A-1. In order to comply with Section Two (2) of the FAQ and paragraph Two (2) of the Charter. And Section Three (3) and Section Four (4) of the FAQ. Support files are made containing the information needed to understand what's being posted. The CSV and info files and any other files such as CD Labels and or jpg files pertaining to the collection that's not in the CSV file. Are placed in a rar and posted with the collection calling it Support makes it easy to understand what it is.

Q-2. Can anyone tell me how this works? My news browser (outlook) opens the files in code. Is it simply changing the extention to .rar?

A-2. well, your Outlook isn't compatible with the yenc posting scheme (afaik). Every post that contains a "yenc" in it should show you the code you spoke of. Try to get a "real" newsreader like Fort' Agent, NewsPro oder NewsBin. They can handle it without problems.

You can see a list of "approved" yenc readers and tools under www.yenc.org (of course, those are only proposals... there's alot more)

Q-3. Where do CSV's come from ?

A-3. Hunter, Actions/Make CSV - that's where CSVs come from.
It takes a person who wants to organize his collection by CSV, notices that there are no public available CSVs for it, therefore creates and uses self-made CSVs. The person is generous enough to share his work to help other collectors. The person should also love to invest many hours of work into this kind of public service while receiving lots of feedback of the "you F#$*ing idiot, I can't burn your crappy CSV onto a 650MB CD" or the "there's a new set on the site, why didn't you update the CSV you lazy SOB?" kind. Or getting no feedback at all while everyone benefits from his work.

A-3-2. CSVs come from a variety of sources. Mostly from places such as
El-Toro - http://csv.el-toro.org/
Sliksters - http://www.sliks-csvs.com/
Underdogs - http://underdog.f-a-t-e.net/rwdownload/index.php?url=&cid=2
LidVolf's - http://hem1.passagen.se/zl/index.html
CSV Warehouse - http://www.autotrig.com/csvlist.php
BigBro's - http://thefrogdogfiles.ca/
Paul's - http://paul5343.tripod.com/

There are more CSV repositories out there too. Also, many CSV makers create and post CSVS with collections that they have created and are not available at CSV web sites. If you can't find a CSV for a collection at el-toro, find a Picher group in which files from the collection are posted and ask there.

Q-4. Who decides which CSV should be used ?

A-3. The person who uses it. If there is more than one set of CSVs for a collection and the one you're using looks a bit chaotic, isn't updated frequently, is often too big or too small for a CD, gets too many "I don't know this" responses when requesting files for it - then it's time to use the other set of CSVs. But that's totally up to you.

Q-5. How do we know the CSV is correct?

A-5. We don't. That's the fun part.

Q-6. I figured out what Final means and that RB superseeds Final, What does PRE mean ?

A-6. CSV tag meanings:
None - ongoing collection; new files and sets will be constantly added.

PRE[-NN] - short for pre-final ([-NN] is an optional version number): The collection is closed, no new sets will be added. Time to fix those nasty typos, replace corrupted files, to check if all the sets are complete and to fill in some holes if necessary. Help from other collectors is highly appreciated during this phase.

FINAL - pretty much self-explanatory, isn't it? Now it's time to burn the collection.

RB[-NN] - short for re-burn ([-NN] is an optional version number): Is needed if there are any changes to the CSV after the FINAL has been published. As a result, you may have to throw away your CD and burn a new one. Which explains why RBs aren't very popular amongst collectors.