By Gene Golovchinsky
Marc Nanard wrote:
As ACM SIGLINK Chair, I invite you, as a SIGLINK member, to provide us with your comments on the new trends of your special interest group. Currently an important issue is rising: SIGLINK must improve its visibility and be more attractive to WWW research. ...
Why? WWW is not about hypertext, it is about access to distributed resources. The fact that a hypertext-like interface mediates some access to these resources is a historical accident. It is no accident, however, that much research conducted by the hypertext and HCI communities was ignored by the designers of the Web. This research was ignored due to constraints imposed on the system by its open, distributed nature.
While the Web is an interesting and exciting vehicle for some kinds of research in distributed computing, it does not provide adequate facilities for conducting hypertext RESEARCH. Many examples of what a hypertext can be exist outside the web. When (if) Web infrastructure improves to accommodate the richness of expression characteristic of state-of-the-art hypertexts this community has helped create, then we can (and should) embrace the Web as a vehicle for our research. Until then, however, I believe that yielding to its onslaught will be detrimental to our research effort.
...As a consequence, next year the name SIGLINK would be changed by ACM into SIGWEB if the membership approves the change.
I would urge the membership to reject this proposal: by inviting the Web into our name, we invite disaster. Whether we intend it or not, a name like SIGWEB will suggest to the casual reader that this is exactly that special interest group of the ACM which is interested in all manner of research on the Web. Thus, although we may see our membership coffers fill, our focus and raison d'être will be lost.
... So it is up to SIGWEB to keep active the study of the Web as a hypertext structure and system among others. ...
It is only through our insistence not to give the Web undue prominence in the Hypertext world that we will be able to study hypertext structures other than the Web in the future. I believe it is imperative that we do not make the Web a focus of our activity, as putting it in our name will surely do.