No Empty Rooms

Labmeeting makes it possible for researchers to collect, organize, search for, annotate, recommend, and share the articles from the literature that are essential to their process of discovery.  Users of Labmeeting can also share documents, coordinate schedules, and post bulletins in a common space used by their lab mates.  Last, but not least, Labmeeting is rapidly becoming an extensive directory of life scientists searchable by name, location, and research interest.

One of the things it is not yet possible to do on Labmeeting, though, is discuss and rate each paper from the literature in an open public forum. I have noticed that this seeming omission sometimes strikes people as a bit strange, since so much development on the web these days is devoted to facilitation of discussions, voting, rating etc., and Labmeeting is arguably an ideal setting in which to try to unleash the “wisdom of the crowds” in the service of science.

I don’t disagree with this point in principle.  We definitely appreciate Labmeeting’s potential as a forum for the critical analysis of published scientific work.  I do think, though, that there is another issue here that is equally important to keep in mind, and that is the phenomenon of empty rooms.  If, in the process of exploring a building, you wander into a room that is completely ordinary and empty, with bare walls and no people in it, how long are you likely to hang around there?  Compare this to the same room, already full of people talking to each other.  Once others have already overcome the barrier of being the first to enter the room and stay, it makes it much easier for others to join up.  Along the same lines: empty rooms are likely to stay empty.

We’ve tried very hard to build Labmeeting without empty rooms.  We think vast empty mansions are easy to get lost in and hard to enjoy by yourself, which is why we’ve started out by focusing on building localized tools for the individual and those in her immediate professional vicinity. Our intention has been to avoid a situation where millions of records gaze back at the user blankly, reading: “0 votes, 0 comments.”  But as soon as a room is ready to be filled, we plan to build it.  We ultimately hope that the real value of Labmeeting will come from all the new ways scientists will be able to interact because of it.  We’re just trying to plot the course that we think is most likely to take us all the way to that destination.