Xref: utzoo comp.cog-eng:1874 comp.groupware:469 alt.hypertext:754
Path: utzoo!utgpu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!mcsun!i2unix!ubdm!fabio
From: fabio@dm.unibo.it (Fabio Vitali)
Newsgroups: comp.cog-eng,comp.groupware,alt.hypertext
Subject: Re: A newsgroup for HCI/UI?
Summary: OK, but would it work?
Keywords: human-computer interaction user interfaces
Message-ID: <1991Feb26.140457.22867@dm.unibo.it>
Date: 26 Feb 91 14:04:57 GMT
References: <1991Feb21.024959.6698@cs.uoregon.edu>
Reply-To: fabio@dm.unibo.it (Fabio Vitali)
Organization: Department of Mathematics, University of Bologna, Italy
Lines: 44

In article <1991Feb21.024959.6698@cs.uoregon.edu> akm@cs.uoregon.edu (Anant Kartik Mithal) writes:
>Does anyone know of a group devoted to issues about Human Computer
>Interaction / User Interfaces? If there is none, how does one go about
>setting one up?

I, for one, would appreciate it very much. It's just that I don't think
it would work. I mean, I read alt.hypertext and comp.groupware, and,
apart for some (very few) messages from people needing advice, they are
mostly dedicated to announcements for conferences and seminars. There is
no flame, no sharing, no discussion on them. In short, they are moribund
newsgroups.
I fear very much the same would happen in the field of HCI. It is too
broad a subject, with too many open issues about it, so that, I think,
everyone would fear too much of starting a flame war on anything, and 
would not post anything that was not widely acceptable and, therefore,
obvious, in such newsgroup.
Anyway, I strongly agree on the necessity of this kind of subject. I
just wish a little bit of sharing was going on on Hypermedia, Groupware,
Human Computer Interaction, etc.
They started pretty interesting, Nelson and such, and became boring and
sooo academic and cautious ("You must have missed my paper at the III
Conference on Hypertexts and Cabbages, which explained why such approach
wouldn't work") not to be interesting anymore.

>Please e-mail me, and I will summarize if there is interest.

I didn't, not because I don't know how to do it, but because I wanted to
light up the discussion a bit, here. I crossposted to alt.hypertext as
well, and suggest to add also comp.mac.system, comp.amiga.something,
comp.atari.something, comp.os.msdos.windows, comp.unix.xwindow, etc. (I
don't actually know the names of most of those, so I leave the
crossposting to someone else). 
So, please, don't email him, let's discuss it publicly.

>kartik

Ciao
Fabio

-- 
Fabio Vitali                  There's a clear morale to this tale, now that
Dept of Computer Science     I think about it: when you're dead you're dead.
Univ. of Bologna  ITALY             And yet another morale occurs to me now:
e-mail: fabio@dm.unibo.it         make love when you can. It's good for you.