Re: Another forum for discussion...
Gary S. Trujillo (gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us)
Thu, 13 Jun 1996 13:00:28 -0500 (EDT)
About a week ago, Tara Prindle (prindle@uconnvm.uconn.edu) announced the
creation of a Web-based forum on her server and invited participation from
members of the NATIVE-L list. Since that time, I have been working on the
software that Tara used for that purpose, which she obtained from a public
software collection, seeing whether it can be adapted for NativeNet purposes.
Prior to Tara's announcement, I had already begun an extensive survey of
Web-based conferencing software, and had tested several packages. After
working with this package, which is fairly primitive in many ways (I found
one bug in the code, and note that it does not even attempt to detect any
of various error conditions that can arise - and the underlying structure
for representing articles leaves much to be desired), I have concluded that
it can be adapted, and seems worth at least some further effort. Though I
had thought about getting a simple system going soon based on this software,
I've since decided that there is enough I want to change in it that I will
instead wait until I am more satisfied with it and feel that it can become
truly useful as a means of accomplishing a number of objectives I've been
thinking about for a long time. I am assuming that over time, Web-based
conferencing may well overtake the use of mailing lists, so I'd like to get
some experience as soon as possible and, with the help of members of our
electronic community, begin doing some tests.
At the present time, I am working on another of my occasional essays on
the subject of NativeNet itself. I'd like to work toward a set of goals
that we might think about working toward together, and I'd like to suggest
a re-conceiving of how we're going about the various things we've been
doing with our mailing lists. I hope that this essay will be ready by
tomorrow (Friday).
Meanwhile, there are a number of articles which have been submitted that I
have not relayed, since I need the time it would take to process them for
working on the essay, the conferencing software, and a few other activities.
I regret the delay of these articles and apologize to those who have sent
them. (I plan to take up the subject of article processing, among other
things, in this article.)
In any event, just as a reminder, for those who are interested in checking
out Tara's new system, you can find it via the URL:
http://www.lib.uconn.edu/NativeTech/msgboard/
Also, while you're out there in Web-land, if you want to get some idea of
my present thinking about goals and such and about some of the possibilities
I've been considering, please check out the "information" link on the Web
site I've set up for NativeNet (http://www.fdl.cc.mn.us/natnet/).
Enjoy.
Gary
--
Gary S. Trujillo gst@gnosys.svle.ma.us
Somerville, Massachusetts {bu.edu,spdcc,cdp}!gnosys!gst