The Philatelic Webmasters Organization

The Philatelic Webmasters Organization (PWO) has been created in order to promote, support and develop philately through philatelic webmastering.

There are many national and international organizations that group the stamp collectors or the philatelic professionals representing their interests. At the moment there is no organization grouping the recently appeared category of stamp collectors who combine their philatelic hobby with the Webmastering activity. On the PWO pages such stamp collectors are called the "Philatelic Webmasters" (PW).

The PW are different from the philatelic journalists, meaning here those who work for philatelic journals and who are grouped in the International Association of Philatelic Journalists (AIJP). They are also different from the publishers represented by the International Publishers' of Postage Catalogues, Stamp Albums and Philatelic Publications Associations (ASCAT).

The PW bring together to the Web what they love so much: an unparalleled information about their hobby, combined with their knowledge of webmastering. All of them started by themselves, being pushed by an inner impulse to share with others what they like, and by their interest to explore a new dimension of the human communication, made possible by the technological (r)evolution. Another difference is that the immense majority of PW is composed of amateurs and also that their number largely exceed as much the number of professional philatelic journalists as that of philatelic publishers, grouped by AIJP and ASCAT.

For many of PW the newsgroup news:rec.collecting.stamps.discuss was the only place where they could discuss their problems, or where they could announce their new pages. But they had to take into consideration the interests of the majority of participants, interests that weren't primarily focused on Webmastering. Unfortunately, in the last years the activity on this newsgroup diminished considerably.

Some of PW, among the most advanced and/or the most brave, have participated in Web competitions proposed by organizations representing the traditional philately (like FIP, MIDAPHIL). The participation was interesting, but many of them were often disappointed by juries' lack of understanding for the specificity of the philatelic webmastering. The noting criteria were not clear or absent, the qualification of judges in webmastering was rather unknown and sometimes the promised score sheets never arrived.

In the last years the number of young stamp collectors has continually diminished. New possibilities, like exciting games, computers and Internet became more attractive than stamp collecting. Through the philatelic webmastering activity we got a new chance to regain the young generations' interest for stamp collecting, that's why PWO will concentrate its efforts in this direction.

For all these reasons the time has come that we, the Philatelic Webmasters, take our destiny in our own hands! The best means to solve our own problems and to attain our goals is to act together, as members of a structured organization. These are the reasons why we have established the Philatelic Webmasters Organization (PWO). Our big advantage is that we have the means and the knowledge to communicate worldwide, with a matchless efficiency and at minimal costs.

She/he will be listed on the Members List, together with many other members who share their interests. This not only makes member's site and the members themselves better visible, but also presents them in the proper context of sites that have in common the passion for philately.
The following data are listed: the name of the site, the topic (or the specialization for commercial sites), the kind of site (Homepage, Commercial, Postal Authority, Organization), the URL of the site, the name of the sites author, the language used in correspondence and the country where they live.
The membership facilitates and encourages direct contacts and exchange of experience among members, bringing new ideas and stimulating synergies.
One important goal of PWO is to elaborate or to help others to elaborate regulations and rules for Web sites competitions and to help in the preparation of competent judges. The judges will use clearly established and widely known criteria.
A member will have the possibility to publish pages of general interest on the PWO site.
The PWO members have the possibility to publish in the Members Gallery information about themselves and links to their representative pages.
Through interaction with many other members who share their interests, members can take profit as much from the technical expertise as from the artistic and philatelic experience of all members.
Member's privacy is protected by the PWO Statutes and by the structure of their PWO site.

Many of the mentioned facilities, like the joining of the PWO, the free listing of all members and of their Web site and the Members Gallery are already offered. The totality of the stated objectives will be attained gradually, depending also on the interests shown by our members.

The success of the PWO depends of the activity of us, its members. The results depend on our imagination, initiative and spirit of collaboration. Only together we will succeed - join us!