While it is undoubtedly true that the Web is only one aspect of Information Science teaching and research, faculty at schools of library and information studies, now increasingly re-tooling themselves as "informatics" programs or "iSchools", began studying the Web almost as soon as it became part of the Internet services available during the early 1990s. Before the Web, LIS programs explored such services as Gopher, WAIS, e-mail, and electronic mailing list behavior. LIS views the Web, like the book, as part of a continuum of information production, dissemination, retrieval, and social use. The creation of a Web Science forum would probably be welcomed by LIS faculties, but it should not be forgotten that those faculties have been studying Web behavior for over a decade, and adapting bibliometric methods to that endeavor. A search of Google Scholar will bear out this assertion. Sir Tim's initiative may lend some long-overdue credibility to that pursuit.

Chris Brown is absolutely right: while information schools don't focus exclusively on the web, what we study is the breadth of socio-technical issues surrounding information collection, analysis, preservation, dissemenation, and use--and since today the web is a fundamental component in these topics, it is at the core of what we do. The ischools recognize that one needs an interdisciplinary perspective to study information, and so we have faculty educated in computer science, library science, economics, psychology, history, physics, and more. We already provide a home for the study of web science, and if new programs in this field are created, we'd welcome them to join us in the ischools movement.

I think that one of the listings, contributors and authors for this Web Science Wiki, should be Dr. Sherry Turkel at MIT. She is both a sociologist and an a pyschologist. Her books among many include "Life on the Screen" and "Second Life". She has a unique perspective on "cyberculture" even before the Web when there was the "Well", computer bulletin boards and IRC. She has been interviewed on NPR and public radio programs such as "Fresh Air". She has followed up that research with "Simulation and It's Discontents".

One key area that makes the web unique is security. In the relatively open environment of the web, the existance of hackers, trying to steal information, and the potential for corporate and military intel gathering (where a very high level of expertise may be applied to breaking into the system) helps to justify the need for a unique Web Science program. The open nature of the web, with millions of desparate, and sometimes desperate, users in combination with the importance the web has achieved definitely sets the web apart as a special field.