Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
purpose of the task was less clear then that of question 3. The 18 respon-
dents with
maybe
for the second question, the most general one, could
become participants once the task and purpose is made clear. This is perhaps
backed up by the fact that 75% of these
maybe
respondents also indicated
they would use the tools only around a trip to WPNP, thus creating a pur-
pose. If the further information they required to make a
yes
or
no
decision
was something like -
could you please visit our website and add any feed-
back or observations from your trip to our blog to help us…-
people may
actually do so. The trigger therefore appears to be a purpose and a specific
task associated with a trip to the park. This is something to bear in mind if
the GKT were to become accessible to the public, or if PV or WPNP were
to consider crowdsourcing opportunities.
6- Conclusion and future directions
The collaborative and participatory ideas of Web 2.0 are being imple-
mented by varying organisations in different ways to suit their needs. A
diversity of projects is seizing the collective intelligence of the public us-
ing crowdsourcing. The way forward for this research project is if it can
adopt these concepts to enhance the existing data archive. Can park visi-
tors enhance flora or fauna data simply by visiting the park, taking photos,
sharing their experiences on a Web forum, by equipping them with GPS
enabled mobile devices during their visit, or by participating in a special
crowdsourcing project to gather data? The range of projects that have been
encountered during the exploratory phase suggest that the opportunities are
there if the occasion arose for PV to use crowdsourcing or Web 2.0 tools to
gather information from these non-traditional sources. The results of three
key visitor survey questions indicate that people may participate if it in-
volves a particular goal or task. The successfulness of such an approach
could depend on various issues such as what communication tools are used
(
Facebook
and
YouTube
were the most used applications by the survey
respondents), appropriate methods to target different age groups, and catch-
ing people during a trip to the park rather than relying on them visiting a
website. Including visitors on an email list during their trip so that specific,
purposeful requests can be send when participation is sought could be a
solution to the latter.
The research into Web 2.0 suggests that the attitude towards the New Web
is generally regarded as positive. Initial results from the visitor survey also
