Revised Aug 5

Warm greetings from Costa Rica! (revised)

This is a forum intended to allow "post TOS Conference" discussion on any TOS issue (International or USA).

This particular forum topic (you can start your own topic) is about planning for this new TOS-USA (with international participation) TOS-USA community website.

In addition to this TOS discussion forum, I will soon set up a TOS mailing list (e-group style), which I think will be easier and more convenient for some people than a forum.  Essentially, any email sent to the TOS mailing list address will be send to all members of the mailing list.  When the TOS mailing list is ready, I'll send out an announcement to TOS convention participants with an invitation to join.  I won't "sign up" anybody.

This is a "community" website. For my first post to this forum, I'll explain (below) the difference between a "community" website and a "static" website.

If any TOS member is interested in helping out with website administration, or has any ideas to share regarding the planning and development of this website, please post your comment here (or contact me by email if you prefer, using this website's contact form.)

--
Lloyd Standish
TOS-USA website administrator

This, the new "community" website for TOS-USA, is soon to be inaugurated.

For those who may not have fully understood what a "community" website is and how it differs from a traditional static website, here is a brief summary:

• A traditional static website contains material that is composed or compiled by a webmaster or group of web authors. It does not allow participation by the public and the material is often updated very infrequently. Due to the relative lack of new content and lack of notification to users when there is new content, static websites usually do not receive many repeat visitors.

• On the other hand, a community website allows and encourages participation by website users. In a community website, the task of providing new content (articles, comments, blog entries, etc.) is not primarily in the hands of a webmaster, but rather primarily in the hands of all the website users. Users can comment on almost all the articles in a community website, as well as contribute their own articles. Users can also receive emailed notices when certain articles of interest (called a "thread") have been commented on.  The community website engine I have chosen for TOS even allows collective authoring of online books.

In sum, a community website is a 2-way communication and networking tool. A traditional static website, on the other hand, is a one-way source of relatively unchanging information.