Re: What's happening at OSU FAQ archives?

Paul W Schleck KD3FU (pschleck@gonix.gonix.com)
Wed, 19 Jun 1996 15:49:59 -0500 (CDT)

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>
> (Apologies if everyone but me already knows this. I have just discovered
> that something unsubscribed me from faq-maintainers several months ago
> --- no wonder things seemed so quiet in FAQ-land. And the mail list
> archives at rtfm:/pub/faq-maintainers have nothing newer than April;
> is there a more up-to-date archive of this list somewhere?)
>
> It looks like the entire contents of the Ohio-State WWW FAQ archives were
> deleted on Monday afternoon. The directory structure and "top.html" index
> files are still there, but no data files...
>
> Wha happen, mon? Has OSU finally decided to decommission that archive,
> and if so, what are people doing for replacement sites?
>
> regards, tom lane
>

Looks like a final mercy killing of what was a dying resource. I'm not
unappreciative of Tom Fine's efforts towards getting this set up, but it
is clear that neither he nor Ohio State had the time, funds, or interest
to maintain it properly over the long term.

Case in point, my FAQ, the Amateur Radio Elmers Resource Directory, had
some file part and Archive-name changes over the years which were not
properly updated at Ohio State. As a result, some of the articles were
way out of date and were becoming an "attractive nuisance." Despite
numerous E-mail messages sent to Tom, the OSU postmaster, and webmaster,
nothing was ever done. I couldn't figure out what amount of pleading,
sucking-up, or "secret electronic handshakes" was required to get my
articles fixed, so I long since gave up (The last time Tom sent a
message to this mailing list, his advice was, in effect, "keep pestering
me and I'll make fixes eventually." I wonder just what superhuman
degree of pestering, bomb threats, bribes, etc. would have been
required).

I finally just added a disclaimer to my article like the following:

[...]

World-Wide Web (WWW): The latest copy of the list should be
available from the following WWW sites (view the Elmers list as
hypertext; in addition, the home site at gonix.com has many new
features, including keyword searching and registration and
feedback forms; the site marked with an asterisk also offers WAIS
index searching by keyword for all Usenet FAQ's):

+ http://www.gonix.com/pschleck/elmers/
+ http://www.lib.ox.ac.uk/internet/news/faq/rec.radio.amateur.misc.html
+ http://www.cs.ruu.nl/cgi-bin/faqwais *

(Note: Because of maintenance problems - FAQ documents not being
promptly updated in particular - the sites at Ohio State and Smart
Pages are no longer recommended for accessing a current copy of
the Elmers List and have been removed from the above list.)

[...]

-- 
Paul W. Schleck
pschleck@gonix.com
http://www.gonix.com/pschleck/
Finger pschleck@gonix.gonix.com for PGP Public Key

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