not too much response, too little

Most of my dear readers will have either noticed or written about the lack of comments on scientific articles, for instance at the BMC journals and most notably at PLoS ONE, which was designed for interaction of author and reader.
At this point, there’s not too much to add to the conclusions: It’s takes to much time to comment on a scientific article properly, there’s no incentive (can’t put it in your CV) or honor to be gained (no one asked me to review this) and they are not written to be discussed (open/pragmatic) but supposed to discuss the results thoroughly themselves. However, despite all the comments on the matter, trying to study the phenomenon on the web is difficult due to the lack of strong keywords: Searching for “comments on publications” does not take you to very informative resources.

Notes from the biomass: Warnock’s dilemma

In the online world, we often face one of two opposite commenting challenges.  Sadly, more common is the above, where one's insights simply don't generate any response.  I have often heard people say in response to the common question "how do we manage wiki edits and blog comments" that it's a problem one should be glad to have (other than spam) as more often wikis and blogs stand empty, not overflowing.

Above dilemma via Peer-to-Peer blog.

On the other side is How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community.

We're still at the stage where either one is an art - writing posts that will engender comments, as well as managing comments so that they don't turn into flamewars.

Comments

[David Smith]

Jakob Neilsen coined the 90:9:1 rule (at least I think he did - that's where I heard about it anyway) where 90% of the pool of users for a site do nothing other than lurk; 9% do a very small amount of contributing and 1% do a lot. It's always stuck with me when I have discussions about personalisation of our products or have to field the "We should have a forum!" type comments (I work for an STM publishing company - a not for profit one so we aren't evil, promise). The places where comments seem to be most visible (The BMJ does pretty well I think) possibly just tap into a pattern of behaviour that already exists within the particular scientific grouping.

Also... Malcolm Gladwell wrote about Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen in the Tipping Point. I mention this, because I feel that in the blogging arena at least - the bloggers are typically Mavens (Connecting people via the sharing of knowledge). We do these things because we want to share, we want to talk, we want to point out the stuff that is interesting and important. And we are the 1% - at best.

I once looked at an online mailing list in the medical area. It had over 1500 people signed up - so it was a decent size for the scientific area in question. I counted up the number of unique posters over the course of a year. There were 73 if memory serves. the list was hugely popular and really well known and a good number of the big beasts of the field of research observed the list closely. But they lurked. I know they did, because they told me so. 73 contributors, and the reality was that the list was driven by one big personality who liked to run the list, and a few other 'Gurus' who held forth on a regular basis.

Not so much the wisdom of the crowds then.

David