Re: The Life of the Cat

I know I'm probably a stranger to most of you due to recent inactivity but I go back to the Halisp list days in early 1999.  I think Dip410 was my first playing experience as a replacement and I was a bit overwhelmed for my first gamestart in Dip431, a World variant by Joe Janbu.  Sadly my Argentina never got to ally with or mix it up with Dave Watson's Mexico.  Anyway.... Real Life has kept me from playing for a while but I've stayed subscribed because I knew this was one of the places I wanted to come back to when my schedule allowed.  I've lurked and read emails when the subject catches my eye.  Kinda like now.

I hadn't realized activities had dwindled enough to threaten the demise of CAT23 and I'm glad there is a core group of you talking about how to fix this.  I've caught up on all the emails and I'm afraid I don't have any fresh ideas but I want to throw my hat in the ring as a volunteer in some type of maintenance capacity.  In the meantime I wanted to put down some of what I remember about our history.  It's one of the reasons I'm partial to CAT23 and want to keep it active.  I consider it the first online Diplomacy community.  I also remember CAT23 being the birthplace of the WorldMasters back in 1999.  If it is not then my impression is such due to my being recruited to help from the CAT lists.

My knowledge of the early days is scarce and second-hand but I hope it's a start to build upon.  CAT23 was originally an online Diplomacy forum on Compuserve and it's designation was 'Category 23' or CAT23 for short.  I don't know how long it existed on Compuserve but that came to an end for some reason.  The interest of the participants was still high so they found another host.  I was never clear on what Halisp was but I had the impression it was a company that donated it's service to us.  I remember the email for the main list was [email protected] and there was at least one other list for chat and/or admin.  By 1999 there had been over 400 games on Compuserve and Halisp and the community was growing.  I believe we were becoming too large for the provider to continue to donate their services and a new home had to be found.  I lost my hard drive in the 'crash of '03' and don't have a hard record of the changes during this time but IIRC the service we landed on initially was Onelist but they changed to E-groups which was then bought by Yahoo.  Several companion groups were set up over the years like the DipKnights and the GM-Mentors.  And a standardized set of rules for PBEM play was developed.  I know more people deserve credit but the names I associate with these projects are Dave Watson, Libby McAfee and David Cohen.  Peter Richardson and Steph Mabie were also involved with the DipKnights.  I think it was Peter Richardson and Ted Miller who ran the first couple of WorldMasters tournaments.  I see Packrat is still active.  Scott deserves a lot of credit as a DipKnights in taking over what seemed like hudreds of abandoned positions.  Peter also had a periodic Dreathwatch report which tried to revive games abandoned by a GM.  And I'm sure a lot more has gone on of which I don't even have an inkling.  Certainly Ray Setzer did a mountain of behind-the-scenes work.  I know Ray has moved on but I bet he'd answer some questions for us and help construct a definitive history.  I see now that I am woefully unfit for the task.

If we can truly lay claim to the first online Diplomacy community then I think that is a worthy enough reason to keep the CAT23 name.  We can certainly lengthen it though.  If people are looking to play Diplomacy then it will help to have a group name with 'Diplomacy' in it.

Scott Fort

-----Original Message-----
>From: The White Wolf <[email protected]>
>Sent: Mar 17, 2008 6:37 PM
>To: Cat-23 NGame <[email protected]>, Cat-23 DipKnights <[email protected]>
>Subject: [CAT23-Ngame] The Life of the Cat
>
>Folks,
>  I posted something similar to this on the DK list,
>but it seems I forgot to add the NGame list *sigh*.
>I've copied both lists on this one, since there are
>unique points in this email that I left out of the
>DK-only mail I sent earlier.
>  The idea of a unique website is probably a good one.
>I personally don't see a problem with being a part of
>the WorldMasters website, if that's what is decided. I
>think Gavin Turner is very generous in offering
>webspace and bandwidth, Adam Kuehn volunteered to
>front the registration fee, and Chris Dziedzic offered
>to be our PR guy, so it seems we have the resources.
>All we need is the manpower and know-how.
>  I, for one, am willing to volunteer manpower, when
>I'm able and when necessary, but I certainly don't
>have the know-how. We'd need a person knowledgeable
>enough with HTML to design something. I know a guy, as
>the saying goes, but sadly he's incommunicado on a
>deployment to Afghanistan for the next six months or
>so. We'd be best served by finding someone within the
>community, who knows what we need and what appeals to
>new and old players alike, without having to be
>directed second-hand.
>  I like the suggestions from Stephen Worthy and Chris
>Dziedzic about FaceBook and MySpace. On the subject of
>volunteering my time, I'd like to offer myself and my
>wife for setting up a MySpace Cat23 community. I know
>from past searches that MySpace has a fair share of
>Dip communities already, and I'm sure they'd all be
>happy to be added as friends, which could definitely
>help with recruiting new members. I'll start on that
>tonight, and provide the link as soon as I have
>something viable.
>  If anyone can think of something I can add to the
>community, please feel free to email me directly. The
>more help and suggestions I get, the better we can
>make this thing.
>  I wish you all well, and I hope to see some
>wonderful things from this thread of discussion.
>
>The White Wolf
>
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