INTRODUCTION
TO HUNGARIAN PHILATELY
Web
Collaboration
Return
to Introduction
The concept
of many people with different skill levels cooperating to build
something of lasting value for their community must go back
to the early days of mankind. Today, every community throughout
the world has public-service and charitable organizations staffed
and funded by volunteers. For many folks, a big part of their
motivation is to enjoy the fellowship of others who share their
goals. Traditionally, this has limited these organizations'
work-sharing to a single physical community, so that members
did not have to travel long distances to work together.
The advent of the Internet has opened up vast new opportunities
for such collaboration. Now people scattered across the globe
can work together toward common goals. Because they can create
web sites that contain words, pictures, sounds and even moving
images, they can become great repositories of information and
education which can have a worldwide audience.
The earliest attempts at using this new technology have come
from individual effort. One person creates a web site which
includes his (or her) personal knowledge on a topic. As he discovers
other sites that contain more information on the topic he can
include links to them on his own site. This is where the "web"
comes from. But each site is limited to the knowledge of a single
individual, and related sites contain redundant and sometimes
conflicting information. Also, as you know if you have tried
it, maintaining a web site takes time and effort, so many sites
are obsolete or incomplete, even if they do not disappear completely.
There are many worthwhile projects that are beyond the time
and abilities available to any one person. No one programmer,
for instance, could build an application like Microsoft Word
or the Windows operating system, especially just in their free
time! Yet programmers worldwide have collaborated through the
Internet to produce a complete suite of office software (www.openoffice.org)
and a powerful operating system (www.linux.org).
The keys to these web collaboration projects are a clear vision
of the objective and a small cadre of people who are willing
to integrate the efforts contributed by others. On this SHPweb
the objective is clear - elaborate on the information provided
by the main page in any way possible. SHP is also fortunate
in having a webmaster and officers that can integrate and guide
the contributions of SHP members as well as anyone else interested
in Hungarian philately. So pick a topic, do some research, write
it up and send it in! Share in the pleasure of helping others
who share your interests.
Return
to Introduction
To
add to this page please send information to
