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In article <4318@nttmhs.ntt.JP>, yam@nttmhs.ntt.jp (Toshihiko YAMAKAMI) says:
>
> What types of high level group communication
>protocols do we use in group activities?

Just thinking off the top of my hat 8-)

1.  Some of my communications are 'informational'.  I don't expect any reply,
and I don't care if they are dealt with or not.

2.  Some are 'requests'.  "Can I have $xxx to buy a widget?"  I'd really
prefer a yes or not answer within a particular time frame, with the possibility
of a 'yes, if...' and 'no, but...' answers, to.

3.  Some are 'responses to requests'.

4.  Some are 'prposals', as in "I think we should do Z."  I want to sesome disc
ussion of the merits of Z, followed by some determination of Yes, let's
do Z or No, let's not do Z within some fixed amount of time, with Table Z
as another possible option.

5.  With 4 comes the ugly spectre of Amendments, Discussions, Points
of Order, voting, and so on.

6.  Some are 'arguments'.  Joe says let's do Z, and I say "No, because"
or "Yes, because".  At some point, Janet says, "Lee's 'No, bacause' is invalid
because...", and most people agree with her.

That's all I can think of right now.

> Is it better to realize such protocols in communication systems?
> Ot is it hard to pick up such high level communiction primitives?


I think it is worth trying.  As you say earlier, most of our current
email systems do not distinguish among the many types of messages that
get passed.  It seems reasonable to try adding structure.  For example,
if I send someone a 'request', it should include a Reply By: field,
and the underlying software could enforce it by forcing the recipient
to reply by that time or else ...

Or else what?  I dunno.  How about (a) their boss gets a weekly report of
the number of reply deadlines they missed, (b) their terminal locks up
until they reply, (c) the answer is 'yes'?
>

In article <90005.104713UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>In article <4318@nttmhs.ntt.JP>, yam@nttmhs.ntt.jp (Toshihiko YAMAKAMI) says:
>>
>> What types of high level group communication
>>protocols do we use in group activities?
>
>Just thinking off the top of my hat 8-)
>
>1.  Some of my communications are 'informational'.ply,
>
>2.  Some are 'requests'.
>
>3.  Some are 'responses to requests'.
>
>4.  Some are 'proposals'.
>
>6.  Some are 'arguments'.
>
>> Is it better to realize such protocols in communication systems?
>> Ot is it hard to pick up such high level communiction primitives?
>

There are more ... how about 'promises' ("the check is in the mail ...")
'reminders' ("specification due ...") and probably more.

Fernando Flores did some work with Terry Winograd of Stanford in the
early Eighties on this taxonomy. (Does anyone have a good citation
for this stuff, i.e., generally available outside university libraries
and written in some variant of English?)

[I did some work with Fernando in the mid-Eighties, when he maintained
that a rather rigid taxonomy (only four categories) was sufficient for
*all* communication. (This is the basis of the 'Coordinator', one of
the first groupware packages.)]

I like the idea of having the communications system understand an
expandable set of primitives -- everything gets neatly packaged, and
I can restrict my viewing to only 'interesting' sets of primitives.  If
you want to argue about who gets the desk next to the women's room, I
can skip the entire thread until it gets to the 'everybody will move
two offices to the left" part.
-- 
Elliott Frank      ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00     (408) 746-6384
               or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00

[the above opinions are strictly mine, if anyone's.]
[the above signature may or may not be repeated, depending upon some
inscrutable property of the mailer-of-the-week.]

In article <d5Vc02Ns7b8k01@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com> esf00@amdahl.uts.amdahl.com (Elliott S. Frank) writes:
>In article <90005.104713UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>>In article <4318@nttmhs.ntt.JP>, yam@nttmhs.ntt.jp (Toshihiko YAMAKAMI) says:
>>> What types of high level group communication
>>>protocols do we use in group activities?

>Fernando Flores did some work with Terry Winograd of Stanford in the
>early Eighties on this taxonomy. (Does anyone have a good citation
>for this stuff, i.e., generally available outside university libraries
>and written in some variant of English?)

"Understanding Computers and Cognition; A New Foundation for Design",
by Terry Winograd and Fernando Flores, published by Addison-Wesley. I have
a paperback copy, (c) 1986, 1987 by Ablex Publishing. I got it at Rice's
Campus Bookstore, but have seen it at well-stocked technical bookstores.

>[I did some work with Fernando in the mid-Eighties, when he maintained
>that a rather rigid taxonomy (only four categories) was sufficient for
>*all* communication. (This is the basis of the 'Coordinator', one of
>the first groupware packages.)]

I find a taxonomy of "illocutionary acts" attributed to John Searle on
pages 58-59 with five categories: Assertives, Directives, Commissives,
Expressives, and Declarations. This comes from:

Searle, John R. A taxonomy of illocutionary acts, in K. Gunderson (Ed.),
    Language, Mind and Knowledge, Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota, 1975,
    344-369. Reprinted in:
Searle, John R., Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech
    Acts, Cambridge: Cambridge Univ., 1979.

>Elliott Frank      ...!{hplabs,ames,sun}!amdahl!esf00     (408) 746-6384
>               or ....!{bnrmtv,drivax,hoptoad}!amdahl!esf00

Doug Monk (bro@rice.edu)

Disclaimer: These views are mine, not necessarily my organization's.

In article <4150@brazos.Rice.edu> bro@titan.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) writes:
>
>I find a taxonomy of "illocutionary acts" attributed to John Searle on
>pages 58-59 with five categories: Assertives, Directives, Commissives,
>Expressives, and Declarations

This means of classifying "illocutionary acts" is typically called
speech-act theory.  The gist of it is that an utterance is classified
according to its purpose.  Utterances can be to inform, to direct, to
request, and so forth.  We used this sort of notion for taxonimizing
message types in the Information Lens.

cheers,
Ken Grant

Internet: kgrant%oracle.com@apple.com 
	  kgrant@oracle.com (if your mailer groks MX records)
UUCP:     ...{hplabs,apple,uunet}!oracle!kgrant

In article <1990Jan6.211045.12857@oracle.com>, kgrant@.com (Ken Grant) says:
>
>In article <4150@brazos.Rice.edu> bro@titan.rice.edu (Douglas Monk) writes:
>>
>This means of classifying "illocutionary acts" is typically called
>speech-act theory.  The gist of it is that an utterance is classified
>according to its purpose.  Utterances can be to inform, to direct, to
>request, and so forth.  We used this sort of notion for taxonimizing
>message types in the Information Lens.
>

Would someone offer a summary of the Information Lens, and perhaps a
good reference or two?  Thanks.

                               lee

In article <90007.095243UH2@PSUVM.BITNET> UH2@PSUVM.BITNET (Lee Sailer) writes:
>
>Would someone offer a summary of the Information Lens, and perhaps a
>good reference or two?  Thanks.
>
>                               lee

This will be a pretty terse summary (I'm busy today) - I can
supply more details later if there is interest.

The Information Lens project at MIT started from the realization that
members of mature electronic mail communities often suffer from
information overload.  It is easy to join a few distribution lists and
be overwhelmed by the mail traffic.  We thought it would be nice if your mail
system could help you by sorting, prioritizing, and otherwise
processing your mail.

In I.Lens messages are actually instantiated objects with a type.
A message type inherits attributes and so on from its ancestors.  The
messages are presented to the user (and mail transport) as
semi-structured text.  At the root of the message tree there is the
type Message, which has fields/attributes such as To, From, Subject,
and so forth.  A specialized message type, such as Meeting
Announcement, inherits the standard header fields from Message, some
fields from Announcement (such as an Expiration Date), and then adds
fields for things like Meeting Time, Meeting Place, and so on.
A user can customize default and alternative values for each field,
and message construction is facilitated through the use of a 
template-oriented message editor.  Users can also create new message
types to facilitate their work.  Thus, a special flavor of Meeting
Announcement is the Lens Group Meeting Announcement, which has
suitable defaults for the where/when/what part of the Meeting Announcement.

On the receiving end, users are able to construct rules which process
their mail based on type, values of attributes, and so forth.
Messages from "the outside world" can always be classified as being of
type Message, and may be more finely classified if the user's rules so
specify.  The action part of the rule may specify that the message be
filed (into a hierarchical folder scheme), deleted, or even run an
arbitrary procedure.

By using their own message types and rules a group can create custom
applications.  For example, a scheduling application has a few special
message types, and some special rule processing to allow access to the
user's on-line calender. The second article referenced below speaks to
this notion.

Finally, the mail system allows messages to be marked as public (e.g.
I don't care who reads this).  Users can provide rules to the mail
service expressing their interests, and the system uses these rules to
find public messages that the user has not seen and which they've
expressed an interest in.

The following pair of articles are a good place to start, and should
be reasonably easy to get yer hands on:

 Malone, T.W., Grant, K.R., Turbak, F.A., Brobst, S.A., and Cohen, M.D.  
  Intelligent information sharing systems, Communications of the ACM, 1987, 30,
  390-402.

 Malone, T.W., Grant, K.R., Lai, K.Y., Rao, R. and Rosenblitt, D.A.
  Semi-structured messages are surprisingly useful for computer supported 
  coordination, ACM Transactions on Office Information Systems, 5, 115-131.
  (Reprinted in I. Greif (Ed.), Computer Supported Cooperative Work, Los Altos,
  CA: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, 1988).

cheers,
kg
Internet: kgrant%oracle.com@apple.com 
	  kgrant@oracle.com (if your mailer groks MX records)
UUCP:     ...{hplabs,apple,uunet}!oracle!kgrant
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