Chris Zissiadis, Woglife
Woglife contains articles and discussion on social, political, humorous and current affairs issues, in a format which attracts a younger audience and gives them the opportunity to express views that may not otherwise find a outlet or an appropriate forum. The site came into being in July 2000 and now delivers some 450,000 page views per month to over 3,500 regular users. The creators of WogLife were responding to their perception that while multicultural Australia had plenty to say, existing communities tended to keep discussions and concerns to within their own ethnic or cultural group. For the older generation this remains largely due to the language barrier, however a problematic insularity is clearly being handed down to the younger members of the wog community.
The various multicultural media are committed to delivering newspaper, television and radio content in the preferred language of the target community. However, while this has the effect of keeping the languages and cultures alive, it also limits the range of discussion themes to the concerns of the particular ethnic group, and precludes interaction and cross-fertilisation between groups.The internet provides this space for interaction and provides it in a way which is in principle open to anyone.
WogLife makes no use of bandwidth-clogging plug-ins and is presented in clean, frameless HTML which loads quickly even using a years-old modem. Anyone can write and article or post a response, and respondents are free to decide whether they wish to provide a name or email address. Needless to say, abusive or threatening posts are deleted immediately by the Editor and the Site Developer, who monitor the site at regular intervals throughout the day. The Site Developer's presentation today will give a brief history of WogLife's online community building, give a demonstration of a typical interaction with the site, describe the kinds of online and offline community interactions to which the WogLife has given rise, and point to some future directions for the group - as well as giving some indication of what a "wog community" might be.