O Clio.

Sing in me.

And through me, tell the story

Of that guide skilled in all ways of digging

Into the undergrowth to find and plunder

The low height of the AWW.

It all started with a thread called 'Why is the AWW Still Such a Deadend?' created by Spaceman Spiff. There various suggestions were made for a sort of new alternative guide. One person brought up the term UnderGuide, as a word for the not-edited guide. Then another person thought that an alternative 'UnderGuide' might not be a bad idea, and the name was chosen¹.

Then a very abstract idea came about that interested some miners and italics. A guide for creative entries as a parallel to the Edited Guide. Suddenly, several discussions started, many of which turned out to accomplish nothing, and suddenly pages were made, updates were requested and people wanted to help. The 'miners' searched through the Alternative Writing Workshop, looking for gems and even tossing in a few gems from all over the site. The AWW saw more discussion and activity than it ever had before and the seeds for the UG were planted. The month of February saw the most activity in the AWW.

Discussions continued, and researchers were still interested. An MSN site was formed, and some entries were put on the mining lists, many of which would later be mined. After a while of conversations stopping and slowing, the UG suddenly grinded to a hault in mid-March. Some people thought it was dead, and in many ways it was.

It lay dormant for several months. Finally, one miner went to Ashley's space in late April to ask what was going on. The italics were preoccupied, but said that they had not forgotten the UnderGuide. It was suggested that if Ashley didn't make a move soon, we should poke him to see what he does. One miner did that on May 16th. Finally, on May 19th, Ashley requested specific information to get before the UG started again. It was supplied and the UG kicked off again.

An offsite Yahoo group began, and that is when the UG became really serious. June saw a period of enormous miner activity, in the AWW and working on the mailing list. There, the miners waited patiently to know what to do. Many realized that in order to get the UG going, there would have to be editors. Then, of course some miners complained at the current system of picking editors - the self proclaimed 'Power Grab'. They set up a system of voting which had four candidates to hold the Editor title-

• GTBacchus
• friendlywithteeth
• Jodan
• spook

Email votes to Ashley were sent and in mid-June he succinctly announced the new editors on the mailing list-

The polls are closed


...and the results are in.


The two holders of the UG Persona are



GTBacchus

Jodan

With that, the editors sprung into action. They started making pages, coming up with systems and building up the infastructure. On Monday, 30 June 2003 the first round of picks started, and a few weeks later the first entries were chosen.

The rest, as they say is history. Until I find time to do the rest of it...

The Rest of it

The UG has had its ups and downs, notably the tragic loss of certain editors and volunteers to the disease of vacation, the musical-chairs-like editor rotation, the CAC-C Creation, the Lode and the p*ss incident (which of course, will mean nothing to you if you don't have access to the offsite group).

It would be tedious and pointless to write up each event, but things have progressed. As a result of the UG, the CAC was reborn in the CAC-Continuum, the UnderGuide named entry was created, and a badge for UG volunteers was made. Who knows what other surprises are to come? I don't.

Historical UG Pages

• The Early MSN Offsite Group - Graciously provided by Ben. This shows some of the earliest picks and the discussion. Feel free to read the old posts.
• Proposals for an Underguide Scheme
• Underguide Scheme Plan D
• UnderGuidelines
• UnderGuide Introduction
• UG Processes Draft