The @World Forum Toolkit
The @World Forum is the dynamic "library, communications and experimental space" that has been created to support this Web site. It is directly accessed by clicking the @World Forum icon to your left.
Other than the general introductory information that you find on the opening page of the @Forum itself and in the page that follows, we suggest you also have a good look at the general Help and Information function, which is quite useful and should answer many if not all of your questions. If you spend ten minutes or so there at the outset, you will surely find later that it was time well spent.
New members are invited to give their close attention to the following before beginning to participate actively in the Forum. By doing this, you will not only have fuller and better access to these tools, but you will also be in a position to be a good neighbour and to use them in a way that will be most comfortable and useful for all concerned.
You will find extensive on-line help which is available via links at the bottom of each page on the @Forum. In addition there is the Forum Search Engine: a powerful utility that can identify entries that appear anywhere on the Forum site via names, words and strings. Once again, you will find handy help information in each place where it appears.
Kindly note this is not a "discussion list" in the sense often encountered on the Web. If you, for example, have a comment which is really intended for one or at most a few selected readers, or if you AR moved to write "I agree with Fred" or the like, then tell it to Fred in a private note (see below). If you have a complaint or question about the site, please contact the organizers directly.
We must be extremely careful to avoid information overload or otherwise degrading the profile of usefulness of this privileged channel. By making a careful distinction between group and private mail you will do a favor to us all, including to yourself. Thank you.
On occasions when you are addressing an issue which is of interest to the group as a whole, and if there have been any earlier exchanges on it, please consider using the same "subject line". This can come in very handy whenever anyone wishes to use the search function to pull together all past exchanges on any given topic.
If you are not already directly familiar with group email practices, we would ask you to have a quick look at the explanatory notes and email procedures that have been developed to guide group members of one particularly effective discussion forum. You and the group will be much more comfortable in working in this way.
This database is fully searchable. For details on how best to do this best here: Search Help.
Any registered member can organize a poll which will be sent to all others on the list. Since this is the case, and bearing in mind people's busy schedules, they obviously should be used sparingly and with care. You will find easy to follow instructions on the main page for creating your own poll. In order to answer a poll and have your answer counted in the totals, you must respond directly to the letter which is sent to you by the robot. Alternatively, you can call up the Poll section and enter you answer directly in the requisite form. An email note to the organizers does not get entered into the accounting.
But your PC must meet the following minimum system requirements to join a conference:
When you go to the page for the first time, spend two minutes with the set-up instructions that you will find under the Talk Help button there.. They are clear and straight forward. You will be on line in minutes.
If you take the time and trouble to prepare your conference you can go a long way to breeching the distances that separate your invited participants. Prepare them as carefully as you would any peer meeting and you will get results. For both the voice conferences and the real-time chat sessions, it is a good idea to set up an appointed time for your meeting, as well as to send out an agenda, and possibly a list of invited participants, in advance. If there is a main paper or position to discuss, best that this too be shared in advance with your invited guests. If this is presented by one of the group, it is a good idea to have someone else serve as the moderator of the meeting.
To sum up, you have here a procedure for getting together that perhaps is not as effective as getting all your guests in the same room, but nonetheless if you are careful in making your preparations and choosing your participants this can be a powerful group work tool -- at a miniscule fraction of the economic and environmental cost of one more physical meeting. Try it! If you do, we can assure you that it will not be the last time you do.
We are putting especial emphasis on the collection of first-rate multimedia links -- that being one of the main objectives of this whole program. We are looking for graphics, audio and video files, including links to conferences and presentations that some of us may not have been able to get to for one reason or another. (If you look at the non-print Media file on the @Work on the Web site, you will see already some good examples of this.)
In some cases, additional software may be needed in order to run them. In the event that this is not clearly explained in the linked site itself, further information is available in the section,
Software Counsel and References Here
For the most part, linked materials that refer to a given program area are filed under that section. On the other hand, as you will see when you go to the @Forum, we have also organized the materials so that it will be possible for you to swing easily between the various programs and Web sites -- which seems important since there are so many overlaps and synergies between the various programs.
See Links Help for more here.
For full details on how to upload and otherwise make use of the Vault, your are referred to its dedicated Help file. Please note that some of these documents may be quite large. The exact size is specified in all cases. It is advised that you look check out their size before downloading, especially of course if you have a slow modem or it's a busy time of the day on the Net.
You can also create a personal calendar. The group calendar is used to post group events while the personal calendar can be used for any personal and/or group event. When an event is posted to the calendar, the person who posted the event can also have a reminder message sent out to all the group members to remind them of the upcoming event.
Go to Calendar Help for more here.
@Forum Communications Functions
The @World Forum offers a flexible facility for immediately contacting and informing all group members of important information. Intended for focused comments and exchanges of materials on specific issues that will be of interest or use to the group as a whole.
In addition to the global group communications, you will find that there is ample scope for private email exchanges . As indicated, this is the way to contact anyone when the exchanges are not of high priority for the group as a whole. So, if you have something that you feel the others need not be troubled with, please make use of the Private Mail icon and direct your communications for those who are specifically going to benefit from it. Please take great care in this. We all thank you.
This component of the site holds all past communications of and to the group under this Forum for convenient reference purposes. You can sort the messages by topic, author or date, simply by clicking the respective column head. For more information, consult Message Help here.
This working tool offers a handy facility for charting the reactions of registered members on chosen topics. It is directly accessed thorough the Poll button either in the menu on your left or at the top of the @Forum home page.
The Forum also offers a so-called "chat" facility for real-time text conversations between small groups of people. Messages sent to this chat room are visible only to the people who are currently in it. Private messages can be sent to another group member who is in the chat room -- just select their name and click "Private Msg". If you click Chat Help here, you can find further guidelines.
The @Conference or Talk links here both allow you to organize and participate in real-time voice conversations in the group's reserved talk space. They can be as private or as public as you want them. Conversations are audible only to group members who are currently in the room. Private messages can be sent to another group member with a right mouse click on the members email address.
Other @Forum Functions and Capabilities:
This section of the @World Forum identifies all registered members. It also offers brief background data on those members who have been kind enough to provide it (see Sign In), with room for direct links to their full Vitae, group background information, and the like. This information is accessible to registered users only.
This is arguably the most important sharing device that the @Forum has to offer. It is here where we are all invited to input hot links and information on sites, tools and programs that will be of especial interest to the group.
The "Files" section of the site constitutes another of the central elements of our communications and support package. It is, in a phrase, an ftp site where anyone is the group can upload and access print materials, other media, etc. (Note: Each program vault has a 20MB limit, so that it is always preferable, whenever possible, to go to the Links section and place a hotlink to your document or item on its site of origin. All submissions over that limit will be refused by the robot, so we must be prudent in our use of this limited space.)
This is a very handy utility of which we hope you will all make good and copious use. Overall, the calendar is an easy and effective way to organize and announce group events to members. It is available to post events of common interest, with provision for automatic notification and timely reminders to the group.
Full step by step help is available to guide you in this by clicking (see Registration Help here). You can also go to Sign In in the @Forum for more here. These two help sources should be quite adequate; however if you run into troubles that they do not provide answers to, all you have to do is click the Post Office link right here and let us know about your problem. We will try to help out quickly.
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Updated 15 September 1999
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