THE DISTRIBUTED ENCYCLOPEDIA - CALL FOR ARTICLES

[Distency]

       * Call for encyclopedic essays *

                      for

         THE DISTRIBUTED ENCYCLOPEDIA

         A (new)  approach to build a
         freely available, comprehen-
         sive encyclopedia using  the
         World Wide Web.

       *                              *


Hello everybody and a happy new year 1998!


This is to announce


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         THE DISTRIBUTED ENCYCLOPEDIA
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and to call up everybody with knowledge in a particular
field to provide an encyclopedic essay on a subject  he
or she is very familiar with.

First, please take my apologies for crossposting  this
message  in several newsgroups. But the nature  of any
encyclopedia implies that many sciences  are  touched,
when a new  encyclopedia arises.  To not  confuse this
newsgroup  with  non-related  discussions  about  this
posting, please

 post any follow-ups to the newsgroup
 comp.infosystems.interpedia

(I will explain later why this newsgroup is suitable.)


Next, let me tell you what this posting is all about:

The most important thing to state is, that  this  is  a
non-commercial project. What we want to do, is to offer
a free encyclopedia for everybody. The media we can use
for this is the Internet, in particular the  World Wide
Web. And since  the encyclopedia  should be  accessible
for anybody without paying any fees, volunteer  authors
are needed that provide articles.

By  now, there are about 20 to 40 million people connec-
ted  to the internet. Most of them are, at least by  to-
day,  university staff with a high knowledge. If anyone
would  just provide one essay about his or her personal
subject,  his or her spezialized knowledge,  and if  we
provide a  centralized way of accessing  this knowledge
by alphabetical  order, we  will have the  biggest  and
deepest encyclopedia ever written.

What are the main issues that are of  interest for  you
when  you  think  about  providing  an  essay  for  The
Distributed Encyclopedia:

o       The copyright stays with the respective  author
        of an essay

o       Whenever  possible, the author stores the essay
        in html format on his or her own web site.

o       A framework for the html  document is provided,
        so all essays will have a uniform layout

o       All  essays  can  be accessed via a centralized
        index

o       Since this is a  non-commercial project,  there
        will be no funds to repay the effort.

So, if you feel  you could help  this project  growing,
or if you are just  curious to see something more (like
the demo articles  we provided already), check out  the
homepage of

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         THE DISTRIBUTED ENCYCLOPEDIA
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       on

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         http://members.aol.com/distency/home.htm
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It would be greatly appreciated if you  help  spreading
the information that this project exists -  by  linking
the site, telling your friends and collegues and so on.

If  you want to discuss the whole subject of building a
free internet encyclopedia, please join  the  newsgroup
comp.infosystems.interpedia  and   post  your  messages
there to help to keep this newsgroup free  of noise.
Interpedia  was  a  similar  project  years  ago, which
- unfortunately - died very soon. But they had  to deal
with a  rather unhandy internet, gopher interfaces  and
so on. No  we  have  WWW, html  and graphics. The  only
thing we need now are authors.  So,  let's try  to save
something of the traditional spririt of the net.  Let's
do something  useful for all the people.  Knowledge  is
the key to the future.
Let's write an encyclopedia together.


Ulrich Fuchs,
       The Distributed Encyclopedia
WWW:   http://members.aol.com/distency/home.htm
email: distency at aol.com