ietf-nntp Newsgroups - Geographic Directories, E-mail/WWW Gateways

Mon Jun 30 10:53:54 PDT 1997

Greetings,

I just discovered the archive for ietf-nntp.  From a news group 
hierarchy non-technical developers perspective (gov., future mncc) 
what you are doing seems important.

I wanted to ask your advice about the second part of my enclosed 
message on "Making the Internet a Communities Network".  Basically I 
am working with folks in Minnesota to build an interactive grid for 
community conferencing - using the tools of the global Internet to 
create "digital crossroads" for people, potential down to the block 
club level to communicate.  I want to make this part of the Internet, 
not just some specialized, unsustainable WWW conference.  It seems 
that news with well designed e-mail and WWW gateways (to allow people 
to choose their preferred interaction technology - leaving the 
different cultures that seem to emerge base on the technological 
implementations) could provide the necessary platform.

I'd like to hear (privately is fine, if this is out of the scope of 
this list) your reaction to my concepts below and any nuggets of 
truth about how the next generation of nntp will make community 
conferencing with geography and mulitple interfaces a reality.

Thanks,
Steven Clift
clift at freenet.msp.mn.us
http://freenet.msp.mn.us/people/clift
Democracies Online
Co-Editor G7 Government Online and Democracy White Paper

From:             Steven Clift <clift at freenet.msp.mn.us>
To:               edem-elect at mtn.org, ispo at www.ispo.cec.be,
iacn at sheffield.ac.uk, communet at list.uvm.edu, mcowork at mtn.org
Date sent:        Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:01:20 +0000
Subject:          Making the Internet a Communites Network

Making the Internet a Communities Network
-----------------------------------------

I collected e-mail addresses at my block picnic the other week.  In
fact I have heard about a number of spontaneous collections across the
Twin Cities.  Imagine ... "Does anyone have a a cup of sugar?" "Who
has my hammer?"  "My car was broken into last night, did anyone see
anything?"

When it comes to building online local civic interactive spaces or
Internet directories, I think we need to do some creative thinking. 
Relying on only manually maintained directories of WWW sites,
newsgroups, e-mail lists, and WWW boards is not very sustainable nor
effective.

I think proposals to Internet standards bodies could make the 
Internet as a whole a foundation for online communities where 
_geography_ matters!  The true lesson of the Internet is that open and
scalable standards create the opportunity for information sharing and
participation.  We tend to think about how the WWW makes providing
information so much easier, but we often forget that there are ways
that we can make locating information and creation of interactive
spaces easier through widely used standards.  It is time to move from
just Hyper-text Transfer Protocal (HTTP) to a Hyper-text Community
Location Protocol. :-)

Here is what I'd like to see:

 1.  Comprehensive Internet directories that allow someone to 
locate an Internet resource (WWW, e-mail list, newsgroup, chat, etc.)
based on geographical attributes.

 2.  A "Global Grid for Community Conferencing" that combines 
standard geographical naming spaces with standard protocols for 
exchanging messages among news groups, WWW boards, and e-mail 
lists.  

Directories
-----------

There is a desperate need for standardized "meta data" to be 
collected and shared about WWW sites, servers, e-mail lists, etc..  I
wonder if details on a WWW server could be inputed to tell the world
about their location (or preferred public locus).  I wonder what kinds
of files with meta data could be positioned for WWW harvesters to use
to allow map based access to the files they have gathered?   

What we need is a standardized file that contains information about a
specific Internet "event".  Items might include the name of the site,
key words, language(s), and something like a Global Positioning System
attribute that pin points the geographical center of a service and
allows for definition of geographic parameters for the target audience
(which could be from the neighborhood up to world wide.)  

Then the basic standard would encourage Internet indices to compete
based on designing systems with the information available versus who
happened to have it submitted or not.  Ideally a special WWW page with
the proper META tags or some other standard way I don't know about,
could exist that would indicate information about a WWW site, sub-site
or other Internet items so that manual submission could be avoided.  I
doubt that Yahoo and other groups could agree to a standardized
subject word scheme, so let's assume that people would still have to
submit information to subject tree based WWW directories like that.

So does anyone have any clue as to who might be interested in this
idea?  Which Internet standards groups should/are taking this on? Who
are some big thinkers in the right place that could make something
happen here?  I am just throwing this idea out there, feel free to
grab it and make it happen.    

Global Grid for Community Conferencing
--------------------------------------

While the commercial world races to invent the perfect WWW 
conferencing system that makes them rich by becoming the standard, I
suggest the problem is more about building and maintaining
participation than perfecting technology.  When I talk about community
conferencing am not talking about "groupware" nor the attributes
required for decision-making or sharing of working documents.  I am
interested in basic text communication.  It all comes back to my block
club and we don't need anything fancy.

While we could include all of our e-mail addresses in the To: field
into the next century, might there be a way that we can leverage the
fact the in the next few years millions of block clubs will be looking
to use interactive online spaces?

Two images that illustrate the "Civic Participation Center" we 
have experienced to some extent with the MN-POLITICS forum are at:

 http://www.e-democracy.org/intl/library/models/circles1.gif
 http://www.e-democracy.org/intl/library/models/circles2.gif

Let's take this concept right down to the block level!

Here is what conceptually I'd like to see in a lower common 
denominator community conferencing system:

 1.  The ability to choose your preferred interaction technology - 
 e-mail, news, or WWW.

 2.  Allow the commitment and convenience of e-mail.

 3.  Leverage news style group nomination (for online interactive 
 spaces) and name space with strong geographical attributes, and the 
 store and forward distribution.

 4.  Allow for group directory search and archive retrieval and 
 posting through the WWW.  A potential WWW directory of participants 
 would be very useful.

There are scores of gateway products between mail-to-news or 
mail-to-WWW, but I have yet to find a product that attempts to weave
all three together in an optimized fashion.  I'll hold off on my other
detailed thoughts, and instead suggest how my block club might find
itself listed someday in a community conferencing system (I don't
think you would want to have global distribution down to this level,
around Minnesota is fine):

 mncc.ci.minneapolis.nb.carag.bc.3400fremontaves

 mncc - Minnesota Communities Conference  (Made up)
 ci - city based on U.S. domain  (co - county, tn - township, etc.)
 minneapolis - we have 826 cities and 87 counties in MN
    nb - neighborhood 
    carag - there are something like 80 neighborhoods here
 bc - block club or building club
 3400fremontaves - I live on the 3400 block

Now at any level you could have "topic" or "group" terms to encourage
issue and interest based discussions.  You could also create
generalist forums.  Assuming from the start that lots of people will
prefer e-mail access you need to scope volume and types of interaction
into different forums.  At the city level perhaps might might have the
following general forums:

 mncc.ci.minneapolis.bulletin - Community Announcement Bulletin Board
 mncc.ci.minneapolis.commons - Minneapolis Community Issues Commons
    mncc.ci.minneapolis.open - Minneapolitan Open Discussion

The bulletin would be for one-way announcements, the commons would be
the primary community issues discussion forum with a facilitator and
specific posting guidelines (like no more than two posts person per
day - assuming lots of e-mail subscribers that would leave if the
volume was too high), and the open group would be the free speech
space for people in Minneapolis to talk about whatever they want (due
to volume it would be assumed that you would have few e-mail
subscribers).

A lot of my thinking on this comes from my participation in the 
GOVNEWS effort (http://www.govnews.org).  The approach above is sort
of a bubble up complement that assumes that at the local level
community issues are more people to people issues than governmental or
at least that government would join the conversation, but not
technically be deeply involved for some time.

What do folks think about this idea?  Sometime in the next year I will
likely propose to the Minnesota E-Democracy board that we initiate a
Minnesota-wide project with many partners (non-profit, public, and
private) to develop such a community-oriented system.  If others parts
of the world are considering similar projects, we should link up. 
While the structural implementation might vary tremendously from area
to area, the basic tools and experiences will have universal
application.

Thanks for reading this far.

Cheers,
Steven Clift
Board Chair
Minnesota E-Democracy
clift at freenet.msp.mn.us
--------------------------------------------------------
      Steven L. Clift - clift at freenet.msp.mn.us
      Minneapolis, Minnesota   -   612-824-3747
 http://freenet.msp.mn.us/people/clift/ - Home Page
 http://www.e-democracy.org - Minnesota E-Democracy
 http://www.hhh.umn.edu/PUBPOL/ - Public Policy Network
-------------------------------------------------------- 

--------------------------------------------------------
      Steven L. Clift - clift at freenet.msp.mn.us
      Minneapolis, Minnesota   -   612-824-3747
 http://freenet.msp.mn.us/people/clift/ - Home Page
 http://www.e-democracy.org - Minnesota E-Democracy
 http://www.hhh.umn.edu/PUBPOL/ - Public Policy Network
-------------------------------------------------------- 