Savoir faire developed for
increasing the depth of knowledge fields and friendliness on our web
sites for the period 2001 to 2002
by John D. Hughes, Anita
Hughes, Julian Bamford, Evelin Halls, Amber Svensson and Pennie
White.
7 July 2002
Our teachers and webmasters
have developed much savoir faire regarding web sites this year.
Our
major web masters are Evelin Halls, Pennie White and Julian Bamford.
We have another three webmasters in full training of our style of
operations: Leanne Eames, Helen Appleyard and Kamfatt Lin.
In
the case of our flagship publication Buddha Dhyana Dana Review, we
know how to increase the depth of knowledge fields we present to our
readers in our publications.
In the case of the Brooking
Street Bugle, we know how to increase the very human approach of the
publication.
Learning to maintain control and focus on these
two qualities has been important for our teams who provide our
communication from our web sites. We understand the fact better that
Internet delivery does not have the economic limitation on space of
paper based material.
Now we understand we can illustrate an
article with 200 photographs on our web site, whereas if we were to
print it we would have to limit the range of illustrations because of
physical space and economic considerations.
When selection is
made from an array of photographs, depth of knowledge field is
diminished.
When meeting deadlines and managing behaviours of
our team of webmasters, wordsmiths and researchers, we all need to
stay familiar with internet contemporary thinking and a mix of views
and perspectives from the paper age. We do not operate within the
historic vacuum of severe limitations on the length of text or number
of photographs.
However, we will resist the temptation of
becoming prolix for its own sake. We think more referenced footnotes
are desirable.
There is hard evidence that long, substantial
articles on Internet web site www.aldaily.com (Arts & Letters
Daily) have appeal.
With 220,000 people per month viewing the
site, it has won a 2002 Webby Award, deemed the oscars of the
Internet. The editor of Arts & Letters Daily, Dennis Sutton, is a
teacher, a philosopher of arts at the University of Canterbury in New
Zealand. He believes that many academic writers on the liberal left
are “extremely poor prose stylists”.
Arts &
Letters Daily readers are especially keen to be introduced to long
substantial articles an apparent paradox since many editors have been
trying to win the competition for attention by giving ever shorter
articles.
We understand administrative issues need to be
considered for our researchers to explore and debate current issues
surrounding Australian directors and boards to meet corporate
governance, legal obligations and accountability.
We do not
wish our researchers to come to conclusions that, if implemented,
would be illegal.
To achieve our grand vision of increasing
our depths of our knowledge fields and increasing human warmth on our
Internet publications,
we plan to use higher orders of thinking
more frequently to hold these objectives more and more over the next
decade.
To master higher orders of thinking we need to plan
to draw upon the insights and wisdom offered by Abhidhamma. This is
one of the reasons it will be taught at the Centre every Tuesday for
the next nine years.
We study understand and apply what we
learn about conditional relations to bring about paths for sharing
good and reliable information.
We understand that wholesome
thoughts and actions in our writing practice are reflected in what we
produce.
We want to be ambassadors of skill in means to show
lifetimes of learning are possible.
The benefits of our
recent study and practice of the Abhidhamma are already beginning to
surface.
The more depth we put into our readers’
understanding of Pali key words, the closer we track our
mission.
First of all, the word ‘kusala’ (moral)
means ‘good health’, ‘faultless’, ‘skilful’,
‘productive of happy sentient results’.
In short,
when we write, we must regularly state that we have learnt
‘wholesome’ and ‘faultless’ are both suitable
translations of the word ‘kusala’.
We know that
‘wholesome’ pertains not only to bodily health and material
food but also to mental health, since the mind is in a healthy state
when mental corruptions are absent.
Thus, ‘free from the
pain of mental corruptions’ is a suitable meaning.
For
whenever moral consciousness arises in one’s continuity, the
corruptions that are likened to sores and diseases are absent.
All
the moral states have the property of eliminating the corruptions and
this elimination takes place only for the moment when they belong to
the sensuous type, for a long period when they belong to the lofty
type and for all time when they belong to the Path type.
There
is no royal path to learning.
When persons become practiced in
Abhidhamma they can understand each for himself or herself the causes
and effects that arise and cease in the continuity of beings at every
instant of the day.
Members are not surprised by mundane
occurrences because they understand causes and effects, moment by
moment.
One mundane approach to understanding how
causes
and effects of events can be researched is through selective but
voracious reading of a broad range of subject matter over a period of
time.
‘Faultless’ (anavajja) is a simple and
convenient word, ‘faultless’ can even be used for ‘kusala’
(moral).
To be ‘kusala’, the presentation of
information on our web sites must allow persons to have access to a
more complete data set of events.
For example, our Brooking
Street Bugle shares information about the practice of Buddha Dhamma
with a very human approach.
Our readers like to find out what
we do here and how we do it though the personal accounts in Members’
news, for example. These accounts come from internal e-mails.
Then
when they have read the stories they can view hundreds of photographs
to widen their very human view and hence understanding further.
This
good example on the Brooking Street Bugle is in accordance with our
style of practicality and friendliness.
We operate all our web
sites from a global view point of using English as a second language.
The aim is for all our articles to be provided with a
glossary of English words that may not be so well known. We want to
continue to develop a broader view.
Another example of how we
apply our understanding of conditional relations to broaden our view
can be evidenced by our flagship publication Buddha Dhyana Dana
Review.
The Buddha Dhyana Dana Review has attracted
international readership.
We paraphrase our Buddha Dhyana
Dana Review writing to help our readers’ comprehension.
At
present, we are unable to afford publication and postage in paper
form. We spent $15,000 Australian in the last year of publication
(2000).
As mentioned earlier, the mundane approach to develop
a global view is for persons to read voraciously. By reading many
quality international sources a reader or researcher can come to a
broader view.
We want to thank all the women who have
throughout the years given us much support in library and secretarial
services to help us get to where we are today.
A method used
by some researchers is called triangulation.
The method of
triangulation is to look at a number of different sources and view
points to authenticate the data you are looking at and come to a
balanced and accurate picture of what you are looking at.
Historians
might look at various sources on the one event to formulate an
accurate picture of that event.
To clarify how triangulation
can be used to have a broader view, we give an example of how we
present information in our online journal the Buddha Dhyana Dana
Review Vol. 12 No. 2 at www.bddronline.net.au
We uploaded
information about the Australasian Buddhist Convention to the Buddha
Dhyana Dana Review Vol. 12 No. 2. The information included a
congratulatory letter from the Convenor of the Convention, Dr.
Ranjith Hettiarachi, some of our Buddhist Hour radio scripts
reporting on the event and our recollection of the teachings and
hundreds of colour photographs taken by our Members with our Digital
Cameras.
In due course, we found suitable captions for
photographs.
Our reading audience can use the hypertext method
of triangulation when reading our various types of textual material
uploaded and the many photographs to complete their data set.
This
service is offered in one web site publication without the need to
gather the information from remote sources.
Search engines on
our web sites help readers.
This extensive reporting exercise
was well planned before the two-day event.
We wish to thank
all our Members who were so supportive and understanding of the need
of our key Members’ attendance at this event.
Because the
organisers hold the copyright we took notes of the various speeches.
Why do we strive to provide a broad range of data in the one
publication? The long substantial articles allow for the formation of
knowledge arrays (or mandalas).
With such mandalas, our
Members and readers can be protected by the Sangha, Devas and Devatas
and guided to think globally. If they were to keep broadening their
view with an outcome to resolution sufficient to embrace the whole
universality of things they would come to Abhidhamma.
Change
has taken place for the better.
Another method we use for
research is to form a better viewfinder (a frame of reference) to
view the information available.
Our ability to create
knowledge mandalas (or arrays) brings us to a suitable
viewfinder.
This year information work was central to our 8
web sites.
Information can be used as a noun or a
verb.
Computer programs that transform text and images and
perform work are information verbs with names like Word, Star Office
and Front Page.
Humans produce information as both noun
(speech, writing, gestures) and verb (processing of office work using
their brain).
Electronic proximity will effect our lives,
nation and cultures.
Through our web sites, we will hardly
remember the large number of people we do reach if we ever meet them
again, much as politicians forget the owners of all those hands they
had to shake.
The relationships on Internet will be more
fickle, more transient, and less reliable than even casual
acquaintances.
To encourage our Internet visitors to return to
our web sites, we have decided to concentrate on practicality and
friendliness on one site, Brooking Street Bugle, and scholarship and
professionalism on another, Buddha Dhyana Dana Review.
The
Buddha Dhyana Dana Review is an independent provider.
The
information market place will offer us many more people to contact
and therefore will force us to be more selective in how we structure
our entourage of contacts from the hundreds of millions of
possibilities to give them a sense of belonging to an organisation
that is an independent provider.
Our ability to deal with
technological complexity is no less limited than our ability to
handle an independent providers’ social
complexity.
Speed-reading and use of icons and images can
improve the speed with which humans can handle information.
If
we were to call people continuously, we would feel the stress from
overload.
It is the same with the information market
place.
There is ample evidence that our emotions will pass
through the information market place.
But you never trust a
new acquaintance based on a few phone calls only.
It seems
likely the information market place will “pass” human
relations only partially. (Michael Dertouzos, Director MIT Laboratory
for Computer Science, 1997).
No matter how consumed we become
with our daily pursuits, we are never more than a mental half step
away from a much greater awareness of our existence on this
planet.
Business people are creating new jobs across the
humanities - technology divide.
The poor nations and the poor
people cannot even get started on our web sites. They will tend to
under-use our information resources because they cannot afford
them.
The hardware and software cost a great deal of money in
a poor country. But we believe it will be more affordable soon.
Meanwhile, we must try to give some help to give our poor Buddha
friends an entrée to the information market place.
In
one case, we provided computers but they did not have any technical
persons to get them operating.
We must help ensure that with
respect to this critical gap in the information market place, our
friends are not “left to their own devices”.
As an
independent provider, we do not wish to become too technically
elitist.
If we were to provide CD-ROMs that took half a day to
load on to a machine, we should not be surprised if they were not
used.
Some of our information delivered may be in many colours
but others may be black and white for reading or printing with the
lower end of technological equipment.
We must avoid successive
complexity in delivering information that can only be read by a
handful of very fast computers, for example.
We know how to
measure the horsepower of our motor cars but can we measure the
horsepower of our computer.
Do we know how many horses or
people or other workers it replaces?
We think our best systems
with an ISYS search engine to get information quickly, such as, for
example, when we write radio scripts, replaces about 22 persons using
the old fashioned library search methods in finding subject
matter.
When used for editing, spell checking, word- count,
percentage of passive sentences, and reading difficulty, we believe
it would save about 42 persons doing the same work manually.
We
cannot see any significant improvement becoming available in these
areas. We can do abstracts from our machines provided we have the
material in digital form at a pace that ninety people could do
manually.
Colour is useful to heighten the reality of the
persons and scenes shown.
Our ability to take colour digital
photographs by the hundreds makes our web sites more human and
subject matter can be more clearly taught from this media.
Our
current plans are for the purchase of space or larger sites.
When
we can get larger sites, we will load a series of one-hour videos of
our Teachings through Internet. We will have many good Prajna
Paramitta teachings ready for this purpose.
When we get larger
sites, we will load hundreds of hours of edited audiotaping to our
sites.
We have 20 years of audiotapes of teachings ready for
this purpose.
We own the copyright of far more ‘good
information’ than our current web site capacities can hold.
As
we setup new web sites with greater space available we can make more
of this good information accessible.
We hold the view that our
current position is improving.
How do we measure our
performance of work as output?
Each week we receive detailed
traffic reports from Site Meter at www.sitemeter.com.
Site
Meter online also offers traffic predictions.
The total number
of visits to our web sites, average visits per day, and the traffic
prediction for the coming month are as follows:
Web site: bdcu
Total Visits and date from: 4,521 visitors since 18 January
2001
Average number of visitors per day: 8
Visitor traffic
predicted in the next month: 214
Web site: bdcublessings
Total
Visits and date from: 2,864 since 28 September 2002
Average number
of visitors per day: 5
Visitor traffic predicted in the next
month: 97
Web site: bddronline
Total Visits and date from:
478 since 22 June 2001
Average number of visitors per day:
2
Visitor traffic predicted in the next month: 13
Web site:
bsbonline
Total Visits and date from: 595 since 20 September
2001
Average number of visitors per day: 2
Visitor traffic
predicted in the next month: 44
Web site: buddhamap
Total
Visits and date from: 506 visitors since 15 January 2001
Average
number of visitors per day: 1
Visitor traffic predicted in the
next month: 13
Web site: buddhatext
Total Visits and date
from: 457 since 11 February 2001
Average number of visitors per day: 1
Visitor traffic
predicted in the next month: 19
Web site: buyresolved
Total
Visits and date from: 368 since 6 March 2001
Average number of visitors per day:
1
Visitor traffic predicted in the next month: 31
Web site:
j.d.hughes
Total Visits and date from: 286 since 11 February 2001
Average number of
visitors per day: 1
Visitor traffic predicted in the next month:
32
Aggregate for all sites
Total Visits for all sites
since counters have been put on: 10,147
Average number of visitors
per day for all sites: 20
Aggregate Visitor traffic predicted in
the next month for all sites: 478
So far there have been no
reported onsite parking problems from the extra
traffic!
References
Mon, Dr. Mehm Tin (1995) The
Essence of Buddha Abhidhamma, Mehm Tay Zar Mon, Yangon.
Lane,
Bernard, (2002) ‘Unwebbish website’ wins with substance
over style’, The Age Newspaper, Media, July 4-10 2002, p.
10.
Our Web
Sites:
www.bdcu.org.au
www.bdcublessings.net.au
www.companyontheweb.com/buddhatext
www.companyontheweb.com/buddhamap
www.bddronline.net.au
www.bsbonline.com.au
www.skybusiness.com/j.d.hughes
www.buyresolved.com.au