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FAQ for Former Stumpers Subscribers

Strictly speaking, this isn’t a collection of Frequently Asked Questions, because it was composed before Project Wombat began. Instead, it is a collection of questions which we expect Stumpers subscribers are likely to ask. (The “I” in the answers is the Stumpers moderator referenced in question 3, who serves as the public “face” of the advisory board, wrote these pages, and was the central contact for starting the service back up.)

What happened to Stumpers?

The Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican decided to cease hosting the list. This was entirely within their rights.

What happened to the Stumpers archives?

The Stumpers archives were created without any sort of legal agreement at all. That makes their disposition a thorny issue. We will bring back the archives in due time, but before we add them, we will be making certain basic changes, including:

• Removing all personal information beyond names
• Removing “[Stumpers-L]” from the subject lines of messages
• Removing some of the headers completely
• Decoding Base64-encoded messages
• Removing HTML formatting where possible
• Removing any attachments from posts made when attachments were allowed
• Replacing certain posts (misaddressed requests to unsubscribe, any spam we find, any viruses which may have made it through) with placeholders
• Fixing up a standard misspelling for “Wombat” as a word for list members (for technical reasons, “W0mbat” with a zero is better than “Womb@t”—so except in posts debating which spelling to use, we will be using the former)

This will take some time, but we will eventually get through the process. We are beginning with the most recent posts and working backwards, and will add them to the Project Wombat archives one year at a time to avoid making too much work for our hosts, who have to do the manipulations themselves.

Who are you?

Project Wombat was created by the last moderator of the Stumpers list and a number of subscribers to that list who felt that the list filled a worthwhile purpose. The intent is to expand management of the list to consist of list users instead of uninterested third parties.

To protect the privacy of people who help with Project Wombat, people who have ongoing roles take pseudonyms of their own choosing. This may fool nobody, under certain circumstances, but prevents the person’s name from being affixed to Project Wombat in search engines unless they so desire.

How is Project Wombat managed?

The initial management consists of a board of seven people. (This will undoubtedly change over time, but a structure was needed with which to begin.) The final moderator of Stumpers selected four specific people who had been stable contributors to Stumpers for at least a few years, and asked them to help. They selected two further members. Decisions are made by this board of seven.

I was a stable contributor to Stumpers, but I’m not on the board! Should I be insulted?

No, there were several additional candidates for inclusion. Further selections would have been made (and may still be made, if the board chooses to expand or once the board decides how long a term is and one expires) if there were time and a real reason. Seven members is enough to make decisions with.

I’m not on the board, but I really want to help out. Can I do anything?

See the volunteer page (in the navigation table) for information.

Can I help pay for all this?

See the donation page (in the navigation table) for information.

Why “Project Wombat”?

Stumpers used a wombat (sort of a Platonic ideal of a wombat, actually, not a specific animal) as its mascot. For quite some time before the end of the Stumpers list, the moderator had been using “Project Wombat” as a name for anything being developed for Stumpers which was not yet ready for public viewing. A change of name is a useful precaution to emphasize the difference between the Stumpers list and the new list(s)—it is unnerving to be responsible for an e-mail list. The new name was obviously going to be something to do with wombats; there was no way around it. So when we were picked up by Project Gutenberg, it was fate...

I hate the new name! Do we have to call it that?

Yes. I hate taking out the trash, but I still concede that it has to be done. And anyway—if I can do all the work to get this going, you can at least put up with a lousy name-change. (Sheesh, kids these days, I tell ya...)

Wait, what was that about an “official” misspelling for Wombat?

It is generally agreed that spelling “Wombat” (as a term for list members) using some sort of symbol or deliberate error is a Good Idea, because it keeps references to list members from interfering with references to real wombats. The most common substitute was probably Womb@t, although that may merely be my impression because I prefer it. Womb@t, however, can be misconstrued by indexing software. It “looks” like an e-mail address, and even when it isn’t accidentally taken for an address, it contains a punctuation symbol, which means that it can legitimately be indexed as the word “Womb”...

W0mbat, on the other hand, using a zero instead of an “o”, will be properly indexed, and in any case the zero splits the word into a single letter and “mbat”, neither of which are likely to conflict with anything. We ask that you write accordingly.

As the archives are cleaned up, we will be “correcting” the references to use “W0mbat”, except in the case of posts debating the possible spellings (since those would be rendered nonsensical if the spellings were all fixed).

What’s the deal with the cat on the error page?

That is my cat. He has a knack for doing distracting or destructive things while I work on the list(s) or these web pages, so he made a good icon for frustrating error messages. He’s our anti-mascot. (And he’s hyperactive in real life.) The things he says on the error page are determined by when the server receives the request; try reloading a few times.

Which list should I subscribe to?

If you liked Stumpers, subscribe to plain Project-Wombat.

Why are there three lists now?

The FM list is there because I noticed that most of the people who gave a reason when unsubscribing from Stumpers said that the volume of mail was just too high. If we try to get people to pare down their postings, we will kill the tone of the list, but we won’t hurt the list at all if we just let some people who want to read everything anyway act as filters... and, of course, if we can retain more subscribers, then the list will get better at answering questions, which is the whole point.

The “Open” list is created in response to critics who have said I’m too strict over the years. It’s a way of saying, “fine, then, do it yourself.” If you don’t like it, you don’t have to read it.

Okay, I’ve grasped all this. So... why are you doing this again?

Because I like getting insufficient sleep and catching headcolds as a result, why else?

What other stuff is going to be on this site?

The “FAQ from Stumpers” won’t return until the Stumpers archives are cleaned up and ready to be added to Project Wombat. (We’re working on it.) Each moderator will get their own web page on which to record whatever they feel like recording. And we’re going to merge the documents from T. F. Mills’ Unofficial Stumpers website into this one, as I have time to pull in the documents. And other new features as we think of them, naturally.