two things...

[kathyp]

love the name guys! great idea!

have two thoughts, both of which may already have been taken care of. The first has to do with improving traffic. has the site been registered with any of the major search engines, and if so, were keywords such as sci, spine, spinal, cord, injury, cure, care, etc listed? if not, this is something which should be done right away so that when people search on those words this site will be near the top of the list of hits.

my understanding was that this site was going to be non-profit, possibly as a 501(c)(3). if this is the direction it is heading, it may be a good idea to register the "sciwire.org" domain name as well even if it isn't used just yet. if non-profit status is eventually procured, it will give the site a different sense of legitimacy than .com or .net can.

just some thoughts.

[Wise Young]

Thanks so much for the suggestion. We did reserve http://sciwire.org and it points towards the Rutgers carecure site.

At the present http://sciwire.net points to this site but I am looking into setting up chat software to allow people to talk to each other in real time. I have been investigating and trying out software, particularly ones that are web based and can be easily run by voice-activated software such as Dragon Naturally speaking.

Regarding expanding the audience base of this site, I would like the advice of the group.

1. Size of the community. How big do you think this community should get? One nice thing about this community is that it is small enough so that everybody knows each other and people some of the more popular postings are being read by almost everybody who comes in. If we get substantially larger, like the MGH site, it will get more impersonal and there may be so many postings that people may not be able to read all the postings in one visit.

2. Wannabees. I recently visited a chat room for spinal cord injury and the people there told me that they have a problem with wannabees and so on. If we advertise widely, this may happen to us as well. That was one of the reasons why I decided rather early on to get verified email addresses on everybody who registered so that only people who are really serious about becoming part of the community would post. Do people think that this is a good idea?

3. Postings. I just asked a number of doctors and scientists to come to the site and take a look. Several have written to say that they are very impressed by the breadth and depth of discussion at this site. Are we hitting the right level? Would people like to see it shift in some direction? Is there too much science, too much politics, too little fun, etc., etc.?

By the way, there are now 312 registrants. We are averaging over 300 visits per day of registered users, suggesting that nearly all the registered users are coming in almost daily. About additional 600 unregistered visitors are coming in to take a look every day. Each visitor is looking at an average of 10 topics per visit, spending 8 minutes per visit.

Wise.

[This message was edited by Wise Young on August 20, 2001 at 07:15 PM.]

[kathyp]

wise,

you posit some interesting questions that i really needed some time to mull over. let me say before i get started on my thoughts that i'm very glad that you are taking such an active roll in trying to get this board set up in as constructive a manner as you are. this can only result in a better board for all of us who have an interest in it.

i also want to say that i'm glad that you're looking into chat software that is friendly with naturally speaking. i use naturally speaking a lot, and having it available in a given application makes life much easier for me. it's much easier than this one finger hunt n' peck arm fatigue stuff.

regarding question 1)... you have a very good point about community size. the more personal size of a small community like this has a lot of advantages, not the least of which, people tend to care about each other and what happens to each other more. the personal aspect plus being able to get through all the posts are very compelling reasons to keep it as is. on the other side of things, i always have a tendancy to want to share good things with everyone who might benefit. it creates quite a conundrum, because sharing it by it's nature makes it larger, thereby reducing the very thing that makes it good. maybe letting it grow by word of mouth and accident of discovery is the best approach for now.

question 2)... i think that getting a verified e-mail is a very good idea, and will cut out a good bit of the micky mouse of all kinds. i also think that the fact that the forums are actively moderated will cut out some more. further, i think a lot of the topics covered on this board won't be of interest to the devotee, wannabe, and pretender crowd. if i were offered a bet, i would put money saying that those folks have already visited here. the url for this board was posted on another board where at least one avowed devotee posts, and where there are several suspected pretenders. i guess the bottom line on this is that on any public board of this nature they will come in. hopefully the nature of the board will discourage them from staying and making a neusense of themselves.

question 3)... science and politics ARE fun! i have never actively posted on the science threads, though i have at times been tempted because of questions i had. still, i have enjoyed reading the research forums for a long time. also am finding the care forum informative and helpful. right now the mix seems good. this is something that can evolve, so if changes seem necessary in the future, then we can always make them. besides, we have the "life" forum, which seems to mostly be about whatever fun or un-fun things happen in our lives. it's a good balance right now. we'll see what happens and change with the times when necessary.

so, i agree that perhaps the board is where it needs to be, and we don't really want to do much to increase traffic over it's current rate.

thanks for listening,

kathy

[Raven]

Dr. Young,

I am attempting to build a chat room with Beseen. I have so far put some of it with the text and the background image. The only problem I have is that since this room is barely being started, no one knows about it. I would prefer to have it used by the people here or people with disabilities.

Just noticed that you are looking for a chat room for this site and wondered if you would like to use it as a part of your chat room. It is very easy to get into and I believe it would be accessible to all here.

Please let me know if you would be interested. If you like you can access it with this link:

http://mercury.beseen.com/chat/rooms/y/21777/

I can change the name of the room to whatever you or the people would like it to be titled. The name I put on it for now is temporary.

Raven

[Wise Young]

I like your site. Can I suggest that you post the URL of the site on the Links Forum so that more people can look up the site from there. Personally, I would like to have a link on each page that shows whether people are chatting about something and people can just click on that link and join the chat.

Over the past couple weeks, I have been visiting a number of sites to see how they are organized and how they work. Here are some observations.

1. Chat rooms get very confusing if more than 20 chat at the same time. It feels like joining a party line on the telephone where dozens of people are having conversations at the same time.

2. It helps when people can use colors and other methods of labelling themselves on the chat stream. I also wish that there was a natural way of filtering and segregating streams of conversation.

3. Multiple chat rooms tend to segregate conversations too much. Very frequently a good conversation may be going on in one chat room and, because the chats are not recorded and, even if they were, nobody would have to time to sift through the conversations again, and so not enough people would benefit from the conversation.

Wise.

[Raven]

Dr. Young,

I have checked and found that there is no filtering on Beseen's chat. Decided to try to find another place with software or scripts for a chat room. Found one called Blue Chat and I am presently working with my son to get it to work.

This script does have filtering, it will replace with another word and not foul language.

There are still a few things on the script that don't work, but we are working on them. I will again advise you whenever it is working so you can access it and see what you think of it.

I have linked my site to yours on my homepage. If you do get a logo, I would like to be able to use it with the link if you would permit me to.

Will also post the url for my site here. Hobbiton was the server hosting my files and has had many problems. Therefore, I am going to my ISP server's site to have my site hosted there. There will be a few pages which will not be working but I am also working on getting them all to work again.

Raven

[Annabanana]

Raven i think a new chat room is a great idea..dischat is excellent but a new one that can be advertised here Ithink would do well. I went to the one that you had linked below but noone was home. When you get the new one up and going please let us all know..thanks!