The virtual MASN - A short history.
Since the creation of the MASN in 2005 its aim was to provide communication facilities and to keep the exchange vital apart of the face-to-face meetings.
The first collective means of communication was a yahoo-group mailing list (a), which exists until now but is very little in use since few years. Already during the founding MASN Coordination Meeting - Vienna, 4th-6th February 2005 - an autonomous homepage project (b) evolved and was put into practice. This first website offered a lively and fruitful virtual meeting ground (with over 1500 members) for several years, but needed to be closed due to technical obstacles. To avoid the latter problems the second website (c) was running under the saas social media platforms provider Ning. The network moved to a third, independent homepage before Ning started to charge money for its services. This third homepage (d) lacked again it-skilled administrative support to offer clear communication facilities. Meanwhile a facebook group (e) was opened which has offered a communication space with continuity in the networks for the last years. The MASN homepages changed nearly every year and couldn’t provide the necessary means to do likewise.
Since autumn 2012 the creation of the new independent MASN homepage (this page) (tikiwiki CMS group ware) has been in progress, because the last webpages and facebook group haven’t provided enough space for thorough communication, exchange and documentation.
The aim of the new page is to offer a clearer arrangement and more participatory connection and exchange possibilities for its users. Besides ameliorating central technical and structural details of the homepage during the first creation phase (before, during and after the 6th MASN Coordination Meeting), the site still needs to be developed further and that for some general question still need to be discussed:
What are the network’s long lasting strategies to administratively and financially sustain an autonomous MASN website?
How should the permissions for e.g. registrations, to open forums, open local or working groups, etc. be distributed to ensure freedom of activity of each user but to save annoying spam attacks the same time?
Shall or how might the website include more communication languages beside English?
Of course there are far more questions and we would like to invite you to discuss them in the General forum.
The first collective means of communication was a yahoo-group mailing list (a), which exists until now but is very little in use since few years. Already during the founding MASN Coordination Meeting - Vienna, 4th-6th February 2005 - an autonomous homepage project (b) evolved and was put into practice. This first website offered a lively and fruitful virtual meeting ground (with over 1500 members) for several years, but needed to be closed due to technical obstacles. To avoid the latter problems the second website (c) was running under the saas social media platforms provider Ning. The network moved to a third, independent homepage before Ning started to charge money for its services. This third homepage (d) lacked again it-skilled administrative support to offer clear communication facilities. Meanwhile a facebook group (e) was opened which has offered a communication space with continuity in the networks for the last years. The MASN homepages changed nearly every year and couldn’t provide the necessary means to do likewise.
Since autumn 2012 the creation of the new independent MASN homepage (this page) (tikiwiki CMS group ware) has been in progress, because the last webpages and facebook group haven’t provided enough space for thorough communication, exchange and documentation.
The aim of the new page is to offer a clearer arrangement and more participatory connection and exchange possibilities for its users. Besides ameliorating central technical and structural details of the homepage during the first creation phase (before, during and after the 6th MASN Coordination Meeting), the site still needs to be developed further and that for some general question still need to be discussed:
What are the network’s long lasting strategies to administratively and financially sustain an autonomous MASN website?
How should the permissions for e.g. registrations, to open forums, open local or working groups, etc. be distributed to ensure freedom of activity of each user but to save annoying spam attacks the same time?
Shall or how might the website include more communication languages beside English?
Of course there are far more questions and we would like to invite you to discuss them in the General forum.
Linklist:
(a) https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/movinganthropology/info
(b) http://movinganthropology.org/ or http://movinganthropology.de/
(c) http://movinganthropology.ning.com/
(d) http://www.movinganthropology.net/
(e) https://www.facebook.com/groups/21804432428/