V.O.I.C.E Virtual OS/2 International Consumer Education

July 2006

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by Christian Hennecke, © July 2006

Christian Hennecke is the Editor in Chief of the VOICE Newsletter. While being a geographer originally, he runs an IT consulting and service company.

VOICE:

Why did you create another service for OS/2-related news?

Roderick Klein:

First of all, to give people an idea what OS2news.com / eComStationNews.com (same website) is about: It's not a web site for end-users.

As an employee of Mensys I work on a lot of projects—maybe a few too many. Something we notice is when we have a new product and want to announce it, it's difficult to reach as many people as possible. It's not to be negative about the other news services, but every news service has its own loyal group of readers. It's up to the people who operate these services to pick up news items and distribute them.

I have been working for Mensys for five years but also do a lot of things related to OS/2 outside office hours. My opinion is that volunteer projects have died simply because not enough people knew about them.

Take the people who show up at Warpstock, for example. Many of them only heard of it by accident! For the simple reason that people don't read OS/2 websites on a day to day basis! I may do that and other people like the volunteers at VOICE but others don't.

One very clear example was last year when I organized a speakup about DFSee for VOICE via IRC. People could ask the author Jan van Wijk questions. I posted several messages via different news sources. There where two speakups, one was timed in such a way that it was targeted at Australia. Because Ed Durrant did a posting via the mailing list of a local user group, seven people showed up. Most people were there because of that posting.

Another chasm exists between the different countries in the world. Russia, Japan, China, South America, even between Germany and the rest of Europe (there are a lot of active OS/2 users in Germany).

This whole introduction is just to make clear what kind of mess we are really in! And it's a big mess!

Now, the problem is that the OS/2 community has gotten smaller but there are plenty of users and developers hiding out there on the planet. Mensys gets new customers every day buying an upgrade from Warp 4 to eComStation! For most of those customers it's their first purchase with us. Reading the comments people leave behind to get access to download the eComStation Demo CD is that they were happy to find eComStation.

But what can the community learn from this? The OS/2 community needs to support itself.

VOICE:

Can you tell us more about what OS2News.com really is? In what way is it different from other news services? You first said that it is not a site for end-users. So that means that they cannot subscribe to a news feed, correct?

Roderick Klein:

eComStationNews.com was established basically as a press agency like Reuters. Users and companies can submit news but not read it. It is a distribution system!

So how does it work? On the submission page, people enter a news item [which adds the item to the Incoming table and awaits approval]. It's the mechanism behind and the design that make the system interesting. All news is stored in the database and can be picked up by web site maintainers (with a userid and password) via RSS or HTML. However, they can also import from an Approved table automatically. Every volunteer for the news system with a userid and password can approve news.

VOICE:

Why don't you offer the RSS newsfeed to end-users?

Roderick Klein:

News that is [more than] a week old can be viewed. We decided to do this because some people [news service providers] are worried that people [news service subscribers] might stop using their website and go directly to eComStationNews.com. People may read this and say, Well, what about if all websites carry the same news? Robert's and my opinion about that is really simple and straightfoward. If we keep on working like we are, we will lose more developers who don't reach enough end-users and lose interest in OS/2. The same goes for end-users who think that the platform is dead. And most end-users read a single website anyway. In the end the news system can benefit everybody! End-users can get to know much more and get to know more people, developers can get much more feedback, and the community can become more alive!

VOICE:

Can you give us a more detailed view of the inner workings?

Roderick Klein:

We designed it so all volunteers can see all messages. It was designed from day one like this. When a news item is approved, it's simply transferred [from the Incoming table] to the Approved table in the database. This can be done with a pull-down box. The most interesting thing about this system is that it has support for multiple languages. Right now it has Dutch, English, and German. But we can and want to add more languages! Like, for example, Chinese and Japanese. Volunteers who approve news then can also, for example, translate a message from Japanese into English! From there on, translation can also take place into other languages!

VOICE:

I can see potential problems for the websites that retrieve news from your service because of news items that are submitted via their own mechanisms. This would not only mean duplicate entries that create a certain amount of administration work but also that items that are submitted via a site's mechanism have to be relayed to OS2News.com. How did you solve this?

Roderick Klein:

The solution to get away from duplicate news items is that all websites redirect news input to the submission page.

VOICE:

How is archiving and searching news going to be handled? By OS2News.com? Or are the websites going to do it on their own?

Roderick Klein:

It purely depends on the website. [For example] OS2.org imports the news and stores it [locally]. We also have a search option. But that is where the other [news service] websites offer [added] value: the interface (look and feel), forums to discuss news. Plus they are websites in the readers' own language!

VOICE:

That sounds like a good solution to me. That way, you won't drag users away from other sites.

Roderick Klein:

As stated we are basically a press agency that distributes to local newspapers.

VOICE:

I understand that OS2News.com runs on an eCS machine.

Roderick Klein:

That is true. All Mensys servers and workstations run on eComStation because our sales system that we have developed over the years runs on that.

VOICE:

Past experiences, especially at OS2.org, have earned OS/2 a reputation for problems with Apache/MySQL/PHP. I suppose that you are using some kind of CMS or custom-made scripts for the site. Have there been any problems so far?

Roderick Klein:

No. We also host the OS/2 Warp Compatible Hardware List site which uses MySQL. That has no problems. Most of the other websites we run use MySQL.

VOICE:

Who was involved in creating the service? And who is already participating?

Roderick Klein:

In 2004, Robert Henschel came to visit the Mensys office and when you get two people together it also ends up in talk about other OS/2-related stuff. I started to draw some simple things on the board and explained what I was thinking. Robert Henschel has implemented a lot of the required code for eComStationNews.com. Also Joachim Benjamins from Mensys has contributed a lot. For a couple of months the OS/2 User Group Dresden's website has been using the service. Also OS2.org gets its news feed from this website.

VOICE:

From what I have heard so far, the whole thing started with Robert feeding the VOICE News mailing list messages into the system. Has there been any close cooperation with Mark Dodel, the list moderator, or Ken Kirchner, the VOICE system administrator?

Roderick Klein:

It's one of the items on the agenda to pick up again. But our agendas are filled up pretty far. There has been discussion in the past, but from our side it has not moved forward that much because of the lack of time. Now, however, since the news system was completed a month ago, we are talking to more parties about using our system.

VOICE:

Well, VOICE could redirect its submit page to OS2News.com and in return feed its mailing list with the OS2News.com newsfeed.

Roderick Klein:

That is the idea, yes.

VOICE:

Do you have enough volunteers for the existing languages?

Roderick Klein:

Right now we have enough volunteers. But the more volunteers, the better. There has already been some worry that this news system might be sensitive to possible censorship! That is why the more people that volunteer, the better! Second, that is why the Approved table is there and the Incoming table!

VOICE:

You mentioned the submission form. I visited all the web pages that are listed as making use of the system. None of them links back to eComStationNews.com so far. Also, not one even mentions getting their news from there.

Roderick Klein:

That is true! It's on our todo list to fix this. There is a closed website to which most major website administrators are subscribed. And we gladly answer questions and provide technical assistance to make it possible to import news from our system.

The theory is that the more websites hook to the news feed, the more spare time we give web admins to work on news on our system.

VOICE:

Do you have any agreement that new subscribers are to sign if they want to participate? Like the requirement to link back to the submit form? Or donating time to manage news on the central site?

Roderick Klein:

Since it's a community based system, we don't want to do paperwork! There is already enough paperwork in daily life. (Laughs.) We trust that people see the need for this system and hope that they will discover that everybody will save time in the long run. It's a matter of trust. Many projects run oral/email agreed facts. We expect people to honour our request to use the link if we also help them to solve any news import problems.

VOICE:

Have you agreed on a common policy regarding approval of news items? WarpCast had rather strict requirements, for instance.

Roderick Klein:

We don't censor any news! If Tim Martin did a posting that he is open to new members for Warpcity, we would accept that.

The more people there are who approve news, the more credible the news system becomes. It's up to the website admin what he approves [for his service]. Everybody who translates news can approve a news item. Once approved it's in the Approved table. Web sites by default use this to import news. They may also import from the NotApproved table, but we don't recommend it since you also have spammers active on submit forums. . .

VOICE:

Well, that's different from submitting an item that badmouths somebody else's work, for instance.

Roderick Klein:

Well, our news system would lose its credibility if we dumped news. The system must run independently. Mensys hosts the system but does not maintain it (other than backups, etc.). Other volunteers process news. And the more people volunteer, the more self-checking it gets. It's up to the people who approve news and website admins to decide what happens to news.

VOICE:

Your mention of Mensys leads me to another question. You already touched the topic of censorship. If there is only one source of news, that could mean domination of information. A hot iron, especially since Mensys, the main distributor and developer of eCS, runs the server.

Roderick Klein:

That is true. If anybody has better ideas, we are more than happy to listen.

VOICE:

Well, I guess that emphasizing the fact that people from other, non-commercial organisations are involved could help.

Roderick Klein:

Like a list of people who approve news on there?

VOICE:

Something like that, yes.

Roderick Klein:

I will relay that suggestion to Joachim and Robert Henschel.

VOICE:

Even if Mensys doesn't want to be the next world dominator, people are going to ask themselves why they do it. Mensys is a company, not a charity organisation.

Roderick Klein:

People like Joachim and I have turned their hobby into their work. I have organized WarpWeekend in 2003 and I'm now working on Warpstock Europe 2006! The point is that our staff does more for OS/2 than just during working hours. Sometimes maybe a bit too much.

VOICE:

Well, for the real skeptics, there still are reasons you already mentioned: It would become easier for Mensys to distribute information about eCS, which could mean more customers and, thus, eCS would live longer.

Roderick Klein:

I will put it simply. There are OS/2 communities out there that get smaller because community lacks. People leave and that's that! We need to join hands really and get in touch with each other! We can keep on living on islands and not notice each other, or we can get to know new developers and new projects and enjoy our operating system more.

And if people have doubts about the fact Mensys staff is involved, I am more than happy to answer questions and we will work in every way to make things transparent. If there is still doubt then, well, all I can say is, Too bad! [To paraphrase:] Don't ask what OS/2 can do for you, ask what you can do for OS/2!

Anyway, we look forward to assisting all OS/2 websites in joining this news system and hope it can make a true difference for our small community. A developer posts a single message and it can propogate to many more websites within a couple days in many more languages! We can also start to offer the newsfeed to websites outside the OS/2 community!

VOICE:

Well, that sounds like a good last word. Thank you for your time.