trs80@tartarus.uwa.edu.au wrote at Mon, 04 Jun 2001 22:04:44 +0800:
> I have an FAQ of which I recently took over the
> maintership. However, the previous maintainer didn't post it to
> news.answers, and the maintainer before that is uncontactable. From
> reading the previous threads, it seems as if the moderators are
> unwilling to remove the previous version of the FAQ if the
> maintainer of that version doesn't give permission. However, since
> I was wanting to use a new (more descriptive) archive name anyway,
> I take it that I just need to submit my faq for automated approval
> (via news-answers@mit.edu), I don't need to get the maintainer
> listed in the version on rtfm and faqs.org to email
> news-answers-request@mit.edu saying that I'm the new maintainter?
There are two somewhat orthogonal issues here: (1) whether archive
names of the old and new FAQ postings would conflict; (2) whether the
new FAQ posting is a derivative work based on the old FAQ posting, or
if it's a completely new work done from scratch.
With respect to issue #1, if the old maintainer is uncontactable, we
would prefer that the new maintainer use a slightly different archive
name. It's usually not difficult to come up with an entirely
reasonable archive name that doesn't conflict with the old FAQ
posting's archive name. If the old maintainer is contactable and
agrees to have their old posting replaced, of course that simplifies
matters.
With respect to issue #2, if the old maintainer is uncontactable,
there's a messy copyright issue if the new FAQ posting is a derivative
work. The *.answers moderation team isn't interested in being a
copyright arbiter, nor would we have any legal or moral authority in
that respect anyway; we would advise the new maintainers of the
copyright issue, and accept their assertion one way or another.
Again, it's simpler if the old maintainer is contactable and either
gives or denies permission to use his or her old FAQ posting as a
basis for the new FAQ posting.
As for how to submit, please note the following section in the
*.answers submission guidelines (we prefer you don't submit by
emailing to news-answers@mit.edu):
1.5 Submitting your article
A. How actually to submit your postings
1. The automated FAQ-checker
Lastly, while it's possible to set archive names for a posting which
is not cross-posted to *.answers, relatively few FAQ maintainers took
advantage of this capability. If you are under the impression that
the old FAQ posting explicitly set its own archive name, you might
want to double check with the *.answers moderation team to make sure
that things are working the way you expect.
--
Ping Huang <pshuang@alum.mit.edu>; info: http://web.mit.edu/pshuang/.plan
Disclaimer: unless explicitly otherwise stated, my
statements represent my personal viewpoints only.
*************************************************************
To unsubscribe send a message to majordomo@faqs.org as
unsubscribe faq-maintainers fill-in-your-email-address-here
*************************************************************
[
FAQ Archive |
Search FAQ Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet References
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997 |
1998 |
1999 |
2000
]
© Copyright The Internet FAQ Consortium, 1997-2000
All rights reserved