Path: bloom-beacon.mit.edu!senator-bedfellow.mit.edu!faqserv From: david@ruc.dk (David Stodolsky) Newsgroups: comp.groupware,news.answers,comp.answers Subject: Introduction to comp.groupware (Periodic informational Posting) Supersedes: Followup-To: comp.groupware Date: 20 Mar 1994 11:41:42 GMT Organization: Roskilde University Lines: 349 Approved: news-answers-request@MIT.Edu Distribution: world Expires: 17 Apr 1994 11:41:26 GMT Message-ID: NNTP-Posting-Host: bloom-picayune.mit.edu Summary: Guidelines for posting to the Usenet newsgroup comp.groupware. Keywords: CSCW, orgware, group, interactive, shared, environments X-Last-Updated: 1993/01/25 Originator: faqserv@bloom-picayune.MIT.EDU Xref: bloom-beacon.mit.edu comp.groupware:1925 news.answers:16572 comp.answers:4230 Archive-name: groupware-intro Last-modified: 1993/1/17 Version: 1.5 Please read carefully: Any article posted to comp.groupware uses a minimum of ten hours of readers' time. Do not post test messages to comp.groupware (see section 5 below). Information for teachers is contained in section 7. This article is posted automatically every 14 days to introduce the group to the more than one thousand new users that have subscribed during that period. ---------------- Contents (and revision information) ------------ Sections in this article (Revised in last modification) 0. Groupware is software and hardware for shared interactive environments. 1. Set your distribution to "world". (Revised) 2. Sign your article. 3. Comp.groupware is being archived. (Revised) 4. If you are posting copyrighted work... 5. Read "Welcome to news.newusers.questions"... (Revised) 6. When you reply to a message, do not change the subject line... 7. Comp.groupware is read by over 28,000 people. (Revised) ------------ End of Contents (and revision information) ---------- 0. Groupware is software and hardware for shared interactive environments. The term "environment" includes software and hardware that sets the context for interaction. Hardware can include specially designed furnishings and architectural spaces that are considered integral to correct utilization of a given software application. A groupware application may require a specific organizational environment to function as expected. More powerful applications can adapt to, or overcome limitations of, their environments. The term "interactive" is used to indicate that time constraints are managed by the system. Many groupware applications appear to support real-time interaction. Others merely enforce deadlines that can span weeks. In either case, the technical limitations on the pace of interaction are made (to appear) negligible in terms of the objectives of the application. Systems that exclude reference to real time are not groupware applications. The term "shared" indicates that two or more participants interact with one another in such a manner that each person influences and is influenced by each other person. No upper limit in the number of participants is indicated, because mediated groups, as opposed to natural ones, can maintain joint awareness with very large numbers of persons. (Joint awareness is one way that "group" is defined.) An objective of some groupware applications is to increase the number of persons that can interact "as a group". Some definitions of groupware include the notion of a common goal. While all systems require some agreement among participants (at minimum that they should be jointly used), interactions can be predominately conflictual. Management of conflict is often a crucial feature of a groupware system. Vote collecting systems are an example. Definitions: Group - Two or more persons who are interacting with one another in such a manner that each person influences and is influenced by each other person (Shaw, M. E. _Group dynamics: The psychology of small group behaviour_. 1976, p. 11). Ware - 1 a) manufactured articles, products of art or craft.... b) an article of merchandise.... 3) an intangible item (as a service) that is a marketable commodity. (_Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary_, 1976, p. 1319). 1. Set your distribution to "world". Comp.groupware is delivered to all continents. Do not limit your chances for feedback by restricting distribution. Restricted distribution can cause confusion when people read responses to articles they have not seen. If you notice an article has a restricted distribution, inform the poster by mail. If you are restricted from posting to "world" by your administrator, request a change in your privileges, at least for this newsgroup. If refused, determine what your rights are in terms of appeal, based upon information available at your site. An alternative is to use the Net to find information and persons to contact concerning your rights. Try the newsgroups: comp.org.eff.news comp.org.eff.talk misc.legal.computing alt.society.civil-liberty alt.comp.acad-freedom.news alt.society.cu-digest Information about the rights of network users is available from the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Information about the Electronic Frontier Foundation can be requested from eff@eff.org. You can also retrieve information about EFF and its projects via anonymous FTP from ftp.eff.org. As a final resort, send a summary of your case to: Carl Kadie (kadie@eff.org) Electronic Frontier Foundation 155 Second Street Cambridge, MA 02141, USA Tel.: +1 (617) 864-0665 Fax: +1 (617) 864-0866. If you can send email off-site, you can post using a Usenet-news mail server. Email to "comp-groupware@ucbvax.berkeley.edu" is posted with the subject line of your letter becoming the subject line of the article. (Note: "." in the newsgroup name is written as "-".) This allows you to post to a newsgroup even if you have read-only access to Network News. 2. Sign your article. Each name should have one and only one user. If the article is a joint product, indicate this at the beginning and end of the article. Some news reading programs allow certain names to be to be automatically selected. Help the reader by using the same name at all times. This will improve the chances that people will read your articles. The signature should include complete name, address, and telephone number (this allows quick verification in case forgery is suspected). Email addresses ought to be included in the signature in case headers get munged. Another nice feature is geographical coordinates, so the time zone can be determined (useful in telephoning). The signature should be limited to four lines as is suggested practice on Usenet. 3. Comp.groupware is being archived. tvv@ncsc.org (Terry Myerson) began archiving comp.groupware 92.10.6. The archive is available by anonymous FTP (File Transfer Protocol) from: avs.ncsc.org ( 128.109.178.23 ) in the directory: ~ftp/newsgroups/comp.groupware The archives are in mail folders named MONTH_YEAR. For example, to peruse all of the postings in the month of October, you could download the archive Oct_92, and execute % Mail -f Oct_92 FTP is a way of copying files between networked computers. If you need help in using or getting started with FTP, send email to: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with: send usenet/news.answers/ftp-list/faq in the body to find out how to do FTP. Those without FTP access should send email to: mail-server@rtfm.mit.edu with: send usenet/news.answers/finding-sources in the body to find out how to do FTP by email. 4. If you are posting copyrighted work, indicate at the beginning of the article whether permission has been obtained. If you do not want an article reproduced, indicate this (e.g., Copyright - Net distribution only). 5. Read "Welcome to news.newusers.questions" in that newsgroup before posting for the first time. This helps to avoid common mistakes and inadvertent abusive behavior that can cause articles to be ignored. Authors should refer to "Guidelines for posting on Usenet" in the newsgroup "news.announce.newusers" to make sure they know to spell check their articles, etc. "Answers to Frequently Asked Questions", "Introduction to news.announce", "Hints on writing style for Usenet" available in the same newsgroup also contain information for new users. Do not post test messages to comp.groupware. There are special groups for testing. And tests should be as limited in their distribution as possible. This is basic information from "Guidelines for posting on Usenet". Posting of test messages inappropriately is considered abusive and will cause a loss of readership for your articles. Always use your Subject line to state the *topic* of your article as completely as possible (e.g., "Macintosh II voice-mail based real-time meeting software ready.", rather than "Meeting software"). Summary lines should indicate *what* your message says about the topic (e.g., "New meeting coordination software available via anonymous FTP"). Statements should always end with periods, questions with question marks (typically), and high energy, high impact declarations with exclamation points. These rules makes articles much easier for recipients to handle appropriately. If you ask a question, your subject line should include "question", "query", "(Q)" or should end with a "?". Questions should clearly explain your problem and surrounding issues. Otherwise, you will simply waste the time of those who want to help you. Tell people the kind of work you are doing or contemplating doing. This helps them provide the information you need. Indicate what efforts, if any, you have made thus far, and what information was found. Subject, Summary, and Keyword headers are scanned by many news reading programs, thus permitting readers to find your article easily. You will have your articles read more often if you select these carefully. 6. When you reply to a message, do not change the subject line or redirect follow-ups (unless you are changing the subject). Such changes make it harder for some news readers to follow the threads in a discussion. Include a "Summary" line which indicates specifically what your message says. This permits your article to be found even if it is a follow-up to an article with poorly chosen subject and keyword information. Please, do not post responses to articles you feel are inappropriate or abusive. (If you can not resist, consider alt.flame as an alternative newsgroup for your article [it has greater readership than comp.groupware]). If the author is not saying anything worth reading, enter the name in your "kill" file, and then no more of your time will be wasted by that person. If you feel that the author is saying something worth reading, but in an inappropriate way, respond by mail. Tell the author what you think is incorrect about the article. If possible, suggest how to accomplish the objective in an appropriate way (e. g., post to another newsgroup). If you have responded to a person by mail a few times without the desired effect, and you feel that the group as a whole could benefit by a solution to the problem, only then should you post an article. The nature of your article should be a suggestion, if possible, of how such problems can be avoided in the future. 7. Comp.groupware is read by over 28,000 people (Brian Reid posts readership statistics at the beginning of each month to the newsgroup news.lists). Consider the cost to readers of any post. If even an obviously inappropriate article is distributed, one that just takes readers a few seconds to scan, and then skip or kill, the total time used is still large. With 36,000 readers, a post that takes an average of 1 second for each reader to deal with (i. e., examining the subject line) means a total of ten hours used (36,000 seconds / 3,600 seconds/hour = 10 hours). If the article uses up an average of four seconds, then the total time expenditure is 40 hours, the equivalent of a work week. This is probably the minimum time expenditure on any article that is even selected for scanning. So, if you spend a week preparing an article and then post it to comp.groupware, there will be a balance between your time investment and that used by readers, even if they only scan your article and make no response. The lack of a separate feedback channel is an unfortunate deficiency in the Network News system as it is currently structured. This analysis should not discourage anyone from posting a simple question. Some of the most interesting and valuable exchanges in comp.groupware have resulted from such questions. However, authors must not make such requests unnecessarily. On the other hand, a carefully prepared article or a report of an extensive project may not receive any comment at all. This could mean that the article is clear and error free. It could also mean it was not of sufficient interest to anyone to be read in detail. What can be assumed is that it was seriously considered. This is a result of the currently low traffic level in comp.groupware and high quality of articles posted. Teachers should not make use of comp.groupware a class activity. If a class is made aware of comp.groupware, this Introduction should be made required reading, so inappropriate use is minimized. Instructional use of the news system is best practised in a local newsgroup established for that purpose. This also permits establishment of a better environment for instructional purposes. See the article "Protecting expression in teleconferencing: Pseudonym-based peer review journals" {Stodolsky, D. S. (1990). _Canadian Journal of Educational Communication_, 19, 41-51. ([1989, May 9]. _Communication Research and Theory Network [CRTNET]_, No. 175 [Semi-final draft available by electronic mail from LISTSERV@PSUVM.BITNET at University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University, Department of Speech Communication and COMSERVE@Vm.ecs.rpi.edu at Troy, NY: Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Department of Language, Literature, and Communication.])} This article also available in compressed format as file "prot.express.tele" on archive.eu.net in ~ftp/documents/authors/Stodolsky, and on ftp.nluug.nl in ~ftp/pub/documents/authors/Stodolsky. Retrieve and examine the file by typing, for example (characters before and including ":" or ">" indicate machine's prompting for input): > ftp archive.EU.net login: ftp password: ftp> bin ftp> cd documents/authors/Stodolsky ftp> get prot.express.tele.Z ftp> bye > uncompress prot.express.tele.Z > view prot.express.tele If your email reply to an author fails, try again using information in the signature lines. An X.500 directory information server can be consulted to find a person's email address. Read the informational article, "How to find people's email addresses" (in the newsgroup "news.answers"), so you know to contact the postmaster at the site of the person you are trying to reach, and so on. Do not post a reply until you have tried to reach the author by telephone, facsimile, or paper mail. If these fail, ask yourself if getting the reply through is worth ten hours of readers' time. If so, post the message. Do not post a message asking a person to send you an email address, unless your letter must be kept private (If this is true, consider using encryption). If it is not of general interest, use only the person's name as the subject (e.g., "To: Foo Bar"). If other readers might find it interesting, also give full subject information. Similarly, do not broadcast requests for information you can obtain from a known source. Requests such as, "What are the contents of book Foo published by Bar" are not appropriate. This information can normally be obtained by a short telephone call and a few minutes of work by someone being paid to provide that service. Let's not deprive someone of a job and at the same time get comp.groupware readers fired because they are wasting all their time reading unnecessary articles :-). Post long articles as a single unit if they are less than 30,000 characters. Otherwise, post separate sections as follow-ups to the first, breaking at meaningful places. This permits the sections to be treated as a single unit, thus minimizing expenditure of attention on the article. The cost of transmitting articles is negligible, so long posts that take one second to delete "cost" the same as short ones. Disregarding these considerations or a lack of self discipline in following them will result in defensive attention management. That is, certain authors will not be read at all by many readers or valuable discussions will take place by email instead of being posted. This would have the unfortunate effect of fractionating the joint awareness that permits the comp.groupware readership to function as a group. Thus, it is recommended that authors who prefer entertainment to rigor in their news reading, post to other newsgroups. ------- This article compiled with assistance from numerous readers of comp.groupware. Corrections, comments, and suggestions to: David S. Stodolsky Tel: + 45 31 95 92 82 Department of Computer Science Fax: + 45 46 75 42 01 Bldg. 20.1, Roskilde University Internet: david@ruc.dk Post Box 260, DK-4000 Roskilde, Denmark : david@mcsun.EU.net