From posting scores to preserving them together
The Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation, or RSSSF, emerged from Usenet’s rec.sport.soccer discussion group. According to its founders’ history, Lars Aarhus, Kent Hedlundh and Karel Stokkermans began the Northern European Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation in January 1994, initially abbreviated NERSSSF. Their activities already had different focuses: Norwegian football archives, annual player voting and results for leagues in several countries, especially Eastern Europe.
Early in December Bernd Timmermann, who ran German football pages, joined. From that month they placed accumulated league tables and historical statistics online. The introduction dates the beginning of cooperation to January; article 1 of the charter dates establishment to December. During 1994 an initial collaboration developed into a publicly accessible archive.
Filling gaps as a condition of membership
One enthusiast could rarely obtain results from around the world continuously. RSSSF sought people familiar with particular competitions, preferably in the relevant countries, to complement one another’s information. Members provided continuing records for a league, cup or historical period, which maintainers added to the common archive.
Joining required explaining the intended contribution, checking whether existing coverage was already sufficient and providing samples. Basic text was preferred, with HTML also accepted. The charter required members to honor their contribution commitments and pursue correctness and completeness. New members needed unanimous board approval. Free readership and membership with responsibilities were distinct relationships. Readers could suggest corrections to team names, omissions and scores, while responsible maintainers organized the material.
The work preserved in a voting report
The discussion group’s 1994 player-of-the-year report records this early cooperation. Voting lasted 31 days and involved 99 ballots. Each voter ranked five players, with at most two of the same nationality. The table separates votes at each rank and total points: Romário led with 269 points and Stoichkov received 254. Readers could see how votes accumulated into the result.
The report assigns work explicitly: Hedlundh received ballots, Stokkermans checked them and wrote commentary, and Aarhus and Timmermann received thanks. It separately records participants’ birthplaces and residence when voting and explains the exclusion of two late ballots. Rules, participation and processing were preserved alongside results. Archiving already combined collection, review, explanation and storage.
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Responsibilities in a small organization
The preserved charter establishes a board of three to five members deciding unanimously. Its tasks include content and layout, hosting and mirrors, relevant sponsorship and finance, membership, working groups and meetings. Each task must have one contact person, making distributed work answerable to identifiable people.
Members can use the mailing list and join working groups. Matters the board submits to the whole membership have participation and majority thresholds. The charter also requires free access and a non-profit purpose while preserving copyright in the material. Acknowledgment of resources previously provided by RISC in Linz shows the importance of cooperative storage and technical support.
Growing beyond the Nordic name
As contributors from other regions joined, “Northern European” disappeared from the name. A Brazilian branch established in July 2000 further connected international compilation with local research. Historian Marcus Vinícius Costa Lage describes it as following common aims and a basic format with some autonomy. Its records cover historical competitions, national teams and international club competitions as well as current seasons.
Lage argues that such accumulated material can provide an entry into research when physical archives are difficult to access, while the reliability of online information still requires examination. RSSSF organized information scattered through fans’ correspondence and personal records into an attributed, governed and revisable common resource. Cooperation rests on who continues to obtain material, who checks and preserves it, and whether others can build on those records.