It looks like the Meta2 list is a good place to forward my recent
post to www-talk list. I am most interested in finding standards
oriented folks that can cross the bridge between the generalists
interested in making the Internet a tool for community building and
those developing standards that set the framework for what is
possible. Please read on. Let me know if you can keep an eye on the
issues presented below.
Thanks,
Steven Clift
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Geographic Metadata About WWW Servers/Pages
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
Date: Wed, 9 Jul 1997 18:30:23
Greetings,
I just reviewed your Meta data conversation on the list from last
March in your archive. My question is in the specific area of making
geographical navigation of the WWW and the Internet as a whole more
possible (sort of a CWW - community wide web, where 95 percent of
your likely traffic is from your neighbors NOT global).
I am interested in making the Internet more community oriented (in a
geographic sense - the virtual communities have relatively fine) so
that for example a map could be generated by an Internet search/index
site or so someone could indicate that they want to search in X
place/area based on Y keywords. I assume that geographical naming
standards are easier to agree upon than keywords and the like
(longitude, latitude, Global Positioning Satellites, place names - say
how about a virtual version of GPS that would allow a site the
_option_ of choosing a GPS point that represents their site - then
you could leverage that body of work).
I assume that the best place to make the Internet more of a
"communities network" by nature (I think this has lots of
similarities to the internationalization - localization? issue) is
in the standards process. I just don't see manual local WWW
directory pages and stand alone "community networks" as sustainable
without some Internet-wide solutions to leverage. So I'd like folks
advice on the best places to share this general idea, so that those
working on broader Internet meta data and general WWW/Internet
standards might include it on their long lists of to dos.
Thanks,
Steven Clift
Democracies Online - http://www.e-democracy.org/do
Co-Editor, G7 Government Online and Democracy White Paper -
http://www.state.mn.us/gol/democracy
P.S. Enclosed is a rather fluffy, but interesting piece that I
distributed around the community networking community.
------- Forwarded Message Follows -------
Date: Sun, 29 Jun 1997 15:05:02 -0500
Reply-to: [log in to unmask]
From: "Steven Clift" <[log in to unmask]>
To: Multiple recipients of list <[log in to unmask]>
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
[log in to unmask]
--------------------------------------------------------
Steven L. Clift - [log in to unmask]
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 - [log in to unmask]
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
--------------------------------------------------------
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