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Geospatial Blogs, Slashgeo's Future and Dilution
posted by Satri
on Friday July 21, @12:00PM
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from the geospatial-community-feedback-loop dept.
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from the geospatial-community-feedback-loop dept.
Last week several blogs started discussing the state of online exchanges occuring on the geospatial blogs. This subject is very dear to me and important to Slashgeo's future. How will online communications evolve within the geospatial community? Is Slashgeo pertinent and what role should it have? Are there too many geobloggers? Read more below for my opinion and personal analysis.
Let's start with the recent entries discussing the topic. Dave Bouwman started the avalanche (first, second and third entry). Then at least All Points Blog, Very Spatial, Spatially Adjusted, Think,
Digital Earth Weblog and Ogle Earth shared their comments. A lot have been said on these entries and they're well worthed the read (really!).
The geospatial blogs
I'm an enthusiast :-) There are a lot of geospatial blogs and a lot of good information and opinions are shared. There could be more activity on the blogs but the community is definitely vigorous. Examples include mailing lists traffic of some open source projects or the geowanking list amongst many. There's a lot of people working in the geospatial world. We're a huge diversity working in numerous different diciplines with the 'geo' in common. Someone working with RFID might not see a strong relation between him and a Remote Sensing specialist. Some blogs which are more or less tied to a specific project or market (e.g. Spatially Adjusted on ESRI products, Ogle Earth on Google Earth) seem to attract more user participation.
Some are passionate, as I believe I am :-), but we're also mostly in the geo-business to pay the bills. Someone spending time reading blogs at work must see potential benefits in it since we generally have many tasks and projects to accomplish.
Slashgeo's vision and goals
I just peaked at our about page and saw "Slashgeo wants to be the best user-friendly and user-driven online resource for news and discussions about GIS, Remote Sensing and everything geospatial.". This is an audacious goal, but it still hold :-) I'm pretty sure Slashgeo's not useless, reaching over 1600 different IP addresses every day. However, we're far away from what we want Slashgeo to be. We'd like it community-driven, where users share opinions, information, knowledge and experience through pertinent news items, questions and comments.
Slashgeo potential benefits
Slashgeo limitations
Dilution
It did not take me long to start believing there might be too many geospatial blogs online. I regularly ask myself why don't we, the geospatial community, choose just a few blogs and all concentrate sharing information and opinion on these blogs? Maybe there's too many geospatial blogs which are diluting the number of people ready to invest time in conversations? One of many problems is geobloggers want to keep full control over their blog, which is fully understandable. Comments are off on some great blogs, such as on the excellent Vector One, reducing the very possibility of an emerging conservation.
Are there really too many blogs in the geospatial community? Should we reduce the number? How? How can we improve communication (information and knowledge sharing) within the community? What is the goal of communication between the actors in the geo world? How can we reach a better communication worth while to everybody? These are tough questions that need to be answered.
Of course, if you ask me which blog should we choose, I'll tell you Slashgeo! :-) :-) It's managed by a legal non-profit organization and it has something other blogs don't offer: along with extreme flexibility and user customization, the ability to thread comments and tag comments with the triple-moderation system that made slashdot what it is today. Encouraging quality, not quantity. ... I would need to be very convincing to have geobloggers leave their dear blogs and join the Slashgeo team ;-) Let me dare reiterate the invitation, anyone wanting to join the Slashgeo "editors", you're welcomed!
My hopes are still up since we observe a steady increase in visits and even in participation, which makes me believe it is possible we'll reach that mythical required critical mass of users eventually. I am planning to leave slashgeo.org to other enthusiasts once it reach a steady state.
What do you think? Is the Slashgeo project pertinent? Are we diluted?
Satri, with contributions from dct
The geospatial blogs
I'm an enthusiast :-) There are a lot of geospatial blogs and a lot of good information and opinions are shared. There could be more activity on the blogs but the community is definitely vigorous. Examples include mailing lists traffic of some open source projects or the geowanking list amongst many. There's a lot of people working in the geospatial world. We're a huge diversity working in numerous different diciplines with the 'geo' in common. Someone working with RFID might not see a strong relation between him and a Remote Sensing specialist. Some blogs which are more or less tied to a specific project or market (e.g. Spatially Adjusted on ESRI products, Ogle Earth on Google Earth) seem to attract more user participation.
Some are passionate, as I believe I am :-), but we're also mostly in the geo-business to pay the bills. Someone spending time reading blogs at work must see potential benefits in it since we generally have many tasks and projects to accomplish.
Slashgeo's vision and goals
I just peaked at our about page and saw "Slashgeo wants to be the best user-friendly and user-driven online resource for news and discussions about GIS, Remote Sensing and everything geospatial.". This is an audacious goal, but it still hold :-) I'm pretty sure Slashgeo's not useless, reaching over 1600 different IP addresses every day. However, we're far away from what we want Slashgeo to be. We'd like it community-driven, where users share opinions, information, knowledge and experience through pertinent news items, questions and comments.
Slashgeo potential benefits
- The prime target of Slashgeo is the reader interested in the main geospatial news with limited time on his/her hands and not necessarily the people already scanning all the RSS feeds themselves. However, our hope is to interest the information-hungry to share their best news on the site for one point entry consultation and discussion.
- Slashgeo provides news summaries. Some users want to know what a story has to offer without having to read the whole article. To them, Slashgeo offers short two-three lines summaries with a link to the original content to learn more when desired.
- Slashgeo aims at accomodating the reader by providing different information output formats including mail digest of daily headlines. We believe that a mail newsletter is still useful to many readers today.
- The comment moderation engine. That's probably why we started Slashgeo in the first place. I personally don't like flat unthreaded comments. The comment moderation system allows threading and tagging (such as informative, insightful, funny, etc.) and is extremely flexible. Right now, this system is more or less useless on Slashgeo since there's not enough comments to see it at its full power. I don't want to imagine myself browsing a geospatial blog entry with 60 comments. However, I can imagine myself doing this on Slashgeo. That's why a lot of slashdot readers go to slashdot just for the comments, not the news items.
Slashgeo limitations
- Slashgeo does not try to create content directly. The users comments are an important part of the added value. I specifically try to keep information and opinion separated. I want news to be news and opinions go in the comment section of every story. Thus a plain Slashgeo story without comments only offers 2-3 lines of non-original content. This is a "here are the facts with sources let us discuss about it" approach. To complement the news, we made a special section for open ended exchange in the community called "Ask Slashgeo section".
- Maybe we're offering something the community as a whole doesn't want or need? Perhaps, there is no need for a single place to meet? Still, we may ask what happens when the number of blogs will double, what to do with the readers having little time to browse all sources of information?
- It is very clear the Slashgeo model is not to please everyone. Still, the site fills a need for information as the stats show. We welcome suggestions from the users. Personal views are important and the comment section will continue to serve for this purpose.
- Is slashdot's model old and obsolete? I don't believe so. To my knowledge, no other engine than slash generates a readable conversation when there's tens to hundred of comments on a specific story.
Dilution
It did not take me long to start believing there might be too many geospatial blogs online. I regularly ask myself why don't we, the geospatial community, choose just a few blogs and all concentrate sharing information and opinion on these blogs? Maybe there's too many geospatial blogs which are diluting the number of people ready to invest time in conversations? One of many problems is geobloggers want to keep full control over their blog, which is fully understandable. Comments are off on some great blogs, such as on the excellent Vector One, reducing the very possibility of an emerging conservation.
Are there really too many blogs in the geospatial community? Should we reduce the number? How? How can we improve communication (information and knowledge sharing) within the community? What is the goal of communication between the actors in the geo world? How can we reach a better communication worth while to everybody? These are tough questions that need to be answered.
Of course, if you ask me which blog should we choose, I'll tell you Slashgeo! :-) :-) It's managed by a legal non-profit organization and it has something other blogs don't offer: along with extreme flexibility and user customization, the ability to thread comments and tag comments with the triple-moderation system that made slashdot what it is today. Encouraging quality, not quantity. ... I would need to be very convincing to have geobloggers leave their dear blogs and join the Slashgeo team ;-) Let me dare reiterate the invitation, anyone wanting to join the Slashgeo "editors", you're welcomed!
My hopes are still up since we observe a steady increase in visits and even in participation, which makes me believe it is possible we'll reach that mythical required critical mass of users eventually. I am planning to leave slashgeo.org to other enthusiasts once it reach a steady state.
What do you think? Is the Slashgeo project pertinent? Are we diluted?
Satri, with contributions from dct
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[+]
Today slashgeo.org takes another step towards openness and transparency. We are providing our financial report to anyone interested as a demonstration of our willingness to be a truly open and a community-driven tool.
In short, it cost us about 2.50$/day to maintain the website. slashgeo's added value should come from the aggregated news and from user comments: if you can divert some time to participate by sharing comments and submitting stories, please do so. It is more important than money to us. We shared some slashgeo.org statistics a few weeks ago - go see them if you missed it.
In short, it cost us about 2.50$/day to maintain the website. slashgeo's added value should come from the aggregated news and from user comments: if you can divert some time to participate by sharing comments and submitting stories, please do so. It is more important than money to us. We shared some slashgeo.org statistics a few weeks ago - go see them if you missed it.
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[+]
Stats don't matter. What matters is the geospatial community finding slashgeo.org useful. A little more than 9 month after launch, crossing the 1,000,000 hits mark tells us our efforts are not entirely meaningless :-) However, let's not over rejoice.. I annoyingly keep repeating to the Slashgeo Team that we have not reached the maturity we envisioned. By maturity I'm referring to the, hopefully growing, number of comments and user submittals. We must also thank many individuals within the geospatial community. Some people write great content worthed to be shared with slashgeo users. Read more below in order to get an overview of slashgeo's most meaningful stats.
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[+]
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[+]
Slashgeo.org is at a crossroad. The new poll asks your feelings about the introduction of ads on Slashgeo's main page. The ads would be Google AdSense text-only ads. Why ads while I clearly said before I wanted Slashgeo to be ad-free? The administrators of the non-profit organization behind Slashgeo have no problem being a few thousands dollars in red, but despite regular efforts of attracting new members in the Slashgeo "editors" team, I'm mostly alone feeding the site. After nearly two years alive, the site is going well, with now about 20,000 daily hits (about 6,000 known unique daily users, 3.8M hits since launch) with however relatively little user participation (e.g. comments, submissions), and most important, providing users with 3-6 aggregated geospatial news daily. I know I'll have to significantly reduce my involvement next fall, jeopardizing Slashgeo's story feeding. Money, it seems, is the most effective incentive: if we can generate enough money with ads, this may allow us to pay someone to feed the site? Money has never been the center of this project, we want to serve the geospatial community, but we have come to wonder if money would help save the project itself. I find it awkward the solution to Slashgeo's manpower problem being serving ads, but we're welcoming any alternative suggestions you have. Having additional regular contributors would doubtlessly make the whole Slashgeo experience much more pleasant and beneficial to all.
The previous poll about breaking the Google Earth license at work it has been one of the least popular. Out of 51 votes, 29% do not look aware of the license at all, 19% said the license made them purchase the Pro or Enterprise version, 5% switched to NASA World Wind because of it and 28% are simply ignoring the license and breaking it.
The previous poll about breaking the Google Earth license at work it has been one of the least popular. Out of 51 votes, 29% do not look aware of the license at all, 19% said the license made them purchase the Pro or Enterprise version, 5% switched to NASA World Wind because of it and 28% are simply ignoring the license and breaking it.
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[+]
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Some weeks ago, Very Spatial asked for questions to answer over their great podcast. They mentioned my personal question during their 69th episode. Here's the question, and my tentative to answer it below. Of course, your input is more than welcomed! ""What is the geospatial community?" I ask "what", because I feel it includes the many sides of the question: - What's a community?
- What is the geospatial community?
- Who is in the geospatial community?
- Who is not in the geospatial community?!
- Why are some geospatial professionals not in the geospatial community?
- Should every geospatial professional be part of the geospatial community?
- What does the geospatial community do to be the geospatial community?
- Is the geospatial community geospatial?
- Is the geospatial community special?
- Is the geospatial community a Good Thing (tm)?
- Does it matter that a geospatial community exists?
- What is the present of the geospatial community?
- What is the future of the geospatial community?" Tentative answers below.
Slashgeo's One Year Anniversary! 1 comment
[+]
SlashGISRS, which was renamed Slashgeo, was launched one year ago! :-) There are so many geospatial news sources, I feel Slashgeo's offer of aggregated news is useful. As for its usefulness as a discussion platform, the future will tell us :-) My curiosity in regards to what's to come is whether Slashgeo will stay a tool useful to some, or become a tool useful to many. After over 1250 published stories and over 1000 comments from anonymous visitors and about 730 registered members, I plan to continue feeding the site regularly, even if there will be some slower weeks when I'm away from my office (such as last week and last April-May). Anyone willing to contribute is more than welcomed! Our values include communication, openness and transparency. I have learned *a lot* in the process and I believe it's true also for the other founding members. We will continue to improve the site and many interesting features which will augment the information architecture of Slashgeo are in the works and should be released in the coming months. Hope you enjoy the tool! :-)
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All Points Blog on slashgeo.org and Aggregators 6 comments
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Adena at All Points Blog discusses blogs and content aggregators in the geospatial community, including slashgeo.org and Planet Geospatial. Adena underlines interesting realities, but I'd also jump in the discussion, sharing my opinion. Especially on parts related to "stealing" and adding no value to content. You can read my opinion below.
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The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
stuff
(Score:4, Insightful)Why Slashgeo is relevant
(Score:3, Interesting)This is why I go to Slashgeo. I reserve the last hour of my workday to read the news. I begin by reading a national news website, then a tech news site, then a half-dozen local newspaper websites. My job requires knowledge of the local communities, so I can't read them last at risk of running out of time. I then read Slashdot. My last stop is Slashgeo. I don't have time to go to all the blogs Satri mentioned in his second paragraph. So I count on him and Slashgeo submitters to find out what the big geospatial news is. With Slashgeo I know that I can get my geospatial news in one quick stop.
The Future of Slashgeo
(Score:3, Informative)( http://www.spatiallyadjusted.com/ )
I think this is why many bloggers look at Slashgeo with distain. To start a conversation built on the back of others work makes people unhappy. It is one thing to link to someone and write up your own analysis, but most of the posts at Slashgeo are just links with a quote. If that is the case, I'd rather see you just close comments as the discussion would better be served on the linked blog, rather than Slashgeo. Now if there was original content or ideas on the Slashgeo posts, maybe that would generate discussion. The fact that Slashcode can handle thousands of comments is irrelevant at this point as I'm sure you are aware.
I know we've talked about this offline, but most of the complaints I get about Slashgeo and PlanetGS is that they repeat themselves. It appears to me at least in this post is that you want to create a moderated Planet GS (ok that isn't really fair, but you get my point). I do see the place of such a website as the comment above mine can attest. BUT, I would also think that such a service would be better left off of Planet GS. Original content is what makes Planet GS great and is what makes all these GIS blogs great. Sure there are repeat stories out there, but in general I'm amazed at how broad the selection of stories that comes out of the GIS blog community.
Later, James
Re:The Future of Slashgeo
(Score:3)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
I agree
Maybe we could completely change the story summaries approach, but writing good content requires time, as most geobloggers know
Writing good content
(Score:3)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
There's something I haven't mentioned before that came to my mind. I'm not entirely comfortable with writing content for one factual reason: being a french canadian, my english isn't so bad, but I'm far from being able to share and write my thoughts with varied and accurate english vocabulary
Too Many Blogs?
(Score:3, Insightful)I'd say that there are not nearly enough "technical" GIS/Geospatial blogs. What we have is an ample supply of is "news" blogs.
(disclaimer: I'm not a big SlashDotter, so this may be a generalization)
Here's how I see the difference between SlashDot & SlashGeo. At SlashDot, the majority of the source articles come from major news outlets / corporate memos / PR etc. And these locations do not necessarily have RSS feeds, or blog style comment capabilities, thus we see the active community. They also deal with a wide range of issues where people have strong feelings - religion, politics, operating systems etc.
With SlashGeo a lot of the source articles come from other sites that have RSS & comments. Thus many people get the feed directly and provide comments back. That, and this is not a field where people get too bent up about X vs Y (Ok the open source vs ESRI thing can generate some heat...)
Anyhow, while I can see where SlashGeo is useful for some people, personally, I like to get the info from the source, and provide comment there. Unless SlashGeo is breaking a new story, and they are the source for the information, why would I comment here? Why not over at the originiting site? At least that way there is a chance the original author would read the comment. (Hence my commenting here today)
Finally, to be clear - in no way do I want to see SlashGeo stop what you are doing - you are passionate about this, and that shows. You have readers, and that's great, keep up the good work. The only thing I'd like is that the feed not be included on Planet Geospatial (or maybe there could be categories at PlanetGS?), as it ends up being repetitive, since many of the source articles are also aggregated into that feed, or show up in my RSS reader from the original source.
In an ideal world, an RSS aggregator engine (like PlanetGeo) would be able to filter out for repetitive postings altogether. Clearly we're a long way from the artificial intelligence that would be required to pull that off, but maybe Google is cooking up something... Cheers, Dave
Re:Too Many Blogs?
(Score:3)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
Hi Dave, you make important points
Re:Too Many Blogs?
(Score:3, Interesting)If the comment system is better at Slashgeo then the originating site?
If the user community is better at Slashgeo then the originating site?
Re:Too Many Blogs?
(Score:3, Interesting)On point 1
So you are saying that the comment moderation technology is more important than involving the author or creating a permanent record of the conversation attached to the actual article? If the conversation is pertinent and related to the article, then anyone who found the article via search would likely have found the comments/conversation useful. However, posting it at a separate site (however large/vibrant/well moderated) does not help. This is a common issue in the larger developer comminuty - particularly DotNetNuke. Someone will blog about something, and then it gets discussed in their forums. Fun? Yes. Useful? Kinda
I agree about the second part - if there is enough community that actually participates to the extent that the conversation has a life separate from the article, then yes - reply where appropriate.
Anyhow - this is just getting a little too meta-meta-blogging related, and I would be better served actually posting some content.
Also - "tf23" - This is a quote from Robert Scoble about anonomous bloggers [wordpress.com]
Now, I'm not saying "Stay off the internet!" - that's a little extreme. And maybe you have good reason to stick with TF23, and that's cool, but by not using your name, you lose some credibility.
Cheers,
Dave
Re:Too Many Blogs?
(Score:3, Interesting)( http://pthbb.org/ )
In Bob we trust, all others bring data.
Re:Too Many Blogs?
(Score:3)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
"On the shoulders of giant clams
by belg4mit (226) on Friday July 21, @06:55PM
Some people would rather not deal with dozens of fake "accounts" on various 'blogs to give comments. That's one of the nice things about a slashcode site: unified authentication and commenting. Typepad blah blah. If the bloggers want to get their yayas they are welcome to participate in whatver discussion may arise here."
Many blogs to one blog?
(Score:2)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
What would happen if Spatially Adjusted entries were posted on "Blog A" in the ESRI section (whenever appropriate), meanwhile, the Ogle Earth blog and Google Earth blog would post in the Google and Web Mapping sections of "Blog A", and other bloggers would do the same? Opinions and information in one single blog with one account, one set of preferences, one place to reach the community, etc. Would this make sense at all?? If so, how this "Blog A" should look like? Does this model offers more benefits than inconveniences?
Re:Many blogs to one blog?
(Score:3, Interesting)I think that this general idea could be implemented with aggregators like PlanetGeo. Just subdivide the content a little more, and allow people to subscribe the the block of feeds that interest them.
The problem with asking everyone to post at one place is the longer term monetizaion / recognition / reputation that comes with producing quality content. While I run ArcDeveloper.net, and I have a blog there, I actually post from my own blog and cross post to ArcDeveloper. Why? in the long run, I want people who are searching for content to always be able to find it at "blog.davebouwman.net". It may also be on PlanetGeo, ArcDeveloper etc, but the authoriative home of my articles is my site. I'm not blogging to try and get the most eyeballs, and then fire up Ad Words or similar, I just do it because I think that the problems I write about are a) interesting and b) solve a problem someone else may have.
Anyhow - just more of my thoughts...
Dave
Re:Many blogs to one blog?
(Score:3)( http://alexandreleroux.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday March 17, @05:07PM )
"I think that the problems I write about are a) interesting and b) solve a problem someone else may have."
That's a very good attitude from my point of view. Like Jeff said "the ride is the goal, not reaching the endpoint." My contribution to the community today is to be part of the group offering slashgeo. Its usefulness in terms of outreach is doubtful at the moment. But just as long as I feel the efforts are worthed and there's a minimal amount of personal satisfaction related to the project, then I'll go on and we'll see what happens. My wishes are to see more constructive collaborations and knowledge sharing, and I do see it happening in the community, even if it never goes as fast and or as smoothly as I'd like
Like Things The Way They Are...
(Score:3, Insightful)( http://mapzlibrarian.blogspot.com/ )
Slashgeo, of which this is only my second comment, is an essential component and one of the most important feeds that I monitor. The main benefit I receive from Slashgeo is the human filtering of key news and blogs out there. For me, Planet Geospatial can provide comprehensive immediate unfiltered news, while Slashgeo provides human filtered GIS news. This is why Slashgeo has been the default feed on our library's GIS News [uta.edu] feeds page. Shock seekers such as GIS Dirtbag question the importance of Slashgeo are just plain being silly. There's simply no other way to put it. There's my rambling two cents. Now I'm going to stop wasting my (and your) time with this stuff and read some real news (or maybe, gulp, even turn this laptop off...)
Developing a web community
(Score:2, Interesting)It can be tough, frustrating work running a website trying to keep people happy and coming back to your site.
Keep up the good work