Sometimes, like with television or IRC, a channel is actually called a channel. Other times, it's called a site, a publication, a world. Some examples:
TheMedium: wiki TheChannel: CommunityWiki
TheMedium: UseNet TheChannel: news:alt.religion.kibology
TheMedium: IRC TheChannel: #wiki on irc.freenode.net
TheMedium: television TheChannel: Channel 57
TheMedium: slashy-scoopy-thingy TheChannel: Kuro5hin
TheMedium: Blog TheChannel: BoingBoing
TheMedium sets a lot of parameters for a community. However, there's choices in TheChannel that have probably more effects than the medium. What options are enabled for TheChannel?
Like with TheMedium, I wanted to reify this idea. It's really just a starter; improvement most welcome.
I like it!
Let me describe something I can't figure out how to say outright.
In the OneBigSoup IntComm:Eventsystem (IntComm
ingDing), I originally used "channels." You sent events to a channel, and others could subscribe to channels.
But then I realized this was more restrictive than I wanted to be. I wanted to just post events, and then let subscribers perform queries over the events, and then receive what they were interested in.
So, for example, someone may request, "Forward me all of Evan's activities." Someone else may request, "Forward me all wiki activities."
Some events fit both queries, some fit one or the other, and some fit one.
So, the concept of the "Channel" I feel is still there- we're picking out an individual stream from TheMedium of the event system.
But I guess you could say that the channel space is N-dimensional, or something.