GregSchwartz.net

Neil Patel, Steve Marmon, and I collaborated on this project. It’s simplest to quote directly from our abstract:
We present a case study on using geo-location information to help users navigate an online forum for farmers. Working with newfarm.org, we ran a controlled experiment that added maps to each thread on the forum. The maps either displayed the location of all the thread’s viewers, or the location of both its viewers and posters. We measured how the maps affected users’ viewing behavior. For the most active threads, we found that maps showing posters significantly increased geographic clustering of viewers. However, interviews with forum users revealed that other information, such as soil type or climatic zone, would be more useful for navigating content.

The forums are owned by The Rodale Institute who were very excited about the collaboration, and happy with the results.

Here is a link to our paper, and here’s our poster.