The International Geoblogosphere - continued

First of all, thanks to all the respondents to my previous post and appeal. I was looking for a shortcut to figuring out the international dimensions of the Geoblogosphere, and, thanks to the highly valuable community component of blogging, I have been enjoyably shoved up the learning curve.

After following various trails over the last 24 hours (well, with some sleep in between), two things stand out in addition to the pleasure of finding individual blogs. First, the most comprehensive listing that I have found is maintained by Robert Huber and Jens Klump in Germany at http://geoblogs.stratigraphy.net/?action=list, who also run the stratigraphy.net website and blog (http://stratigraphynet.blogspot.com/). Second, Chris Rowan pointed me to the Geoblogosphere survey that Callan Bentley had conducted a few months ago (http://nvcc.edu/home/cbentley/geoblog/2008/09/rise-of-geoblogosphere.html). Callan's map of the international distribution of geobloggers is interesting and informative - is there a way (and I ask this as someone for whom the workings of the stuff behind the monitor remain largely mysterious and intimidating) of putting these two sets of data together? In Callan's survey, the top two reasons given as dislikes about the Geoblogosphere were not enough geologists blogging and that it's too dispersed - it needs a directory. It also strikes me that, while the virtual and geography-free nature of the community is great, nevertheless there is value to awareness of local as well as global communities.

In a sense, I believe that one value of local communities relates to the more serious part of my previous post: to "broadcast" and stimulate (see the top three reasons for blogging in Callan's survey - anyone who blogs is, I believe, demonstrating enthusiasm and activity). I would like to think that the Geoblogosphere could actively provoke discussion of the AGI document and the issues it raises. From my own local perspective, for example, I strongly believe that the Geological Society in London has a role in the public and policy-making perception of these issues. But the GeolSoc is a great and venerable institution that still suffers from a degree of conservatism and the difficulties of reaching consensus to stick its institutional head above the parapet (having written that, I'll find out if anyone else at the GeolSoc is reading this!). Perhaps a concerted campaign through the UK geoblogging community could influence this in the right direction, a geoblog lobby? The GeolSoc might even have a role as providing a listing and aggregation of UK and international geoblogs.

The ability to link geographic geoblogging communities as well as thematic ones would be useful - your thoughts?

Meanwhile, I loved the response that Callan reports to why bloggers blog - "Cogito Ergo Blogo"

Comments

[Callan Bentley]

The "cogito" bit is 100% Ron Schott, not me. It was the only Latin I got on the survey.

[Sandglass]

Oops -thanks for the source and the Latin typo correction!

[Chris Rowan]

I've been thinking recently that maybe we could make more use of http://theaccretionarywedge.wordpress.com/ - currently it's just the site for our web carnival, but perhaps we could turn it into a more general geoblogospheric portal?

I've also been toying with the idea of tagging posts with a geographical location, such that you could view them on Google Earth...

[Sandglass]

Is there some way the two approaches can be combined? I don't know much about Google Earth communities (I generally have them turned off) but could a dedicated global geoblogging community be set up on Google Earth via the accretionary wedge?

[Silver Fox]

I think that for most geobloggers you can get location, at least regional, from their "about" page. Some of us are psuedonymous and have only listed a region or state for our location. Other than that, I'm not sure what you have in mind for making use of local communities. Across the science blogosphere in general, I feel quite connected to bloggers from quite a range of places.

I think the Accretionary Wedge wordpress blog is most often run by Brian at Clastic Detritus, who is at AGU right now - but I could be wrong about that.

I'd like to learn more about tagging posts on Google Earth. So far my Google Earth understanding besides viewing and saving images is pretty limited!

[Sandglass]

I guess that I'm thinking about how that connectedness might be harnessed (of course, only by those interested in being harnessed!)We live, work, and think as geologists in a time when geology is of fundamental importance in addressing major issues, yet our influence as a scientifc group is not great, and our voice, when it's heard, is often distorted. Could the geoblogosphere be an alternative means of making the whole greater than the sum of the parts?

[Lost Geologist]

You started an interesting discussion Michael. Indeed I think it is mainly a problem of perception that the Geoblogosphere is dominated by American/English bloggers. When I began blogging almost one year ago I was not aware of any German Geoblogs. Because I wanted to be understood by fellow geobloggers I therefor decided to blog in English and not German. By now the German Geoblogosphere has grown a little and it tempted me to also blog in German. Anyways, I know there is a vivid Latinamerican-Spanish-Portugese Geoblogosphere and other geoblogs scattered across Europe and the World. Also I am aware of two active geology internet forums, one is http://www.geologyrocks.co.uk/ from the UK and the other http://www.geoversum.de/ from Germany (Gunnar and I are quite active there) which is to my knowledge the most active and best, free geology forum.

[Robert Huber]

The intention of geoblogs.stratigraphy.net mainly was to collect a large number of urls to test our agenames webservices with them (automatized identification of stratigraphic context see e.g. http://stratigraphynet.blogspot.com/2008/12/agetagging-geoblogosphere-1st-try.html). But of course I would be happy if it would be expanded and found to be useful for the community. So, if this would be interesting for the community I would be happy to add additional fields on blogs e.g. for country, field of expertise etc. to geoblogs.stratigraphy.net. I would also be happy if some of you would join this effort eg. by technological assistance or some kind of editorial work.

To better identify "real" geo-articles in blogs I could imagine a similar procedure as it is already realized by research blogging (http://researchblogging.org). Geo content could be identified by a logo+backlink and formalized tags for e.g location, stratigraphy, research area etc. Well, I know this sound confuse, maybe I should think of this some more days an post somethin on my blog soon;)

[Chris Rowan]

Robert - it sounds like we're thinking along the same lines. Get in touch if you want to throw some ideas around/together.

[Sandglass]

This is, indeed, turning into an interesting discussion! I agree with Lost Geologist (who I hope is not completely lost in the snow - I always felt that I should have been a carbonate sedimentologist, doing important fieldwork in the Bahamas)that a lot of this is perception. But then we run into the always embarassing fact of anglophone dominance - I wish that I could blog in German - or Portugese, or Russian..... I could manage (imperfectly and with some effort) in French, but that's about it. I know there is translation software on the net - I wonder if there's a way to hook it up to the Latinamerican geoblogosphere? Do you have the addresses of Latinamerican geoblogs? I have to say also that the geoversum site seems a lot more "active" than geologyrocks, but, as always, I'm probably missing something.

For Robert and Chris - I'm pleased that this conversation has started up and that, if there's enough interest, some kind of enhanced and interactive directory might be possible. Being a distinctly non-techy person, I can't offer much technological support, but would be more than happy to help in any other ways. (By the way Robert, I couldn't get the links to work - any suggestions?)

I just can't help coming back to thinking about "the whole is greater than the sum of the parts" concept and that there's some value in harnessing all the energy of the geoblogosphere.

[Lost Geologist]

Michael, not completely lost but preparing to go home for christmas and new year. It's senseless to stay, the field is turning from white to mud brown which is somehow even worse. Also I have to say that I did not specialise in carbonate sedimentology but just started liking it within the last 2 semesters (actually specialised in mineral deposits). Bahamas or any other Caribbean area would be great of course (I am still dreaming)! There are 3 very good Latinamerican geoblogs. Patricio is running En Morrenas (http://enmorrenas.wordpress.com/), Lukysh is in charge of Geocosas (http://geocosas.wordpress.com/) and Miguel blogs in MiGeo (http://migeo.blogspot.com/). Three very nice guys whom I met this september in Lima, Peru, for the Latinamerican Geological Congress. They have links to more and other Latinamerican geoblogs, also a number of more palaeontological orientated Spanish language blogs.

[Robert Huber]

Chris, would you mind to pick up some of these ideas in your blog? It would be interesting to hear what the rest of the blogosphere thinks of this and your blog has many readers. Most of the US bloggers are either in SF (AGU) or on their way back home, so they probably missed this discussion.
Maybe we could soon start a discussion on what the 'essence' of a geoscientific blog article is..is it location, age, fossils, discipline etc..

Michael, which links didn't work? I was adding some basic language support to geoblogs.snet, so maybe you discovered some new bugs :(

[Sandglass]

Robert - I can't get either link in your Dec 19 comment to work - but perhaps it's my problem (although I don't seem to have any others at the moment - computing-wise, that is!)

I look forward to the discussion continuing and broadening.

[Sandglass]

Robert - you may have seen the comment on my latest post from Suvrat Kher, based in India - I've added his blog to your list.