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From: oz@yetti.UUCP
Newsgroups: news.misc
Subject: USENET PAPER (1/2) INTRODUCTION and MISCELLANIA
Message-ID: <214@yetti.UUCP>
Date: Sun, 29-Nov-87 17:16:31 EST
Article-I.D.: yetti.214
Posted: Sun Nov 29 17:16:31 1987
Date-Received: Tue, 1-Dec-87 05:32:28 EST
Reply-To: oz@yetti.UUCP (Ozan Yigit)
Distribution: world
Organization: York U. Computer Science
Lines: 169


	What you are about to get in the next posting is a paper
	[draft] titled 

		USENET: An Examination of the Social and Political
		Processes of a Cooperative Computer/Communications
		Network Under the Stress of Rapid Growth

	by:	Jerome Durlak
		Rory O'Brien
		Ozan Yigit

	This paper was originally presented at the Montreal Conference of
	the Canadian Communications Association. To our knowledge, it
	is the first paper that takes a serious look at the USENET as a
	Computer-Mediated Communication Medium, and also the first paper
	being made available to the audience of the very network it is
	investigating, for their commentary, suggestions etc. 
	Unlike D. Norman's famous UN*X paper, this posting is done by the 
	authors, to generate as much discussion as possible about the paper, 
	and to encourage a serious look at the "net". It is our hope that
	further research will be undertaken as a result of this posting.

The Posting:

	We have decided to post only a single copy of our paper, formatted
	by using a set of "generic" typesetting commands. Two "sed" scripts
	are used to convert the "generic" format to either N/Troff(MS) or
	LaTeX:

		sed -f dorof.sed usenet.fmt >usenet.n

		sed -f dotex.sed usenet.fmt >usenet.tex

	If you do not have n/troff or LaTeX, than you should be able to
	tweak the sed scripts and the header files (header.tex | header.n) to 
	generate a version typesettable under scribe, script, roff, proff or 
	whatever.

	PLEASE NOTE:

	Both this introduction, and the USENET paper itself are
	Copyright 1987, Jerome Durlak, Rory O'Brien, Ozan Yigit

	Rights are hearby granted to print or typeset for personal
	or academic research purposes only. All other forms of 
	publication, distribution through bulletin boards or 
	distribution on any network other than USENET, CDNNET, 
	NETNORTH, ARPA Internet or CSNET requires prior written 
	permission of the authors.

	This means: typeset it, and distribute internally in your
	organization, distribute through the networks mentioned, but
	do NOT try to publish it in a journal, or post it to bix, 
	compuserve or your favorite bulletin board without our
	permission.

	A special permission is hereby granted to ;login:, The USENIX
	Association Newsletter, to publish a condensed version of this
	paper, provided that the condensed version is made available to
	the authors for a review before publication.

Bit of History:

	This paper initially got started about a year ago, as one of the 
	authors felt that USENET was consuming too much of his time
	[read: news-craving] and it deserved some formal attention. He
	managed to convince two innocent souls to join him into looking
	into USENET a bit more seriously, and hence this paper. Since
	than, the authors have gone over literally hundreds of news 
	articles dating back to 1985, and are currently engaged in several
	other papers related to USENET.

What is and what is not:

	This paper is about USENET, but not about whether USENET is good
	or bad. In other words, no messages from the Surgeon General.
	From the very start, we have decided to treat USENET as something
	that requires attention, much like an organism, rather than something
	that needs to be shot-down or glorified. [There are plenty of
	individuals engaging in the former or the latter daily, so you are 
	not missing much.] It is also our unanimous feeling that a Computer
	Mediated Communication System as large and influential as USENET
	requires careful study before it is exposed for its weaknesses
	or strengths. 

	At least one individual who read an early version of this paper
	remarked that we did not want to "offend" anybody. This is not
	entirely true. It is just that this particular paper is free from
	any hard conclusions that may be offensive to some. We are just
	scratching the surface of USENET.

	This paper is also a DRAFT. The purpose of this posting is to get
	some initial reactions to the paper, and correct any misunderstand-
	ings on our part before the final version.

	This paper also does not claim to have the appropriate socio-
	political and mass-media related models or theories. We think we 
	have found some, and no doubt some of the net readers will suggest 
	others. One model that sticks in our mind can be described as 
	ANARCHY. We think this one requires close attention.

Net Issues:

	We have, over the period of a year, observed USENET, and came up
	with many issues, each of which may be a basis for a separate
	study. Just to mention a few: legal issues, politics (gate-keepers 
	vs readers), information-overload, evolution of a netiquette, 
	chaos-vs-moderated conversations, asynchronicity in communication, 
	adequacy of user interfaces for filtering/massaging, REAL costs
	of the net [reader/organization], quality of information [fallacy
	of "Gospel according to USENET"], and so on. Undoubtedly, many of
	the net readers have noted other issues worth investigation. This
	is probably as good a time as any to think about them.

Feedback:

	The purpose of this posting is to generate feedback, whether it
	be your thoughts about relevant issues [some of which mentioned
	above], your thoughts, suggestions, flames about our paper, or
	any other comments you care to make. In our view, if you have
	anything to say, PLEASE SAY IT, either via private mail, or via
	the net. If you choose to e-mail to us, and you do not wish us to
	refer to that particular piece of correspondence in our future
	papers, please indicate it as such. In short, we will be looking
	forward to your comments in any shape or form. We would especially
	like to hear from the female readers of the net, as their voices
	are rarely heard in the matters relating to USENET itself.

	If you choose to include parts of our paper for any posting to
	the net, we would appreciate it if you keep such inclusions to 
	bare minimum. We expect our paper to be read by many, and hence,
	there is no need to keep reposting it in small parts.

	All e-mail correspondence may be sent to:

		uunet!mnetor! ---+
		ihnp4!utzoo! ----+--> yetti!netters
		.....!utgpu! ----+

	or
		netters@yuyetti.BITNET

	or
		mindscan@yulibra.BITNET

	All written (surface mail) correspondence may be mailed
	to:
		Dr. Jerome Durlak
		Mass Communications Programme
		York University
		4700 Keele Street
		North York, Ontario, M3J 1P3
		Canada

Acknowledgments:

	Few people had a chance to read a version of this paper, and
	made some very helpful comments. We would especially like to
	thank John Quarterman, Dave Taylor, Lauren Weinstein and John
	Gilmore for their comments and suggestions. We will include a
	more complete acknowledgments section to the final version of
	this paper.

-- 
You see things, and you say "WHY?"  	Usenet: [decvax|ihnp4]!utzoo!yetti!oz
But I dream things that never were; 	        ......!seismo!mnetor!yetti!oz
and say "WHY NOT?"			Bitnet: oz@[yusol|yulibra|yuyetti]
[Back To Methuselah]  Bernard Shaw 	Phonet: [416] 736-5257 x 3976