A MISCELLANY OF QUESTIONS OF ACCESS TO FREENETS... The issue of long-distance dial-up charges was raised. This a problem common to freenets. One solution is to dial in via a local number , eg., through Telenet. Another possible solution is for your freenet to acquire leased lines. CAN SCHOOLS OR OTHER ORGANIZATIONS WITH A REQUIREMENT FOR ACCESS TO FREENET GET A DEDICATED LINE INSTALLED AT THEIR LOCATION SO THAT THEY DO NOT HAVE TO DEAL WITH THE PROBLEM OF DIALING IN? Essentially this question was addressed based on the access policy of the NCF. The NCF have allowed dedicated lines to be installed in such places as the Ottawa Public Library and will look at other situations on a case by case basis. The general policy is that access from the dedicated terminal must be accessible to the general public. WHAT ABOUT DISTANCE EDUCATION THROUGH THE FREENET? There was some discussion on the use of the Freenet as a tool in the delivery of university credit courses. Distance education that is currently done by Carleton University through TV programming, was cited as an area where Freenet might be used to help a student learn a subject. For example, by having access to the professor through electronic mail, a student could leave detailed questions and get responses quite quickly. It was pointed out that courses such as this take place on the internet quite regularly. It was mentioned that the Rhode Island Freenet association is planning to have a fibre optic link, provided by the cable companies, that would allow for the delivery of multimedia information that is ideal for interactive learning and distance education. FREENET AND THE ARTS COMMUNITY The services that are available to the arts community were discussed briefly. It was pointed out that there are a significant number of newsgroups available in the existing Freenets that are related to various forms of the arts. WHAT DO THEY MEAN BY "POWER USERS, TRUSTED USERS AND SUPER USERS" (see agenda)? A power user is a person who is beyond the novice level and has mastered some of the tricks of the Freenet. A trusted user refers to an information provider who has read and write capabilities to a specific area of the Freenet. This will be the area where the information provider can update the information from their organization. It was pointed out that this "techie" language was not all that appropriate and that it implied that all other users were untrustworthy. It was suggested that this could more appropriately be addressed by referring to access levels. A super user is a programmer/administrator with access to the entire UNIX shell of the Freenet system. PEOPLE WITH DISABILITIES... There was some discussion on the disabled community's access to FreeNets. With reference to the fact that often disabled groups discussion forums get hidden away in the Health and Social issues, one participant informed the group of the Talahassee FreeNet's move to put Disabled Issues as a main menu item. Other members of the group mentioned that using the GO command is an easy way to by-pass the menu structure. GENDER ISSUES... The discussion then turned to gender issues. One participant expressed concern that this was not a true community network because it did not represent a true cross-section of society/the community. Users are (probably), predominantly white, male, educated, straight, and computer literate). How do we get more women involved? the reason there are not as many women involved may stem from even bigger issues - the fact that more women are live in poverty and have less education then men. There was concerned that a clear sexual harassment policy was not initiated right from the outset (in the case of NCF) - it should be a perogative to make equity an issue. Another participant stated that the individuals the most involved in the Internet and organizing the Internet have been those individuals involved in the library profession, a profession dominated by women (80-20). why has there not been enough publicity about women's participation? Another librarian pointed out that in the portion of the library field involved with networks and the more technical side the male/female balance is not as one-sided. Some participant were concerned with why certain groups were not invited to participate in the FreeNet. The reaction was that the NCF runs on a volunteer basis, and there is no way one can cover every group. On the other hand, the group at the conference doesn't look like the group on an average Toronto subway car -- we have to wonder if we are accidentally excluding some people. FreeNets should make a special effort to invite and encourage participation. A BILINGUAL FREENET There was a lot of discussion about the difficulties involved in having a bilingual FreeNet, and how it should work. One approach would be to have the user choose his/her language preference, and then have menus diverge from there. The other choice would be to have the same menu available in both languages, with information and discussion in the language in which it was provided. No conclusion was reached, although the breadth of the problem was well defined. However, it was concluded that this is essentially a "programming problem" -- that can be resolved when the policy issues are resolved. RURAL ACCESS There is an international group called the Association for Progressive Communications, represented by the WEB in Canada that uses FIDOnet to provide communications to groups in Nicragua, Brazil and Africa by running a program called "FrontDoor." It allows users to have daily (or bi-weekly, or weekly) connections to the internet in a batch mode. Robert Thompson (see attendees) will gladly provide details. This might be a good solution for setting up community networks where internet access is not readily available. Other protocols would probably also work, such as Waffle UUCP protocols.