The purpose of this post is to evaluate, what kind of interaction and knowledge work there exist at Scientific Blogging and how existing groupware features support these interaction and knowledge work.

Scientific Blogging

Scientific Blogging is a web 2.0 platform for science – science 2.0 in other words. The members of the site come around the World and share an interest on science. At Scientific Blogging people write science related articles and posts at their own blogs, search for interesting articles and communicate with other members.

Interaction

At Scientific Blogging conversation is related on articles and blogs. Existing interaction can be examined with different models or categories. For example communication can be categorized to formal or informal, or It can be seen as dispersed in time and space. With web 2.0 the communication is usually between several persons, which means many to many communication.

Commenting tool supports widely different forms of interaction like one to one and many to many communication. Commenting tool also supports pictures and hyperlinks like article and blog posting.

Knowledge Work

At Scientific Blogging the knowledge work is mostly searching and sharing information and knowledge. However commenting allows people to create new knowledge with conversation.

Members can search interesting articles from different categories, which are: Physical Sciences, Earth Sciences, Life Sciences, Medicine, Social Sciences, Culture and Video. There is also search tool available at the top right.

Picture 1. Search function and awareness information related on interaction (commenting) at Scientific Blogging; 1) comments on members articles, 2) comments on members comments and 3) comments made by members friends.

Sharing explicit information and knowledge can be done by writing articles and blog posts. Besides sharing own production, members can also share other author's articles to other social media sites or follow RSS feeds.

Picture2. Share/Save tool allows member to share interesting articles to other social media sites.

Scientific Blogging Tools

Picture 3. Members ”My Tools”.

Tools available (My Tools) for Scientific Blogging members are:

• write article

• write blog

• edit profile

• my content

• my column

• preferences

• friends

Write article and write blog tools allow members to write an article or a blog post. Both contain topic and are categorised to certain field under Scientific Blogging category. Text editor allows member to write rich text and embed hyperlinks and pictures.

Edit profile is pretty much what it says. Scientific Blogging member can add an avatar and description about him/herself and also recommend books and blogs. At profile page members friends are presented and RSS feed about members posts is provided.

My content and my column provide different views to members contribution at Scientific Blogging. Preferences include members personal and column information and account details.

Friend list tool supports network building and it includes two other important collaboration tools, which are chat and online awareness information.

Chat is supported between mutual friends and it is not connected to certain article or post. Chat is always synchronous and usually informal. Chat is one to one interaction with text and the conversation is not stored.

Online information is usable, if there are synchronous communication tools, like chat for example, available. Commenting, which is typically asynchronous communication, does not need online awareness that much.

Ideas about future development

You should not forget the usability. You cannot add every nice feature at the site, without damaging the usability. At the moment, I think that Scientific Blogging has found a good balance. If you wish to find out web 2.0 usability failures, just check out MySpace or Facebook.

The participation of the members depends on, of course, the features available at the site. Administrators have to make decisions, what kind of interaction is desired, and then pick up the most suitable tools to support this interaction. The same goes with knowledge work.

For example, if Scientific Blogging wishes to support spontaneous and informal knowledge work between members, perhaps chat tool with picture sharing and drawing support would be usable. In this case, the chat conversations should also be stored.