Subject: A modest proposal

From: Bob Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Fri, 12 Aug 94 09:21:39 EDT

With respect to the proliferation of 'personal' and
'people' resources on AstroWeb...

AstroWeb only supports people who have created
personal information on an HTTPD, WAIS, GOPHER, FTP, 
or TELNET server.

What the community needs is an extension to the
Benn Email listing which individual people can
add and change records.

I think 'somebody' should create a new service
called "AstroOids" or something more respectable.

The data would be ~~

	name: { Robert E. Jackson }
	address: { STScI/APSB
		   3700 San Martin Drive
		   Baltimore, MD 21218
		   USA }
	password: { .... }
	domain: { anarky.stsci.edu }
        interests: { ...... }
	email: { [email-masked] }
	inst: { Computer Sciences Corporation }
	phone: { 410 338 4737 USA }
	url: { http://.......... }
	comments: { ...... }

The only required fields would be 'name:', 'address:', 
'password:', 'domain:', and 'interests:'.  The rest of the 
fields are optional.

The 'interests' would be populated via HTML checkboxes
with categories taken from the A&A Abstracts.

ANYONE could add a record via HTML forms.  

ANYONE running in 'domain' and entering the correct 'password' 
could delete that record.

The database would be searchable via HTML Forms and WAIS.
The entire record would be indexed.  This would allow
people to find people with similar 'interests'.

A formatted version of the entire database would available
via HTTPD and FTP.

The database maintainers would not approve the addition
of records.  However the maintainers would monitor the 
database to remove 'noise' records.

The database could be initially populated from the 
Benn EMail listing at RGO.  (I don't know what to do
about 'domain' and 'password' in this case.)

Then we could offload all the 'personal' and 'people'
records off of AstroWeb.