The Society now has a website of its own. Its aims are to:
- Promote the Society and its objectives to the wider world.
- Provide updates to members between Newsletter issues.
- Help people to contact the Society.
- Act as a forum for the discussion of local issues.
- Host electronic mailing-lists for rapid communication.
Most websites are strictly one-way affairs, where the editor or webmaster controls everything that appears. Ours is rather different, as it is designed for audience participation. This means that anyone can write new articles or add comments to existing ones, and all changes appear on the site immediately. We have taken advantage of this feature to create a "Taplow Forum" where people are specifically invited to have their say on any local topic that interests them. Our hope is that this will lead to some interesting discussions that could form the basis for future articles in the Newsletter.
The website is already playing an important role in the creation of the Newsletter: this issue was created by collecting all the articles into a special part of the site, and editing them online before starting the typesetting process. The finished result will also be available on the site and we hope to get the text of many past issues online to form an archive.
Please have a look at the website and tell us what you think. You can do this from any public library if you do not have a computer at home. If you want to add comments or contribute to the Forum you will need a username and password: it takes just a few seconds to register if you already have an e-mail address. Give it a try, and "have your say" in the Forum. Don't worry about messing things up: the site keeps copies of everything, so we can always recover from mistakes.
www.taplowsociety.org.uk
