Tom Clancy FAQ - General
Contents
Newsgroups and Netiquette
Authors
Author Information
Other
Newsgroups and Netiquette
The Newsgroups
This FAQ specifically addresses the
alt.fan.tom-clancy and
alt.books.tom-clancy
newsgroups. The
alt.books.tom-clancy newsgroup has the heavier message and
thread volume. For more information regarding the newsgroups,
go to this
page.
Back to Top
Tom Clancy Mailing List
Through the efforts of
Nicolas Pieraut,
a new Tom Clancy mailing list is now available. If you want to
subscribe, follow this link:
http://www.onelist.com/subscribe.cgi/clancy. This mailing
list requires a confirmation code to be sent back so watch your
email after you subscribe.
Back to Top
Netiquette -- Spoiler Warnings
These are newsgroups dedicated to discussions of Tom Clancy
and his media products. Please be considerate of your fellow
readers who may not have read the latest Clancy story, seen the
latest Clancy movie, or played the latest game. If you are going
to include information that may spoil things for movie for other
readers of this group, please have the courtesy to place the
title and the word "SPOILER" before any such information;
preferably in the Subject line.
Since the paperback version of the hardbacks may take up to a
year to be published, it is appropriate to continue to add a
spoiler warning for that length of time after a hardcover book
comes out. Most participants continue to add the spoiler tag
well after the paperback version appears.
Back to Top
Netiquette -- Contacting Mr. Clancy
If you want to ask Mr. Clancy a question, post it on the
appropriate newsgroup; *don't* email him. Flooding his mail with
questions is discourteous and counter productive. Besides,
another reader will very likely be able to answer your question
faster than Mr. Clancy. We all know that he's busy researching
and writing and that demands on his time are huge. In case you
are wondering, Mr. Clancy's longtime email address on AOL does
not work on a regular basis. He has used it a few times to
respond to us in the newsgroup.
Clancy taunted us that he had another ID that he had been
using in the newsgroups. So, he posed a challenge to us. The
message is here. Subsequently, Clancy reported that the bet had been
won rather quickly so no need to continue to try.
If you have a honest need to contact Mr.
Clancy, his agent is now Michael Ovitz of
Artists Management Group.
Contact address and phone number is on the website. Robert
Gottlieb of the William Morriss Agency is no longer Clancy's
agent.
Back to Top
Netiquette -- Posting Full Message Quotes or News Articles
When replying to a post, take the few extra seconds to delete
extraneous quotes from the prior post. That is, many newreaders
will automatically quote the entire message for which you are
preparing to reply. If you are not replying to the entire
message, prune the quote back to only those parts which are
relevant to your comments. If the entire message is quoted, plus
your comments, the "bandwidth" wasted will be significant. Many
news servers delete the oldest messages after certain storage
sizes are reached. For example, presume that a news server has
one gigabyte available for storage of messages from all
newsgroups (including the binary groups). As the server reaches
the storage limits, the oldest messages from all groups are
deleted. After some time, we may find that the news servers are
deleting one and two day old messages due to space
considerations. By doing our part, we may be able to prevent
this.
Recently, several participants have begun posting news
articles from other sources in their entirety. As with posting
extraneous posts, this wastes "bandwidth". If you must quote a
news article, quote only the part you actually want to comment
on. Even better, post the web address and your comments only.
Similarly, don't post a news article with no comment. This will
be viewed as Spam by many participants of the newsgroup. Note in
the case of news articles that you should make sure you don't
violate any copyright laws.
Back to Top
Netiquette -- Flame Wars
The newsgroups and mailing list are not a place for personal
attack. This not only wastes bandwidth but is discourteous to
the other participants. If you have a personal beef with
someone, take it off line. The Tom Clancy newsgroups and mailing
list are intended for civilized debate and comment.
Back to Top
Netiquette - Trolls
A troll is a message posted solely to inspire traffic and
conflict, and not because the poster actually gives a whit about
the opinions expressed therein. The participants of the
newsgroup are encouraged to ignore the troller and positings.
Back to Top
Netiquette - Spam and Inappropriate Postings
If you spam, there are newsgroup participants who will pursue
you and get your account deleted. This HAS occured recently.
This is a VERY busy newsgroup, and our readers take great
pleasure in reading and posting. We don't want to put up with
people who are not acting in accordance to the purpose of this
group. Spamming are great ways to get yourself killfiled.
Decorum is encouraged among the participants of this
newsgroup. Newsgroup participants are also encouraged to keep
profanity to a minimum - particularly in thread headers. There
are many minors who read this group, and while they will be
exposed to it at some point, a.b.t-c isn't really the place to
introduce them to such coarse or inappropriate language.
Back to Top
Netiquette - Don't Post Binaries (Pictures)
This is to be a text-only newsgroup. Please don't post
binaries in the newsgroup (i.e. pictures). Provide a link to a
picture (similar to full-text articles) instead.
Back to Top
Other
General Abbreviations and Acronyms
Rather than create a separate list of general abbreviations
and acronyms for this FAQ, readers are referred to existing FAQs.
The sci.military.naval FAQ contains a basic list of naval
abbreviations/acronyms; there is also a separate, and very
large, Acronyms and Codenames FAQ. These are available at the
following URL:
USNSM FAQ Archive
These FAQ's are maintained by Andrew Toppan (actoppan@gwi.net)
who formerly maintained the Tom Clancy FAQ as well.
There is a "standardized" system of abbreviations for the
book titles which is provided in the
Books section
of this FAQ.
Back to Top
What does REMF mean?
One extremely common abbreviation is: REMF (Pronounced "remph".
This was used extensively in R6 but is also found in other books
as well. The PG rated version of the explanation was provided
by George Morgan: "Rear Echelon Muddled Fool". Basically, this
is some command person who does not get their hands dirty but
generally creates problems for the line animals over and above
the problems presented by the enemy. An example: Assume a Navy
SEAL (or other snake eater) has just climbed back aboard a ship
after double tapping some poor tango on the beach. The REMF
immediately runs up to him and berates him because he wasted
ammunition but using two bullets instead of two.
Back to Top
About the FAQ
This FAQ was originally the work of Bob Marek (bobm@loc3.tandem.com)
and was first completed January 16, 1995. Maintenance of the FAQ
was then passed to Geoff Gass (glg@nwu.edu),
and to Andrew Toppan (actoppan@gwi.net)
in November 1996. Andrew passed maintenance to
Stephen Cosby in
January, 1998. It is maintained on a time-available basis.
Contributions, suggestions, comments and corrections are always
welcome.
Back to Top
Is there a downloadable text version of the FAQ?
No. The FAQ is fully HTML coded now and there are certain
functions and/or features which cannot be provided in a text
version.
Back to Top |
