Re: Slick's popping in-- FAQs history

[Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net>]

Roy Miller writes ...
> 
> In fact, they were posted on Saturday, I can still "see" them. Do you want
> me to email them to you?
> 
> BTW - Rubywand has appointed himself as the updater of the FAQs. Nathan
> turned them over to someone else (I can't remember who that was) but before
> I lost the bookmark, I hadn't seen any updates to Nathan's work by that
> person.
> 
 ....


     It may help to review the history of Csa2's Apple II FAQs.

     The first FAQs Keeper was David Kopper. He put together some Q&A and
posted the first FAQs on 28 Nov 1990. The FAQs was distributed via net.answers
starting on 17 Dec 1991.

     In June of 1992 there was a smooth transition and Dan DeMaggio became FAQs
Keeper. He reorganized the FAQs and continued to update and build it until the
Spring of 1995. Although he posted no further updates, Dan, evidently, remained
the maintainer recognized by news.answers until August 1996.

     Nathan Mates officially became FAQs Keeper (recognized by news.answers) in
August 1996 with his first posting of an updated FAQs. Practically speaking, it
is probably fair to say that his tenure began in mid-1995 because he was
already maintaining a very informative A2 web site to which he often directed
users.

     Nathan added quite a bit of material to the FAQs and also created an html
version which users could access from his site. Everyone was very impressed
with the FAQs and pleased with the job Nathan was doing.

     In the Summer of 1997, Nathan decided to use access to the FAQs as a means
to drive a person with whom he frequently disagreed-- call him "X"-- away from
the newsgroup. He began to deny access to his FAQs site to X and to anyone he
believed supported him. Since the method denied access to everyone else using
the same service as a banned person-- such as everyone on AOL-- many users with
no interest in the squabble were also denied access. He also ceased posting the
FAQs to the newsgroup and said the blocks to access would remain until X left
the newsgroup.

     If the idea was to have everyone blame X for losing FAQs access, the
strategy failed. Most users blamed Nathan. A series of long, fairly hot
discussions erupted and the idea of starting a new FAQs emerged.

     By December, the discussions had produced a consensus that, if the blocks
on access continued we would need a new FAQs. Also: the new FAQs could not
contain any of Nathan's added material; but, it could contain material from
FAQs produced before Nathan became Keeper. Since no one else seemed to have the
time, I began to put together a new FAQs-- mainly just a reorganized and
slightly expanded version of Dan DeMaggio's work.

     Finally, in a posting, Nathan was asked point blank if he wished to remain
Keeper and be willing to end blocks to access. He made no response and retained
the blocks. So, on 25 December, the new FAQs was posted and Ground became the
home site for the FAQs.

     It figures that X would then decide to leave the newsgroup. (He did,
eventually, return.)  Nathan declared victory and removed the blocks and
resumed postings via news.answers.

     Even so, I continued to maintain the new Faqs and to post them. It would
be months before they were anywhere nearly as good as Nathan's; but, thanks
largely to postings from gurus like David Empson and Supertimer, they did
contain some new information and other features not included in the official
FAQs. Chiefly, it was a matter of wishing to be sure that the newsgroup could
never again be blackmailed via FAQs access.

     A funny thing about the FAQs competition over the next several months is
that, aside from wishing some one would emerge to take over the new FAQs, I
knew zilch about news.answers and really had no idea what Nathan was talking
about when he said his FAQs were "official". I regarded Nathan as a competing
FAQs Keeper who, via some arcane net trickery, managed to get his FAQs
recognized by all sorts of net archives.

     Anyway, Nathan ceased posting his FAQs again after April of 1998. In July,
there was some sort of major squabble on the Delphi A2 forum which led to
Nathan's wiping his site and abondoning the Apple II.

     Nathan was gone and no one seemed interested in continuing to have his
FAQs posted; so, I finally dug into info about news.answers and submitted the
new FAQs. Since there had been no updates of Nathan's FAQs for several months
and since, by then, the new FAQs were both larger and more recent, news.answers
accepted them as the FAQs for comp.sys.apple2.

     17 October 1998 is when our FAQs became 'official' and I became,
'officially', the FAQs Keeper. Since then, the FAQs have expanded greatly. Each
month they are posted via news.answers to FAQs archives around the world. 

     Ground remains the home site ( ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Faqs/ ).
The html version is maintained on my "II Computing" site at
http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/A2FAQs1START.html . We are currently at 45
releases.

     If some sites wish to offer the old FAQs, fine. They should be available
somewhere and we will continue to maintain listings and links to the sites in
the official Csa2 FAQs.



Rubywand