Auteurs principaux: Catherine Dhaussy
Date de publication: 1999-11-11
Date d'actualization du HTML: 1999-11-18
Langue d'origine: English
Régions: Amérique Latine et les Caraïbes
Sujets: Interfaces utilisateurs
Projets connexes: EMEC
Maison de publication: Conférence Terena
Typo de document: Publications
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Title

The EMEC Methodology (Efficient Management of Multilingual Electronic Conferences): A Step Towards Direct Democracy

Authors & Author Affiliations

• Catherine DHAUSSY: Head Assistant, FUNREDES, 11 rue de Sofia - 75018 - Paris - France
• Daniel PIMIENTA: Head, FUNREDES, BP 2972 - Santo Domingo - Dominican Republic

Abstract

Recent shifts of the Internet towards business call for innovative approaches as far as virtual communities are concerned. New fashionable web conferences often fail in communication aspects; they are too time-consuming: computer accessed information, although nicely organized, cannot replace communication.

This paper claims for an alternative approach focusing more on methodology than software tools. The two main objectives of the methodology are: to decrease the level of the barriers (language, information overload, time, etc.) and to increase the incentive for proactivity.

EMEC, the proposed methodology, allows for a better focus on community themes and respects people's schedules, languages, and cultures.

Keywords

• methodology
• virtual community
• multilingual
• computer-assisted translation
• moderation

Main Text

Diagnostic and Justifications

The mass marketing of the Internet has increased the number of people using e-mail services, a growth which has logically led to a more and more important proportion of new subscribers in existing e-conferences (mailing lists). The majority of these newcomers have not passed through what had, since the beginning, been considered as the appropriate learning steps, and have not been exposed to the very subtle social rules which implicitly or explicitly apply to e-conference communication (Wenger 1998, quoted in Rojo 1999): they have not followed the acculturation process. This has then generated a statistical increase of messages which are inappropriate in the e-conference framework ( "subscribe" or "unsubscribe" commands, discussion of points addressed by the "Frequently Asked Questions", out-of-focus opinions, junk mail, hoax...). Also, the increase of the average posting length is a trend which can easily be noticed --and explicable for the same reasons. Several attempts to reduce the occurrence of those symptoms by moderation have been rejected because of a common and erroneous confusion between moderation and censorship, in the name of freedom of speech and expression. Moreover, the global raise of the number of e-conferences induces a greater number of lists with similar objectives and thus increases the chance for the user to receive several times the same announcement posted in various sites. Finally, the new role of the Internet for business, combined with the older background, has tended to generalize massive posting of messages with advertisement purposes, which are often diffused without any conscience or knowledge of what is allowed and what is not, in terms of posting in e-conferences.

The combination of those factors has produced a less and less acceptable amount of wasted time for subscribers, who need to spend an increasingly large part of their working day only to receive their mail, and to sort out what is not relevant and should be deleted, from what is relevant and should be read --and processed, with the appropriate level of priority. The dramatic reduction of the density of useful information leads to a drop of the attention devoted to the most important messages, which are mixed within the incoming flow, and get diluted in the too high proportion of irrelevant messages; thus a great threat to the efficiency of what remains the main tool of the Internet for professional exchanges. Experts leave specialized thematic conferences, which have been invaded by a large unqualified audience; this phenomenon in turn contributes to a certain loss of the average quality of information exchanged.

Some other observations and issues should be added to the diagnostic:

• many thematic or regional communities (such as the Caribbean, or the European Union) are often blocked by the various languages spoken by their members, a situation which may call for some level of translation [a]
• the recent and fast growing use of online conferences (web-based forums) has not solved the problems linked to participation and pro-activity: the systems often offer an impressive interface, but they require too much from the users, particularly in terms of connection, and regarding information management --since they do not automatically provide notice of incoming mails.
• the growing number of small special interest groups, which have been enjoying free e-mail accounts for years, and more recently free spaces of communication (the so-called "e-groups", see e.g. http://www.egroups.com), might tend to develop new rules, specific to each of these tiny communities, which would have nothing to do with the expected and appropriate behavior in a larger gathering of people, especially if they are professionals; since the phenomenon is rather new, at least in terms of web-based forums and e-mail based conferences, no strong conclusion can be drawn. Nevertheless, it is an interesting point to keep in mind.
• a shift in the very conception of virtual communities: e-conferences used to be considered as a place to meet and discuss topics of shared interest; this view has of course survived, but it has been competing for some years with a new standard: the e-conference would be an activity among many other activities on the Internet (Cashel, quoted in Rojo 1999).

Despite all these impediments, e-confenreces remain one of the most important ingredients of the networks, and certainely the main basic principle of Internet-based collaborative work. It is then vital to find out ways. In order to bring a solution to the set of identified problems, FUNREDES, an NGO dealing with the dissemination of the Internet in the South, has designed a methodology called EMEC --an acronym standing for "Efficient Management of Multilingual Electronic Conferences". This process, applied on the top of moderated distribution lists, and which includes a component of language translation, has been tested since mid-September mainly in the framework of the MISTICA project --the Spanish acronym for "Methodology and Social Impact of Information and Communication Technologies in America".

Description of the EMEC Methodology

General Description

EMEC is a conceptual design the experimentation of which is beginning. The project deals with the creation of a moderated electronic conference system based on list servers with added value elements aiming at removing currently existing inconveniences which restrict participation (namely: information overload, loss of focus, language barriers in multilingual communities).

The EMEC methodology is the organized implementation of a set of multilingual services conceived to help and sustain the communication flow of the e-conference, to reduce the amount of unsolicited incoming information while providing easy retrieval of the original contributions. The central elements of the methodology are, on the one hand, the creation of contribution headers with an information management orientation, and the organized archiving and retrieval of the contributions, on the other hand, a permanent focus on users training, both implicitely and explicitely: an initial education is highly recommended, and an on-going help aiming at developing the user's skills is provided through the moderation for all members, and directly on an individual level. All of these elements are available in each of the languages supported by a given virtual community, according to a separation of the e-conferences based on language criteria, and a management led in a strictly parallel way (each of the e-conference is provided with the same content, the only difference lying in the language in use). An EMEC management team with a structure answering efficiency is the process part of the methodology.

Methodological Devices and Requirements

Two types of devices are considered: firstly, those which allow greater focus and management of information overload, secondly, those which promote and expand community communication. They are, of course, closely linked in the project.

Moderation and systematic animation, delivery through e-mail of structured summaries compatible with information management standards and associated with some web file-system for voluntary and easy retrieval are the main ingredients from the focus point of view. Translation of messages, support for users, and training to reinforce network culture are the basis of the facilitating component.

In terms of human resources, the team should be composed of at least five people, corresponding to the following roles:

• Coordinator, moderator, animator
• Information officer, responsible for documents and content
• Translator
• Technical assistant for administration of Internet node and its applications
• Web designer

Basic Principles

According to what has been previously stated, EMEC is a methodology designed for the management of electronic conferences, which has the particularity of uniting the classic electronic mail with the resources of an associate web site. How does it work at the operative level? Three main axes may be identified indeed:

• the moderation sends to the regular e-conference a message with the presentation of the original posting (a brief document with the key data of the message and a summary of its content, along with a web reference linking to the page where the original message is available)
• the Web design team uploads this message (the original one; the presentation sent to the list is automatically archived through an application, such as Hypermail) on an associated web page, according to an appropriate classification
• the translation: each message is translated into various other languages, so that it is available, e.g. (from now on, let us take the example of the MISTICA project) in Spanish, Portuguese, French and English; this applies both to the presentation e-mail and to the integral message, with some difference in the refinement of the translation.

Innovations

Reading the description so far, one may wonder what is really new for users of an already moderated list. It then seems important to ask what EMEC changes from the user's point of view.

On the Level of Incoming Mail

• instead of a whole message, a very brief informative e-mail is received by the members of the community;
• to read the integral message (in the original language or translated), the user has to go to the web page whose URL is indicated in the e-mail (by clicking on the URL)
• all the messages are received in a single language (the preferred language, according to the choice made beforehand by each user --of course, one may choose to receive several versions of the message)

On the Level of Outgoing Mail

• according to each one's linguistic preferences and abilities, it is possible to write in Spanish, Portuguese, French or English
• in order to make the automatic translation program work efficiently, it is necessary to respect certain writing rules

On the Archives Level

• for the e-mail that is distributed on the list, there is a classic storage through any program which does it (e.g. Hypermail). These archives are organized according to authors, dates or topics
• the original messages are archived by categories, with options allowing to perform an advanced search

On the Community Chart and on the Level of Individual Commitment

Due to these novelties, EMEC introduces the rights and duties of the members of the virtual community:

Rights:

• to write in one's own language
• to have one's message diffused without having been translated [b]
• to read in one's own language
• to have a minimum load of messages
• to save time in the administration of one's e-mail
• to have well organized files on the web

Duties:

• to get used to the context
• to respect writing rules
• to go to a web page to read an integral message

Push/Pull

It has become quite common to mix e-mail push and web-based pull in the management of virtual communities: many e-conferences provide their users with both an information flow through regular e-mail, and the archives of the list, the "institutional memory of the community", on the Web. However the articulation between the two supports is quite original in the EMEC methodology, and the information they provide, to a certain extent, differs from existing models.

The message sent through a list server to all the members of the virtual community contains three main parts:

• Raw Information About the Message:
  • author (first name, last name, e-mail address)
  • title (may be edited during moderation; in the case of a multi-thematic e-conference, the first word indicates the topic)
  • date sent and time (with time zone specification)
  • language of the original message
  • size of the original message (if received in the language of the list) or of the translated original message
  • keywords (2 to 5, chosen in a list made and maintained by the EMEC team)
• A Synthesis of the Original Message: an abstract, or the integral message if very short
• The Web References (URL) of the original message or its translation

Notes:
1: in case of forwarded messages, the first and the last senders are mentioned
2: the use of the carbon copy (CC:) field is mentioned

The website associated with the mailing list, and working in the EMEC context, may be divided into four parts:

• miscellaneous information about the given electronic conference and virtual community
• information about the EMEC methodology: presentation of the project, FAQ, writing guidelines in order to facilitate automated translation, etc.
• the list archives: both the messages sent to the list and the integral texts of the postings (sent to the list in form of documentary record and synthesis) are on the Web, just as the files transmitted as attachments. In addition to the directory that contains all the messages that go through the list, and which can be organized by authors, dates or titles, the site also offers an area where the integral messages are archived, according to a five level classification, which has been especially elaborated for the project [c]
• a search area, which offers the possibility to find messages by words or sentences, and also to perform an advanced search, e.g. by field

Translation

In addition to its methodological part EMEC provides a more "technical" service: translation. For both time and budget reasons, it is impossible to have human translators throughout the process. Some practical decisions have then been taken, the most important of them being the use of a computer assisted translation program, such as Systran or Globalink.

For non-specialist people, automatic translation is an endless source of jokes and laughs; it is indeed true to think that if we pick up any message in any e-conference, the final text may be very hard to understand. But EMEC does not use the automatic translation alone, and the translated texts do not all have the same purposes.

Let us first talk about the key data and abstract. This is the message sent in one language [d] to the members of the list, it has to be clear, and easy to understand for everyone. Since the quantity of data that need to be available in various languages is not very important, the whole translation is made by a human team, who elaborate an error free text, as far as language is concerned, and adapted to the target audience as far as the possible cultural elements are concerned.

The situation is quite different for the whole text, the original note sent to the moderation, which will be located on the website. It may be very long --and the people who will read it, since they are the ones interested in the topic, will have some idea about the background. In this case, the message is pre-processed, i.e. it is roughly re-written according to a set of rules, which allows the program to perform better, hence to give an understandable result. People are then encouraged to see the automatic translation not as a literary one, but as a tool which may help them to have a broad idea of the content. Moreover, it is recommended to anyone with a basic knowledge of the original language to use the original message as a tool helping the understanding of the automatically translated text.

The Human Team Behind the Project

The EMEC methodology is supposed to be transparent for its users --that is even one of the strongest requirements indeed: the main part of the charge is supported by professionals, which allow the members of the e-conference to concentrate on the very content, and to stop bothering about what does not belong to content itself. However, a quite heavy logistics supports the effort. Several key positions may be identified:

• Animation of the Conference: the debates are led by a person who initiates and facilitates the discussions, helps keeping the focus, manages delicate situations, is involved in training, assists the moderation process, etc.
• Moderation of the Conference: a quite common feature, actually: a person receives all the messages sent to the mailing list, and then decides whether or not to transmit them to the members. This often implies some editing; direct correspondence with the author may also be used in some occasions.
• Information Management: creation and storage of the messages sent to the list (key data, abstract, URL).
• Translation: one or several persons (one translator by translation flow is recommended) translate all the texts, with the help of an automatic translation program.
• Integrating E-mail / Website: the original messages, as well as the whole list archives, can be found on this associated web page; one person is in charge of putting both types of documents on the website. The same person (it might also be another one) is also responsible or works as an assistant for the maintenance of the site and of the related applications (database, e.g.) and resources.

First Results

The EMEC methodology is in its starting phase in the MISTICA framework. It is then a bit early to draw conclusions about it. Nevertheless, some broad trends may be identified:

• few feedback and reactions; among these few messages, the great majority focused on the translation part, not on the methodology. An evaluation is planned after 3 months of working (publication of results planned at the end of January 2000)
• a growing number of contributions in the whole range of the four supported languages: people feel more and more free to post in any language.
• however, this tendency concerns forwarded messages rather than messages from the senders themselves; after six months of use of Spanish in the e-conference, a relatively small amount of people have chosen to receive messages in another language, and some of them even keep writing in a language which is not the one in which they are the most fluent. This should be different in a virtual community in which EMEC is introduced at once, from the very beginning; also, a distinct result should be observed in a community where there is no strong linguistic majority.
• a growing number of rejected messages, although we are not sure whether this is mainly due to the growing number of subscribers (this is a normal consequence which can be noticed in all the conferences in expansion), to the stricter rules which now apply to the animation / moderation of the e-conference, or to the fact that people, knowing that the EMEC team will process the message in an appropriate way, do not pay much attention to what they send
• a very poor respect of the set of recommendations concerning the way to write messages in order to help the automatic translation program to work better. Once again, the EMEC team does the job: all the messages are pre-processed, in order the result of the automatic translation to be understandable; from this point of view, people seem to welcome their new rights, but not to fulfill their new duties.

These first trends make the authors even more convinced of the necessity for the users to be continually trained on a methodological level.

Conclusion

The experiments conducted to design appropriate methodology for multilingual virtual communities started a long time ago as a will to create an environment of fluid and efficient performance for online groups from various backgrounds, an environment which would protect the members from information overload, and, through the panoply of methodological devices, help to develop the proactivity within the community. What is at stake in fact goes much beyond good management and translation: allowing everyone to take part in the debates, EMEC has to do with the building blocks of the direct and participative democracy that the Internet should contribute to make emerge.

[a] In this case, the option of a common lingua franca is not recommended: this may allow basic communication between the members of a list, but the problems are numerous:

people who are not totally fluent in that language spend more time writing, and usually with a poorer result

people who are fluent or for whom it is a mother tongue would tend to have some monopoly on the exchanges, just because they understand better, react quicker, and have the appropriate cultural background

selecting a common language is a tricky decision, for political and cultural reasons

to be multilingual has its limits! It is not reasonable to think that an average person would fluently speak more than three or four different languages. Now, depending on the region, there are more than three or four linguae francae; since the Internet has an international diffusion, it is more and more necessary to be able to have real exchanges (not only a mere communication based on a limited vocabulary and a pidginlike syntax) with virtually everyone on the planet.
[b] One may consider that what (s)he wants to say can make sense in one sole language (puns, humour, cultural references...), and would be distorted by a translation; indicating it in his/her original message, (s)he will not be translated.
[c] The EMEC classification is divided into five main categories:

C1: the contributions rejected for ethical considerations; these contributions are not stored. The administration messages are included in this category.

C2: the contributions rejected because they do not respect the rules (e.g., messages out of focus), but which are kept on the website for one month (to prevent the censorship argument)

C3: the contributions limited in time (e.g., advertisement for a conference)

C4 (the main one): all the other messages that are stored

C5 (this is an optional category): outstanding contributions, allowing an institutional memory of the virtual community to be progressively built.
[d] In order not to overload people with texts they will not understand, EMEC divides the normal list into as many lists as there are languages in use, then send strictly the same content to all the lists, in one given language.

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to express their warmest thanks to enda-caribe, who was our first partner in the definition of the EMEC project; to the IDRC (International Development Research Center) and the FPH (Fondation Charles Léopold Mayer pour le Progrès de l'Homme) who have financed the MISTICA project, which offered us the first framework to put our methodology into practice. We are also grateful to the whole EMEC team for their dedication.

References

[1] J. Cashel, The Emergence of Collaborative Communities, Online Community Report, http://www.forumone.com/
[2] Funredes website: http://funredes.org/english
[3] Funredes and enda-caribe, EMEC original project (documented in 1997): http://funredes.org/funredes/emec.htm
[4] Funredes, MISTICA project: http://funredes.org/mistica
(- EMEC for MISTICA: http://funredes.org/mistica/english/emec/method_emec/index.html
- Writing rules: http://funredes.org/mistica/english/emec/method_emec/presentation.html#anexo1)
[5] Hypermail reference page: http://www.eit.com/software/hypermail/hypermail.html
[6] A. Rojo, Visión panorámica sobre conferencia electrónica, 1999, http://funredes.org/mistica/castellano/emec/estudio/
[7] E. Wenger, Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity, Cambridge University Press, 1998

Vitae

• Catherine Dhaussy: After some projects linked to virtual communities, and a graduate research on the topic, Catherine Dhaussy entered the NGO Funredes (the "Networks and Development Foundation") two years ago. When the EMEC project was launched, she became responsible for the coordination.
• Daniel Pimienta: Head of the NGO Funredes since 1988, Daniel Pimienta had previously worked for 12 years as a System Architect and Planner (France and the USA). Settled in the Dominican Republic for 12 years, he has since then devoted his work to helping development through the use of Information and Communication Technologies.

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Association Réseaux et Développement http://www.funredes.org/francais/publicaciones/index.php3/docid/356/ Créé 1999-11-11 - Actualisée le 1999-11-18 Copyright © 1999 FUNREDES