108 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
108 lines
5.7 KiB
Plaintext
Frequently-Asked Questions about Venice (*)
|
|
-------------------------------------------
|
|
|
|
(* - or at least those I think people will be asking)
|
|
|
|
Q: What is Venice?
|
|
A: The Venice Web Community System is a system for supporting online
|
|
communities and special interest groups. A single Venice server will
|
|
support multiple SIGs, and all users authenticating themselves with the
|
|
Venice server will be able to join any SIG based on that server. SIGs
|
|
will support features like Web conferencing, chat, and instant messaging.
|
|
|
|
Q: Aren't there already conferencing packages out there?
|
|
A: Yes, and some of them are very good. However, Venice is being designed
|
|
first and foremost to support the Electric Minds community, and the
|
|
software will implement the appearances and behaviors they're used to
|
|
(at least for the most part). Enough other people have already found
|
|
this useful that I think it will have broad-based appeal.
|
|
|
|
Q: Who are Electric Minds, anyway? What makes them so special?
|
|
A: Electric Minds is a pioneering online community, originally founded by
|
|
Howard Rheingold, longtime user of The WELL and author of _The Virtual
|
|
Community_, in November 1996. Electric Minds, among other things, hosted
|
|
the discussion site for the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match, and went on
|
|
to become one of _Time_ magazine's top 10 Web sites of 1996. His company
|
|
lost its financing, though, and was acquired by Durand Communications,
|
|
Inc., of Santa Barbara, CA, in July 1997, who shifted the community from
|
|
the existing WellEngaged conferencing platform to its own "CommunityWare"
|
|
online community software. Electric Minds has been a lively place for
|
|
conversation ever since, despite the departure of Rheingold. The current
|
|
host of the Electric Minds community is Harry "maddog" Pike, of New
|
|
Hampshire.
|
|
|
|
Q: So where's Durand Communications now? Never heard of 'em.
|
|
A: Durand Communications was acquired by Online System Services (now Webb
|
|
Interactive Services, Inc.), of Denver, CO. CommunityWare was folded
|
|
together with OSS' i2u product, and the result was introduced as WebbMe,
|
|
which was also an online community system.
|
|
|
|
Q: So why does Electric Minds need Venice?
|
|
A: Webb Interactive is pulling the plug on WebbMe at the end of January, 2001.
|
|
Electric Minds will be no more, unless it can be moved from its existing
|
|
servers.
|
|
|
|
Q: Can't you just use the existing WebbMe software?
|
|
A: Not practical. WebbMe is written using Microsoft Active Server Pages under
|
|
IIS 4.0 on Windows NT 4.0, using a SQL Server back end. Even if a server
|
|
could be found to support it, the software is old and very touchy to
|
|
administer. (Webb Interactive's work is all in Java now, using WebLogic
|
|
and Oracle. Very few people are left who remember much of anything about
|
|
how WebbMe works.)
|
|
|
|
Q: Doesn't Webb have software you can use now?
|
|
A: Well, they do have a Discussions product as part of their AccelX suite, but
|
|
it has a couple of major issues:
|
|
(1) It's not open source. In my opinion, it is not desirable for a
|
|
community like Electric Minds to be held prey to proprietary software
|
|
storing its intellectual content.
|
|
(2) It's also heavy in its requirements. It uses Enterprise JavaBeans and
|
|
requires the BEA WebLogic server and an Oracle database as back end.
|
|
For our purposes, that'd be overkill.
|
|
|
|
Q: Well, then, what about {Slash|Scoop|Squishdot|mod_virgule|etc.}?
|
|
A: Those packages are all good (and, in fact, Venice may incorporate some of
|
|
their features in future), but they were designed for other purposes. It's
|
|
partially the nature of the software that makes Electric Minds the community
|
|
it is, and so, to preserve the community as we know it, we need to keep
|
|
the functionality as close as possible. (This will also make it possible,
|
|
at a future date, to import the old discussions from the WebbMe Electric
|
|
Minds into Venice, for future reference and for posterity.)
|
|
|
|
Q: Why call it "Venice"?
|
|
A: During its early development (predating the Electric Minds acquisition),
|
|
CommunityWare was known as "Rome." Rome was one of the primary centers
|
|
of advanced community in ancient times. Similarly, Venice was one of the
|
|
centers of advanced community during the Renaissance...and, right now,
|
|
Electric Minds could use a renaissance :-).
|
|
|
|
Q: But you're not ripping off CommunityWare/Webb, are you?
|
|
A: Not at all. Some of the design structures are similar to CommunityWare,
|
|
but there are many significant changes. For instance, the Venice HTML
|
|
interface uses no <FRAME> tags, and the security model has been replaced
|
|
with a more self-consistent one. As time goes on, Venice will continue
|
|
to incorporate features that distinguish it from the original WebbMe.
|
|
|
|
Q: Did WebbMe have instant messaging, too?
|
|
A: Yes, it did. The original CommunityWare instant messaging and chat was
|
|
based on code derived from Durand's earlier MindWire product. It was later
|
|
replaced with a not-entirely-reliable system implemented using IRC. When
|
|
Venice implements IM and chat, it will likely be based on Jabber.
|
|
|
|
Q: What's Jabber?
|
|
A: Jabber is the world's only open-source XML-based instant messaging system.
|
|
Aside from offering its own instant messaging, it allows compatibility with
|
|
other IM systems like AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo!. See http://www.jabber.org.
|
|
|
|
Q: How will Venice use Jabber?
|
|
A: Venice will most likely run in conjunction with a Jabber server that can
|
|
authenticate users against the Venice database. Venice will include Java
|
|
applets for Jabber communication.
|
|
|
|
Q: Venice should implement {cool feature} like {other software} does.
|
|
A: Sounds interesting. Email me and tell me more.
|
|
|
|
Q: My question wasn't covered here! Will you add it?
|
|
A: Maybe, if enough people ask it :-). Email me your suggestions.
|
|
|