Notes From Science Online – Cat Herding

Image via CrunchBase

The challenges and rewards of managing online communities

Arikia Millikan – Science Blogs

Arikia’s Hierarchy of Blogger Needs: Tier 1: CMS and Tech support, Tier 2: Acknowledgement, Accessibility and Analytics, Tier 3; individuatlity and Tier 4 Community

All tiers need to be there otherwise communities can fall apart,…but even if they do use the internet principle of rapid iteration: learn from mistakes and rebuild.

Corie-Lok – Nature Network

Nature Network started as Network for scientists covering lot of stuff….life in the community, protocols etc…

To be a successful cat herder you need to be there…communities do not build themselves…important to have a community of several interested parties to drive this

some funding agencies are starting networks

Ilja d Madisch – ResearchGate

offerings on an individual user lever (groups, rapid response, q&A, journal finder) and institutional offerings (community tools, communication platforms for institutional communities)

much community building so far – but challenge; catering for the diversity of scintists….solution: open platform, make api available and crowdsource app development. 140000 members now but only 30% activity measured as users logging in at least once a month.