History of the Imperium Working Group

[kafka47]

Is the HIWG still active. Every time, I click on Swordy's site, I either get a dead link or no response. I am very interested in getting a complete run of the proceedings and may want to join if it is still worthwhile.

Finding documents from the New Zealand chapter says it is an Adobe document but then claims there is no PDF extension...

 

[Falkayn]

I suspect it is as dead as a Dodo. I haven't heard anything about it being active still in the last couple of years since I've been interested in Traveller again.

This question came up on the TML a while ago and one of the HIWG people, Clayton Bush, said:

HIWG was overtaken by technology. The original organization was set up to exchange correspondence, and then set up an organization to group people together because we had to have multiple nodes. Poor Ed Edwards was getting 150 1-20 page mails a week.

We moved to Delphi and Genie for discussion groups. Email was a great improvement. The bulletin board system worked great for breaking up all the noise into coherent streams of messages.

Moral: See the CITIZENS OF THE IMPERIUM bulletin board. Participate.

He had other lessons they learnt as well, but basically it was dead. Bryan Borich apparently creates an HIWG CD every year (for $20) and might be offering it via BITS soon. His email is:
Kagekiha(at)aol.com with the (at) being replaced with a you know what.

 

[Swordy]

I've not been contacted by anyone involved with the site in many moons. I don't want to kill it off just yet, but it is a rather pitifull mess. I'd like to see someone take over maintenance of it again, but I don't know what chance there is of that. We have plenty of room on the server and could host all of the files that Bryan has on the two CDs with no problem, but much work would need to be done to index it properly and format it for the web. I know that Bryan doesn't have the time to do it. I know too little about the group to stick my fingers into it. So... there it sits

 

[kafka47]

I would be happy to take a stab at indexing them (I am a librarian, afterall) but I have recieved no reply from Bryan regarding obtaining them. So if they are public domain, would someone be interested in sending me copies?

 

[Vargas]

Whether or not they are public domain is problematic as many HIWGers copyrighted (copywrote?) their material. Whether or not the copyright markings have remained intact over the years is another issue.

 

[kafka47]

My understaing of Fair Use, is that if items are Public Domain, they may be freely traded. However, if they remain under copyright which they may have forfeited when they submitted to being on HIWG Discs, it then becomes the property of HIWG. Now if that body wishes to make all information public, then there is not issues of copyright violation.

But, my original point stands, I would be interested in obtaining copies and would be willing to do the onerous task of indexing the contents (and possibly reformating them for the web), if the holders would like to come forward.

 

[Swordy]

Originally posted by kafka47:
I would be happy to take a stab at indexing them (I am a librarian, afterall) but I have recieved no reply from Bryan regarding obtaining them. So if they are public domain, would someone be interested in sending me copies?

I've gone in to their site and fixed the broken links. Some files were missing, but I found them on the CD. Bryan is an interesting fellow, sometimes too cunning to be understood, but I will attempt to find a good address for him. He has popped up a few places recently and there are people who have purchased the CDs in the past 30 days or so. Likely, however, he will remain satisfied with providing the information on CD.

 

[Antony]

The HIWG Quadrant III site is still up. There is not a great deal on the site but there is an ctive link to the Ustral Quadrant sector which is also still up, though no longer active.

For those who may not know Quadrant III basically covered the Aslan Hierate and surrounding sectors. The HIWG site can be found at

http://members.aol.com/ghanii/Q-III/Q-III.htm

 

[Vargas]

Kafka- HIWG was not so well organized that it took over copyrights to material submitted to its central repository. Most of HIWG wanted to be published by DGP and/or GDW which would have involved relinquishing rights to them in exchange for payment. I would make no assumptions.

 

[Vargas]

What does the $20 Bryan gets for a HIWG CD cover?

 

[mad13142000]

HIWG Members are still around, even if the home is Kaput..

Quadrant 3 is at
http://carbon.cudenver.edu/~lguatney/Q-IV/Q-IV.html
Quadrant 1 was cut up between a couple of sites:
http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Matrix/1302/HIWGNZ/
and
http://users.chariot.net.au/~sinclairg/Yiklerzdanzh.html
and the last bits of the archive are at
http://traveller.mu.org/archive/HIWG/

Hope this helps...
-MADDog