The newsgroup
During a recent MICE meeting we discussed user support for these tools. We came
to the conclusion that a Usenet group could be an effective complement to the
MICE NSCs.
I make the following proposal of scope and charter. This is not an official
CFD, this is merely a pre-CFD discussion. Any input is welcomed!
XXX Next two para changed!
I suggest that the group should be called 'comp.multimedia.conferencing'.
Other suggestions have been eunet.mice-users, but that was scrapped since
non-Europe sites usually doesn't carry these groups. We would like to have the
name MICE somewhere in the groupname of funding reasons, but I suspect that
there might be opposition against it. (The specific name MICE in the group
name is also suggested, since the MICE NSCs will actively help people out in
this group. Of course users will help each other as well.)
XXX
The scope of the group should be discussions about the multicasting
conferencing tools, their use and experiences with them. It will inevitably
carry some newcomer's questions. Some of these should be possible to direct to
FAQs. Some discussion about multicasting will also take place there too, but the
bulk of it should stay on the mbone-list. I also think that the rem-conf list
still should have the role of a "reservation channel", where the MBone booking
should be performed. At the same time, announcements should probably be
crossposted to the mice-users group as well.
The MICE NSCs will actively try to help people out when they have questions.
One complication is that since MICE is a european project with nationally
financed centers, we may limit the time spent answering questions from
"unsupported" areas. This will most probably not become a problem, but it
should be mentioned so that no misunderstanding will arise.
The group should be unmoderated. But at the same time, the MICE NSCs will
have some kind of unofficial hosting role, helping people out, and develop
FAQs and so on.
The MICE NSCs would like to connect this group to some local mailing lists,
set up at the national level. This is so that sites which dont have Usenet
can participate.
Other possible groups
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I have looked around in Usenet, and not found anything treating this subject.
There is one group called rec.video.desktop, but it aims mainly at Macintosh,
CDROM and QuickTime etc. Our group is instead aiming at H.261, multicasting
and MBone. I have posted proposal in that group about including our stuff in
they're group, but there wasn't any reactions (except for a couple of inquiries
about MICE).
The current situation is that people discuss these things on the mbone list and
the rem-conf list. Unfortunately, not many novices know about these lists, and
hence cannot get appropriate help.
How to continue
---------------
Lets discuss this, and come up with a reasonable Call For Discussion proposal.
I suspect there are some opinions out there. :-)
I will send this to the mbone@isi.edu, rem-conf@es.net and also post it to
Usenet rec.video.desktop and some other groups. This document has been circulated
internally within the MICE NSCs prior to this.
If you want, I can collect the various suggestions and revise a charter. I
suggest you send submissions to me, unless someone have strong opinions about
it.
Regards,
Christian Wettergren, KTH/Teleinformatics, cwe@it.kth.se
for the MICE NSCs.