(1) What is NC Darts anyway?

It was conceived as a central repository for dart league sites (and off-site URLs) for as many leagues as we can find in North Carolina. This not only includes local leagues but statewide challenge leagues, in-state tournaments (such as the annual NC State Steeltip Tournament in the fall) as well as any other darting news of general interest to North Carolina dartists which is of a non-commercial nature (more on "non-commercial" a bit later in this FAQ).

The NC Darts Project is an outgrowth of the Web presence of one little dart league in Durham, NC. For nearly two years, the (now former) statistician and paper newsletter editor of the Bull City Dart League maintained the BCDL's site as an afterthought. The generosity of Rick Osgood of the fabulously successful Cyberdarts site got the league on the Web in 1994 and as the little league's site grew it became clear that we couldn't impose on Rick to keep updating all those pages we kept emailing him every week. We tried commercial servers and finally were offered a mirror site at the world-famous SunSITE (now iBiblio) server at UNC-Chapel Hill. After six months or so the last commercial site we used went dark and we moved permanently to iBiblio

We began thinking about broadening the iBiblio archive to include all the leagues in North Carolina early on, but time and work constraints kept that on the back burner for a long time - until now! We had seen the success we had with the BCDL site (a league whose site was linked to from sites on all seven continents, some in languages we couldn't even identify!) and wanted to let the rest of the leagues in the state in on the fun and notoriety.

(2) Well how does my league get in on all this fun?

It's a simple as contacting us. It won't cost you or your league one thin dime. That's a concept hard for some folks to grasp in this ever-increasingly commercial "brave new world" of the internet, but the keyword here is "FREE!" Please take a moment and follow this link to iBiblio's main page and read their Content Disclaimer, Collection Policy and (yes! Do it!) their Alphabetic Index to learn more about this valuable resource and why it's considered one of the crown jewels in the internet universe.

(3) Can NC Darts design and maintain our collection?

No. All web page design and maintenence is the responsibility of the participating leagues. It would be difficult to find a league today which doesn't have a member or three who is fairly knowlegeable of HTML tagging. As soon as we receive your HTML files by email, they will be validated and put online. Since a great deal of the other dart sites on the Web are public domain, you can always do what we did in the beginning (a noble and honorable trait, if you ask us): we liberally stole designs from sites we liked. We've always been flattered when someone "steals" some design fiddlybit from us for their own league's site. Just don't steal copyright material. It's not good karma. And it'll get you nuked from here in a New York Minute.

In a worst-case scenario, contact the head web monkey here for suggestions. We have some HTML templates, graphics and shortcut tricks (like a really fine MS-Excel macro (that we "stole" from NASA-GSFC) that turns a .XLS file into HTML at the push of a button). We really want to see your league here!

(4) We already have a web server. Can we get a link from the NC Darts homepage?

You betcha! No matter where you are in the Old North State, we want to link you. Send us the URL. NOW!

(5) Can we talk about "non-commercial" now?

Sure, since you brought it up. To have your league hosted here at MetaLab, you have to be a non-commercial (ie, not-for-profit) dart league. This really shouldn't be a problem since (a) we know of no commercial dart league franchise operations here in North Carolina and (2) if there are, they should be hosting their own sites out of their own profits. Simple, eh? We don't mind linking to the commercial dart leagues or equipment vendors from here if we feel their presence on this site would be beneficial to the state darters, but we cannot host commercial pages. If your league has classified ads from individuals for one-time sales or trades of used or "just not what I was looking for when I bought it" dart equipment, that will probably not be a problem here.

When it comes to questionable material hosted here, the decision of the judges is final. We are responsible to the University (and, ultimately to the taxpayers of the state of North Carolina) to honor the mandate of iBiblio. Please read the iBiblio Collection Policy one more time if you still have questions on this topic.

(6) Can our league's webmaster get an account at iBiblio (or at least write access to our league's home directory via ftp)?

Yes. They'll even get a fancy iBiblio email address, and be kept abreast of the latest features and news at iBiblio.

(7) Who is the NC Darts Archivist?

Theoretically speaking, it is Patrick J. Murray. Patrick has been known to go AWOL from time to time, and while he occasionally answers emails, he apparently hasn't messed with the archives for quite some time. More likely, Andrew J. Mead is the one minding the store until Pat resurfaces.

The Usual Disclaimer

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