Note: The boldface font below refers to a passage I quoted in my response. -- Gene
The World Wide Web is a major issue for the next two years. SIGLINK's current involvement in WWW activities is important but not sufficient. SIGLINK is concerned with the Web, but this relationship is not immediately evident to newcomers attracted by the excitement of the WWW. Of course, we all know that 'Hypertext' is not simply the Web and that plenty of important research still is to be done beside and beyond the WWW. But the Web is currently the most important and fruitful research domain for applying hypermedia technologies. A cross fertilization of hypertext and WWW research already exists at the individual level within the SIGLINK membership but it is not made visible enough at the institutional level. As SIGLINK officers, we need to make more explicit SIGLINK's openness to the Web community.
During the last months, the SIGLINK executive committee has been working on this topic, jointly with a large set of advisors, including the previous SIGLINK chairs and the previous HT'xx conference chairs. It has become obvious that SIGLINK needs to make its contributions more visible. Ten years ago, Nelson's word "hypertext" was the up to date word to make the domain emerge and LINK was its key notion. Today, please, try to tell someone who is not a SIGLINK member that your main interest is "LINKs". The set of answers is astonishing! Even within the ACM, I have been surprised to observe that some SIG officers know the word SIGLINK but still wonder what is its concern! Once explained they often say: "Oh! you mean the Web". Obviously SIGLINK's name is no longer relevant outside of SIGLINK itself. Such SIG-name relevance problem is not specific to SIGLINK. Recently SIGOIS changed its name to SIGGROUP in order to make their concern about groupware clearer. Such is life.
As a result of this preliminary work, it seems suitable to provide SIGLINK with a new dynamics which would make its openness to the Web community more explicit and add visibility to its name. Changing a name is always something sad, but it is also a step towards future. SIGLINK needs to be turned towards future, towards new membership, towards new research. I do want to help SIGLINK be ready to enter in the next century. But it is up to you to decide.
So, we propose to change the name of SIGLINK into SIGWEB, and to make it explicit in SIGWEB statement that:
"SIGLINK supports the multi-disciplinary field of hypertext and hypermedia, facilitating its application both on the World-Wide Web and also in other distributed and stand-alone environments.
SIGLINK provides a forum for the promotion, dissemination, and exchange of ideas concerning hypertext research and applications among computer scientists, systems designers, authors, and end-users."
It must remain clear to us that changing to SIGWEB does not mean that the WWW is or will be our single topic, but that the Web will take in the future a larger place among other hypertext studies. Even, some of us suggested to rename SIGLINK SIGWEBs, explicitly in the plural, in order to assert that WWW is a web among all of those which are our concern. Plural notation would add confusion, but the underlying idea is clear.
SIGLINK (SIGWEB) provides a home for all of those who feel concerned with the hypertext related aspects of the WWW.
We also must make it to other institutions that SIGWEB is not competing with them, neither inside the ACM nor outside of it. Web related organizations such as the WWW consortium or the IW3C2 have their own concerns which are different and complementary to ours; I am already in touch with Robert Cailliau and Vincent Quint to clarify our strategy.
Within the ACM, some Web related aspects such as communication, information retrieval, programming languages, multimedia techniques and so onä, are already the concern of other SIGs. We are not competing with other SIGs on such topics. It is up to them to deeply study these specific aspects. We will cooperate with them to bridge gaps and enforce the unity of WWW studies within the ACM, which have to go on being studied with the proper SIGs. So it is up to SIGWEB to keep active the study of the Web as a hypertext structure and system among others. [quote]
One cannot say it is a change in SIGLINK focus, since the WEB focus and SIGLINK focus are very close. The Web was present very early at HT conferences but it grew so fast that SIGLINK misunderstood how to provide it a home. So, as a son who leaves home soon, it had its own life. In my statement, I insisted on the need for unification and openness. Today there is an opportunity to merge the two communities into the ACM. I consider that it is suitable that SIGLINK make a visible and significant effort to attract into the ACM people who work on the same domain as we do.
As a summary, the SIGLINK executive committee proposes that you change SIGLINK's name into SIGWEB. In order to take effect, this proposal need first to be validated by SIGLINK membership. We have organized a forum about this topic and are waiting for your comments, suggestions and advise as soon as possible. Send them to acm-siglink@lirmm.fr.
If you accept the proposal we will propose the changes in SIGLINK's bylaws to ACM. It will take about one year to make the change effective, and then it will be time to start preparing for new elections.
Marc Nanard,
SIGLINK Chair