Version 4.4, January 1996
Revised by Gail Ann Williams
with Michelle Fox
Copyright 1996, The WELL, All Rights Reserved.
(Not a member of The WELL? Check out these
useful general excerpts adapted for
hosts
and moderators at other online communities.)
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PART I: GENERAL INTRODUCTION
1.0 FEATURED CONFERENCE
1.1 Conference Ideas: The Good, The Bad, & the Unforeseen
1.2 Proposing a New Featured Conference
1.3 The Hosts Agreement With The WELL
1.4 The WELL Policy Regarding Censorship
2.0 HOSTING A CONFERENCE
2.1 What Exactly Does a Host Do?
2.2 Welcoming New Participants
2.3 General Conference Rules
2.4 Special Conference Rules
2.5 Handling Problems
2.6 Participants as Guests
2.7 Moderating Tips
2.8 To Solo-Host Or Co-Host?
2.9 How Much Time Does it Take?
2.10 Hosts Needn't Be Wizards
2.11 The Hosts Conference & Backstage
2.12 What You Should Know Before You Begin
PART II: SETTING UP YOUR NEW CONFERENCE: The Tabula Rasa
3.0 CHECKING OUT YOUR NEW CONFERENCE
3.1 Looking Around
3.2 The 'Real' Name of Your Conference
3.3 Displaying the Hosts
4.0 CONFERENCE BANNERS
4.1 The Welcome Message
4.2 The Bulletin
4.3 The Login Banner
4.4 The Logout Banner
4.5 The Index
4.6 The Web Login, or wlogin
4.7 The Userlist, or ulist (Limited Access and Private Conferences Only)
4.8 Some Users Will Not See Your Banners
5.0 THE FIRST TOPIC
5.1 Topic Order
5.2 How Many Topics Should You Start With?
5.3 The Mysterious Summary File
6.0 OPENING THE CONFERENCE FOR ACTION
6.1 Taking Over Hosting an Existing Conference
6.2 Building Traffic
PART III: THE BASIC HOST'S TOOLKIT
7.0 THE BASIC HOST TOOLS
8.0 HANDLING TOPICS & RESPONSES
8.1 Freeze and Thaw
8.2 Retire and Unretire
8.3 Censoring with Hide and Scribble
8.4 Killing Topics
9.0 LINKING TOPICS BETWEEN CONFERENCES
9.1 Advantages & Disadvantages
9.2 Murphy's Linking Laws
9.3 Technical Side-Effects of Linking
9.4 The Linkfrom Command
9.5 Listing Linked Topics
10.0 THAT'S IT FOR THE BASICS
PART IV: ADVANCED TOOLS FOR CONFERENCE MAINTENANCE
11.0 A GUIDED TOUR OF YOUR CONFERENCE'S DIRECTORIES
11.1 What is a Conference Directory?
11.2 Your Conference Directory's Full Pathname
11.3 The Conference Info Directory
11.4 The Conference Front Page Web Directory (Featured Conferences only)
12.0 THE RC FILES
12.1 What Are the RC and URC Files?
13.0 CREATING A MENU WITH !INFOMENU
13.1 Moving & Copying Files Into the Info Directory
13.2 Removing Files From the Info Directory
13.3 How Menus Work
13.4 Preparing Your Files
13.5 Amenu
14.0 A FRONT PAGE ON THE WEB
14.1 Your Conference Web Directory (Featured Conferences only)
14.2 Creating your Conference Front Page on the Web
15.0 HOW GOES IT: CONFERENCE STATISTICS
15.1 Using the !conflog Command to Check Conference Visits
15.2 Census: Comparing Conference Activity
15.3 Using Extract -U for Topic Statistics
16.0 PRUNING YOUR CONFERENCE
16.1 Hitlist: A Utility for Inactive Topics
16.2 Conference Archives
copyright 1996, The WELL
