Ian & Stuart's Australian Mac: Not for Sale/Another.not.for.sale (Australia).iso/hold me in your arms/Nexus/nexus.software/hypermail

Internet Message Format | 1994-05-22 | 17KB

From: Adam Feuer <[e-mail]>
Date: Sun, 1 May 1994 21:34:30 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: creating Web docs...
To: Sparky <[e-mail]>, f|x <[e-mail]>
cc: NEXUS-Gaia <[e-mail]>

mark,

  thanks for the cool email... :)

  regarding the difference in community/flavor/feeling between BBSes and
usenet/iNet in general, i am getting it. did check out monochrome, yep,
easy to use and very homely in a good way...
  emphasizing the local vs. the global... that is what a cafe is all
about. i will say this about the sf ecafes (SFnet) is that all the
discussion is SFlocal since there is only a UUCP mail/news feed in and
out. got to ruminate about this...

  regarding web documents. mainly what i am thinking is about ease of
creation and collaboration on a minimum hardware platform. something that
emphasizes document creation but also enables collaboration... and email
is kinda there. what i want is for people to have an easy time creating
documents-- creating new documents in Lynx, adding them in, iterating on
them... an idea that just occurred to me is to have a page of sample
documents in your bookmark page.

  what i don't like about URLs is that i have to write them down when
somebody tells me one, then quit pine, launch lynx, then type it in to
Lynx... i want to be able to highlight or something and just switch into
Lynx and web over to it. i agree there is a lot of crap in the web, there
are a lot of crappy links, things are very disorganized. which is good in
one way, disorienting in another. i try to visualize ways for people to
help each other organize the information that matters to them.

  as far as there not being a lot of content up there... well hmmm. there
aren't many easy tools for creating content and slamming it into the web.
i do use pico a lot to write things, i would like to be able to switch
back and forth from pico to a Lynx view of the document, by hitting a
key-- to see what it looks like, try the links, etc.
  side note: one thing that i don't like about Lynx is that it only lets
you edit files that you specify links to by using file://localhost... it
doesn't have enough smarts to let you edit a generalized
http://hostname.domain.name/ URL even if it is on your same machine... i
would like to see that added, for sure. then the documents i create would
be more portable, and not have to be re-localized every time someone
copies someone elses pages...(don't even know if this is a big problem)...
best would be an securely-authenticated Lynx that let me edit http files
on another machine, if i had priviledges.

  again i see this as a way to encourage people to create & edit html
docs. a set of shortcuts for the html tags would also be great. (i could
just use fuction keys if i were using a PC; as it is, i haven't figured
out how to re-bind the f-keys on my sun!)

/me puts on the crackpot hat...

  partly my idea behind something like hypermail is to do "information
gardening." many current netters are prolific consumers of information--
information mining, using information resources that are already existing.
  and that is cool. but real power-- economic power, social power-- comes
from /lots/ of people coordinating a little bit of all their efforts. if
people can link together into communities...  and one tool for that
already exists-- email.  people tell each other about what they think,
things they heard about, saw on the net, read, whatever-- all the time.
people use the net to collaborate on articles, books, magazines.

  i too want to think about the social relationships between creative
people, and strengthen them, encourage them, help more grow...

  imagine a cross between a magazine, an e-list, and a web server. you
have a theme or set of themes or purposes (elist and zines both), a core
group of staff or visionaries who spend a lot of time coordinating the
effort (editors in zines, frequent posters or moderators on elists). and
you have authors who send in articles, infrequent contributors, etc.
  what i want to do is set up a way for people to act as "master
gardeners" for the things that interest them. they have a circle of
friends that are all have varying levels of interest in the same thing. i
would like to see a way for people to more easily sift thru information
that their community /produces/ and edit it, and refine it, and publish
it.
  i see the "coordinating gardeners" as maintaining part of a website,
while they and their community creates ("grows") documents and sends them
in to these coordinators. just like committees have subcommittees that
produce working documents, etc. (urrmmm. maybe this /isn't/ a good idea.
;)

  maybe distributed management of a distributed website won't work in
practice, but i would sure like to try. i want the tools to evolve that
way. i agree you can do it now. i just want a better integrated set of
tools. :)

  i know you're busy, no need to reply. just wanted to let you know where
i was coming from.

cheers
adam

From: [e-mail] (Dwayne)
Subject: Re: creating Web docs...
To: [e-mail]
Date: Mon, 2 May 1994 18:14:57 +1000 (EST)
Cc: [e-mail] (meta-list nexus)
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.89.9405012039.A12237-0100000@netcom11> from
  "Adam Feuer" at May 1, 94 09:34:30 pm

Adam Feuer blew a bubble, which danced and sang:
    [lynx hassles]
yep, agree entirely.  I think that you CAN specify local-host to be
something when you set it up, but, erm, I'm not sure. Can't you mail
someone? Newsgroups? U-Kansas?

: /me puts on the crackpot hat...

again? That trick *never* works...

:   and that is cool. but real power-- economic power, social power-- comes
: from /lots/ of people coordinating a little bit of all their efforts. if
: people can link together into communities...  and one tool for that
: already exists-- email.  people tell each other about what they think,
: things they heard about, saw on the net, read, whatever-- all the time.
: people use the net to collaborate on articles, books, magazines.

Yeah, this is way cool. I'm corresponding with a guy from the technomads
mailing list at the moment on this. He's just mentioned this idea,
networks of people, along the lines of, erm, well, you know how you can
do distributed processing with fractint under X? Well, same sort of
thing with people, but via email.  So he says. I have no idea what he's
on about, but I'll let you guys know when he replies to my last batch of
mail  :-)

:   i too want to think about the social relationships between creative
: people, and strengthen them, encourage them, help more grow...

:)

Nexus to the rescue!  :-)

:   imagine a cross between a magazine, an e-list, and a web server. you
: have a theme or set of themes or purposes (elist and zines both), a core
: group of staff or visionaries who spend a lot of time coordinating the
: effort (editors in zines, frequent posters or moderators on elists). and
: you have authors who send in articles, infrequent contributors, etc.

     !!!!!!!!!!!!!!

:   what i want to do is set up a way for people to act as "master
: gardeners" for the things that interest them. they have a circle of
: friends that are all have varying levels of interest in the same thing. i
: would like to see a way for people to more easily sift thru information
: that their community /produces/ and edit it, and refine it, and publish
: it.

Wow. An incubation centre for memetic attractors. This is BRILLIANT!

/me hugs adam.

Wow. Can it be done? This would be SUCH a good idea.

Hey, you know how I keep muttering about strengthening ties between nexi
to promote community (hen we get some nexi linked..)??

I think this would be the way to do it. wow.

:   i see the "coordinating gardeners" as maintaining part of a website,
: while they and their community creates ("grows") documents and sends them
: in to these coordinators. just like committees have subcommittees that
: produce working documents, etc. (urrmmm. maybe this /isn't/ a good idea.
: ;)

How about you run it as a centre-fringe thing.  Documents are closer to
the centre because they have been 'voted on' by the community.

you red a document, and assign it a score. 0 deletes it. Then, the docs
are ranked according to scores. The more popular, the closer in to the
centre it is, and the easier it is to read/access/whatever.
Erm, I know what I mean.  I'll go and think about it. wow.

:   maybe distributed management of a distributed website won't work in
: practice, but i would sure like to try. i want the tools to evolve that
: way. i agree you can do it now. i just want a better integrated set of
: tools. :)

I think this is seriously worth a look at.

Dwayne.

if we do not hold on to hedonism, we will lose our souls.   -- mordwyn

.sig under construction        internet---> [e-mail]
                               irc--------> ddraig on #leri in undernet

From: [e-mail] (Lamont Granquist)
Date: Wed, 18 May 1994 19:19:27 PDT
To: [e-mail] ( leri), [e-mail] (meta-list nexus)
Subject:  Re: Massively Fuzzy

i'm not exactly sure what this has to do with nexus...

[...voting servers...]
> : wild, i sat down over last summer and did a halfway serious attempt at
> : trying to figure out how to go about designing something like this...
>
> Really? Can we have access to your stuff?

It was all written down and its all trashed now.  I was trying to figure
out a good method to collect the votes and some stuff like what flexibility
the server should have and what kind of data structures you'd need.  I
wasn't going for something really professional using RSA fingerprinting
to authorize the votes and stuff, just something which could easily be
hacked into nn or rn by users...

I also never got very far...

My idea was to have a "complete newgroup server."  The server would have
the capability to archive posts and provide easy info-server access to
it (gopher/WWW/ftp/etc), it would also collect "votes" and store them
individually.  Then people could download a list of message-IDs based on
votes, download the articles based on votes, or sub to a mailing-list
which sent message-IDs or articles based on votes.  The criteria used for
votes would be fully customizable by the infoconsumer and would allow one
to (for example) recieve a mailing list of a newsgroups based on articles
which recieve >50 "popular" votes or which are voted on by a list of
individually selected "moderators."  It could also allow for the easy
creation of "virtual moderated newsgroups" which would simply be
suggested moderators for infoconsumers to use as their criteria, or as
starting points for their criteria.  Of course searching via WWW/gopher/etc
should ideally be capable of using voting criteria as one part of the
search expression.  I was also mulling over ways to use/incorporate
NNTP/NOV into this to make it easy to use from NNTP capable newsreaders.

At some point, it would be nice to have it fully integrated into
newsprograms...   You'd fire up your newsreader, which would log-on to your
local NNTP host, then you'd either pull down a list of votes from the
local NNTP server, or else you'd query a vote server to get the list of
votes.  If an article was not found on the NNTP server due to it being
expired, the NNTP server could attempt to query the newsgroup archives
to get a copy if it hadn't been cancelled.  Voting would be handelled
automagically by the newsreader, etc...  You'd have to find the right
client/server and local-information/distributed-information balance, but
it should work...

I shudder to think of the CPU load and disk hogging this would cause if it
wasn't written efficiently...  =)

> : i didn't have the idea to make it WWW-based, though -- i didn't really
> : know what WWW was capable of back then...
>
> Well, mainly the idea of imbedded hypertext links is the key, I think,
> because then you could do fun things like designate an 'attractor' as
> such, which is just a list of links, listing a bundle of
> posts/docs/whathaveyou which orbit a particular attractor, as such.

this sounds good -- so each attractor would be a hypertext page to the
links?

> : > It seems to me that the rulespace that would be produced by this sort of
> : > mechanism would go a good way towards defining just what the memespace
> : > leri floats in is made up of, or other lists....
> :
> : this might be interesting.  i wonder if something along these lines could
> : eliminate the need for heirarchial newsgroups.
>
> This was the major attraction. That and that instead of moderating
> things, or forwarding articles to an entire list, you just link it into
> whatever attractor/s you feel it fits into, rate it fro thingy to
> thingy+n  (..10, A..Z, whatever) for *each attractor*  (I'm going to use
> this terminology until someone suggests something better) and leave it
> at that.
> Those interested in it will see, those not won't.  Yet all will be part
> of the same community.

well, i'm not sure that you'd need to submit it to any particular
attractor...    ideally you just post it -- anything with MDMA in it would
likely get picked up by the Ecstasy attractor(s), etc...

*wiiiiild* thought just occured...

what you're going to wind up doing is something like taking the Ecstasy
attractor and linking in the "me" attractor, which will be a special
post-filter which will promote articles which are replies to things you've
written, or questions which you'd like to reply to....

damn, this is getting cooler the more i think about it...

now i just gotta figure out how to program neural nets and how to do them
efficiently on von neumann machines...

> There are already 'virtual newsgroups' about.  There is a newsreader
> which scans for all occurrences of a keywaord, and creates a nwesgroup
> based on it, and the newsgroup rules can be distributed. Forget the name
> of the reader though  :-(

'nn' does this.  its the newsreader i use, and this is more or less the
kind of thing i had in mind to begin with...

> Yup.  And if there was some way of boiling the list neural net into
> something less abstract, then it would make a great intro to the group,
> you'd just look at the memetic attractors the group/s orbit, and decide
> if you'd like it.

yeah, if you could precipitate some kind of description out of the neural
net code automatically...  that could be placed as the first item in the
hypertext document for the attractor.

> Agents could prowl around and report back on similar groups whose neural
> net spec are similar to yours.  Global search for 'friends' as it were.
> I found leri because of the review in High Weirdness By Email, the
> phrase 'electric commune' rang clear to me, yet what if I never saw that
> text?

right, but it would be easy to have your attractor look for posts on
similar attractors...  those items would grap a lot of attention and
then could be dealt with by the group...

> : > You could also possibly rank people, because posts that most of the
> : > group found interesting would get higher rankings (this could be biased
> : > towards prolific posters, who knows) but I think that this might be a
> : > *very* iffy thing to do.
> :
> : i don't think you should do this.
>
> Neither do I, but it's a possibility.
> Academia would love it in journals......

yeah, i'm sure that Academia would love it...  =)

> : each post should be judged on its
> : merits -- although i could see that any individual algorithm would probably
> : want to use the past performace of the author as a criteria.  i don't think
> : it would be good to make this "official" though and compile public
> : statistics on it.
>
> I think it would be bloody horrible, myself.

"having a chilling effect on public discourse" is a phrase that crosses
my mind....

> Yup. Too true.  And, of course, it would then affect the quality of
> people's posts. If I knew that everyone thought that *everything* I
> wrote was wonderful (they do already, but anyway) I'd be unsufferably
> smug.
>
> If I thought that everyone hated everything I wrote, well, instant
> lurker, at best.

right, but this happens today without any kind of neural net filters
and such...

> : > Hey, if we had a leri-net, then people would just feed their personal
> : > rule-list into the general rule-list, and rules which are duplicated
> : > would be reinforced.
> : > Hmmm, this sounds better the more I think of it.
> :
> : this does start to sound better and better.  it also seems to be more true
> : to the model of "memetics" than newsgroups are...
>
> Newsgroups are a function of technology, exactly the same as books.
>
> They in no way mimic the way people operate. It's about time we had
> something *did* mimic the way people operate.
>
> Wish I could program well enough to create this...

ditto, on all points.


--
Lamont Granquist ([e-mail])
"And then the alien anthropologists - Admitted they were still perplexed - But
on eliminating every other reason - For our sad demise - They logged the only
explanation left - This species has amused itself to death" -- Roger Waters