REWOICC@ERENJ.BITNET (the element of laughter) (01/25/91)
hello all. last month, as i was sitting here paging though one of the digests, i read a post by someone requesting help for removal of some virus from the pcs in the lab that he was a consultant for. that post (and the numerous others that appear with that same theme: "please help me remove <insert virus name here> from my pc/friend's pc/pc lab") prompted me to write to Ken and ask him what he thought about creating a set of "virus man pages" that would be stored in the archives and made available to everyone so that requests for help could be referred to there instead of endlessly repeating the procedure to the list again and again. he mentioned to me the list that is maintained by patricia hoffman which is not public domain and how he would *love* to have something like that made available to the network at large. i agreed. however, i am not a virus expert, nor am i a computer guru. (merely a well-learned user ;) ergo, i cannot compose this data myself. but, i am more than willing to try and coordinate an effort to make this service available to the net. the way i envision this project is asking people to volunteer to write about a specific virus the necessary information regarding its charac- teristics, its effects, its means of propagation, its removal, etc. this method will require that some kind of template be drafted so that there is some semblance of order to the descriptions. it will also re- quire that there be some kind of panel or group of experts who "okay" each file before being added to the archives. again, that is how i think would be the best way to tackle this project, should any of you feel that this would be worthwhile (i know kenneth and i feel that way). please feel free to comment on that suggestion or make your own as i'd rather discuss this matter first before plunging head- long into it. there are a number of other concerns ken and i discussed, but until i am sure that there is some support for this idea, i will hold off on them. if there is interest, i'll probably just post the correspondance that we had for everyone's perusal (you don't mind do you, ken?) and we can go from there. - -- rob woiccak rewoicc@erenj.bitnet