The theoretical framework of communities of practice (CoP) is often used for framing research into online communities. However, there is an absence of measures and empirical work that evaluates knowledge-sharing within such communities. This represents a substantial gap in our understanding of informal learning for diverse people and in the case of communities that support participation in science, a potential loss of capacity for an enterprise that serves a critical function for society. Our objective is to operationalize practice within a designed online, scientific community and evaluate these behaviors as representative of seven theorized high-level groups. For this case study, content and social network analysis were applied to forums (n = 1858), activity posts (n = 1300), and direct messages (n = 667). Content analysis showed that community members most often used practices that were coded as social and not domain-specific. Differences existed in the ways that forums, messages, and activity posts were used as well as between education and outreach members and members of the public and scientists. Social network analysis revealed two domain-specific practices were central to the knowledge-sharing discourse. The seven theorized high-level groups were reduced to three. We provide a new empirically-based framework for use in identifying practices within the digital spaces as well as recommendations for designing online science communities that emphasize knowledge creation.

实践社区 (CoP) 的理论框架通常用于构建在线社区的研究框架。然而，缺乏评估此类社区内知识共享的措施和实证工作。这代表着我们对不同人群的非正式学习的理解存在巨大差距，对于支持参与科学的社区来说，这对于为社会发挥关键作用的企业来说可能会丧失能力。我们的目标是在设计的在线科学社区中实施实践，并作为七个理论化高级群体的代表来评估这些行为。在本案例研究中，内容和社交网络分析应用于论坛 ( n  = 1858)、活动帖子 ( n  = 1300) 和私信 ( n  = 667)。内容分析表明，社区成员最常使用被编码为社交而非特定领域的实践。论坛、信息和活动帖子的使用方式以及教育和外展成员与公众和科学家之间存在差异。社交网络分析表明，两种特定领域的实践对于知识共享话语至关重要。七个理论上的高层小组减少到三个。我们提供了一个新的基于经验的框架，用于识别数字空间内的实践，以及设计强调知识创造的在线科学社区的建议。