Department of Computer Science
The University of Chicago
Online Discussion Using HyperNews
Last modified: Mon Feb 26 11:32:21 CST 2001
All class discussion, outside of lecture meetings, should be carried
out with the HyperNews system. HyperNews allows you to attach
"responses" to "articles" created by the instructor, and also to other
people's responses. It presents the articles and responses as HTML
documents, which you may view through your favorite World Wide Web
browser. I have provided four articles as starting points:
Please use the Class Work article for all discussion of
course content outside of class. All questions about lectures, the
textbooks, homework assignments, programming projects, and the
contents of the final exam, answers to those questions, and other
discussion of the ideas in the course, belong in the public discussion
under Class Work. Only items that are truly of no interest to
the class at large, or that are confidential, should be taken up by
electronic mail.
References
General Instructions
HyperNews is a new system from NCSA for carrying out discussions on
the World Wide Web. The presentation and documentation are still a bit
confusing, but the functionality is essentially right, so it is best
for us to get on the bandwagon, and increase the incentive for NCSA to
improve things.
The best way to get the hang of HyperNews is to use it. Practice in
the
Test
area. Refer to the
instructions
provided by NCSA for detailed information, but keep in mind that the
instructions describe a configurable system which is still under
development. In particular, they do not cover local choices made in
the installation that we are using.
Confusing Points
- Not all of the buttons at the bottom of a discussion page may be
used by general participants. The Delete and Copy
buttons are only available to system administrators.
- The Notify button leads to a page that allows you to
subscribe or unsubscribe to a particular article or
response. The only point of subscribing is to be notified by
Email of additional responses. I strongly recommend that you
subscribe to the Class Work article.
- The Membership button lets you enter, and later modify,
information about yourself, including your name, URL if you
have one, and the form in which you wish to be notified of new
responses. Everyone in the class should enroll as a member of
the local HyperNews discussion group.
- The Response button is the only obvious one: it creates a
response. This is the only button that you are likely to use
repeatedly. The other ones should not have been included on
every page. Perhaps a later release of HyperNews, or some local
reconfiguration, will improve this.
Special Netiquette Rules for Com Sci 230
- Give your correct name on every response, except in the Course
Evaluation section, where you may respond anonymously (or in
the Test section to test annonymous posting). If you
enroll correctly with HyperNews, you need only type in your
Email address (the whole thing, including
uchicago.edu, and the rest of your identification will
be filled in automatically.
- Even if you have the ability to serve WWWeb materials in your
own directories, please do not use the URL form of
response. Rather, type your full response in to the window as
plain text, HTML, or setext. In this way, your response will be
secured permanently in the class archives; otherwise it will
be vulnerable to problems in your own directory or WWWeb
server. If you submit HTML, you may point to external URLs, but
do so only if they are fairly reliable, and if the information
is too voluminous or dynamic to copy in sensibly.
- Avoid the PRE-formatted text form of response, because it is
very annoying to readers. Learn enough HTML to accomplish
whatever structure your document needs (<p> for
paragraph, etc.). Use the <pre>...</pre>
marking within HTML to lay out pieces of code, but let the
remainder of your comments be formatted by the reader's
browser. There are excellent
online instructions
to get you started writing HTML. It's very easy.
- Have fun with the "relation" icons, but use them informatively,
not misleadingly.