Frequently-Asked Questions about Venice (*)
-------------------------------------------

(* - or at least those I think people will be asking)

Q: What is Venice?
A: The Venice Web Community System is a system for supporting online
   communities and special interest groups.  A single Venice server will
   support multiple communities, and all users authenticating themselves with
   the Venice server will be able to join any community based on that server.
   Communities will support features like Web conferencing, chat, and instant
   messaging.

Q: Aren't there already conferencing packages out there?
A: Yes, and some of them are very good.  However, Venice is being designed
   first and foremost to support the Electric Minds community, and the
   software will implement the appearances and behaviors they're used to
   (at least for the most part).  Enough other people have already found
   this useful that I think it will have broad-based appeal.

Q: Who are Electric Minds, anyway?  What makes them so special?
A: Electric Minds is a pioneering online community, originally founded by
   Howard Rheingold, longtime user of The WELL and author of _The Virtual
   Community_, in November 1996.  Electric Minds, among other things, hosted
   the discussion site for the Kasparov vs. Deep Blue chess match, and went on
   to become one of _Time_ magazine's top 10 Web sites of 1996.  His company
   lost its financing, though, and was acquired by Durand Communications,
   Inc., of Santa Barbara, CA, in July 1997, who shifted the community from
   the existing WellEngaged conferencing platform to its own "CommunityWare"
   online community software.  Electric Minds has been a lively place for
   conversation ever since, despite the departure of Rheingold.  The current
   host of the Electric Minds community is Harry "maddog" Pike, of New
   Hampshire.

Q: So where's Durand Communications now?  Never heard of 'em.
A: Durand Communications was acquired by Online System Services (now Webb
   Interactive Services, Inc.), of Denver, CO.  CommunityWare was folded
   together with OSS' i2u product, and the result was introduced as WebbMe,
   which was also an online community system.

Q: So why does Electric Minds need Venice?
A: Webb Interactive is pulling the plug on WebbMe at the end of January, 2001.
   Electric Minds will be no more, unless it can be moved from its existing
   servers.

Q: Can't you just use the existing WebbMe software?
A: Not practical.  WebbMe is written using Microsoft Active Server Pages under
   IIS 4.0 on Windows NT 4.0, using a SQL Server back end.  Even if a server
   could be found to support it, the software is old and very touchy to
   administer.  (Webb Interactive's work is all in Java now, using WebLogic
   and Oracle.  Very few people are left who remember much of anything about
   how WebbMe works.)

Q: Doesn't Webb have software you can use now?
A: Well, they do have a Discussions product as part of their AccelX suite, but
   it has a couple of major issues:
   (1) It's not open source.  In my opinion, it is not desirable for a
       community like Electric Minds to be held prey to proprietary software
       storing its intellectual content.
   (2) It's also heavy in its requirements.  It uses Enterprise JavaBeans and
       requires the BEA WebLogic server and an Oracle database as back end.
       For our purposes, that'd be overkill.

Q: Well, then, what about {Slash|Scoop|Squishdot|mod_virgule|etc.}?
A: Those packages are all good (and, in fact, Venice may incorporate some of
   their features in future), but they were designed for other purposes.  It's
   partially the nature of the software that makes Electric Minds the community
   it is, and so, to preserve the community as we know it, we need to keep
   the functionality as close as possible.  (This will also make it possible,
   at a future date, to import the old discussions from the WebbMe Electric
   Minds into Venice, for future reference and for posterity.)

Q: Why call it "Venice"?
A: During its early development (predating the Electric Minds acquisition),
   CommunityWare was known as "Rome."  Rome was one of the primary centers
   of advanced community in ancient times.  Similarly, Venice was one of the
   centers of advanced community during the Renaissance...and, right now,
   Electric Minds could use a renaissance :-).

Q: But you're not ripping off CommunityWare/Webb, are you?
A: Not at all.  Some of the design structures are similar to CommunityWare,
   but there are many significant changes.  For instance, the Venice HTML
   interface uses no <FRAME> tags, and the security model has been replaced
   with a more self-consistent one.  As time goes on, Venice will continue
   to incorporate features that distinguish it from the original WebbMe.

Q: What was up with the whole "SIGs" nomenclature?
A: That was one of the ways I was trying to differentiate myself from
   CommunityWare and WebbMe.  However, the terminology ("Special Interest
   Group") turned out to be too cumbersome.  Besides, as of November 2001,
   Webb Interactive is out of that business, and indeed out of all business but
   Jabber.com Inc.  Therefore, I reversed myself on November 7, 2001 ("The Day
   of The Great Renaming") and they're now called "Communities" everywhere.
   (With two exceptions; the database and the URL generation, both for backward
   compatibility.)

Q: Did WebbMe have instant messaging, too?
A: Yes, it did.  The original CommunityWare instant messaging and chat was
   based on code derived from Durand's earlier MindWire product.  It was later
   replaced with a not-entirely-reliable system implemented using IRC.  When
   Venice implements IM and chat, it will likely be based on Jabber.

Q: What's Jabber?
A: Jabber is the world's only open-source XML-based instant messaging system.
   Aside from offering its own instant messaging, it allows compatibility with
   other IM systems like AIM, ICQ, MSN, and Yahoo!.  See http://www.jabber.org.

Q: How will Venice use Jabber?
A: Venice will most likely run in conjunction with a Jabber server that can
   authenticate users against the Venice database.  Venice will include Java
   applets for Jabber communication.

Q: Venice should implement {cool feature} like {other software} does.
A: Sounds interesting.  Email me and tell me more.

Q: My question wasn't covered here!  Will you add it?
A: Maybe, if enough people ask it :-).  Email me your suggestions.

