Reprinted with permission, Cat Fanciers' Almanac, February 1996
In today's world of "surfing the net" and exploring "cyberspace," it was inevitable some of our more innovative cat fanciers would find a way to merge this favorite computer pastime with their other favorite pastime -- the fancy itself. Technology has a way of inserting itself into some of the most unexpected niches and in 1993 CFA found itself thrust into cyberspace.
Have pod creatures taken over Central Office? Not exactly. In 1993, the CFA Board accepted its first online (electronically based) CFA cat club. Since that time, CFA's presence online has slowly expanded, but the pace is beginning to quicken. In October of 1994, a second online CFA club was accepted by the Board. Here is a quick look at the two online clubs and just what they mean to CFA and CFA's future.
The first online club was based on CompuServe, a commercial online service. The Internet was not supported by as much user-friendly software in 1993 as it is today, so CompuServe seemed the optimum first home for Online Feline Fanciers, or /OFF as it's known to its members. Actually, CompuServe is where most of the founding members of /OFF met each other. According to /OFF President Lorraine Shelton, the founding members met in the Petsforum of CompuServe and created their own section there called Cat Breeders' World to facilitate discussion of issues of interest to fellow fanciers. After a particularly extensive online discussion of CFA proposed amendments, they realized they could "serve CFA by encouraging the discussion of CFA issues and [by] representing CFA on the Information Superhighway." They applied for CFA approval as a club a short time afterward.
The objectives of /OFF are fourfold:
These are not dissimilar from any other cat club in CFA. The most significant differences, though, between /OFF and other clubs are that the club is not show-producing, the membership is made up of people across a very large geographic area (i.e., the entire country), and there is a common thread of communication through each and every stated objective.
To facilitate the objective of communication, /OFF has created an excellent homepage on the WWW. Netsurfers can check it out at http://www.clock.org/off/ and see what they have to offer. What you'll find is a collection of articles on topics concerning showing, scoring, titles, and genetics and husbandry, links to listings of upcoming shows, summaries of previous online conferences, and club documents including constitution and bylaws. There is also a link to the CFA homepage described in last month's Almanac. Their homepage is continually being updated as new information is added or linked in. This homepage puts a fine face on the fancy and is available for viewing to anyone in the world with Internet access.
During the spring of 1995, several subscribers and former subscribers of the fanciers mail list (to be reviewed in an upcoming article) decided they wanted to have an Internet-based CFA cat club. While /OFF was already online for over two years, it was restricted to CompuServe subscribers and thus participation was unavailable to those not subscribing to CompuServe.. A number of other dependable online services had sprung up all over the country and the time was ripe for this electronic arena to be exploited. The group petitioned the Board in October for acceptance as a CFA club to be known as the Internet Cat Club, or ICC for short. A few days before the Board meeting, /OFF expanded its access and membership basis to the Internet as a whole, but this had no effect on the application of ICC which was accepted as a CFA club by the Board. Now there were two online clubs.
ICC was formed with some interesting differences to /OFF. First, they were to be a show-producing club (within five years of acceptance by CFA). They were also formed to support animal welfare and rescue groups by providing "rapid access to pertinent information and publicity," to disseminate information on animal rights activities and proposed restrictive legislation, to facilitate breeder access to information on a variety of relevant feline health and husbandry topics, and to facilitate rapid dissemination of information as a public service for disaster response or "other issues that directly or indirectly affect members of the fancy." Again, the communication thread was common to all of the club's objectives.
ICC has also constructed a homepage which, not surprisingly, features some of the same types of information as that of /OFF. There are links to other homepages, including CFA's, articles of general interest to breeders and fanciers, copies of the club's constitution and bylaws (including their code of ethics), as well as links to information consistent with the clubs unique objectives.
So what does the online basis of these two clubs mean to its members and to CFA? One clear advantage was stated by /OFF member Gina Wiley. "As today's society becomes more high-tech, so are some of CFA's cat fanciers. [We] recognize the time contraints we have in attending monthly club meetings at a certain time and place." She adds, "Online meetings can be attended in your bathrobe and slippers since no one really knows what you look like -- just how you type!" In addition, members who live in an area where there is no other club can participate, and members can "attend" meetings as their own schedules permit; the Internet is open 24 hours a day. There is also a virtue in the time delay. In regular club meetings members often make statements they later wish they'd worded differently or more clearly. Since online "meetings" are virtually continuous, one can contemplate a topic under discussion for several minutes or hours, then sit down at a keyboard and type, edit, retype, and completely wordsmith a thought or idea before sharing it with other club members. The most tongue-tied club members can suddenly become silver-tongued (silver-fingered?) orators in an online environment.
So what are the disadvantages of meeting online? So far this sounds like all sugar plums and roses. Some of them have already been mentioned. As Gina Wiley pointed out, no one really knows what you look like. Since members are likely to live far apart, they have often never met face-to-face and have no clue what many other members even look like. This can, of course, be an advantage also in that you are likely to be judged by what you have to say and how you say it, rather than by appearance or the sound of your voice or any of the myriad of factors that go into our assessment of another person we've met. Another limitation is the removal of the pure social element of club meetings and its replacement with a "virtual" social element. Since you are assessed by what and how you write, if your writing or typing skills are poor, your social standing in an online club may suffer as well. While this may seem unfair, it's immediately understandable as this is virtually the only method of communication that exists for the club members. While they can always just pick up the phone and call, that adds little advantage and may add considerable expense to their club environment.
So what's being gained in an online club? A wide variety of individuals from many backgrounds and cultures are possible in an online forum. Most clubs are limited to the fanciers who live in their immediate vicinity. Online clubs are limited only to the expanse of the Internet...and the Internet covers much of the globe and is expanding at the rate of about 1000 additional computer networks per month. Information that used to be disseminated by many phone calls are now sent via a single message...and that message is not changed in the repeating as verbal messages usually are. Whether or not this means of conducting club business is better than traditional methods will have to be judged by the extent to which online club business continues to grow.
LOGOUT: Those Magnificent Cats at Panther's Cave This is a delightful look at the numerous homepages of feline owners, and many of these provide links to the multitude of feline sites around the world.