SWAPA

From SWILwiki

Table of contents
1 The SWarthmore/SWil Amateur Publishing/Press Association
2 SWAPA terminology and abbreviations
3 Past SWAPA OEs
4 Links
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The SWarthmore/SWil Amateur Publishing/Press Association

SWAPA is one of SWIL's oldest traditions. We've had it longer than the Pterodactyl Hunt, longer than the science-fiction library. It was begun by the Fearless and Charismatic Leader himself. And yet, it is a little-known secret of SWILdom. It used to have a website (http://www.swil.org/swapa.html), but then it was decided that such an antediluvian possession shouldn't, lest its digital counterparts attempt to replace it. Or something like that.

SWAPA is an APA, an Amateur Press Association in the grand tradition of fanzines since the Dawn of Everything. Anyone is eligible to join, regardless of whether they graduated from SWIL or Swat (or even matriculated in the first place). SWAPAns send a few pages of content to the OE's at least once every three months, and all of the contributions are printed out, stapled together, and mailed out once each month. SWAPA is more about SWIL the community than about SF/F, and is a great way to get in touch with and meet alums. Like SWIL, SWAPA is free (open to interpretation, nonproprietary); unlike SWIL, SWAPA is non-free (there's a subscription fee). SWAPA will, if you let it, devour your bookshelves and leave you swimming (happily!) in piles of pastel-covered paper with numbers on them. SWAPA is, in the thoroughly unbiased opinion of Jillian Waldman, one of the niftier things on earth.

A more cautious observer might advise you that:

SWAPA is allegedly an amateur press association that compiles a few pages from each reader into a thick booklet that it mails out on a regular basis. In fact, it is a cover for a Department of Defense research project as can be seen from the following reasoning:
SWAPA = WASPA = DASPA = DARPA
Clearly the DoD Advanced Research Projects Agency is behind this.

If the vagueness of the above description bothers you, find the nearest SWAPAn and they will answer questions for you. If it really bothers you, edit the page. (This joke is the likely genesis of the domain name swarpa.net.)

If you're interested in trying SWAPA out, contact the OEs and get them to send you a spec copy. To actually join SWAPA, though, you need to send in a 'zine and eventually some money.

As Jillian discovered in Fall '05, there's also a thing called APA90, which was an APA run by Michael Bernstein from at least '90 to '94, in which many SWILfolk participated. It's different from SWAPA, being basically the APA equivalent of the swat90 email list.

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SWAPA terminology and abbreviations

  • mailing comments: or comments for short -- replies to other people's 'zines and comments that each person can put in their 'zine.
  • ct: comment to
  • minac: This originally stood for "minimum activity", in SWAPA's case, the requirement that one submit at least one page of original content every three months. It has now become the verb "to fail to meet minimum activity requirements", i.e., to fall out of SWAPA.
  • OEs: Organizing Editors, who collect money and zines, collate everything, and send it out. They get a Tactical Nuclear Stapler. See below for current OEs.
  • RAEBNC: "Read and Enjoyed But No Comments" (or simply RAE)
  • SWAPAe: the plural of SWAPA
  • SWAPAn: a member of SWAPA
  • ToC: Table of Contents, which closes at midnight (the deadline to get your zine in).
  • zine (or 'zine): The thing you send in to an APA.
  • Do the scary thing!
  • supplement: An additional collection of 'zines gathered from current and former members of SWAPA to go with big-number anniversary issues (e.g. SWAPA 300) (i.e. about every 4 years). Everyone gets to submit a one-page summary of their life, and all contributors and current members receive a copy of the whole thing.
  • franking: To "frank" an article you've read somewhere is to photocopy it and include it in SWAPA, sometimes with comments in the margins. You can also frank objects, you just have to mail enough copies of them to the OEs.
  • original content: Stuff you wrote yourself, i.e. not franked stuff.
  • spec copy: Not to be confused with Swarthmore's human specs, this is just a sample copy of SWAPA sent by the OEs to a prospective SWAPAn.

See also:

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Past SWAPA OEs

  • Jim Huang
  • Dave Szent-Gyorgyi & Anne Mylott
  • DVS & Ed Blachman
  • Jeff (June 1992-Nov 1995)
  • Jim, Sherry, & Melissa Running (1995 or 1996?)
  • Jim & Melissa Running
  • Jim, Melissa Running, & Josh Burdick
  • Kyla & Chaos (Jan 2002-Jul 2003)
  • Kyla & Hannah (Sept 2003-Jul 2006)
  • Kyla & Amy (Aug 2006-Aug 2007)
  • Kyla, Amy, & Chaos (Sept 2007- )
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Links

Retrieved from "http://wiki.swil.org/index.php/SWAPA"