Subject: comp.society.folklore Frequently Asked Questions
Date: 7 Feb 1995 19:36:10 GMT
Expires: 7 Mar 1995 19:29:46 GMT
X-Last-Updated: 1995/02/07

Archive-name: folklore/csf-faq
Comp-society-folklore-archive-name: faq
Version: 1.1

Welcome to comp.society.folklore!

1) What is the charter of comp.society.folklore?

Comp.society.folklore is a low-traffic moderated newsgroup in the comp.*
hierarchy dedicated to discussions of computer and Internet history and
legends, both the truly legendary and "urban legend" style legends. 

2) Who is the moderator of comp.society.folklore?

The current moderator of comp.society.folklore is Joel Furr
(jfurr@acpub.duke.edu).  You can submit articles to the group either by
mailing them directly or by posting to the group and letting your site's
news software forward the articles on to the moderator.  The latter is
preferred as it preserves important header information. 

Historical note: the original moderator of the group, at its creation on
February 11, 1991 was Eric S. Raymond.  As far as anyone was able to tell,
Raymond never posted a single submitted article to the newsgroup.  After
years of questions and complaints and criticism, he finally admitted that
after initial failures getting articles to propagate beyond his site, he'd
given up and not actually bothered to inform anyone.  When this
information finally came out, Joel Furr took matters into his own hands
and volunteered to replace Raymond, was installed as moderator by David
Lawrence (the moderator of news.announce.newgroups) and actually got the
group going. 

3) Why does comp.society.folklore exist?

Some people didn't like wading through all the noise in alt.folklore.-
computers, an unmoderated newsgroup with the same basic charter.  So, they
got a moderated newsgroup created to either replace it or supplement it. 
Unfortunately, they picked the wrong guy to moderate it, so it never
really got anywhere.  Also, some sites can't get alt.*, so a comp.* group 
would help those people get computer folklore traffic.

Admittedly, it doesn't get a lot of traffic, but that's probably a
combination of alt.folklore.computers doing so well with the same charter
and the group being abandoned by its first moderator for so long.  Your
mileage may vary. 

4) What was that fiasco in late 1992 about unmoderating the newsgroup?

Mark Brader proposed unmoderating comp.society.folklore and aliasing
alt.folklore.computers to it for no reason other than that he wanted to
"promote" alt.folklore.computers.  Despite the fact that this was almost
certainly a plan that would result in most of the traffic being lost
entirely for technical reasons (aliasing has strange effects), he was
certain it was best for all involved.  Some people supported the plan
because alt.folklore.computers was STILL intolerably noisy and
comp.society.- folklore was (mysteriously) getting no posts, so why not? 
Others supported it because their sites didn't carry alt.* at all.  But in
the long result, most people understood that the plan was a *very* bad
idea, essentially a hostile takeover of a thriving newsgroup, and after a
very acrimonious flamewar, the move to unmoderate lost by a vote of 151
yes, 729 no. 

5) What's the moderation policy for comp.society.folklore?

The moderator reserves the right to reject posts which contain no computer
history or legend related content.  Insults, test postings, ads, attacks,
and posts that are mainly jokes, among others, qualify for rejection.  In
actual practice, however, very few posts are rejected, and for the most
part, these are rejected because they are providing the same answer as an
approved post.  Example: some guy asks a question, ten people follow up
with the answer.  Only one of the replies is approved, since the other 9
said the same answer. 

STUFF THAT WILL BE EDITED OUT BY THE MODERATOR (PLEASE READ):

The moderator reserves the right to trim or eliminate .signatures, exces-
sive quoting, and crossposted newsgroups. From this point forward, all
crossposting to groups other than comp.society.folklore will be eliminated
prior to posting.  If you do not like this policy, please submit your
articles elsewhere or submit an article to comp.society.folklore without
crossposting and submit another copy, with all the other newsgroups, to
those newsgroups. 

