Integrating community services-a common infrastructure proposal

Computer based community systems can provide powerful support in knowledge transfer, both in the direct exchange of information and in finding people to exchange information with. Several such information exchange and expert finding services have already been implemented. The problem of current approaches is that they are not able to exchange data with each other. User profile information and contributed information have to be entered separately for every community-based information system. So, what one system has learned is not available for other systems. We present our ideas for a community services infrastructure as an enabling technology for further integration of community related services.