The IVU Cyberspace Domain
IVU News 2-97

On 29 March 1997 the IVU launched its own domain on the Internet: ivu.org

This gives us a web page address at: http://www.ivu.org. The General Secretary is now secretary@ivu.org and I have the rather grand address of webmaster@ivu.org. EVU and VUNA have decided to join the domain and have web addresses at http://www.ivu.org/evu and http://www.ivu.org/vuna. This gives IVU a permanent place on the Internet which, I suggest, is a matter of importance for an organisation almost 90 years old. The two e-mail addresses (more if wanted) can be redirected to whoever holds those positions at any time in the future. This should see us through the next 90 years, but who knows what could happen in that time...?

Why does it matter?

My first involvement with IVU was in April 1995 when I was asked to set up the first EVU web pages, followed by IVU pages in November of that year. Before that, I had been involved with the vegetarian movement for many years organising a local group, running a vegetarian guesthouse and maintaining web pages for the UK Vegetarian Society but I knew very little about the IVU. I was aware that the IVU existed and that it organised world congresses every two years, but that was all. It was just a very remote organisation which linked up the leaders of national societies and they always seemed to be rather remote themselves. If that was all I knew, I am sure there must have been millions of ordinary vegetarians around the world who hardly knew that the IVU existed at all.

The internet has already changed all that, and it has the potential to change it much more dramatically in the future. It has put the IVU within reach of everyone with an internet connection, perhaps not the majority yet but within a few years using the internet will be as common as using a telephone today.

Since the IVU web pages went on-line they have been accessed more than 100,000 times, probably by 20,000 people. There has been a steady increase from 1,000 hits per month at the beginning to around 15,000 per month now. A hit is when a page is accessed, so one person reading five pages would generate five hits.

This represents a huge increase in awareness of the IVU, what it is and what it does. The question now is how to use all this awareness further to promote the IVU and vegetarianism in general.

Anarchy versus Democracy

The early years of the internet were basically anarchy, individuals creating resources which could be used by other individuals as they wished. All of this was free, with almost no involvement from big business, charities or democratic organisations. That began to change in 1995, and more rapidly in 1996, as the World Wide Web increased in importance (it was only invented in 1993). There is now an increasing use of the internet by businesses, not that many of them are making any money out of it yet, and this is paralleled by voluntary organisations.

Vegetarian use of the internet has followed much the same pattern. Until recently, the major vegetarian resources on the internet were run by individuals, with contributions from other individual internet users. Inevitably, this approach has run into problems when the individual at the centre of things no longer has the time, or the inclination, to maintain the resources and there is no structure to appoint a replacement. The vegetarian internet is now littered with outdated files, all started with the best of intentions, but often over-ambitious and now falling further and further out of date.

This is where organised vegetarianism should now be offering the solution with the IVU at the centre of it all. The IVU's Internet domain is owned by IVU, not by any individual. I am currently maintaining it, but I can be replaced in the future, just like any council member or officer, and this should give us the long-term continuity that is clearly needed.

Many individual vegetarians around the world are contributing to the IVU web pages, most often by translating them into their own languages, but they are not contributing to an individually owned resource: they are helping the IVU to help more vegetarians. This makes it much easier to encourage active participation and has resulted in some of the web pages now being available in 14 different languages.

The role of member societies

At present, most of this work is still being done by individual contributors. We are beginning to see some involvement from the national vegetarian societies which make up the IVU, but so far this seems to have been rather slow and lacking in real committment.

Many IVU member societies now have their own web pages. Some of them make no mention of the IVU (or of EVU/VUNA) and have no link to the IVU pages. Some mention IVU, but do not have a link. Others have a link, but do not mention the fact that they are members. I am aware of only two which proclaim membership of the IVU on their main index pages.

There seems to have been a tendency over the years for societies to go their own way, attaching no great importance to their membership of the IVU. This may work well enough locally, but isolationism on the Internet simply will not work: attracting visitors to your pages entails advertising them, and the best way to do that is to have links from as many other pages as possible. The nature of the IVU is ideal for linking up all the pages of member societies - they are already all linked from the IVU pages, with societies' logos where possible, but we need many more prominent return links from societies to the IVU and to one another.

In order to improve this, I hope to create badges stating: We are members of IVU/EVU/VUNA (a different badge for each) and then to persuade member societies to display these on their index pages, using them as links. Many member societies are not yet on-line at all of course, but we can now use the IVU pages to give affiliated societies a presence on the Internet. Please contact Francisco Martín or myself to discuss this.

I believe that linking up on the Internet can provide a strength of common identity for IVU member societies which has never quite been achieved in the past 90 years. This has now been demonstrated by EVU and VUNA sharing the domain. The aim is to make our new domain ivu.org the natural focal point for vegetarianism on the internet, so please encourage your society to become more actively involved with us in this venture.

John Davis - webmaster@ivu.org

Unity is Strength
Join the IVU and put your group on the Web

IVU can now give every affiliated society space on the World Wide Web. Make the ivu.org domain your home on the Internet. Just check that your subscription is up to date and contact John Davis or the Hon. General Secretary. Provided that your message is in keeping with the aims of the IVU, John will put it on the Web for you.

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