www.lily.org from March 1996
This is an archival version of www.lily.org from March 1996. The current site is at lilycore.sf.net.
Welcome to The lily Development Group
"Growing Communication Systems
for Internet Communities"
lily is an interactive Computer Mediated Communications (CMC)server. Essentially, this means that it allows people at different places to talk to each other via computer.
lily is a real communication tool. It was, and continues to be, designed and developed - with real people in mind. The initial goal was to improve online, real-time, communication between individuals and groups of people.
lily is flexible. An equally important secondary development goal of the project was to provide flexibility to programmers to experiment, accommodate and adapt lily under a wide variety of methods and formats for communication.
lily is freedom of choice. lily supports both personal and professional communication and it does so without one type interfering with the other.
While the initial goals for the project have been met, the development continues. We're always looking for ways
to improve on its ease of use - of ways to help foster and facilitate interactive communication by and between real people.
Features - Design & Use
You Can Try lily
A Note To Programmers
More Information About lily
A Brief History of lily
Contact Us About lily
lily's Features - Design and Use
By trying to meet the communication needs of a wide variety of users, while maintaining a professional appearance, lily continues to work to bring itself into the world of available production CMCs. There are several features built-in (or that will be built-in) as the core features of lily:
- Both private and public messages are part of the system. Private
messages may be to groups, and public messages are to discussions.
- People may be a member of one, many, or no discussions.
- Messages are the most important activity, therefore sending
messages is the easiest action on the system.
- Signaling and notifications are available for a variety of
actions by people and discussions. Signals and notifications may be
turned off to reduce information overload.
- All messages are authenticated from an account, but that account
is always anonymous.
- Because of this authentication with anonymity, it is possible to
automatically ignore messages and actions from a particular user.
- Communicating with people on the same server is the most
important activity, therefore is the easiest to accomplish,
Communicating with people and discussions on other servers
is possible using the same methods as on one's default server.
- The underlying structure is public, easy to understand,
easy to modify, and supports a wide variety of ways to accept
input and display output. The lily developers encourage extensions to
the code.
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You Can Try lily...
- Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
- The largest publicly accessible lily server runs here. To request an
account, send email to
<lily-admin@rpi.edu>
- NASA Spacelink
- This highly customized lily server helps bring educators, students,
and NASA scientists together for an interactive learning experience.
- Biddeford Internet, Corp.
- Maine's Largest local Internet Service Provider uses lily to facilitate
internal communication amongst is widely scattered staff.
If you are running a lily server somewhere on the Internet and want to be
listed here, please let us know at
<webmaster@lily.org>.
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A Note to Programmers...
The lily project is, in its simplest form, an attempt to create a
real-time, interactive, computer mediated communication tool (usually
abbreviated in most lily documentation as a CMC) which is focused on
interpersonal communication. While there have been many approaches to
this in the past, lily attempts to borrow some key features from each
one, and avoid some of the deficiencies and problems from each:
- Various MOO and MUD systems
- The emphasis has been on role-playing and construction, not
communication.
- The "virtual world" communication is an option in lily, since it
provides a good communication method for many conversations
- MOOs are best for their flexibility
IRC
- Multiple servers are a powerful tool, since worldwide
communication is an extension of lily's goals.
- With this size - information overload is a major concern that
lily actively sought to eliminate.
- User authentication has always been a problem in IRC.
CONNECT and Clover
- These systems provided the examples for efficient and professional
person-to-person and group communication.
- A concentration on a server to support a community (usually
geographically located).
- Limitations on naming and identifying people or groups has always
been a problem.
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More Information About lily...
- What is lily?
- How do you use lily?
- Mailing lists about lily
- How do I administer lily?
- *Programming lily
- lily Clients
- *lily Games
- lily Servers on the Net
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The lily CMC / <webmaster@lily.org> / 2 Mar 1996
This site was recycled
by The Spruce Harbor Group
"Helping to Keep the World Wide Web Free of Hazardous Waste Pages"