From: The L-Space Cabal <cabal@lspace.org>
Subject: [FAQ] The Lspace.org Domain
Newsgroups: alt.fan.pratchett,alt.fan.pratchett.announce,alt.books.pratchett
Summary: This FAQ provides information about the lspace.org domain and the services it provides.
Followup-To: poster
Organization: L-Space
Keywords: Pratchett Discworld FAQ L-Space Cabal lspace.org
Approved: afpa-mod@lspace.org
X-Autoposter: This FAQ was autoposted by <leo@lspace.org>
X-Archive-name: pratchett/lspace-faq
X-Posting-Frequency: monthly (on the 7th)
X-Last-modified: 23 January 2005
X-URL: <http://www.lspace.org/faqs/>
Archive-name: pratchett/lspace-faq
Posting-Frequency: monthly (on the 7th)
Last-modified: 23 January 2005
URL: <http://www.lspace.org/faqs/>
Changes: + Fixed a broken link.
+ Reformatted to 65 characters/line.
+ Removed empty promise of future expansion in Q4.
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This FAQ consists of the following sections:
1. What is lspace.org?
2. What is the L-Space Cabal?
3. Why do people keep telling me: "There Is No Cabal"?
4. What services are available from lspace.org?
5. Does the L-Space Cabal maintain all lspace.org services?
6. Who are all these people with lspace.org e-mail addresses?
7. So if I want an lspace.org address myself, I should just write
a good Web page or volunteer to do something?
8. Are people with lspace.org addresses all close friends? Do
they have any special powers on a.f.p.? Does the Cabal?
9. What do I do if I have a complaint about someone@lspace.org?
10. Should I be scared of approaching the L-Space Cabal? They
have been around so long! They know so much! They are so
wise! I've heard they flame people! I am such a newbie! Won't
they flame *me*? Or laugh in my face?
---------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Mass distorts space into polyfractal L-space, in which
Everywhere is also Everywhere Else. All libraries are
connected in L-space by the bookwormholes created by the
strong space-time distortion in any large collection of
books."
-- (Terry Pratchett, The Discworld Companion)
<http://www.lspace.org/about/whatis-lspace.html>
1. What is lspace.org?
-------------------
Lspace.org is an Internet domain name. It was formally
registered with the InterNIC in December 1995, and went
on-line in January 1996.
In October 2001, the domain name lspace.info was also
registered, but this is not actively being used yet.
Registering an Internet domain allows the owners to assign
arbitrary computer host names (such as www.lspace.org or
irc.lspace.org) and e-mail addresses (such as
cabal@lspace.org or afp-help@lspace.org) within that domain.
The domain name lspace.org was chosen with Terry Pratchett's
permission, but beyond that he has no further personal
involvement with us. Nothing we do is in any way official or
sanctioned.
2. What is the L-Space Cabal?
--------------------------
Lspace.org is owned and administered by Robert Collier, Leo
Breebaart, Mike Knell and Colm Buckley, collectively known as
The L-Space Cabal.
Despite the ".org" extension, lspace.org is *not* an actual
organisation, legal entity, or, heaven forbid, commercial
enterprise. The only money involved here is the money we
spend to keep everything up and running. Had .info domains
been available in 1995, we would have used lspace.info
instead of lspace.org straight away to make this clear.
'L-Space' is just a convenient name for a virtual construct
that consists of four friends running a domain and various
services, because they think this is (a) great fun, and (b)
quite useful.
2a. What do you mean, "fun"?
----------------------------
All four of us are technically inclined people (the word
"geeks" has been mentioned) with many years of computer,
sysadmin, and Internet experience between us. Having your own
domain to play around with is tremendous fun to a techie.
It's as simple as that.
2b. What do you mean, "useful"?
-------------------------------
All four of us were active in on-line Terry Pratchett fandom
long before lspace.org came into being. In fact, we met and
became friends (first virtually, later in real life) through
the Usenet newsgroup alt.fan.pratchett.
Each of us had been involved in running and maintaining
popular Pratchett-related resources such as web sites, FTP
sites, mailing lists, moderated newsgroups, and Frequently
Asked Questions documents. All these services were run from
many different machines, using many different, occasionally
changing, contact addresses.
What we wanted to do with lspace.org was bring all our
Pratchett-related resources under one Internet roof, making
it easier for people to remember the addresses and host names
and people involved.
3. Why do people keep telling me: "There Is No Cabal"?
---------------------------------------------------
Calling ourselves the L-Space Cabal was a tongue-in-cheek
reference to the legendary Usenet Backbone Cabal: a
supposedly elite group of powerful sysadmins, who were
accused by various conspiracy theorists of secretly running
Usenet.
The Usenet Backbone Cabal *really* did not exist, and this
was written down in a FAQ of the period as: "Usenet Rule #0:
There is no Cabal". Over time, both concept and phrase became
part of Usenet folklore.
When the L-Space Cabal first revealed itself, experienced
a.f.p. Usenetters were quick to pick up on the reference, and
a ritual running gag was born that to this day has not died
out: any mention of the Cabal *must* immediately be followed
by the phrase "There Is No Cabal" ("TINC", for short), and
much subsequent hilarity ensues, particularly if the ritual
successfully manages to confuse the uninitiated.
4. What services are available from lspace.org?
--------------------------------------------
The main entry point for everything we have to offer is our
WWW site: The L-Space Web <http://www.lspace.org/>.
Note that the web site L-Space Web is not the same thing as
the domain lspace.org, despite the former's relative
importance and high visibility, and despite a tendency for
people (even ourselves, occasionally) to use the terms
interchangeably.
Other popular services we provide include the publicly
accessible news server news.lspace.org (which holds the last
90 days of all the Pratchett newsgroups traffic), and the
chat server irc.lspace.
5. Does the L-Space Cabal maintain all lspace.org services?
--------------------------------------------------------
No. It started out that way, but over the years on-line Terry
Pratchett fandom has expanded to include much more than just
the resources created or maintained by the members of the
Cabal. Many people from all over the world have spent time
and effort trying to make new resources available, and/or
help improve the quality of existing ones.
The scope of lspace.org has also changed to reflect this
growth. For example, the L-Space Web now includes many
sections maintained by (or containing content submitted by)
other fans (such as the Games pages, or the Filk archive),
and there are a number of mailing lists and other 'special'
e-mail addresses (such as afp-help@lspace.org or
uk-meets@lspace.org) we provide the hosting for.
Also, both lspace.org and the L-Space Web profit immensely
from a dedicated and ever-growing band of volunteers
(typically, but not necessarily, with their roots in the
alt.fan.pratchett newsgroup community) who help us keep
everything going.
6. Who are all these people with lspace.org e-mail addresses?
----------------------------------------------------------
The L-Space Cabal are no longer the only ones with personal
lspace.org e-mail addresses. The widespread and international
lspace.org 'family' is growing slowly but steadily (with
about 70 members at the moment of writing).
Most of the people we offer an lspace.org address to can be
found among the aforementioned volunteers active in on-line
Pratchett fandom in general or lspace.org maintenance in
particular.
Inviting these people to join lspace.org is both a way to
make it easier for their 'customers' to remember contact
addresses, as well as a way for us to say "thank you" or "we
really like what you are doing".
7. So if I want an lspace.org address myself, I should just write
a good Web page or volunteer to do something?
---------------------------------------------------------------------
No, it's not that simple.
To begin with, it should always be understood that the "do
something worthwhile -- get an lspace.org address" guideline
is just that: a guideline that the Cabal has chosen to
kind-of-follow because it struck our fancy, rather than a
cast-iron rule or contract the outside world can somehow
demand that we abide by,
For another thing, Terry Pratchett is a very popular author,
and these days the world of on-line fandom is huge. If we
offered an lspace.org address to everyone who maintained a
popular web page or other service, the resulting explosion of
the lspace.org namespace would cause us administrative and
technical problems we simply do not have the time or
inclination to tackle.
Finally, we strongly dislike the idea of an lspace.org
address being something that can be "bought" merely by
following an appropriate sequence of steps. If you want to
get involved in Pratchett on-line fandom, do it for the right
reasons: because it's fun, because it's useful, and above all
because you want to do it *for its own sake*. Anything after
that is just icing on the cake. There are no guarantees.
Explicitly asking us for an address is one of the surest ways
of predisposing us against giving you one.
All of the above may sound a little arbitrary -- tyrannical
or elitist, even -- but we are putting this extra forcefully
because it's something we do need people to understand very,
very clearly. Lspace.org is *not* a public commodity run by
the Cabal on the users' behalf. It is our own private sand
box that we have *chosen* to run as a public commodity for
the reasons outlined in question 2. And we reserve the right
to make, break, change, or decline to have any rules.
8. Are people with lspace.org addresses all close friends? Do
they have any special powers on a.f.p.? Does the Cabal?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
No, no, and no. If someone has an lspace.org address, this
means exactly one thing: that at one point in time, the
L-Space Cabal saw reason (usually, but not always, having to
do with fandom involvement) to offer that person an address.
Having an lspace.org address (or, indeed, being a member of
the Cabal) does not necessarily make you a personal friend of
any other lspacer. It does not bestow wisdom or intelligence,
politeness or tact, power or abilities, beyond what you
already have. It does not mean you have signed a contract or
made a promise to uphold certain values or act a certain way.
Among the lspace.org crowd you will find people who don't
know of each other's existence, people who have come to hate
each other's guts, people who are close Internet or real life
friends, and even people involved in serious relationships
with each other up to and including marriage and procreation.
Lspacers who maintain a specific service do control that
service, of course, and this does make the Cabal in
particular a rather "powerful" entity, but that is not
intrinsically related to the presence of an lspace.org
address, and any such power certainly stops at the newsgroup
or IRC channel border.
If there is any extra respect that the Ankh-Morporkian crew
of lspace.org individuals may have been getting around the
net; any inclination from folks to sit up and pay closer
attention when one of us says something, then that is based
solely on the personal track record, expertise, and general
worthiness of the lspacer in question, never simply on the
fact that they are using an lspace.org address to sign their
opinions.
9. What do I do if I have a complaint about someone@lspace.org?
------------------------------------------------------------
Complaints form the other side of the respect coin mentioned
in the previous question. In both cases, care should be taken
not to confuse lspace.org with the individual people in its
"address space".
In the words of the standard disclaimer: the L-Space Cabal
can not be held responsible for any individual lspacer's
actions or words. If there is a problem, take it up with them
privately first, or try to find other ways of resolving your
conflict.
However, if you feel the Cabal really does need to know about
the problem or complaint in question (which would typically
only be the case if it also directly involved one of the
lspace.org services themselves), you should always feel free
to send us a note about it at <cabal@lspace.org>, and we will
address the issue to the best of our capabilities.
10. Should I be scared of approaching the L-Space Cabal? They
have been around so long! They know so much! They are so
wise! I've heard they flame people! I am such a newbie! Won't
they flame *me*? Or laugh in my face?
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Nope. True. True. Well, if you say so. Not as the Cabal. So?
No. Never!
See also the answer to question 7.
If you have *any* questions or suggestions or comments,
please do not hesitate to contact us in e-mail. Be assured we
will always look forward to hearing from you.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
The L-Space Cabal <cabal@lspace.org>:
Robert Collier (London, UK) Leo Breebaart (Delft, NL)
Mike Knell (London, UK) Colm Buckley (Dublin, IE)