Washington Apple Pi runs a community bulletin board system where members can meet and exchange information and ideas, 24 hours a day. The "digital hub", if you will, of the well-connected user group lifestyle.
The TCS is an umbrella project under which all of Washington Apple Pi's electronic communications services are built and administered.
At the center of these services stands an electronic bulletin board system, which is also called the TCS because it came first and the other services grew out from that foundation.
This document will focus on the main bulletin board piece. Other pages describe the surrounding services in more detail.
The TCS bulletin board system is a place online where Pi members can meet, post messages, ask questions, and share their knowledge. It's a 24-hour community center, providing ready access to the invaluable resources that Washington Apple Pi has to offer.
Over the years, thousands of members have considered this their most immediate connection to the Washington Apple Pi community. To this day the TCS's discussion boards remain as active and vital as ever, especially as the Internet has grown to include too much information to adequately take in and apply to one's own situation. Fellow Pi members, experienced and enthusiastic about Macintosh computing, are always on hand to offer practical, applicable (and often even correct!) advice.
The TCS, in all of its services, is built and maintained entirely by your fellow Pi members on a volunteer basis. These folks are not paid, and too often not thanked, for the time, effort, expertise, and money they provide to the project. The same can be said about every project overseen by this organization.
Answering the question a different way, the TCS Committee is a standing committee of the Washington Apple Pi Board of Directors. The board appoints as one of their officers a Telecommunications Officer, or TCSO, who serves as the committee's chairperson and reports their issues to the board.
Originally, in the early 1980's, Washington Apple Pi's "TCS" stood for "Teleconferencing System". Though some will tell you with a wry grin that it meant "Tin Cans and String". We tend to speak in terms of the former definition, though our use of the term has expanded since those early days, just as our use of the system has expanded.
Roughly a decade ago, the original bulletin board system expanded to include e-mail and global newsgroup services. Then in the mid-1990's it grew to incorporate affordable dial-up Internet access. For historical reasons we consider all of these "TCS services", though the focus of this FAQ will be the core bulletin board component.
Like any good volunteer project with a 20-year history, the TCS has a mascot and some inside jokes. The official mascot is a penguin, and the reason for this was naturally an inside joke.
Briefly put, one of the greatest challenges faced by the original system administrators was to keep the server closet cool enough that the machines wouldn't fail. The closet was almost as small as the budget, and a rogue's gallery of specialized fans and compressors were tried and failed. Come 1986 they had located a water-cooled unit that for the first time ever managed to keep the room below 90 degrees throughout the month of April.
At around that time Nancy Seferian, a recent TCS crew addition, was looking for a way to pitch in. She was an artist, rather than a programmer or network engineer, so her earliest contribution was artwork to mount on the door of the server closet. It featured a proud penguin in a scarf and earmuffs, and read "-30¡c or bust". Ever since that day, the shivering crew members who enter and exit that room have been known as penguins.
You'll note that this decision, and this artwork, well predate both the Linux and QuickTime penguins. (Which we also enjoy a great deal! We just really like penguins.)
One individual or household may use one TCS Classic or TCS Explorer subscription. One TCS Classic account is included with each Pi membership. Additional accounts are available for family members at $20/year apiece. TCS Explorer is a $96/year option which includes dial-up Internet access.
Each account must be associated with a contact telephone number, usually at home. The system operator has not needed to contact any of these numbers in a great many years, and this isn't expected to change, but nonetheless this remains a requirement of our bylaws and it helps to keep the community safe.
The name on the account should be the name of the person who most uses the account. Family members are allowed to share a Pi membership and to share a TCS account, but if they become active participants we ask that they participate using their real names. The name on the account can be changed upon request to the system operators, or additional accounts can be registered. (Note that this account name is not the same as the e-mail address. The former is in the form "JANE MEMBER", the latter usually in the form "jane.member@wap.org".)
You access the TCS bulletin board by using any web browser and pointing it at <http://tcs.wap.org/>.
Create a bookmark in your web browser for <http://tcs.wap.org/>. Upon visiting that page, enter your mailbox name (e.g. "jane.member") and your TCS password (e.g. "1234.abcd"). If you encounter trouble, refer to the cookies and known bugs FAQs.
Traditionally, the TCS bulletin board has been accessed via a command-line terminal environment using either a modem-based terminal emulation program like ZTerm, or an Internet-based telnet program like NiftyTelnet. Alas, after two decades of use, this technology has been dropped.
The TCS can be a big place, and cover a great many topics in a day. Some members will be interested in chatting about pets and animals, for example, while others want to get their daily Mac fix and get out quickly. So the TCS is customizable: each person can select her own preferred boards to see every visit, and unselect the rest so they stay out of the way. Consequently, in order to respect people's board selection preferences it's important for each discussion to take place on an appropriate board.
The most interesting discussions, however, rarely stay completely focused. A question about repairing keyboards for example might lead naturally into a debate about preventative maintenance. Or an announcement of a web site might lead into a debate about the features of different web browsers. More to the point, sometimes you may have a question to ask about your computer, but if you already knew the exact nature of the problem (be it hardware, system software, or some add-on program) then you might be halfway to answering the question on your own! That's OK; it happens all the time. But in all of these cases, one of the regular visitors might suggest taking up the discussion on another board. Please don't be offended; their hope is simply to draw out the greatest potential benefit to the community. They may even know of a recent discussion on the same topic, which might already contain the information you want.
The thing to understand is that there's no 100% correct answer, since one can never predict where a conversation will lead. It might even lead into several different directions, each most appropriate to a separate board. So don't be afraid to just pick a board that sounds reasonably appropriate and try there. If someone recommends continuing somewhere else, give that a try. Most often these recommendations are well-founded in local history.
Excellent question. With the above said, the following tips might help you locate the correct board on the first try.
All buying and selling should take place on the Classified Ads conference. Never on the computing or general interest discussion boards. Conversely, advice and discussion should not take place under Classified Ads.
The "Pi TCS Support" board on the Pi conference is for support of the Pi's in-house communications services. The TCS crew asks that you refrain from general discussion on that board, so that they're able to check in on any critical issues or bugs frequently throughout the day.
Discussion of Windows and other PC operating systems should take place on the "PC & Other Computers" board on the Computing conference. Even when the topic is, for example, integrating Macs within an all-Windows workplace.
There is only one board on the system on which the natives may become restless if confronted with a less-than-highly-technical question. That board is called Propellerhead Zoo" and serves as somewhat of a wild game preserve where geeks can strut and prowl as technical people are sometimes wont to do. Let it be, don't tap on the glass, and hopefully the other boards can be kept flying-fur-free for the sake of everyone else.
There are two catch-all boards on the system, basically for all manner of chatting that doesn't fit the question-and-answer model. "Mac Union" on the Computing conference is best for Mac advocacy and related industry events, but can also serve as a catch-all Mac-related board. "Open Discussion" on the Interests conference is for any stray chatter that doesn't fit anywhere else.
"Pi Announcements" is a read-only board, on which only selected volunteers post news of upcoming Pi events.
Again, it's always a judgement call, and someone might recommend moving to a different board even in the best of cases. But even a little effort toward finding the right board will pay off through drawing the most appropriate answers and inspiring the most interesting related discussions. Also, don't forget to check first to see if your topic has recently been discussed to death. You might find the answers you need there, or at least have a head-start to serve as a basis for follow-ups.
That's unfortunate, and against the character and charge of the TCS. Chances are, it was also unintentional. But as in any other social venue, these things do sometimes happen. Often the best thing to do is to shrug it off and let things settle down. But if more attention is necessary, there do exist some measures of recourse.
First, realize that electronic written communication is inherently fraught with the potential for miscommunication. People write online with less attention than they'd give to a traditional letter of correspondence. They often write as if they were speaking in person, only without being able to convey crucial nonverbal clues such as facial expressions and gestures. So quite often, a message will come across with an unintended tone. On the other hand, people are also writing from within the safety of their homes or offices, so sometimes they write things to strangers that they wouldn't dare say in person.
The TCS Committee does its best to catch these situations and to address them privately. But since committee members are more likely to have actually met the people involved in person, they sometimes infer the facial expressions and fail to see the unintended miscues. Indeed, members of the TCS Committee are prone to the very same types of miscommunication, and they write a lot of messages and answer a lot of questions.
If you feel an issue needs to be redressed, try addressing a private message to the TCS crew, referencing the exact problem in its context. They should follow up with either or both parties to help address the situation. If this doesn't provide a sufficient resolution, you can send e-mail to the TCSO, or even ultimately appeal to Washington Apple Pi's Board of Directors.