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The *NEW* PGG FAQ Mk. II
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Monday, 22 August, 1994 9:55:03 PM
alt.galactic-guide Item
From: A Tribal Smile,swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu,Internet
Subject: DRAFT: The *NEW* PGG FAQ Mk. II
To: alt.galactic-guide
Greetings from the Mothership!
This is a *DRAFT* of the new PGG FAQ Mk. II -- please send me comments
and feedback *before* we start doing things with this. Thanks!
Stevadelic
----------
Welcome to...
A L T . G A L A C T I C - G U I D E
This is the Mostly All-New FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) information file
for the Usenet group alt.galactic-guide. This file is intended to provide
you with answers to your frequently asked questions and is 97% fat-free with
no preservatives or artificial flavours.
This file is based on Paul Clegg's original FAQ, and was enhanced and is now
maintained by Steve Baker.
Contents
--------
1.0 What is this newsgroup?
2.0 Who's in charge around here?
2.1 So who do I send articles to?
3.0 Format of the articles
3.1 Article content and legal stuff
3.2 So where can I get article ideas then?
3.3 The article lifecycle
4.0 The PGG Mothership
5.0 World-Wide Web (WWW) sites
6.0 Miscellaneous questions
1.0 What is this newsgroup?
----------------------------
This newsgroup was created for the sole purpose of allowing uninterrupted
communication between people involved in Project Galactic Guide. What is
this project, you ask?
It all started back in, oh, November of 1991 in the alt.fan.douglas-adams
newsgroup. For the uninformed, Douglas Adams is the author of a series
of humourous s/f books centering on the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
In these books, the characters write for and frequently consult a sort of
electronic encyclopedia which has an entry on just about everything.
Paul said, "Hey, why don't we create a REAL guide to the galaxy?" and
everyone else said, "Sounds good, let's do it!". So, with great fervor
we started working on the skeletal structure of Project Galactic Guide,
although at that time, we often called it "The HitchHiker's Guide the Known
Galaxy."
It was originally supposed to be about REAL things (as opposed to made-up
things), but we eventually broke down and decided to incorporate EVERYTHING.
So, now we'll take humorous entries about fictitious things (done in the
Douglas Adams style, of course), and humorous entries about real things
(also done in the Douglas Adams style, of course).
2.0 Who's in charge around here?
---------------------------------
Well, not anyone, really. Er, actually, I suppose there *are* a couple of
froods who tend to have a bit more input about things than others, but
really it's mostly chaotic. Well, not actually *chaotic* but instead maybe
something a bit more like recess or something.
The aforementioned Paul Clegg is one of PGG's Founding Fathers. He is
easily identifiable by his "...Paul" signature. Today, Paul's an Editor
and has many Wise Things to say about topics, issues, concerns, thoughts,
ideas, problems, suggestions, and comments. His action figure should be
available this holiday season (along with the PGG Mothership playset), and
he is available via email at: cleggp@rpi.edu
Steve Baker helped get the project rolling with his "The Guide!" software
for IBM/MS-DOS machines in the spring of 1992. Steve usually answers to
the nom de plume "Stevadelic." Today, Steve's an Editor, the Librarian,
Pilot of the PGG Mothership, and actively avoids doing required updates
and bug fixes to the TG! system. (He claims to be too busy working on
Klingon language translation software.) You can send email to Steve at
the address: swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu
Roel van der Meulen joined the project in the fall of 1993, and is an active
PGG Field Researcher Recruiter (he finds new articles and authors for PGG,
in addition to his own work). He also maintains the PGG archives contents
file and one of the fine WWW sites. Roel's Internet email address is:
vdmeulen@rulrol.leidenuniv.nl
Jeff Kramer is compiling the "PGG Report," a regular newsletter with lots
of great information about the Project and its activities. Jeff is
available at: lthumper@bga.com
There's a lot of others out there who have contributed t-shirt designs,
press card information, articles, ideas, suggestions, comments, et al...
but to avoid this becoming one of those "Hi guys"-type things, I'll just
leave it at that.
2.1 So who do I send articles to?
----------------------------------
Steve is on-line and available year-round, and Paul is available from
September until April or May (during the college school year). Both Paul
and Steve also have America Online accounts, so they're available there
also. Steve actually collects email accounts (he's up to six different
active, on-line email accounts, which is quite a lot of passwords to get
straight).
To answer the question, however, let's just say send articles to one of the
PGG Editors:
swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu -- Steve
cleggp@rpi.edu -- Paul
3.0 Format of the articles
---------------------------
The articles that are accepted are organized by category and compiled in
article "archives." Each archive file contains 25 accepted Guide entries.
These are stored on FTP sites to be downloaded from the Mothership by those
who want them.
We've decided upon a simple ASCII text format for the article entries. The
specs on the format are contained in the "article.new" file. It's really
pretty simple, with just a few header token-type things that define useful
information stuff.
The fine folks at PGG spent about a year discussing, debating, formulating,
postulating, configuring, finalizing, and neglecting a nifty but complex
text format. It was complete with crazy text formatting things and lots of
other fun and wonderful features, but it never really caught on.
We're currently investigating the possibilities of porting the article
archives into HTML (HyperText Markup Language) for use with html and WWW
viewers. For now, however, standard ASCII files are just fine!
3.1 Article content and legal stuff
------------------------------------
You're welcome to write about anything. Yes, no matter how bizarre or
crazy, please write about it. Really. Anything.
Er, except, we don't want you to regurgitate Adams' material. Not only is
this very unoriginal, it's also known as plagiarism. (Unless DNA himself
decides to write it for us!) In general, please do NOT copy other people's
work or ideas. We don't want the project stopped because we violated some
silly copyright law!
3.2 So where can I get article ideas then?
-------------------------------------------
We have a PGG Idea Bank, chock full of great ideas that beg for exploring.
They're frequently posted to the alt.galactic-guide newsgroup, and all are
available on-line at the Mothership.
When posting an idea, be sure to include your name and email address for
proper credit down the road. Conversely, when using an idea, just go ahead
and write your article and credit the idea's originator in the header
information.
3.3 The article lifecycle
--------------------------
This describes what your Friendly Neighbourhood PGG Editor does and presents
"a day in the life of an article" so to speak. Erm, actually, the articles
themselves don't really speak much; that's just an expression, so let's
carry on.
1) A young, up-and-coming author sends a PGG article to an editor via email.
Please see above for info on who to send stuff to.
2) The editor send a message back to the author, stating something like
"blah blah, thanks for the article, blah blah blah, I'll edit it for
format and stuff, blah blah, you'll get it back soon for author
confirmation, blah blah, give me all your money, etc etc."
This message is the author's "receipt" that the editor received the
article submission. If you don't get one of these, then the editor
didn't get your article!
4) The editor edits the article and performs routine grammar and spell-
checker things on the article.
5) The editor then sends the article back to the author for "author
confirmation." (This is often times abbreviated as A/C.)
6) The author reviews the modified article, and then lets the editor know
that things are alright. If the author has additional changes with the
article, they go back to step one and start over.
7) Once the article is approved, the editor sends it to the PGG Librarian.
The Librarian adds the approved article into the article archives and
posts the article to alt.galactic-guide.
4.0 The PGG Mothership
-----------------------
The Mothership is an Anonymous FTP site where you can download PGG info,
articles, programs, t-shirt images, reports, and other great stuff. To
get to the PGG Mothership, FTP to the following site:
Lexical: vela.acs.oakland.edu
Numeric: 141.210.10.2
URL: ftp://vela.acs.oakland.edu/pub/galactic-guide
When you connect, use the [ anonymous ] user ID and specify your full
Internet email address as the password.
The Mothership is [ pub/galactic-guide ], which is actually just a link
to [ pub/swbaker ]. Thus, if you're using an FTP server which doesn't show
the logical links, go into the [ swbaker ] directory.
Anyway, beneath this directory are additional directories for each of
the particular computer programs and general Hitchhiker's Guide fan stuff.
There is a separate FAQ file on the PGG FTP which describes these
directories and the files they contain in more detail.
5.0 World-Wide Web (WWW) sites
--------------------------------
For those who can view html documents (including users of Mosaic, Cello,
and WinWeb), there are a number of froody WWW sites:
URL: http://www.strw.leidenuniv.nl/~vdmeulen/index/index.html
Operator: Roel van der Meulen
URL: http://ww.willamette.edu/pgg/
Operator: James Tilton
URL: http://web.cs.city.ac.uk/pgg/guide.html
Operator: Nick Williams
URL: http://www.realtime.net/~lthumper/
Operator: Jeff Kramer
These all have links to the Article Archives, the PGG Mothership, format
and article information, and many have search capabilities.
6.0 Miscellaneous questions
----------------------------
Q: Is there a Macintosh Guide Reader?
A: Not yet. Sorry.
Q: Is this the end of the PGG FAQ?
A: Yes.
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From: swbaker@vela.acs.oakland.edu (A Tribal Smile)
Newsgroups: alt.galactic-guide
Subject: DRAFT: The *NEW* PGG FAQ Mk. II
Date: Mon, 22 Aug 1994 11:55:03 Banana
Organization: Project Galactic Guide Mothership
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Message-ID: <swbaker.67.000477C5@vela.acs.oakland.edu>
NNTP-Posting-Host: 162.48.130.42
Summary: This is only a DRAFT - please send me comments!
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