Subject: Re: CCL:WWW Oversight

From: [email-masked] (Rzepa,Henry)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 08:51:03 +0000

Bruce A. Luxon writes;

>The idea that some self
>appointed committee is going to referee the quality of my web site is
>abhorent. If you don't like a particular site don't visit it anymore.
>We don't need anymore control freaks than we already have.

There is a distinction I think between unsolicited control, and
situations where you actually submit a URL to a site known
to impose it. If one turns one's mind back to
150 years ago. "Scholarly works" were often "published"
privately at the author's own expense, and circulated amongst
friends and peers. We are pretty much in that era now with
WWW pages! However, very soon we will be awash with
home pages, and quite soon career prospects might start
depending on such accomplishments, or grant awards etc.
At this stage, people will WANT an independent body to
referee the quality of what they produce. Perhaps we
have one such. They are called learned societies.

Might I also point out that Chemical Abstracts are
apparently investigating whether abstracting a home
page is possible or worthwhile. If we solve the
problem of how to ensure at least a degree of data
permanency, then we have the idea of a WWW abstracts
section within CA!

Dr Henry Rzepa, Department of Chemistry, Imperial College, LONDON SW7 2AY;
[email-masked] via Eudora 2.1.1, Tel  (44) 171 594 5774 or 594 5809.
Fax: (44) 171 594 5804. World-Wide-Web URL:
http://www.ch.ic.ac.uk/rzepa.html

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From: Gregory Nikiforovich <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 06:30:43 -0600 (CST)

On Mon, 30 Jan 1995 [email-masked] wrote:

> WWW pages!

   150 years ago people like Pasteur and Faraday had ideas. Now it seems that
 people like those proposing censoring of WWW pages have no ideas, but a lot
 of imagination how to sell their sixpence of knowledge for a pound. Nice to
 hear from you, fellows progressists!

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Gregory V. Nikiforovich                                   Phone (314) 935-4677
Research Professor                                        Fax   (314) 935-4979
Center for Molecular Design                            E-mail address:
Washington University                                  [email-masked]
Lopata Hall, Box 1099
St.Louis, MO 63130

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From: [email-masked] (Toni Kazic)
Date: Mon, 30 Jan 1995 11:50:09 -0600

Netters,

I'd like to reiterate that open, do-it-yourself  expression on the Web and
refeered databases are ***not*** binary choices.  Both are appropriate for
different types of information, and the Web is already a mix of such data
(you just don't see the quality control mechanisms for databases like
GenBank or PIR, but they're there).

Henry Rzepa properly points out that the global infrastructure for URNs is
expensive and therefore probably distant.  But I think it would benefit all
of us to tinker with some of the issues ---- including what we want
refeered and the mechanics of distributed databases ---- in advance.  I was
heartened by Steve Bachrach's and others' offers to get some form of this
ball rolling.  The hard issues are less technical, and more sociological
--- what do we want reviewed, how do we do it.  Quality control and sifting
through the Web are different issues technically, though to a user they
often collude.

Toni Kazic
Institute for Biomedical Computing
Washington University