Ottawa Discussion Groups

• Group creation/maintenance.
  With the creation of ONAG, the largest problem of organizing the creation and removal of discussion groups is being handled by this group.
  The flora.* newsgroups can serve as a demonstration of the participation in groups where this is needed. We now need to help facilitate the movement of discussion groups from flora.* to ott.*
  • flora.comnet-www, flora.www-design --> Ottawa tech discussion?
  • Discussion started in ott.online about creation of ott.community.net.* newsgroups. Where will this go?
  • flora.afo --> ?
  • flora.hbln --> ?
  • flora.cfsc --> ?

• WWW Newsreader
  A WEB based Newsgroup reader was installed to allow reading by users who do not otherwise have access from their access provider.
  http://www.flora.org/flora/newsgroups/

• Newsgroup propagation
  An offer to share regional newsgroups with any Ottawa server has been made. A number of providers have come online. See: http://www.flora.org/flora/newsgroups/. This should help Increase the speed of distribution of ott.* regional newsgroups so that discussions can happen more reliably (Messages were being lost) and faster (potential smaller paths) than previously. Advertisement of this initiative will help decrease the perception that distribution of the newsgroups is poor, and will help encourage people to use these groups rather than non-distributed discussion groups.

• Email submission of articles?
  When this was discussed, there was opposition to it. No general utility can be enabled, and it should be the decision of the members of a specific group whether this is available.

• Email distribution of Newsgroups?
  • Does a need exist? With the availability of a WWW based newsreader, I suspect not.
  • List managers for each group will need to be found. Anyone wishing to be a list manager for an ott.* --> Email gateway group should post to the HELP discussion group

• Other barriers to access of Ottawa regional discussion groups?
  • The largest barrier to access seems to be knowledge. Either people do not know that the discussion groups exist, or do not know how to access them if they do. The WEB based newsreader and documentation here is aimed at helping to solve this problem.