Re: Slick's popping in-- FAQs history

[George Rentovich <grent@home.com>]

Hi,
    As far as Nathan was concerned, if you were not with him you were against him.
There was no middle ground.  He would rather have software die a bit death than,
than let a deprotected copy go any where to be preserved.
He was very talented, injected religion into almost everything, & was judgmental of
everyone.
   I bought  his HD off him when he was selling off all of his Apple II/IIgs items.
After all was sold,  he then claimed we were all ripping him off because we would
not give what we felt it was worth. Have not time to look at it, but I am sure he
formatted it and wrote zeros to every block at least a few times.
     Take Care
               George



Slick wrote:

> That was very interesting. I didn't know some of that, especially the part
> about the major squabble on Delphi. I always wondered what exactly pissed
> Nathan off so much that he deleted everything. BTW, since he's been gone
> for years, is it now possible to optain a copy of Twilight II somewhere? I
> always wanted to try that demo out, but I never could download a
> DECOMPRESSABLE archive. ShrinkIt always said it was corrupt.
>
> In article <3C20B4CD.7105DF1A@swbell.net>, Rubywand <rubywand@swbell.net> wrote:
>
> > 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