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As of January 01, 1999 (v1.3)
The River is a service mark of The River Cooperative Corporation
Thanks for your interest in The River, aka river.org.
This FAQ contains information about The River, an online service devoted to conferencing. It is maintained by the members of The support08@river.org.
I. General Information About The River
II. The River User Information
III. Member Ownership of The River
V. Technical Aspects of The River
VII. The River and Other Systems
VIII. Miscellaneous Information
The River is a self-governing, uncensored, economically sustainable computer conferencing system. The central mission of The River is to provide a medium for stimulating and interesting conversations among a diverse group of people, and to foster virtual communities which control their own destinies. The River is owned and governed by the members, people who create the conversations that are the source of the system's value. The River is open to experimentation and open to newcomers. Perhaps we can also provide an economic and governance model for other communities of interest that want to build a convivial place to hold discussions in cyberspace.
The River is a member-owned, member-governed co-operative business. Membership, and full participation in governance, is open to any user with a River account who wishes to become a member. The members elect a Board of Directors, which in turn appoints system staff and management.
On a day-to-day basis, the staff and managers are responsible for operations of The River, and they are accountable to the Board, which is accountable to the members. We hope to achieve a proactive, lively and whole-hearted cooperation and openness between staff, management, Board, members and users -- all the people who are in this venture together for their mutual benefit and enjoyment.
Anyone who wants to join us.
Our goal is to share what we have learned online in the past 30+ years, and then apply our collective wisdom to design something exciting and viable for ourselves. We've decided to join together to create a new member-owned virtual community and commercial online service as an adventure for ourselves, an experiment in self-government and a place to gather old friends and new voices.
The River grew out of online conversations about virtual community, the drawbacks and benefits of existing services, and whether a member-owned cooperative could prove to be conducive to a stable and rewarding community and business, among a group of people who were to become the system's founders.
Collectively, these people have abundant experience in online communities: Plato, EIES, CompuServe, America Online, Apple-Link, Women's Wire, Usenet, ILink, RIME, the WELL, Prodigy, ARPAnet, the Source, Delphi, GEnie, the Internet, Grex, Echo, PC-Link, Viewtron, Protocall, Plink, The Meta Network and SOLO.
Some of the best conversation in cyberspace, fasincating people, challenging ideas, a new online adventure -- there are as many different answers to this question as there are people. And you won't know until you log in and join us!
The River is a corporation owned as a co-operative.
Our structure is as follows:
The River is a member-owned, member-governed co-op. Any River account holder can become a member by paying the annual membership fee of $50.
Members shall have three powers:
1. To adopt bylaws and amendments;2. To elect the five-member Board of Directors;
3. Upon petition of two-thirds of the members, to call a special meeting to conduct any legal business, for example, adoption of new bylaws, recall and re-election of directors, approval of mergers, conversions, or dissolution of the co-op.
You can telnet to The River from anywhere on the Internet.
First telnet river.org to reach us.When the "login:" prompt appears, type
newuser,
then the "password:" prompt appears, type
guest,
and then follow the online directions to join.
If you have a problem reaching us, send email to support08@river.org.
We will need some biographical information from you: name, address, etc. All information collected from guests, users and members is strictly confidential.
No. Internet access is globally inclusive, and The River is dedicating its resources first to global access. The River will continue investigating other forms of access as they become technically and financially feasible, but we believe telnet access provides us with the best way to make ourselves reachable by people from all over the world.
A list of major Internet providers can be found in the reference section of any good book on the Internet. Check with your local library or bookstore. If you are involved in a university, access to the Internet is normally provided for faculty, staff and students, so check with your campus computing center. Many businesses also offer their employees access to the Internet. Ask your MIS or Human Resources department. Major online services such as AOL and CIS are also beginning to offer telnet functions.
If you are still stuck and don't know how to find an Internet provider, send email to support08@river.org and we'll do our best to help you.
If your online service offers telnet capacity, you can get to The River from there. Check with your online service for details on how to use their implementation of telnet.
As little as possible. The River is conceived as existing in cyberspace. Anyone with Internet access can access The River as easily as anyone else. We already have active members in Japan, Europe, Canada, the US, and participation in the conversations costs the same for each. As much as possible we have tried to remove geography as a hurdle to participation. You can step into The River anywhere.
You're required to pay your bills on time, refrain from doing things that cause technical problems for the system, and avoid making posts that break the law. You, and not The River, are responsible for what you post. Each of our conferences has policies set by its host, but The River has no overall restrictions on subject matter or language. Some conferences are very focused; others have no rules at all about what you can post. You are free to find and participate in whatever conferences you find most congenial.
The River offers UNIX shell access and electronic mail, but is primarily dedicated to supporting online conversations.
No, The River requires that you use your real name and biographical information when registering. You can then choose a screen name, a short name that appears when you post, but it is possible for other users to then get your real name from your screen name. We believe in accountability for what you write on The River, and that means backing it up with your real name.
The River is member-owned and member-governed. Its owners are a self-selecting group of people who use and care about the system. Any user can become a member and participate in the ownership and governance of the system. That way, the same people who own The River provide it with its source of value -- high-quality online conversation.
It means that any user can become a member, and that all members have an equal stake in the governing of The River. It means that the Board of Directors is directly accountable to the membership. It also means that system staff and management attempt to give a high level of customer service and responsiveness, and members are highly motivated to volunteer time and talent to whatever needs to be done.
A user is a person who registers with The River to use the service and pays the monthly access fee. A member gains a larger voice in the governing of The River by casting a vote for the Board of Directors and gains a stronger connection to The River by supporting it economically.
No. You are welcome to participate in The River as a user for as long as you'd like. Membership is not required, although you are welcome to become a member at any time.
Over time, we've found that many of the contributors to an online community come to want a direct voice in its governance. Becoming a member of The River gives you that direct voice. Since each member has one vote, and only one vote, becoming a member of The River puts you on an equal basis with every other member, from the people who have been members from the very beginning of the system to the newest of the newcomers. And since the board is elected by and accountable to the members, your voice is a very real one.
It's an unfortunate fact that in our society, and especially in the online world, individuals seldom feel they have a real and individual voice in their communities and businesses. Becoming a member of The River gives you exactly that chance. There's a lot of satisfaction to be gained by knowing that you are one of the owners of a place you like, especially when the other owners are people that like the place, too!
Your membership is renewable yearly as soon as your annual fees are paid.
The River uses YAPP, which is very similar to the Picospan program used by the WELL and Grex. We chose this conferencing software because it provides the best environment we know of for ongoing, connected, thoughtful computer-mediated conversations between many people, and because it is accessible to anyone with a computer and modem, not just those with new fast modems or state-of-the-art graphics capability.
There are a wide variety of conferences and topics: everything from politics to literature to media to technical matters.
In general, the ideas for all River conferences come from the users -- users just like you. However, The River does exercise some control over starting new conferences -- so you cannot just start a new conference by yourself. A three-person committee, the Group of Three, is in charge of helping people start new conferences. This oversight is necessary to avoid duplication, to ensure the new conference has effective hosting, and to avoid proliferation of pointless, frivolous conferences. However, it is almost certain that we will soon have The Pointless Frivolous Conference! Send email to confteam if you have an idea for a new conference.
Yes.
Yes, there will be third-party software that will enable you to do this.
Members are permitted to have as many private conferences as they like, space permitting.
Send email to the general manager, and you'll receive information about how to create a private conference on The River.
The River is currently housed on a PC Pentium, using FreeBSD Unix.
Any computer equipped with a modem and software that enable it to dial in to an Internet access provider. You can navigate The River on an XT clone, a Sun Sparcstation, or a Mac. You may find that you get more out of the Internet if your computer software allows you to make a PPP connection to the Internet and to view graphics files. At present, however, The River is set up to work for anyone who can get online.
Yes. The River is experimenting with options that help users participate more fully and deeply in conversation with each other. A graphical user interface offers exciting possibilities for ease of use, inclusion of sound, pictures & video, and hypertext linking. The River provides options such as these while preserving the ability to conduct focused, ongoing conversations and maintaining accessibility to all users.
Users pay a flat fee of $10/month for unlimited use of the system. Users are allowed 5 Megabytes of free disk storage. Additional storage is charged for at the rate of $1 per meg per month.
You can pay by check or money order.
The River charges one flat fee for unlimited use. Most other online services charge a flat fee plus an hourly charge after the allotted monthly hours are used -- and some do not give any allotted hours for the base charge. The River is a member-owned start-up. It is entirely paid for by fees from users and members.
You can send payment by check or money order for two or more months in advance.
We hope and expect you will participate in more than one online service. At The River, you will find, we hope, the highest quality of conversation, involving a community of users from around the globe who gather for no other reason than to converse, entertain, enlighten, and hang out with each other. We hope we will be your favorite community in cyberspace.
The WELL was one of The River's main inspirations; the model for conferencing and many of the ideals of online community that The River espouses evolved on the WELL. Many of The River's founders met each other there, and much of the early brainstorming for The River took place on the WELL. Many River members maintain accounts on both systems. However, The WELL, Inc. is not involved in The River. Although there is no business relationship between the two services, The River owes a spiritual debt to Stewart Brand, Matthew McClure, Cliff Figallo, John Coate, and a large band of fellow pioneers who created, on the WELL, one of the first true international online communities.
The River focuses on conferencing among its users. The River is not a full-service Internet provider. The WELL, America Online, Delphi, and other mainstream online systems offer a range of services beyond what The River offers. The River focuses on online conversation. And we hope that by sharpening our focus we can help cultivate a new era in virtual community.
All online systems differ from each other in tone, partly because of the system's rules and tools and partly because of the people who gravitate there. It is our hope that, in being member-governed, The River will be lively, empowering, diverse and welcoming.
Of course! Being a member or user of The River does not preclude any other online affiliation. Many of us are long-time members of the WELL as well as other online venues.
Imagine a river with many sources that come from all over. The River draws its strength from these converging tributaries. Unlike ordinary ordinary coffeehouse conversations, the River lets everyone get a word in edgewise. Each contribution makes the River grow. And, yes, we occasionally will have virtual waterfights!
While The River may have some files that are convenient for its users or programs that have been developed as free/shareware ways to use The River, it is not a file server or depository.
No, but we have standard UNIX features such as "send" and "talk." You can use them to talk to another person online at the same time you are online.
No, The River is purely a conferencing system. But it's our experience that you'll stay informed on what is happening in the world because our users bring that news to The River daily (and sometimes hourly!). In fact, many times our users find that they have learned about something going on in the world that has not yet been broadcast on TV or radio in their area.
Where and when is up to you. The River has no geographic "home" so it's sort of like the universe: its center is everywhere and its borders are nowhere. If you can get Riverpudlians and potential Riverpudlians together, we will provide you with a (spartan but useful) River Party Kit including, in some special cases, some refreshment money from our River Bank. You just have to promise to bring some of the energy of your party online.
Billing matters: billing@river.org
Help and support: support08@river.org
Conference matters: confteam@river.org
Press inquiries press@river.org
Unsure of who to contact? Send your message to:
support08@river.org