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From: kenn@intrbas.uucp (Kenneth G. Goutal)
Newsgroups: comp.groupware
Subject: Re: Using news for internal communications
Keywords: news; Participate; organizational structures
Message-ID: <124@intrbas.UUCP>
Date: 21 Dec 90 18:58:26 GMT
References: <276561BC.419@intercon.com> <3602@jaytee.East.Sun.COM> <4604@awdprime.UUCP>
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I don't have all the info I want right at hand.
I'll have to wait till I'm home over the holidays to post details.
Briefly, Participate is a conferencing/mail/etc package originally
developed in the late 1970's.  To my knowledge, it runs on PR1ME,
IBM, VAX/VMS, and, most recently, Unix.  Several of the public-access
systems offer it.  Each user has a fairly complex profile of what they
may or may not do.  In a wide-open system, any user may start a new
conference, contribute to any conference, vote in any conference
(there's an explicit support for polls/surveys/ballots), and so forth.
The creator of a conference is the initial moderator.
The moderator gets to specify who may do what in their own conference.
So, someone in Personnel might create a conference to which anyone
coould contribute, but anonymously, and which only the moderator could
read.  Huh?  Why?  It would be called "suggestion box", of course!
Engineering might create one called "dumb questions to which anyone
could contribute, and anyone could read, but all entries would be anonymous.
Someone in Personnel (again) might create one to which only they could
contribute, but which anyone could read, called "newsletter",
but they might branch subconferences from it called "classified ads"
and "letters to the editor" that would be limited in the size of articles.
The president might create one that was open only to the VP's,
from which they could not unsubscribe, called "daily memo".
The VP's, on the other hand, might create their own called "we'll get
him" to which any VP could contribute and any VP could read, but
the president could not.  (Just joking...)  Anyway, it's enormously
flexible, and can therefore model existing or proposed organizational
structures and traditional  channels of communication.

I'll try to get you an address/phone# to which to address inquiries.
I don't have any price info.

Again, I do not represent Participate, its creators, maintainers, or
vendors, nor does my employer.

-- Kenn Goutal
...!linus!intrbas!kenn
...!uunet!intrbas!kenn