Some criticism on the Lynx report from WWW94

Charles Ashley <charlesa@cosmos.learned.co.uk>
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Date: Tue, 31 May 1994 17:36:10 +0200
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From: Charles Ashley <charlesa@cosmos.learned.co.uk>
To: Multiple recipients of list <www-talk@www0.cern.ch>
Subject: Some criticism on the Lynx report from WWW94
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Hi there -

Some criticism on the Lynx from WWW94...

Not too impressed with your Lynx WWW94 Special.  If you are going to continue  
this sort of publishing venture, do it right.  Hire professional journalists,  
not computer hacks typing from their diaries.  Not every reader is a computer  
hack.  It doesn't do your publication much good, nor does it make a very good  
impression of WWW94 who weren't there.

I thought Bill Thompson's comments - written in a style which looks like they  
were straight out of a notebook - were incomplete as best.  Benefit of the  
doubt: perhaps he just didn't go the right sessions.

Arguably the 3 top issues of WWW94:
- DigiCash
- HTML+ (what, when, where...)
- VRML & modelling cyberspace

Of these, the Lynx mentions the first one.  Hard not to, since everybody was in  
attendance.  But where are the more in-depth comments from David Chaum? How  
will DigiCash work?  Was he asked to expand on some of his themes in any way?   
How did his views go down with the audience?  


No mention of the ongoing HTML+ debate, a key issue affecting all Webbers. ALOT  
of time was spent on this issue.

Very little mention of VTML & 3-d webspace, although there was a workshop and  
alot of talk about it.

So, what's the beef?  If you guys are going to claim to have titles like editor  
and reporter, do things properly.  Proper journalism, please!

I have no problem with The Lynx WWW94 Special Report if it's for "internal use  
only", as a publication for the whole world via the Web?  I worry that you are  
giving the Web developer community a bad name with sloppy "journalism", and in  
fact doing damage to the Web community itself by trivializing many of the  
issues.  To quote;"...only six people at Robert Cailliau's session were  
Web-initiates, and one of them was Tim Berners-Lee's father!"

It's all very exciting doing an online journal.  But please remember that  
people actually read this stuff, not all of them familiar with internetworking  
and webs of information.  Is "amateurism" something we want associated with WWW  
publishing?

I hope some of this criticism will be of use to your future issues, and to the  
Web community at large.

Charles Ashley