From: schulz@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Stephan Schulz) Newsgroups: soc.history.ancient Subject: [FAQ] Welcome to soc.history.ancient (Mini-FAQ) Followup-To: soc.history.ancient Summary: FAQ on technical aspects of the group. Expires: 1 Jul 1997 00:00:00 GMT Supersedes: <5k2ugk$jkc@sunsystem5.informatik.tu-muenchen.de> Keywords: FAQ, welcome, ancient, history Archive-name: history/ancient/mini-faq Posting-Frequency: about weekly (will drop to about monthly later) URL: http://wwwjessen.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~schulz/ancient_faq.posted Maintainer: Stephan Schulz [Last changed: Mon Apr 7 14:15:46 MET DST 1997] Welcome to soc.history.ancient (Mini-FAQ) ========================================= [This FAQ is intended as a temporary solution only, and is mostly cobbled together from the CFV and the soc.history.medieval FAQ. I'mn back, and so is the FAQ. Florida is a nice place. If you buy really cheap T-Shirts there, be aware of the fact that you get what you pay for ;-) Stephan ] This document is intended as a primer to the newsgroup soc.history.ancient. It describes the purpose of this group and contains pointers to some interesting resources and general netiquette documents. It is not intended as a resource on ancient history in itself. Only time will tell us what frequently asked questions we will have to answer in the future. This is only a draft. Please feel free to suggest changes, additional topics and corrections. Comments and requests are enclosed in [square brackets]. The last posted version of this FAQ will be available on the WWW under http://wwwjessen.informatik.tu-muenchen.de/~schulz/ancient_faq.posted. Table of Contents ================= 1 What is the charter of this group? 2 How was this group created? 3 Discussion Style and Netiquette 4 Frequently asked questions 5 Credits 1 What is the charter of this group? ------------------------------------ The newsgroup line and charter of the group as voted on during group creation are as follows: soc.history.ancient Ancient history (up to AD 700). This is a news group for discussion of ancient historical cultures existing up to circa AD 700. Appropriate types of articles include discussions of ancient cultures, FAQs, booklists, personal insight essays, announcements of new publications and research, analyses of historical patterns (i.e., styles of warfare, travel, agriculture, etc.), and reviews of current research and television series or specials. Short, non-hype, commercial announcements of books, seminars, etc. are also acceptable, but no more than once per month per business. Inappropriate types of articles include commercial advertisements posted more frequently than once per month, unrelated to ancient history, or including excessive length of hype; non-historical or pseudo-historical discussions (what if, alternate history, fantasy cultures, etc.); topics outside the date range of the news group; binary files (excluding PGP and similar short signatures); and articles focusing on legends (except insofar as they affected history), alternative history, and unverifiable events. Soc.history.ancient is intended to be the first, but not the only, resource on Usenet for the reader interested in ancient history. The newsgroup's focus is specifically on history, preferably as it can be known from texts. The texts in and of themselves, as literary or linguistic topics, or non-textual remains, are secondary in interest on this newsgroup, and there are other newsgroups where postings on these topics will often find more informed and interested audiences. Articles on topics for which textual evidence is scant or non-existant should be posted to sci.archaeology.moderated or sci.archaeology. While discussions of the Maya, the only known American culture with surviving texts from our period, are welcome, posters should be aware that sci.archaeology.mesoamerican is more likely to be read by informed specialists in that subject. And for postings on topics *primarily about* Old World texts and/or languages of the texts themselves, humanities.classics, humanities.language.sanskrit, or sci.lang will be a better place to go. There is no newsgroup for which discussion of ancient art is especially on-topic. Posters are asked to judge which group is most likely to be interested or informed on the topic of a post discussing the visual or other non-literary arts, and to choose the appropriate newsgroup, perhaps posting pointers in one or more other group. Pointers to binaries posted in alt.binaries.pictures.misc or available by e-mail are encouraged. This charter will be included in the newsgroup's first FAQ. Thereafter, it will be changed only by formal RFD or CFV, or in accordance with the renaming or creation of newsgroups relevant to ancient history (such as a binaries group for maps, or an Egyptology group, for example). This group will be unmoderated, allowing anyone with the proper access to create or participate in message discussions. 2 How was this group created? ----------------------------- The FAQ of a history group probably should contain some remarks on the history of the group. So here it is: The first proposal for the group soc.history.ancient was posted on Monday, July 29th 1996 to news.announce.newgroups, news.groups, and a lot of topical newsgroups and mailing lists. This posting was preceded by an email discussion among the proponents, Michael Martinez, Joe Bernstein, Patrick Conway and Stephan Schulz, as well as some other supporters of a group on ancient history. The second RFD, with an improved charter and rationale, was posted after an unusually long delay (due to a hard disk crash and some problems with the distribution of the proposal) on November 27th, 1996. Voting on the group started on January 8th 1997, and closed on January 29th. The UVV votetaker was David Bostwick, he announced the result of the vote on February 5th, 1997. The group passed with 333:13 votes. After the customary 5-day waiting period, the group was created by a newsgroup message send by the moderator of news.announce.newgroups, David C. Lawrence (tale@uunet.uu.net, now tale@isc.org). All relevant documents (RFDs, CFVs, and the result posting) are archived at ftp://ftp.uu.net/usenet/news.announce.newgroups/soc/soc.history.ancient. 3 Discussion Style and Netiquette --------------------------------- Usenet is an entirely open medium. Everybody can read this group and everybody can post to it. This means that the groups will occasionally see trolls (strong worded postings intended only to provoke a lot of replies), flames, and off-topic posts. The best way to deal with this kind of postings is usually to ignore it. In case of repeated and significant violation of the charter you can send a polite email to the offender, perhaps with a copy to the postmaster at his site. If you personally object to some people or some subjects, most news readers allow the use of a KILL-file that can be used to filter out undesirable postings. Check the documentation of your news reader or look at the FAQ sheets in news.software.readers. In order to improve the communication on this group you might want to keep the following in mind: - Extensive cross-posting (posting to more than one group) often leads to different threads on the same topic. Consider to use a Follow-Up header to confine discussion to the most appropriate group. - People hate to read things again and again. Thus, try to avoid large quotes. Quote only what you respond to. Mark deletions with three dots or a short summary of what you deleted, if you think the context is important. In particular, don't quote large amounts of text and add "me too" at the bottom. - Use descriptive Subject lines. "History", "Test" or "Hi there" are not particularly useful. - If you change the topic of a thread, or if it has drifted until it has nothing to do with the Subject header line, you should consider a new subject line as well. Add "(was: _old_subject_)" to the new subject. - Try to format your lines to 72 characters. Most terminals and windows are 80 characters wide, and quoting will often indent your text a couple of times. Lines wrapping around on the screen are very hard to read. - Don't try to pass on your homework assignments. Requests like "Please tell everything about Athenian Democracy, my paper is due tomorrow!" are usually met with well deserved sarcasm. Try to be specific and to give enough information to allow the reader to anticipate your problems. - Do not post binaries in the group. They are explicitly forbidden by the charter, and belong only in the hierarchies explicitly intended for them. The reason for this is to allow news servers with limited resources to avoid these (very expensive) postings. For more information on the appropriate behaviour on and the structure of Usenet check out the introductory postings in news.announce.newusers. This might pay off even if you think you are an experienced user or if you read them a couple of years ago. You might also want to check out the excellent alt.atheism FAQ on logical arguments. It is regularly posted to alt.atheism and alt.atheism.moderated (and, of course, to news.answers), and a copy can be found on the WWW at http://www.cis.ohio-state.edu/hypertext/faq/usenet/atheism/logic/faq.html. For some topics technically out of scope of this group, but likely to turn up nonetheless, the excellent talk.origins FAQ archives provide a lot of information. This includes prehistoric catastrophes and flood myths, but also discussions of scientific principles and vocabulary. The talk.origins FAQ archives can be reached via the Welcome FAQ at http://earth.ics.uci.edu:8080/faqs/faq-welcome.html. 4 Frequently asked questions ---------------------------- 4.1: What are the different dating schemes (AD, BC, BCE, CE) about? The traditional (Christian) dating scheme uses the abbreviation AD ("Anno Domini", or "Year of the Lord") to denote years after the (supposed) birth of Jesus Christ. It uses BC ("before Christ") to denote earlier dates. Note that there is no year 0, 1 BC is directly followed by 1 AD. Yes, this is illogical to a modern mathematicians mind, but it may have appeared reasonable to the early medieval monks that probably established this dating system [Has anybody more information on the early use of the Christian dating scheme?]. There are some concerns about the use of the strong Christian symbolism in the naming scheme. On the one hand, some traditional followers of Christian faith believe that the use of these names violates the second commandment: "Thou shallst not use the name of the Lord in vain" (or words to that effect - my knowledge of the King James Bible is rudimentary). For both traditional Jewish and Muslim persons there is another objection, namely that the statement "Year of the Lord" presupposes the divinity of Jesus Christ, contrary to their beliefs. Due to similar concern, other cultures feel uncomfortable with using these Eurocentric names. As a solution, more neutral synonyms have been suggested and come into use: CE ("Common Era", or, sometimes "Christian Era" - note that this does not imply any religous statement, but merly acknowledges the existence of Christianity or the Christian Dating scheme) is equivalent to AD, and BCE ("Before the Common (Christian) Era") is equivalent to BC. These are strict synonyms, there is no change to the numbers assigned to the years. 5 Credits --------- The first version of this FAQ was written and posted by me (Stephan Schulz). Since then the following people have, to a greater or lesser degree, influenced this FAQ: Stan Goodman and D. Michael Tepe -------------------------- It can be done! --------------------------------- Please email me as schulz@informatik.tu-muenchen.de (Stephan Schulz) ----------------------------------------------------------------------------