CRCL, Bangkok -- Flame ON!

SOUTHEAST ASIAN
COMPUTING AND LINGUISTICS

Produced by Doug Cooper / Center for Research in Computational Linguistics,
Bangkok. Presented in cooperation with . . . ( 0.2 -- comment only )

FLAME ON!

It's impossible to spend any serious amount of time either browsing or desiging Web pages without becoming infuriated. Here's some unsolicited advice for all you up-and-coming authors out there.

ON CONTENT

ADD INFORMATION, NOT LINKS -- too many Web pages leave you with the feeling that you're watching somebody else use a remote control. There are many ways to add value: prepare new resources, make existing resources easier to use, analyze them or describe their relative merits, etc. Don't just tell people where you've been -- show them what you got out of it.

DO BETTER THAN REALITY -- duplicating the real world is too limiting. Archiving papers on-line duplicates a library, but posting drafts to seek comments and collaboration goes further. Choosing the one 'right' accent for your sound archive mimics audio tape, but posting alternate pages extends the resouce.

ON DESIGN

ART IS EASY -- PRODUCTION IS HARD -- It is easy for a designer with top-rate equipment to create striking visual images. It is difficult, though, to create in a manner that can be reproduced in the real world. This lesson has long been understood in print media, where the trick is to put together designs that can't be screwed up as the result of misregistration, poor color matching, bad paper, etc.

Unfortunately, it's still largely unknown in the world of electronic design. How many times have you seen pages that were unreadable because of the poor contrast between text and background color? That's what happens when a page designed on a 16 million color system gets shown on a 256-color one -- subtle contrasts can vanish, leaving behind an indecipherable mess.

I'm not saying that you shouldn't push technology, btw -- I'm all for an improved method over backward compatability for its own sake. I am, however, saying that it's a good idea to ask if there is a technically simpler way to achieve the effect you're after.

DON'T MAKE YOUR READER WAIT -- Don't waste your reader's time: conserve time and space. Sending a 24-bit color image or uncompressed sound file not only wastes your reader's time -- it wastes your time when he or she hits the stop button. Don't forget that the point is communication -- not the Web equivalent of playing at higher volume than the next guy.

WRITE MAINTAINABLE PAGES -- HTML is code, after all, and the sooner you start the longer it will take. Think about how you'll be managing links and resources in six months -- the Net is filled with webmasters who got off to a good start, but lost interest when it keeping things organized got too complicated.

ON COPYRIGHT

GIVE A LITTLE -- I am astonished by the number of people who spend time worrying that people are going to 'steal' their 'intellectual property.' You should be so lucky! The Internet is here as it is largely because of the willing, voluntary efforts of thousands of people who worked for the sheer pleasure of contributing to something both worthy and cool. If you insist that people add your copyright notice, they'll find ways to avoid it; if you do something good for free, they'll credit you out of gratitude.

Indeed, the whole habit of plastering copyright notices over everything you produce is pretty obnoxious. It's one thing to copyright something you intend to pursue the commercial development of -- a book, work of art, or even a program. Or, if you're not going to develop it, I can understand using copyright to keep something private, or to guarantee that it can be freely distrobuted.

On the other hand, treating every utterance or production as a pearl worthy of protection is infantile. It denies all external influences, and implies that because you expressed it, the thought must be yours entirely. Worse, it's just plain selfish and self-aggrandizing -- a way of saying "Look at ME!!!" to everyone who reads your page. Isn't it just possible to give something to the world for free, even if the price you want is as small as insisting that your name be mentioned every time your idea is used?

Lest you think I'm just talking out of my hat, by the way, I've earned my living as a writer for fifteen years. Certainly I'm in favor of copyright -- but as a mechanism for regulating trade; not as a way to restrict free sharing and borrowing of ideas.

For instance, I'd be upset if another publisher were to photo-offset and sell one of my books. But as for other authors borrowing, expropriating, or outright stealing any of my ideas, programs, methods, examples -- they are welcome to it. As far as I'm concerned, it hurts me not at all, and might improve their work immensely. And you can bet your boots that I'm going to try to incorporate every good idea I see into my next book, too.

For example, look at the page-management software I've supplied as part of this web. If somebody were to take it, repackage it, bullet-proof it, and sell a million copies, sure -- I'd kick myself. But I'm far less worried about somebody making money on one of my ideas (ideas are the easy part -- it's carrying them through that's hard) than I am about the chilling effect that trying to own ideas outright has.

Look -- the Internet is a stupendous medium for transmitting perfect copies of information. Companies who want to restrict and sell that flow find this threatening. But as a scholar, I feel that it's the very openness of the system that protects me -- it's obvious to anybody in my field when I've been copied. As the release notice attached to each of my pages points out, you're free to steal -- it's your reputation that gets hurt, not mine.

All original work © 1995 Doug Cooper. Please see this disclaimer, which takes responsibility for content, and the release notice, which gives you the right to copy it. We believe that all files referenced by these pages may be distributed for research / educational purposes. If any file should not be distributed, please let us know and we will remove it.