X-Message-Number: 1242 Subject: CRYONICS Sci.cryonics faq maintainer volunteer wanted Date: Tue, 29 Sep 92 12:44:40 -0400 From: I'm tired of maintaining the sci.cryonics FAQ list. Does anyone else want to do it? I've prepared a fairly detailed description of what the maintainer would have to do. I call the description a "hatfile" because it says what a person would have to do to wear the FAQ maintainer's hat. The minimal monthly action is to give one shell command to repost the FAQ, which could be automated with an at job. The complexity in the list below is entirely about setting things up. (The term "hatfile" was invented by Ron Hubbard to run his Church of Scientology. Just because I think he had one good idea, don't assume that I think any of his other ideas were good!) Hatfile for the Sci.Cryonics FAQ List Maintainer Prerequisites for the FAQ maintainer: 1) The maintainer should not work for any existing cryonics organization. 2) The maintainer must have netnews and email access. 3) Access to a perl interpreter would make the process of periodically reposting the FAQ list easier. 4) Access to several years backissues of the Alcor, ACS, and Cryonics Institute newsletters. (The CI and ACS newsletters have merged in the last few years.) 5) Several years' subscription to Kevin Brown's cryonics mailing list. (Alternatively, you could fetch the archives and read them. But that would be a lot of work.) 6) Ability to write coherent English. 7) Your site must get the news.answers newsgroup. Duties of the FAQ maintainer: 1) Post the FAQ list to sci.cryonics and news.answers monthly. This is nontrivial because the articles need to have some nonstandard header fields. jik, the moderator of news.answers, has written a perl script called "post_faq.pl" that does this for you. 2) Read sci.cryonics, the cryonics mailing list, and jik's faq-maintainers list. 3) Appropriately respond to requests for changes to the FAQ list. 4) Add interesting questions to the FAQ list as they come up. Solicit answers or write them yourself. What to do if you want to take over the job: 1) Fetch and read the "news.answers submission guidelines" from backissues of the news.answers newsgroup at your site, so you know what you're getting into. If the article has expired, fetch the file /pub/usenet/news.answers/news-answers from pit-manager.mit.edu via anonymous FTP. 2) Send mail to the previous maintainer saying you want the job. 3) Wait for a response saying that you're the one, so we don't have two people who think they are the maintainer. 4) Fetch the faq-posting program pub/post_faq.shar from pit-manager.mit.edu via anonymous FTP, and install it. 5) The previous maintainer should send you the postfaq csh script, the previous version of the faq, and the configfile for post_faq.pl. (Note that postfaq and post_faq are two distinct programs here, not a typo.) Install them. Test the script with the command "postfaq debug". This should create a file named grand_post with all 9 parts of the FAQ. Don't give the command "postfaq doit" yet. 6) Send mail to announcing that you have taken over the cryonics FAQ maintenance. Ask him to put you on the faq-maintainers mailing list, and ask him what changes you should make to the format of the FAQ to reflect the change in moderator. 7) Update references to the previous maintainer in the FAQ so they point to you. 8) Follow the instructions the news.answers moderator gives you. 9) If he wants you to post the FAQ without the "approved:" lines, comment out both occurrences of "echo $approved >> $postfile" in the postfaq script and give the command "postfaq doit". 10) If he says it's okay to go ahead and post the faq with your current configuration, comment in both of the "echo $approved >> $postfile" lines and give the command "postfaq doit". 11) Give the command "postfaq doit" once a month to post the faq. Use your personal calendar or the "at" program to help you remember. What to do when you want someone else to take over the job: 1) Make this file current, so the next person won't have to ask you lots of questions. 2) Advertise for the job to the cryonics mailing list. 3) Select one of the people who respond, and tell him he's the new FAQ maintainer. 4) Send him the current edition of the FAQ, the postfaq csh script, and the configfile maintained by post_faq.pl. 5) When you see a successfully posted FAQ, send mail to and ask to be removed from the faq-maintainers list. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=1242