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Web Notes -- Expertspace, Internet Business Network, Ecola's Newsstand, Searchable list of discussion mailing lists, NetTax '96, Akropolis Arts Magazine
Other Educational Resources -- K-12 Administrator's Connection, Bosnia Page, H-NET, The Book Nook
FEATURES:
In case you hadn't noticed, this is where the action is -- putting out public domain etexts at the rate of 32 a month.
http://pobox.com/~drew/scripts.htm
The scripts aren't here -- this site just points to them. But if you are interested in film, and especially if you are interested writing screen-plays, this is a must-see site. Here you'll find scripts and drafts of many of your favorite movies, including recent ones like Pulp Fiction. You'll also find lots of Disney and sci-fi. Some of these are transcripts, others look like shooting scripts. For Star Wars, they list first and second draft and also final script. It's amazing that the studios themselves have not made this same material -- and lots more -- freely and readily available. They don't print and sell these scripts, and the availability of a resource like this fosters the study and understanding of film as an art form and feeds the enthusiasm of fans who buy and rent videotapes and serve as the audience for cable and TV broadcasts of movies. Also, if you have unproduced scripts of your own and would like to let the world know about them, rather than simply let them gather dust, post them at your own Web site (or a friend's) and let Drew Feinberg know so he can add a link.
Please note new address.
Massive, searchable index of on-line books (including more than 1100 English works).
For those who do not have the capability or the time to retrieve electronic texts from the Internet, many are available at a nominal price from PLEASE COPY THIS DISK, a project of The Samizdat Express. For further information, send email to samizdat@samizdat.com or check our Web site http://www.samizdat.com/
Obviously, support, not price, should be the primary consideration when buying a PC.
Does anyone know of a PC company that uses interactive Web-based discussion software to provide effective support?
Please let me know. It looks like I may need a new machine and a new vendor very soon.
Richard Seltzer, seltzer@samizdat.com
This is the place to come if you want to hire a speaker for an event, meeting, or trade show. It includes a hypertext list of conference resources, useful tips for working with booking agents, and a list of top speakers (by the way, you'll find yours truly, Richard Seltzer, listed there under "visionaries").
Here you'll find lots of useful info for companies interested in doing business on the Web. In particular, check /nomad.html for "nearly daily" pointers and insightful commentary, and /custint/ for "Customer Intimacy: How Websites Learn and What They Have to Teach," which consists of slides to a presentation about the strategic significance of the Web.
Many newspapers and magazines are now on-line. This site helps you find the one you want when you want it. Interactive forms locate over 800 English-language periodicals worldwide.
If you are looking for an Internet mailing list (listserv), you can now do a search at this Web site, rather than having to download the entire enormous file. The original plain-text version is still available by anonymous FTP at: ftp://sri.com/netinfo/interest-groups.txt or by email at mail-server@sri.com.
This is free online tax calculation program for U.S. income tax (1995 1040 tax return). Each line of the form hyperlinks to IRS information on that item, and you can download IRS forms here.
The first issue of this magazine (Jan. 1996) is now online, with articles relating to "all" the arts. They are looking for submissions -- fiction and poetry, and as well as articles.
from Walter Westrum at Northern Illinois Universitiy in DeKalb, IL
Links to resources of interest to school administrators. Just getting started.
This page provides evaluative descriptions of about a dozen sites devoted to current events in Bosnia.
73 discussion group listservs covering a wide range of subjects in the humanities and social sciences. For details send to the above address this message: get H-NET WHATIS
"Read about the books you want to read. Write about the books you read." Here we see the beginnings of what could grow to be a very interesting archive of book reports. It's organized by grade in school (K-3, 4-6, 7-9, 10-12). Kids can use an on-line form to submit their reports.
Creative people can often find good uses for innovations that don't meet traditional standards of quality, that aren't yet ready to be full-fledged products. This is true of low-resolution audio and video and software that still has bugs.
If you have an innovation that isn't ready for prime time, then
This is an important element of the Internet culture. (Netscape plays it beautifully.)
And the same principle holds true not just for software, but also for books and courseware.
Attached are some related thoughts I sent out in response to reader reaction to an article of mine in Internet-on-a-Disk #14.
Gordon Joly || http://pobox.com/~gjoly/ || gjoly@pobox.com
Date: Wed, 13 Dec 1995 16:19:51 +0000 (GMT)
Take a look at what is happening with telephone service. Vocal Tech (Internet Phone) and maybe half a dozen other outfits are offering phone-like service over the Internet. Right now it's a bit like ham radio. But it's very intelligible and very usable as a social medium and even for business. Which am I going to opt for -- the kind of quality that lets me hear a pin fall in the background for about $100 an hour to talk to someone in Europe, or just enough quality at no charge beyond what I pay my Internet access carrier (about 30 cents an hour).
The same applies in the video marketplace. I don't think that in the foreseeable future video over the web (at 14.4) is in any way going to compete with delivery of Hollywood blockbuster movies on cable or through broadcast or VCR. But there are very interesting things that can be done, where the video image (and sound in synch) add to the information you are trying to convey or the experience you are trying to create. For instance, what's there today would be very acceptable for many in a picture-phone kind of environment.
On the Internet, small, basement operations are coming up with interesting ideas and instead of waiting until they have completed products, with quality that's ready for "prime time," they are making the software available in beta form for free and hence are rapidly determining if there is a market. This means that users have an opportunity to experiment to see what they can do with it. The innovator gets valuable feedback (through a free extended laboratory of volunteers). And the state-of-the-art moves ahead at lightning speed.
In short, I don't see video over the Web as competition for high quality TV images. Rather I see it leading to a slew of new applications.
I'm looking forward to the day (which should be soon) when everyone can be a broadcaster (as well as a publisher).
I find it helpful to visualize the Internet business environment in terms of concentric circles. At the center we find people-to-people, everyone-to-everyone -- direct interaction, through email and newsgroups and Web-based discussion areas. That's the main reason people come to the Internet -- to relate to other people.
The next circle out is the Free Zone -- all the libraries of free information -- all the good stuff that libraries and educational institutions, and governments and well-meaning individuals and companies make available for free.
The center and the Free Zone are still the heart of the Internet. That's where the concentration of gravity is. Yes, it's possible for businesses to ignore the unique characteristics of the Internet and to try to bulldoze their way to profit by making enormous investments. But that's like pushing rocks uphill. And their competitors -- companies that are sensitive to the environment and take advantage of the gravity rather than fighting it -- can do much better for much less, making money rolling rocks downhill.
The next circle -- the realm where companies start to see revenue -- needs an update, because so many new opportunities have opened up. I used to refer to this as the "subscription zone" because information by subscription was the main activity here. This includes all the tools and services that let you find just what you want when you want it. People are willing to pay more to get less -- if it's just what they want. Even if the raw information is free, it can be worth a lot to be able to find the right needle in that monstrous haystack.
Now I call it the Value-Added Zone, and include a wide variety of Internet-based services which go beyond the plain vanilla personal interaction and information which is available for free.
For example,
1) information available by subscription, which is timely or tailored/personalized/selected (as noted above),
2) use of intelligent search engines and agents (tools that can go significantly beyond what's available for free -- drilling down to give you not a list of hundreds or thousands of matches, but rather the few that are of real value to you),
3) access to specialized databases,
4) participation in specially staged on-line events -- including opportunities to interact with celebrities and experts, and participation in on-line training/distance education courses,
5) access to environments that facilitate multi-media personal interaction,
6) interactive advertising -- personalized based on choice/profiles and usage stats, and broadly solicited by the recipient, while the messages/content received are not the direct result of user choice,
7) translation services (automated and manual), and
8) mixed media services (combining Internet use with CD ROM, telephone, radio, or television).
And the list will keep getting longer.
The outer circle, the "Transaction or On-Line Shopping Zone" is where people buy and sell ordinary goods by credit card over the Internet. While this activity gets lots of media hype, it is still in its infancy, and probably won't really take off until the advent of "micro-commerce," the ability to do on-line transactions of less than a cent, which can enable new kinds of products and services and business models. (For information on what's coming on that front, check the "Millicent" white paper at http://HTTP.CS.Berkeley.EDU/~gauthier/millicent/millicent.html ).
The historical examples of such changes include the Netscape Navigator and Yahoo.
The Netscape Navigator is now so commonly used as an Internet browser that it's easy to lose sight of how revolutionary it was when it first appeared around September of 1994. At that point in time it was virtually impossible to use the Web from at home. With a 14.4 modem, the browsers of that time simply timed out before you got anything useful. It was a frustrating experience. I could get everything I wanted using my connection from the office over the corporate network. And there were many users at other corporations and educational and research institutions. But the home market simply didn't exist. To really connect to the Web from home, I would need to get an ISDN line and buy about $1000 dollars worth of hardware to make that work with my PC. Or I'd need some other high-speed expensive solution. Then the Netscape Navigator suddenly appeared. It was six times faster than anything else at the time. It was like getting a six times faster Internet connection for free. All of a sudden, it was easy to use the Web from home, and home use started to grow at a phenomenal rate, opening up a wide variety of business opportunities.
Around that same time -- early fall of 1994 -- the number of Web sites had increased to the point that it was becoming very difficult to find what you wanted when you wanted it. This problem had led to the development of the electronic mall as a business concept. The idea was to host or link many separate Web sites in an organized fashion -- to impose order on the disorder of the Web at large. The idea was to create the ideal "on-ramp" -- to invite people to come in to this particular site because here they could easily see -- organized like a mall -- all the kinds of things that they might be interested in; and like in a mall, the visitor could be attracted to wander into this or that other store because of its proximity to the one they were looking for. That looked like a good business model. And then a couple of students from Stanford put together their Yahoo site. This didn't involve any fancy technology, no search engines that would go out and actively check what's on the Web. Basically, their service was just an outgrowth of the lists of interesting sites which they had compiled for their own use. They made it available for others, and made it easy for people to submit info about their own Web sites to be added to the data base. All of a sudden it was very easy to find a Web site that you wanted when you wanted it. Yahoo grew at an astronomical rate -- both in terms of the sites it listed and in terms of the number of users. This simple and effective solution made the "electronic mall" obsolete over night.
Now Alta Vista, a new free service from Digital Equipment, (http://www.altavista.digital.com/) breaks the mold. It is now possible not just to find a Web site you might be interested in, but to search the full text of nearly every document on the on the Web and in newsgroups.
That means you can locate a document on a computer in China or anywhere else on the Web probably far quicker than you could locate it on your own hard drive. This makes it easy for you to identify resources and for others to find you. At the same time, this capability changes the whole concept of a Web site. People no longer have to navigate by way of your "home page". You no longer have the ability to control the context and experience of the user who visits your site. Rather people will find the documents they want directly -- diving straight into files you buried deep in subdirectories. Suddenly you have to rethink how you structure and present your information.
We introduced that concept in our last issue, a week before Alta Vista went public. ("Who Controls the Context? -- Search Engines and the Fate of Carefully Constructed Web Sites" http://www.samizdat.com/context.html). Now it's time to take a closer look at this new capability and its implications.
First, are the titles of your pages appropriate and useful? If people get to those pages by hyperlinks from your home page, the title is insignificant; hence you might be using some internal shorthand for your own convenience. But the title of each and every page is the first thing that users of Alta Vista will see, and will be an important criterion in their decision to go to your pages or other similar ones.
Second, what are the first three lines on each of those pages? As a default, that's what an Alta Vista user is shown, together with your page titles. Ideally, those lines should provide a clear and crisp picture of the contents of that page, so people interested in that subject matter will know that they want to look at the whole thing.
Next, can you be found the ways your potential visitors are likely to search? For instance, you may have all your company's press releases on line. But the phrase "press release" probably never appears on any of those pages. In other words, someone searching for "XYZ Company" AND "press release" might find nothing. So simply add that phrase to those pages, and soon (not immediately; after the Alta Vista "spiders" have visited there again) people will be able to find them. Likewise, consider any and all key words and phrases that might logically occur to people looking for the kind of information you provide and add those words to your documents -- perhaps as a extra line at the bottom.
Also, remember that many people will be looking for other people and searching by their full name. If individuals are mentioned on your pages, make sure that the full names appear -- first name followed immediately by last name -- somewhere on those pages. And if the name is a common one, be sure that other terms immediately associated with this particular "John Smith" appear with the name.
If you have a page that is particularly important to you and you want to make sure that people searching for that particular piece of information or product/service will find you -- and that your page will come out high on the list of search hits -- you might consider carrying this principle to extremes. For instance, at the bottom of the document or anywhere in the form of a "comment" that won't be seen by visitors, but will be noted by the search engine, repeat your key word many times.
A simple search for link:samizdat.com gave me a list of nearly 150 Web pages that have hypertext links to my site. I had had no idea that so many people valued what I was doing. And it was a pleasure to check out those other sites and see what we have in common. Because I thought it would be of interest to my viewers I created a page with a list of hyperlinks to all the sites with hyperlinks to my own (simply by saving the source of the pages the Alta Vista search created). http://www.samizdat.com/links.html And to encourage more sites to create such links, I offered to continually update this list, asking Web masters to contact me directly.
Then I began searching for the topics that are important to me -- subjects I cover at my Web site. I was delighted to discover that not only could I find far more Web pages with Alta Vista than with any other search engine, but, also, a set of simple but powerful commands made it easy to refine my searches and home in on my particular needs.
For example, I searched for "The Lizard of Oz," the title of a book I wrote and self-published 22 years ago and which is now available at my Web site (http://www.samizdat.com/liz1.html) I discovered that a play with that title will be performed in a town in Pennsylvania this February. At first I thought this might be the children's play which I had adapted from my own book. But inquiring further, I discovered that this was a story adapted from the Wizard of Oz by other writers. I also found another, different play with the same title being performed in Tasmania; and half a dozen works of art, all originating in Australia, which is often referred to as "Oz."
Some writers who would like to make their information freely available over the Internet, hesitate to do so because they are uptight that others might plagiarize their work -- not just make it more widely available, but change the name of the author, or lift chunks and appropriate the work piecemeal in another context. Now, in a matter of seconds, and at no cost, you can search the entire Web not just for titles, but for any chunk of text. And the fact that such detection is so easy should be a powerful deterrent for any would-be plagiarizer.
Try Alta Vista and let your imagination run free. And be sure that your kids will do the same. Don't be so naive as to presume that simple-minded censoring schemes will keep them away from certain kinds of information if they actively want to find such information.
And keep in mind that with a free tool as powerful as this, with only a beginner's Internet knowledge, you could set yourself up in business finding informaiton of all kinds on the Internet for clients on request.
It represents a revolutionary advance. But there will be more revolutions.
We can expect that increasingly more of the content available over the Internet will be stored in data bases. The provider of the information won't have to go to the expense of converting it to .html (the Web format) or restructuring it in the form of Web pages. Rather, in response to queries, the information will be converted on the fly from a variety of formats to .html and possibly other formats as well, for immediate one-time delivery to the user.
And more and more conent will include audio and video, sometimes combined with text, and sometimes combined with CD ROMs and telephones and television -- a glorious mind-bending mixture of media far beyond the reach of today's Alta Vista.
So Alta Vista is revolutionary. It is today's answer. But already the question has changed.
It's like Alice in the land through the Looking Glass.
I'm not an engineer. I'm just a writer. And I have no advance knowledge of technology that can do multimedia searches or that could probe multiple heterogeneous databases linked to the Internet. It's hard for me to imagine how a multi-media search could work without the use of keyword tags applied by human observers. And it's hard for me to imagine that the owners of databases would want to allow search engines to probe their guts and pump out their data to index it for retrieval.
But on the other hand, there are a lot of creative engineers out there who want to make a buck and who just love a challenge like that.
My guess is that there will be solutions to both these problems within two years.
And my guess is that the solution will be of the "agent" variety, rather than the massive Altavista-style spider/search engine.
In other words, the individual user will launch a program which the user has given a very specific search task -- like playing "Fish" on a mega-scale -- find me all XYZs. And like giving a bloodhound a piece of clothing to sniff, you will give your agent samples of the kinds of things you are looking for -- and these samples might be text, graphics, sounds, video, etc. The agent will then independently poke around everywhere -- might use a search engine like Altavista for the text stuff, might log in and register as a user at publicly available database sites (or even log in with password at database sites which require membership and to which the user is a member), and then come back -- perhaps a day or two later -- with a set of clues and pointers to stuff that's close, or the thing itself, if there's an exact match.
Anyway, such are my speculations.
Internet-on-a-Disk and at our Web site.
Here's one brilliant trick which was recently posted to newsgroups, and which the author gave us permission to include here. Be sure to check out his Web site next time you go surfing: http://www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/hyper.html
**Subject: WWW/Netnews: A nifty trick courtesy Altavista
From: jorn@MCS.COM (Jorn Barger)
Newsgroups: alt.culture.usenet,alt.culture.www, comp.infosystems.www.authoring.misc
Date: 10 Jan 1996 23:35:55 -0600
Digital's phenomenal new WWWeb search engine at <URL:http://www.altavista.digital.com/> has such sophisticated capabilities that I've been able to add a new link to my home page, offering most of my *news postings* from the last month (but self-updating/ never out of date) via:
<URL:http://www.altavista.digital.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&what=news&fmt=&q=from%3Ajorn.mcs>
(You can set up whatever query you like, there, submit it, and clip the URL of the returned page...)
Be sure to read their very clear help pages for more handy tricks, like collecting virtually *all* the pages that link to any one of yours...
Email: paciello@yuri.org PH/FAX: (603) 598-9544
WebAble! http://www.yuri.org/webable/
This is the second of a series of three articles which will describe many of the barriers people with disabilities experience as they try to use the World Wide Web.
In my last article, in Internet-on-a-Disk #12, I discussed several issues regarding the inaccessibility of the World Wide Web and people who are "print impaired", including the blind and visually impaired. In this article, I will focus on two other major disability categories: the deaf/hearing impaired and people who are mobility impaired. As I previously noted, these articles are not meant to be all-inclusive. The purpose here is to convey information; to build awareness around Web access for people with disabilities. It is also my intention to promote accessibility to Web "investors" and solicit their support for future Web development.
Up front, it's very important that so-called "able-bodied" persons understand some important distinctions regarding those who are typically classified as "people with disabilities". For example, you will note that I purposely differentiate between people who are deaf and people who are hearing impaired. Generally speaking, the deaf do not consider themselves as "hearing impaired"; their hearing is not impaired, it simply does not exist.
It is also important to know that the deaf do not personally consider themselves as "disabled" or "functionally limited". They prefer the distinction of being their own culture that includes their own form of communication, sign language. Of course, my personal argument is that there are no people with disabilities. Rather, all people are "differently-abled".
However opportunity always implies challenge. One of those challenges is found in the current evolution of the Web: moving it from a text-based interface to a multmodal, multimedia operating environment. It is this environment that presents barriers to the deaf.
For example, each time a web site includes a video clip which also includes sound, the deaf are locked out.
The solution is relatively simple: implement closed captioning. You may know that captioning is now an industry standard for televisions. As a result, you see televisions with built in capitioning functionality. Deaf users are no longer required to purchase a separate captioning box. For general information about captioning please refer to the Closed Captioning Web http://www.erols.com/berke/ Additionally, you may refer to http://www.verbatim.com/which features closed captioning.
Current implementions of "Web captioning" are not the same as television captioning. Rather than captioning within the video clip, Webmasters are including captioning or script indicators on their pages. These indicators are located in close proximity to the video clip hyperlink (or image). When a user clicks on the captioning indicator the script of the clip is displayed.
One of the better implementations of Web captioning can be found at the Web site of Boston-based public broadcasting station WBGH http://www.wgbh.com/ Among many beneficial services provided for people with disabilities, WGBH runs the National Center for Accessible Media (NCAM), directed by Larry Goldberg. On the WGBH Educational Foundation/Access Instructions web page http://www.wgbh.org/wgbh/pages/access/accessinstructions.html , you will see an example of web captioning.
There are a couple of guidelines you should consider before implementing captioning on your web page:
As a result, Web pages and Web access do not present any major barriers to the physically challenged. Still, presentation of content should be given some credence. Because of various physical difficulties, head and eye movement are not always easily accomplished. Keep the following guidelines in mind:
The World Wide Web consortium is very interested in designing the Web for people with disabilties. At the recent Fourth International World Wide Web conference, the workshop, Designing the Web for People with Disabilities http://www.yuri.org/webable/w4conf.htmlfocused on several new developments in the area of Web accessibility. The next and final article will highlight the results of this workshop and provide information on future accessibility workshops.
For additional information regarding Web accessibility for People with Disabilities, please refer to the Web site: WebABLE! http://www.yuri.org/webable/ WebABLE! is an information repository for people with disabilities and professionals who work in the field. Should you desire to contact me further, please feel free to send me email at: paciello@yuri.org
Today the Internet is being used by educational institutions largely as a marketing tool, for disseminating information about their existing courses and as a way of distributing course materials. The Internet is a vast, searchable, interconnected library, which can be readily accessed from anywhere. So small remote schools without much money can use the Internet to provide their students with access to the best, most current information resources in the world. And professors at such small remote schools can make themselves known in a global arena.
Those are enormous capabilities and opportunities. But the next stage is even more interesting, with the Internet becoming the basis for new ways of learning and new business models for educational institutions and training companies.
When the interactive element is added to the Web through the use of collaborative tools, -- the Internet, in conjunction with other distance-learning media like television and videoconferencing, can make it less expensive and easier to deliver true education and training to global audiences.
That's the promise. But how close are we to that goal?
John Sumser recently made a provocative observation at his Internet Business Network Web site http://www.interbiznet.com/ibn/nomad.html
"We have an allergic reaction to the use of the term community in regards to the Web. Though vogue, we think that the term seriously distracts attention from the power of the medium. With lurker to poster ratios averaging greater than 9 to 1, the idea that public participation is a panacea seems far-fetched. Can you name a website that you found so compelling that you had to add your two cents to the 'dialog'?".[December 28, 1995]
So what does it take to get people to actively participate in Web-based forums and chat? This is an important question for Web sites which would like to use such tools to build their audience and even to stage for-a-fee events that provide the opportunity to interact with celebrities and experts. And it's even more important for determining the usefulness of this medium for distance education and training.
Anyone with reliable statistics on the ratio of visitors to participants using Web-based interactive software (such as forums and chat), please send us details on about your site -- what you are using, how you are using it, and what you've learned about this new medium. (Send to seltzer@samizdat.com)
In the absence of such data, we can only speculate about the key factors that might affect participation. Of course, it's important to start with topics that are compelling to the target audience. But there are some factors that could raise or lower participation regardless of the topic.
1) Registration
Public unmoderated newsgroups require no registration. Anyone can read them, and any reader, on a whim, can submit a response or create a new topic. These newsgroups are in a legal Neverneverland. They do not reside on just one server, but rather are duplicated and perpetuated on numerous machines around the world. There is no central point of control, and there is no systematic censorship. The users themselves very effectively police these newsgroups, informally enforcing rules of "netiquette" and striving to keep the discussion relevant to the topic for which a newsgroup was created. But, under what seems to be the current legal interpretation, no one except the poster is legally responsible for the content, which could conceivably be libellous or include misuse of copyrighted material.
When a Web site includes a discussion area, even if the topics under discussion resemble a newsgroup, the owner of the site could conceivably be held liable for the content. (Keep in mind that I am not a lawyer, and that there is -- to the best of my knowledge -- no case law yet relating to this new medium. I am simply speculating.) If participation were very high -- thousands or tens of thousands of messages -- and the manager of the site clearly indicated that the discussion would not be moderated, it seems probable that the site would not be held liable for material posted there, so long as they removed postings that were flagrantly libellous or copyright infringements or otherwise illegal once these were brought to their attention. If participation were low -- dozens or even hundreds of messages -- a judge might reasonably expect that the site manager could and should be aware of the content and might be expected to police the discussion, despite disclaimers about no moderation.
So, as a protection for the Web site manager, some Web-based discussion software includes a registration feature. This can include email confirmation and password access, so the manager has some level ofassurance that the person doing the posting is in fact who he/she says he/she is. Such a feature makes it easy for the manager to exclude anyone who misbehaves on-line -- membership is clearly a privilege which can be withdrawn. It also enables the site manager to make some forums/discussions open to the general public and to restrict others, which opens up the possibility of charging for special on-line events, including distance education/training programs.
But at the same time, registration cuts down on participation. In a public forum, the casual reader cannot spontaneously decide to respond to a provocative remark. Rather, you might have to fill out a form and wait for an email reply before you can have your say. And by the time the registration is in effect, you've probably lost your passion if not your idea, and you remain a lurker, rather than becoming a participant.
My guess is that such a procedure probably cuts down participation in public forums by an order of magitude or more. (Please send me real stats so we can check this wild speculation of mine.) In other words, in a newsgroup you might expect that about 10 out of a hundred readers would actively participate, contributing postings. And in a Web-based discussion involving registration, you might expect 10 out of hundred readers would register, and one out of those 10 would actually participate.
That could be a major drawback, because it is the content posted by active participants that makes such a discussion area interesting and attractive. So while readership (visitors) rather than participation might be your criterion of success,low participation -- due in part to the registration process -- would lead to low readership.
2) Priming the pump
In any case, regardless of whether registration is enabled, content draws visitors. Ideally, the visitors themselves provide the content that draws other visitors, and your discussion area grows like crazy, with very little need for intervention on the part of the Web site manager. But a Web-based forum, even on a very hot topic can resemble a junior high school dance -- with lots of people lined up on the sidelines and no one willing to be the first one to go out onto the dance floor.
So how do you get the discussion started? How do you prime the pump?
Once again, we need data and anecdotal accounts from sites that have tried to start discussions. How much material do you have to provide yourself to begin with in order to attract an audience and get them talking to one another? How many people do you have to handpick and request or even pay to participate to get some interesting, informative, and provocative dialogue going?
3) Moderators
Popular newsgroups typically have thousands of readers and hundreds of participants. If someone grossly misbehaves, polluting the newsgroup environment or even threatening the viability the newsgroup, the reaction of the loyal participants is swift and pointed.
Web-based discussion areas, particularly those with registration, are not likely to have that many participants, hence it is less likely that self-policing will work. And hence the manager of the Web site would probably be well-advised to assign one or more moderators, to keep an eye on the postings, to encourage the participants to keep the discussion on topic, to periodically rearrange postings and threads putting like material together and making it easier for readers to find what they are interested in, to remove postings that might create legal problems, and to exclude participants who flagrantly misbehave and disrupt the discussion environment.
Once again, we need data. What is the typical time-investment needed by a moderator to keep tabs on a Web-based discussion with X new postings per day?
4) Facilitators
In some applications -- especially distance education/training -- the percentage of participation rather than the raw numbers of readers and participants could be a key factor in determining success, (like school fund-raising campaigns that state their goals in terms of percent of participation).
In these cases, perhaps a facilitator would be of value. Just as a trained professional can make a brainstorming meeting more effective, by structuring the discussion and drawing everyone in, someone with the right on-line skills might be able to raise participation from 10% of the registrants to 80, 90 or even 100%. Such a person could/should be able to diagnose factors which could dampen participation -- including cultural, social, and language barriers -- and then take action to overcome them.
You couldn't expect the teacher of a course -- the content expert -- to have these special on-line interpersonal skills. Rather this could be a whole new role/career.
5) Incentives to promote familiarity with the new medium
Part of the problem faced today by pioneering Web sites is probably due to the fact that would-be participants are unfamiliar with the medium. It took a while for notes and newsgroups to take off. Even folks familiar with those other on-line forms of discussion may be reluctant to try this new mode. Some incentive might be necessary to get people to try it and get used to it.
PCs come with games like solitaire, which help new users get accustomed to the mouse and other characteristics of the machine and its software. Perhaps Web-based discussion software should come with such an icebreaker.
Or perhaps Web site managers could and should include incentives when they open new discussion areas -- perhaps offering prizes for the most postings or the best postings or the postings that generate the most replies or longest threads.
What have you tried? What were the results?
6) Capabilities and limitations of the software
How difficult is the software to learn and to use? Do you need to provide on-line instructions? Or an interactive sample discussion for simple on-line training? Or a test area where people can test out the mechanism for posting and replying, without the risk of making fools of themselves, which they might fear in the main discussion area?
Is the application integrated with email, so people can participate in this new medium by means of an old familiar application?
In other words, is there a tie-in to LISTSERV (automated mailing list) software? And can participants elect to get email tickler messages when someone responds to a posting of theirs?
Keep in mind that this kind of software is still in its infancy. The characteristics I'm mentioning here are a wish list, not a product description. (My personal favorite is Workgroup Web Forum from Digital Equipment, which you can try out at http://webforum.research.digital.com/ or at http://www.fosters.com/)
If you have tried Web-based discussion as a user or as a site manager, please send us email to share your experiences and insights into what works and what doesn't and what more is needed in the next round of software development.
Let's share with one another what we've learned and work together to help point the developers in the right direction. Please send all this mail to me at seltzer@samizdat.com
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 1995 09:33:27 -0500
As someone who is recklessly starting his own online publishing business, it was gratifying and reassuring to see someone with your experience and background promoting an idea I also feel will be key to online business ventures: that of the necessity of building a community of people and interests.
I came upon your article [on building communities on the Internet] because, as a resident of the New Hampshire Seacoast, I was investigating the New Hampshire Primary site put up by Foster's Daily Democrat [http://www.fosters.com]. Frankly, it wasn't so much the community aspect of that site so much as the impressive indexing of articles and the server/software's blazing speed that caught my attention.
I returned to check out the forums after being advised this part of the site was unusual and possibly most relevant to the idea of building communities online. For the most part, I like what's been done -- the structure, the polling opportunties, threading of topics. The high-level discussion by N.H. politicos seemed a little wrong-headed, since the direction of the online world seems to be toward giving everybody the chance to do or say what they want. The popular featured forums at America Online at least allow Joe User to interact directly with the experts.
Foster's also must be somewhat disappointed with the response; I think the longest thread was 5 articles when I looked this evening. My feeling is that this is because the discussion doesn't really have a use not covered by more familiar forums. Who will see the comments? Who will be influenced? By what means can a user assign weight to traditional political discourse in a new and unusual setting? What is the service being provided?
My own ideas for creating a community online revolve around the concept of usefulness and, at least to the degree I understand it, the marketing concept of benefit segmentation, which assumes a community of shared interests. Not knowing you and not having actually done anything with my ideas yet, I'm reluctant to be too specific. But we both should know in six months or a year if we're both on the right track. Thanks for your article.
They needed to be sure that if someone said they were Gingrich or Clinton, that's who they are.
Hence they had to set up a separate (verifiable) forum for the candidates.
The hope and expectation was that there would be lots of traffic to the public/open forums, and that the candidates and their staffs would be looking there to see the hot issues/questions and then respond in their own forums. That hasn't happened.
I wish I had a clear and simple answer.
I believe that the technology is right on target. But we need a better understanding of people's behavior in this new environment.
An awkward registration procedure probably cuts out lots of otherwise spontaneous discussion from newcomers. But it's likely that the company that opens such forums would be held accountable by courts (to some extent) for their content. Hence the desire to have some clue of who is really participating, and also the need to have the ability to shut out someone who is acting inappropriately. For more on this and other factors affecting participation, see my article in this issue "Are Participants Born or Made?"
On a practical note, I find that it's important not to get too hung up on the latest technology. Rather, do whatever you can with what you have available to get a dialogue going with your audience. There are a variety of ways to do that -- such as soliciting email responses and posting them as "Letters to the Editor," like this.
I believe that far too often people setting out to do business on the Internet are inclined to try to automate everything they do, and hence they lose touch with their audience. I'm not too keen on mail-back bouncers and LISTSERVs (though they do have their place.) It's important that no matter what you do, there is always at least one simple channel (like a human email address) so people can get quick and simple human answers to simple questions.
Thanks again for your thoughts.
Richard Seltzer
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 11:01:26 -0700
I also am not very appreciative of the (unecessary) graphics on the web. As a radio personality who has a full schedule of things to do now, I tend to put the web in the same category as television: lots of "productive/successful" people, who can pay for the access, don't have the time (to "waste", that) it takes to load the graphics. Personally, I use e-mail subscriptions majoritively so that I can keep-up; I grab my laptop and go...
Regarding RealAudio: I have yet to try it because the details of using it haven't been clear enough, yet, for me. For example, I ASSUME that you need a sound board to use it, correct? (I have yet to see that stated ANYWHERE).
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 95 19:00 SAT
My compliments for your Internet on a Disk. I felt somehow "considered" by your comments. You really know what kind of people and machines are at this end of the line in most cases. It is a common mistake commited by many, to assume that most of us are full time programmers with huge work stations and extra fast conections (and extra fat wallets to pay for telephone bills).
Felicitaciones.
Good luck to you in your work.
Jerry Megna, Dean, College of Education and Human Services, Rider University, Lawrenceville, New Jersey 08648
Date: Mon, 11 Dec 1995 08:40:14 +0900 (JST)
Many thanks for the *great* job you always do in making so much useful and interesting material available to the world.
Would you please put me on your mailing list for the URL of search.txt when it's available? Thanks.
Date: Sun, 10 Dec 1995 07:51:55 -0800
After reading your article in the December issue of Internet on a Disk, I thought you might be intereseted in what we've been doing with CU-SeeMe:
(Keep up the good work. IOAD is a great resource!)
++++++++
ABC's "World News Now" Makes Broadcasting History
This past Thursday morning (11/23), ABC's World News Now became the first regularly scheduled newscast on the internet. Now, from 2AM to 4AM ET, the overnight news program is available around the world to anyone with a computer, a connection to the internet, and CU-SeeMe(tm) - desktop videoconferencing software originally developed by Cornell University (that's the "CU" part) and enhanced for commercial use by White Pine Software.
The Thanksgiving Day broadcast was the result of a project begun 10 months ago by Victor Dorff (a freelance producer of multimedia events), and was made possible by a partnership of the Global SchoolNet, Netcom, and White Pine.
And there's more to come.
World News Now can now use CU-SeeMe and the internet to conduct interviews with people in places where satellite transmission would be impossible (or prohibitively expensive). Beginning this week, for example, World News Now will add a new regular segment from Australia:
The Global SchoolNet in San Diego (http://gsn.org) has been using CU-SeeMe to connect school children from around the world with each other, and with world leaders. With GSN's help, World News Now has established a link with students in a high school near Melbourne, and, each week, the students and the anchors will meet over the internet for a brief chat and exchange of headlines.
The entire project is made possible by the donation of a T1 line from Netcom (www.netcom.com), which provided the connection to the internet for a six-month free trial period. CU-SeeMe is available free over the internet from White Pine Software (www.wpine.com). A commercially enhanced version will be available from White Pine in January of 1996.
After Tuesday, World News Now will be available on two CU-SeeMe addresses, one in Europe (158.36.33.3) and one in the US (gsh.org). (Prior to that, only the site in Europe is running.)
[Some technical details: The picture is black and white. (Color is expected in January.) The frame rate is about 20 fps at best, and most people with a 28.8 modem won't get much more than 10 fps. (Those with a 14.4 modem will get either sound or video, but not both.) The audio sounds like an AM radio, but White Pine expects to have significantly better audio with the next release of the software. In fact, all these things will improve quickly. As I keep reminding people, it is within our lifetimes that it took two people to tune a television set - one to sit on the sofa, and the other to stand behind the set (or on the roof) adjusting the antenna.]
If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact me. (Frankly, I love talking about this stuff.) The best way to reach me by phone is usually by beeping me at (800) 800 7759 and leaving a detailed message about when and where to call you back. You can also email me at victor@eworld.com.
Date: Sun, 17 Dec 1995 07:06:25 -0900
Thank you. For your translation, for your web page, for your words on academic publishing. As a Fulbright scholar I was in Russia (I left in 1980) for two years -- 1992-94 -- and brought with me a lot of materials on Russian small theatres, new playwrights, Russian American Theatre project. I feel that "Samizdat" (now in US) is the most promising alternative, and I intend to do it (as soon as I would get comfortable with the Internet and cyber environment). We just came back from Ethiopia (that was my wife's visit to her native country after 18 years), our nine year old son was saved by the Russian doctors at the hospital established by the Russian Red Cross at the turn of the century. The links of history are an inspirational mystery.
Thanks again.
Anatoly Antohin
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 1996 23:48:04 -0600
Hello. I read your latest issue of "Internet-on-a-disk". Interesting reading.......
Some of the web sites I already knew about....others of course I did not.
I spend lot of time on the web......anyhow...it is interesting about all the attention the commercial side of it is getting yet.....the commercial model of selling...I really wonder where it is going......for us smaller guys. ...
You mention Alta Vista's new search engine.....here are some experiences.
1.....have you noticed that Netscape no longer references Yahoo thru their "Net Directory" button in Netscape Navigator......Yes.....it is now "Excite"........Yahoo is ......well......going out of favor.....
2.....Alta Vista blows away.......Excite......Webcrawler (this should be and I think is an embarassement to AOL)........Deja.....is okay......Lycos.....is okay......InfoSeek......much improved lately......but the quality of the info from Alta Vista includes....the date the page was posted.....description...URL plus Title of Link .....the size of the page.......conclusion: Alta Vista #1........everyone else ....second fiddle....and as you travel around the web......it has gained rapid acceptance!
Check out the following URL:
http://www.freevue.com/ (Their new software product is for VideoConferencing over the Internet......buy Connectix's QuickCam.... and with their software....you have an inexpensive video-conferencing product)
I try lots of new WWW/Internet technologies........Worlds Chat.......I was one of the first AlphaWorld Citizens....when in late August....prior to public knowledge....it went up......and I visited it for a whole week and there was absolutely nothing.....now......WOW.....it is amazing......and if you haven't visited it.... you should check it out.
Also, I have a Radio Show once per month that airs on Wisconsin Public Radio...90-minutes long.....where I talk about computer technology...what's new ....offer advise.....and answer questions...and the show is in year number 11......so....unofficially I think I have the world's longest running talkshow on computer technology! Audience of about 300,000!.....some NPR stations carry it ....
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