Big Dummy's Guide to the Internet

Adam Gaffin wrote it for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and it circulated as plain text over FTP, Gopher and BBSes. The content was practical: how to read Usenet, search with Archie, fetch files, use IRC and LISTSERV, and behave well enough that nobody wrote angry replies. It was aimed squarely at new users outside the universities — exactly the crowd that would soon give Eternal September its name.

The name didn't last. The publisher behind the For Dummies series was not amused, and the guide became EFF's Guide to the Internet. It was updated for a few more years and then went the way of its peers: obsolete the day you could just click instead.