invite them to join the forum, say a few words, and then offer to answer people’s questions on a specific topic.
I talk about social networks a lot, but have neglected the one I moderate, so let me extend the question to everyone here. Who would you be interested in talking to? What would you like to discuss in the forum?
Of course, if you are not a member, feel free to sign up. Nature Network is probably the best life science focussed network out there and a bunch of us do hang around there from time to time.
Technorati Tags: Nature Network, Bioinformatics, Social Network
13 Comments
It’s great that NPG are always looking for new ideas. What concerns me a little is that a group can have many members but not much active participation. We have the same problem at Nodalpoint. It’s the “if you build it they will come” syndrome – they do come, but what do they do when they get there?
I think that the most successful social networks have two important features: (1) they make it easy for users to create and share information and (2) they make it easy for users to access information in ways other than visiting the site. Two examples: browser extensions (such as del.icio.us, Facebook) that permit sharing with a couple of clicks and RSS feeds that inform users when content updates.
Nature Network is a great idea, but it lacks these key features. The only way to interact there or to see what’s new is to physically visit the site, login, browse and write. If you rely almost exclusively on user-created content and make that process difficult, you end up with little content and the impression of a static site.
So more ideas from members would be great – but so would better features and site design.
Neil
Right on target. Nature Network has the critical mass of membership, but it makes it difficult to keep track of things, especially of the activities of your network (the killer feature in Facebook for example). I will continue to support NN though, for one by being more active on the groups, since it does have the potential to be a great resource for the community once they get the design sorted out.
Nodal point suffers from being its inherent blog-like design. It takes away a lot of the networking features that Facebook, del.icio.us, etc have.
Neil
Right on target. Nature Network has the critical mass of membership, but it makes it difficult to keep track of things, especially of the activities of your network (the killer feature in Facebook for example). I will continue to support NN though, for one by being more active on the groups, since it does have the potential to be a great resource for the community once they get the design sorted out.
Nodal point suffers from being its inherent blog-like design. It takes away a lot of the networking features that Facebook, del.icio.us, etc have.
Don’t forget how the group got that big
. In any case it is difficult to get the average person to participate in most online activities. I remember an observation that someone made about the 1% rule of social sites. Only about 1% of people are active in most of these sites. I don’t remember where I read it and this estimate could be off by now. Some sites are better than others in stimulating participation. Facebook is so far the best example from those that I have tried.
Going back to the questions. Aside from having a discussion on the daily challenges in bioinformatics as suggested by Keith and Neil in Neil’s blog I would be interested also in some historical perspective from someone that has been in the field for a long time (ex Philip E. Bourne).
Don't forget how the group got that big
. In any case it is difficult to get the average person to participate in most online activities. I remember an observation that someone made about the 1% rule of social sites. Only about 1% of people are active in most of these sites. I don't remember where I read it and this estimate could be off by now. Some sites are better than others in stimulating participation. Facebook is so far the best example from those that I have tried.
Going back to the questions. Aside from having a discussion on the daily challenges in bioinformatics as suggested by Keith and Neil in Neil's blog I would be interested also in some historical perspective from someone that has been in the field for a long time (ex Philip E. Bourne).
I had forgotten about Pierre’s shenanigans. As to the 99-1 split, I’ve heard that as well. I’ve heard various versions, including a 95-4-1 (which is probably closer to reality).
I like the historic perspective suggestion. Especially since the field has changed so much in the last decade.
I had forgotten about Pierre's shenanigans. As to the 99-1 split, I've heard that as well. I've heard various versions, including a 95-4-1 (which is probably closer to reality).
I like the historic perspective suggestion. Especially since the field has changed so much in the last decade.
Pedro, that’s interesting. I’ve heard that less than 1 percent (something like 0.1 percent) of users post content to social websites.
Anyway, to you all, I definitely take your point about the need for more and better features. We are in the midst of revamping the ‘network snapshot’ page, so that you can get a better idea of what people in your network are doing on Nature Network. And we are starting to develop new features that will make it easier for people to find others they have something in common with (ie shared publications, shared affiliations, etc).
Neil, we actually do have RSS feeds for the blogs and the groups/forums on NN. You can also opt in to receiving email alerts when there’s new content in your groups and forums. And for blogs and forum topics, users can save/share those pages on delicious and Connotea with a couple of clicks. Some of these features have been on the site for at least a few months now, so please check us out if you haven’t in a while. We release new features/improvements to the site every two weeks.
To you all, if/when you come up with some good ideas for stimulating activity in your Bionformatics group, please email me. I really do want to help you get that group going. We’ve found that having fairly well known people answering questions in the group’s forum is a really good way of drawing people in and gives them an incentive to post questions. As an example, check out our “Ask the Nature Editor” forum on NN: http://network.nature.com/forum/askthenatureeditor We’ve had lots of great discussion among users and Nature editors about how peer review and publishing works at Nature, and careers in scientific publishing.
Sorry for the rambling reply. I’ll stop now.
Pedro, that's interesting. I've heard that less than 1 percent (something like 0.1 percent) of users post content to social websites.
Anyway, to you all, I definitely take your point about the need for more and better features. We are in the midst of revamping the 'network snapshot' page, so that you can get a better idea of what people in your network are doing on Nature Network. And we are starting to develop new features that will make it easier for people to find others they have something in common with (ie shared publications, shared affiliations, etc).
Neil, we actually do have RSS feeds for the blogs and the groups/forums on NN. You can also opt in to receiving email alerts when there's new content in your groups and forums. And for blogs and forum topics, users can save/share those pages on delicious and Connotea with a couple of clicks. Some of these features have been on the site for at least a few months now, so please check us out if you haven't in a while. We release new features/improvements to the site every two weeks.
To you all, if/when you come up with some good ideas for stimulating activity in your Bionformatics group, please email me. I really do want to help you get that group going. We've found that having fairly well known people answering questions in the group's forum is a really good way of drawing people in and gives them an incentive to post questions. As an example, check out our “Ask the Nature Editor” forum on NN: http://network.nature.com/forum/askthenatureeditor We've had lots of great discussion among users and Nature editors about how peer review and publishing works at Nature, and careers in scientific publishing.
Sorry for the rambling reply. I'll stop now.
Corie, thanks for the reply – it’s great to see NPG working to improve the user experience.
I’m aware of the features that you mentioned. What I would like to see are site-wide RSS feeds (or some other mechanism) that tell me when anything that interests me at NN has been updated. Separate feeds for blogs and forums is a little inconvenient. Personally, I’m not a fan of email alerts – they are a rather “web 1.0″ way of doing things. On bookmarking, I prefer del.icio.us over Connotea but I’m not sure what the point of bookmarking a NN page would be, without an easy way to return to the site from the bookmark (i.e. without having to login). Perhaps NN should have its own “my favourite NN articles” feature.
I guess what I have in mind is an experience much more like Facebook. Check out the excellent Firefox addons Boost for Facebook or del.icio.us bookmarks. These really help users stay in touch with and use a network without interrupting their browsing experience. Of course I realise that a good addon requires developers.
Corie, thanks for the reply – it's great to see NPG working to improve the user experience.
I'm aware of the features that you mentioned. What I would like to see are site-wide RSS feeds (or some other mechanism) that tell me when anything that interests me at NN has been updated. Separate feeds for blogs and forums is a little inconvenient. Personally, I'm not a fan of email alerts – they are a rather “web 1.0″ way of doing things. On bookmarking, I prefer del.icio.us over Connotea but I'm not sure what the point of bookmarking a NN page would be, without an easy way to return to the site from the bookmark (i.e. without having to login). Perhaps NN should have its own “my favourite NN articles” feature.
I guess what I have in mind is an experience much more like Facebook. Check out the excellent Firefox addons Boost for Facebook or del.icio.us bookmarks. These really help users stay in touch with and use a network without interrupting their browsing experience. Of course I realise that a good addon requires developers.
Thanks Neil for the clarification. You’re suggesting some good ideas. I’ll email you with some questions and then bring your ideas to our team. It’s tough competing with Facebook (their developers outnumber ours by, well, a lot) but we can definitely learn a lot from them.
Thanks Neil for the clarification. You're suggesting some good ideas. I'll email you with some questions and then bring your ideas to our team. It's tough competing with Facebook (their developers outnumber ours by, well, a lot) but we can definitely learn a lot from them.