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 Slick writes ... > > Could someone give me alink to the current version of the groups two > faq's? I lost my bookmarks to a hard drive crash a while ago, and I > haven't been a regular member of this group in years since college life > practically took over. I'm just curious to see what new stuff has been > created in the last few years, but I don't have links to the FTP sites > anymore. > > ANybody who was here during the time of the great piracy flame war and the > great FAQ flame war between Nathan Mates & Rubywand would probably > remember me. I think both of those went on for over 2 years. Not to > mention the "Charles Turley" controversy. Welcome back to Csa2, Slick! The official Apple II FAQs are updated and distributed via news.answers to many sites around the world. Here are URLs for sites which maintain both the FAQs and the associated FAQs Resource files: Ground- home site for pure Text and formatted Text FAQs ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Faqs/ ftp://ground.ecn.uiowa.edu/apple2/Faqs/Formatted/ Main web site (FAQs in html) http://home.swbell.net/rubywand/A2FAQs1START.html Tarnover- pure Text FAQs plus large archive of A2 info http://tarnover.dyndns.org/FAQ/ GS WorldView- formatted Text FAQs http://www.apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/faqs/ You can still find the old FAQs: Home of the Apple II http://www.xs4all.nl/~fjkraan/comp/apple2faq/ Apple2.org http://www.apple2.org/ Rubywand