Your opinion of an online communication tool

Dear Connecting Science member,

I would like to hear your reaction to an online communication tool that a colleague and I have developed (see links below). It is called Nature and Biodiversity News and Views. The aim is to present interesting topics relating to nature and biodiversity to the general public. People can read short articles on biodiversity or nature topics, then have their say in the form of quick multi-choice questions and free text. People can also read other peoples' views.

We developed it with the idea that biodiversity scientists could write short, simple articles about issues relating to biodiversity and conservation, coupled with some multi-choice questions to explore peoples' views. All the user input goes into a database and we collect some data to profile users so that - potentially - we could look at whether there are big differences in views, e.g between people from different countries. It was developed as part of a European project.

The system is a prototype, so don't read too much into any results data: most of it is people testing it!We are not expert web developers, so I realise the interface could be better (if anyone would like to help, please let me know). Note, one potential application is to run News and Views in a public space like a museum), hence we opted for fairly large text and buttons, and we tried to keep it simple, rather than having too many features.

I'd be interested to hear your views on this prototype system. Do you think it has merit? Is this sort of thing being done better elsewhere? Can you see further potential for the idea? What if it had more content on it, like videos?

You can find News and Views here: http://www.nandv.ceh.ac.uk/news_views/welcome.aspx

You can read more about it here: http://www.alter-net.info/POOLED/ARTICLES/BF_DOCART/VIEW.ASP?Q=BF_D...

Thanks for any constructive criticism you can give.

Regards,
Andy