This 1st digest collects the comments received between 14.07.94 and 29.07.94 on the proposal for a new, permanent AMAST list. The comments are presented in the chronological order of their arrival. This digest is distributed to the subscribers of the list amast@cs.utwente.nl, i.e. those who sent a message to amast-request@cs.utwente.nl, as well as to those who requested for it by sending a message to amast-info@cs.utwente.nl. I look forward to receiving further comments; if you have some, please send them to the following address: amast@cs.utwente.nl They will be included in the next digest, expected to be distributed around mid-August 1994. Best regards, Pippo __________________ STATISTICS TO DATE ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The current statistics about subscriptions and no. of people contributing comments are as follows: (A) 21 contributed comments, (B) 101 subscribed, (C) 5 sent a request to amast-info, without subscribing as yet, (D) 16 unsubscribed explicitly. [beginning of 1st AMAST Digest] =============================================== ------------ Ataru T. Nakagawa (the first subscriber!): Your suggestions are quite reasonable. I have received few announcements via this list not obtainable otherwise, but this list, if it is to act exactly as the name suggests, will be quite useful to me. I can now expect the list to function as such. ------------ Jan Kuper: I think your proposal is fine. The COLIBRI-system works very well. ------------ Neville Dean: Your ideas make sense. I would however plead that you should not restrict a newsletter to a WWW server as Peter Thiemann seems to suggest. Not everyone has WWW - luckily I have an account at a remote site which I can use, but my colleagues certainly do not! If you set up an ftp site, would you please make sure that any compressed or tarred files can be uncompressed and untarred on the fly as I do not have any convenient means to do this. (Again I have to use my remote account for uncompressing files, which is not convenient.) So please lets have a mailing list as well as information retrieval servers. ------------ Arthur Fleck: I like the idea of an electronic newsletter. I'd prefer a frequency that is as seldom as can be consistent with keeping the issues from becoming dauntingly long. I'd advocate SHORT abstracts (e.g., 200 words) plus pointers (i.e., author's email address, and ftp access info). A frequency of 2/4 weeks, perhaps varying with volume of material, sounds attractive to me. ------------ Andre' Arnold I agree with your proposal but for one point: a 50 lines abstract is not really short. I like messages that are not larger than the window of my Mail-reader (40 lines including the header) ------------ Vladimiro Sassone: My opinion about the AMAST list is very close to Peter Mosses's one. I think that unmoderated mailing lists can work pretty well, although I am sure that moderation can only improve things. In addition, I don't think that mantaining an unmoderated mailing list is such an heavy task. In fact, I would offer myself as a volunteer, if I just had a `more stable' position: as things currently are, I could guarantee the service only for one year and a half, roughly. Of course, this is just an idea, as I still would need to check with the system people here if there are enough available resources for the task. However, if nothing better can be found, you could take me into account. Moreover, as Peter Mosses points out, there are certainly around `list-servers' which deal with things such as subscriptions, unsubscription, FAQs, information about the list and the associated archive. I don't know exactly how they work, nor where and to whom they are available, but I could try to find it out. It may be interesting to adopt some mild form of (automatic) moderation, as suggested by Luigi Logrippo. On the contrary, I don't think that an AMAST web page is precisely what one wants. In fact, this choice would require the reader to look periodically at the page and, therefore, it requires that one remembers to do it. I certainly prefer to receive the (relevant) news, when it arises, by e-mail: no effort at all. My general impression is that, although web pages can be very effectively organized, navigating the web to look for something which may interest you, can be at the end much more time-consuming than receiving messages, discarding those you don't care about and storing the others. Nevertheless, I like the web and I think that creating an AMAST web page as a a parallel -- *not* alternative to the mailing list -- service offered to the AMAST community is definitely worthy. Moreover, there is already a volunteer for the task! ------------ Michael Mislove: I support the idea of a newsletter to replace the unmoderated mailing list. LICS has a very successful newsletter, and I think it is an example to follow. The frequency of mailing should be dictated by the level of interest people show. So, I wouldn't wed myself to a once a week mailing if there isn't enough material to support that frequency. As opposed to mailing out the newsletter, an alternative you might consider is simply sending subscribers a message when the latest version becomes available, and then letting them access the information via WWW or ftp. Perhaps a simple listing of the table of contents would be sufficient as a mailing. I wouldn't worry too much about the comment that WWW is not generally available. NCSA has a version of Mosaic to run on almost any platform that supports windowing, and it is public domain, so anyone can grab it off the net. And, with other free tools, almost anyone who has access to internet can set up a fully functioning WWW client with little trouble. I also think the idea of short abstracts with links to fuller articles is a good idea - it would be possible to do this via WWW, but the links will have to be pointers if the newsletter is sent out (unless people are instructed to read it from within Mosaic). Obviously, the recent problems with mailings make it clear that public mailing lists shouldn't be used. The "closed list" you describe will probably ensure that the clientele consists only of those who definitely are interested. It also avoids having to deal with "flames" and other nonsense that crop up in newsgroups. One way to advertise the newsletter is to ask other such newsletters (such as LICS) to list the new service in one of the upcoming newsletters. The scope of contents you propose sounds fine. You might consider also commissioning reviews of various things, such as software, books, etc. Also, conference reports could be included. ------------ Andre' Arnold: I like the conciseness of the display of the COLIBRI Newsletter (to be compared to the LICS Newsletter) ------------ Xue-Miao Lu: The following story is similar to the happening with amast@... months ago. There upon a time, a person rose his head and, seemingly, was looking into the sky. A second person noticed him, and followed his sight, by looking into the sky. Then came a third one, a fourth one, .... After a while, most of them found nothing special in the sky and so asked the first person what was he doing. The first person replied sadly: "My nose is bleeding". Ahhhhh! ------------ Charles Rattray: I agree with your suggested setup. The newsletter idea is good but abstracts should be less than the proposed 50 lines. Suggested content: OK; would also be good to see Mike Mislove's proposal for reviews of books, papers, reports, PhD theses, software. Newsletter should be distributed to the "closed" list and maybe should be available on WWW for the casual browser. Distribution should be regular but it might be difficult to find material for it on a weekly basis. Fortnightly could be frequent enough. The COLIBRI model meets our requirements. ------------ Mike Johnson: The proposal is excellent. I strongly support the idea of a newsletter with ftp/WWW pointers and very short abstracts. The COLIBRI style is exactly what I would like. I think once every two weeks is probably frequent enough unless there is a surprisingly large amount of valuable material arriving in any particular week. Conversely I would not mind if distribution was sometimes less frequent when there happened to be less material. ------------ Yamine Ait-Aimeur: I fully support the existence of the amast mailing list. For us (young researchers) it represents the opportunity to exchange scientific point of views, informations related to the community and moreover to hear from the leaders and leader teams in the area. Therefore, I fully agree to be in this mailing list. ------------ Vaughan Pratt: My preferences in decreasing order would be emailed newsletter, moderated list, unmoderated list. Do the first of these that volunteers can be found for. ------------ Message from Pippo (25.07.94): There are no new comments. As Charles pointed out, it may be unclear that the new AMAST alias addresses in Twente are already effective, therefore I'm going to distribute a short clarification message to this effect. The message will be sent to those addressees of the first message who did neither subscribe nor explicitly unsubscribe to the new AMAST list. Also on behalf of Teodor Rus, I'm glad to take this opportunity to inform you that the final text of the AMAST'93 special issue of TCS has been mailed to Elsevier. The issue is scheduled to appear in vol. 140 of TCS, March 1995. ------------ Hubert Comon: I have usually a lot of mails to read. I'm interested in the AMAST activities but this is not my main topics of interest. Hence I don't want to subscribe to the new permanent AMAST list: it depends very much on its format. I'd like to get a summary (newsletter) but not all reports and discussions. I'm waiting for the result of the discussion before subscribing or unsubscribing. ------------ Christine Choppy: I agree with what you propose, and with what Peter Mosses says as well. ------------ Peter Grogono: I have taken note of the discussion, but have nothing to add to the sensible proposals that have already been made. ------------ Michel Bidoit: I am quite happy that the AMAST forum will be alive again. ------------ Josep Maria Font: One thing I would particularly like to see implemented with the new mechanism of the mailing list, and which I think is possible precisely with it, is that the messages, newsletters and other mail we receive from the list comes with `amast' in the field `From:' of the message. This would make the archival of the messages quicker in most mail programs. ------------ Mike O'Donnell: I prefer the most digested, least interactive form if there are several, as this information gets fed in with a very high degree of multiplexing. ____________ Peter D. Mosses: Here are my suggestions: Summary ======= 1. a monthly newsletter, a la COLIBRI 28 2. use URLs for referencing files 3. care needed to avoid invalid references 4. option of subscribing to longer version 5. archives of newsletter with WWW access Details ======= 1. The number of messages on this topic that accumulated while I was on vacation is higher than I like to see on such administrative topics. But it was certainly better than to have all the contributed comments as separate messages! So I now go in for a *newsletter*, distributed every two weeks - or better still, every month, unless it becomes too long. 2. As for format, something like COLIBRI 28 would be OK for me. But I suggest replacing references like "ftp.let.ruu.nl:/pub/..." by proper WWW URLs of the form "ftp://ftp.let.ruu.nl/pub/...", as the number of FTP-but-not-WWW users is presumably going to dwindle rapidly in the near future, and it'd be convenient to be able to copy and paste the URL directly from the newsletter into Mosaic. 3. NB To avoid frustration (and extra "oops" messages), the compiler of the newsletter should check file references *very* carefully. This will be straightforward for files created locally from e-mail contributions. For references to remote files in contributions, perhaps the safest is to replace them by references to local copies, thus avoiding the danger of them becoming invalid after the newletter appears. The local copy should then start by stating where the original was found. 4. For those who don't want the bother of fetching files using FTP/WWW/mailservers, one might provide the alternative of subscribing to a full newsletter, where copies of all the referenced files are appended. But then there should probably be a (40-line) limit on each item in the longer version. 5. Presumably there'll be an archive of the AMAST newsletters, with FTP access. If there was also an HTML version of each newsletter, this would automatically provide the nice WWW access that some on this list would like. And if the newsletter appeared at regular intervals, the WWW users wouldn't even need to subscribe: they could just take a look each time a new issue is due, all they'd need to know is the location of the directory containing the newsletters (the filenames should enforce chronological directory listings in any case). The first file in the directory listing could have an informative name like "AMAST-NL-NEXT-ISSUE-DUE-94-08-15". ____________ Chris Brink: Dear Amasters, This responds to Pippo's message of 12 July concerning the hasles with the unmoderated amast mailing list and what can be done to have a better service. Hassles apart, I think Pippo has been doing a great job of voluntarily providing a service to the amast community, and as long as he has the energy I for one would like him to continue doing so. The idea of an informal newsletter sounds fine to me, and I guess the technical and conventional safeguards against the thing turning rampant will suffice. But I have some further ideas. At AMAST 93 some of us got to talking along the following lines: AMAST is shaping up to become something that will endure, but it seems to some extent to be hampered by the fact that it is at present still organised on an ad hoc basis by committed volunteers who for one thing have to scrape together their own finances and administrative support. It may be better if AMAST enthusiasts grouped themselves together into what was once called a "learned society" (an organisation, or association, or club, or special interest group -- whatever), which then becomes the public face of amast. This should help to secure funding, organisational support, public recognition, liaison with industry, and so on. As a result of these discussions at Twente some of us started a body called SIGALA: the Special Interest Group on Algebraic Logic and its Applications. It was precisely the fear of irritating a lot of people by having an unmoderated email correspondence on this topic that prompted us to draw up a mailing list first, and then to have an in-house discussion. But of course the drawback of that is that many people who might have wanted to know about SIGALA didn't have the opportunity for doing so. Anyway, be that as it may, SIGALA got started with a number of specific aims, the most important of which is to support AMAST. SIGALA has a newsletter, two editions of which have appeared (under the editorship of Armando Haeberer in Rio: armando@exu.inf.puc-rio.br .) But again, the newsletter is not just cast up into the air to drift on the electronic winds, it is only sent to people on the membership list. This is a strength, in the sense of not annoying people who do not want it, but it is also a weakness, in the sense of maybe not getting to where it may be wanted. Thus at present, I fear, we have the somewhat anomalous situation that the left hand does not know mcuh about what the right hand is doing. AMAST is a conference without a society, SIGALA is a society without a conference. Amast wants a newsletter, SIGALA has started one. It seems to me we have enough complementarity here to bring these to things together. Indeed, it seems a twist of fate that this even needs to be said, since it was never the intention for them to be different. I am seeing some of the SIGALA people in Rio next week, so if anybody would like to respond to this please use Armando's address. With best wishes, Chris Brink. University of Cape Town. ------------ Pippo Scollo: For the time being I feel urged to address two matters relating to form. I agree with the suggestion by Josep Maria Font, indeed I guess everybody does, and I've taken actions to implement it. This should work next week. The size of the digest of contributions is such, however, that I don't want to delay its distribution to the amast (-request or -info) subscribers any further; (only) the first digest will come from my personal address, thus. From the same address I will send a sort of `sample issue' of a possible e-mail form of the newsletter. The *contents* of the issue, however, are also relevant to this discussion, as it is explained below. The issue consists of a table of contents followed by three items. There's a precise reason for each of the three items. That is: Item [1] is a one-page (=< 40 lines) abstract of the CCL'94 program and registration form announcement. It gives www- and ftp-pointers to the full material. It's a `urgent' announcement, in that the reduced registration rates expire on the 1st of August. This raises the question, w.r.t. our discussion, whether a fixed frequency is OK, in the lack of the additional possibility of sending an announcement to the list outside the newsletter (this additional possibility does not entail unmoderated distribution, of course). Item [2] is a two-page announcement of the Chicago Journal of Theoretical Computer Science, that you may have received on Theorynet. The announcement is slightly different, though, since here it does fit within two 40-line pages (the Theorynet announcement doesn't), yet with no changes to the text. This raises the format question (the editor's work is much simpler if a few format rules will be followed by contributors; call for rule proposals). Besides the `minor' question just mentioned, the announcement itself is very interesting, and raises other questions. The announcement gives several pointers to additional information (not only www and ftp, but also gopher and e-mail). This is good, but is one of the reasons why the announcement takes two pages instead of one. Should we thus allow announcements longer than one page (provided they adhere to given rules)? And the content of the announcement, is very synergetic with our discussion. Item [3] is the index of the AMAST material ftp-available in Twente: the AMAST'93 conference report, two AMAST workshop reports, and two issues of the SIGALA newsletter. Some of this material (the SIGALA newsletter) is already available elsewhere, the rest can be made available elsewhere. This points to the question of setting up a few mirror-images of an AMAST repository; should there be a central one? or should it be distributed? if so, what structure do we adopt to ensure proper coordination? [end of 1st AMAST Digest] =====================================================