The purpose of this meeting was to discuss how the NDT newsgroup can be improved. Suggested changes to the Newsgroup charter for improvement were explored, however no changes can be made at such a meeting. Charter changes can only be made through formal Usenet procedures: Request for Discussion and Call for Votes. Furthermore, the attendees (including myself) do not speak for the NDT Newsgroup readers as a whole. We are interested in the continued success of this newsgroup and just happen to have the good fortune of being able to meet as a group in Seattle. It is my hope that this report of the NDT Newsgroup meeting in Seattle will stimulate further suggestions from all the newsgroup's readers (you). You may e-mail me privately with suggestions that I will later summarize in a post or you can just post it on the newsgroup.

The following report is merely my impression of the discussion and apologize if I misrepresent the attendees' opinion. The meeting closely followed what was outlined in the suggested agenda posted by me on Oct. 9, 1996:

1. How is the NDT Newsgroup going to co-exist with ASNT's "NDT Forum" which has just come online and is linked to Quality Magazine's web site?

Actually, some of this question was answered in the ASNT Information & Analysis committee (IAC) meeting held on Oct. 15, 1996. The IAC is responsible for ASNT's web page. The NDT Forum on Quality Magazine's homepage is a temporary collaborative project with ASNT, who plans to shortly launch a similar forum (mostly for ASNT members only) based on ASNT's web page. The proposed name of ASNT's forum is "ASNTnet". I attended the IAC meeting to find out the purpose and function of the proposed ASNTnet and how it might have a synergistic relationship with the NDT Newsgroup. To make a long story shorter, I was appointed to head up a task force to review the current plans for ASNTnet.

Next day, at the Newsgroup meeting, I explained my IAC appointment and shared some of my thoughts on how ASNTnet might become synergistic with the NDT newsgroup. I suggested that ASNT give it's members on ASNTnet the option of either submitting their messsage just among ASNTnet or both ASNTnet and the NDT Newsgroup. Frankly, nearly all of the attendees stronly rejected that suggestion (mine). Instead there was agreement that ASNT should provide a hyperlink on their homepage to the NDT Newsgroup that is completely separate from ASNTnet. Furthermore, it was felt that the function and purpose of ASNTnet should be to facilitate the discussion of ASNT specific topics and that ASNT should encourage its members to use the NDT newsgroup to post and reply to NDT questions that have a broader scope. The reasons were that the NDT Newsgroup is well-established, widely read, and more accessible (because of the e-mail gateway) than the proposed web based ASNTnet.

2. Should we reconsider the NDT Newsgroup position on advertising?

The NDT Newsgroup charter does not permit any advertisement. However, it seems that the Newsgroup is tolerant of certain kinds of advertisement like announcements of book, conferences, and commercial NDT web sites. In place of modifying the NDT newsgroup charter (a long process), it was agreed that I should post monthly guidelines on acceptable advertising. These guidelines would be agreed upon by a group of advisors (e-mail me if you want to become one). Furthermore, these guidelines could include tips on how to craft good questions and responses.

3. Should we encourage people to reply more to the Newsgroup than by private e-mail?

In the early days of the Newsgroup, I had encouraged everyone to respond to questions privately and have the person who posted the question also post a summary of responses. This was suggested to reduce traffic but apparently there have been very few summaries. The attendees of the Newsgroup meeting indicated that the real reason very few people are posting responses may be because of the "autoreply" of their specific newsreaders and e-mail software is set to the author and not to the newsgroup. It was suggested that something could be done for the SwRI gateway so that the autoreply would be to the newsgroup by default. I will check with Dr. Pickens on this but I think I've already asked him about it and the problem is how the individual's software is configured. It was suggested that I also include in the monthly posting a reminder of setting the autoreply in the software correctly.

4. How can we publish the existence of the NDT Newsgroup?

It was suggested that we publish more via the printed media and that excerpts from the Newgroup threads be given as an example of the type of discussion taken place. We also need to ask all NDT web pages to make a hyperlink to the NDT Newsgroup.

5. Is there a need to moderate (filter, screen, censor, ..etc.) the Newsgroup?

I have become concerned recently about some responses that have strayed way off the NDT topic to the point of invoking racial slurs. I have restrained myself from stating that a topic has gone to far because I don't want to aggravate the situation, which is the same reason I advise others not to respond. However, I proposed to the NDT Newsgroup meeting attendees that I might start asking that certain topics not be discussed further. I would only post such a request after getting some private opinions from my advisors. Perhaps an informal "NDT Newsgroup Guidelines Committee" could be set up. If you want to be on such a committee, e-mail me. I would look towards this committee for advice but not necessarily permission. I feel it is important to attempt to stop bad topics as soon as possible.

6. Is there anything else that needs to be modified in our charter?

Generally it was expressed that a guideline should be developed rather than change our charter. This guideline could take the form of a monthly FAQ posting. This would be more of an "administrative" FAQ than a technical one.

Overall, I really enjoyed the meeting and perhaps we should begin to think about meeting in the "real world" more often. I don't plan to attend any major conferences for at least six more months. However, I hope that some of you can arrange similar NDT Newsgroup meetings at upcoming conferences. Perhaps the next meeting will also have an IRC link for those who can't physically be there.