The origin of the term "WEBMASTER"

I decided to post a blog regarding the term "Webmaster" because I encounter an incident last week on the guestbook of Hercor College regarding the term. A person from Roxas City, Capiz, Philippines, maybe a student or a newbie teacher that mistakenly misunderstood the term webmaster and post offensive words regarding my personality. I used the term webmaster to indicate that I'm the one who designed and maintained the website and he or maybe she was really pissed about it. Some of his comments were true but his comments regarding the term webmaster really caught my eye. He was saying that I was so conceited that I used the the term "webmaster" and I concluded then that the person really don't understand the term. Now this blog is for that person and to those who are interested to know the origin and the definition of the term 'webmaster'.

The following are the information I gather from different websites that I found from Google & Yahoo!:

• The alias or role of the person(s) responsible for the development and maintenance of one or more web servers and/or some or all of the web pages at a website. The term does not imply any particular level of skill or mastery. The webmaster's e-mail address often appears on the home page of the site. Failing that, you could try sending e-mail to postmaster (from which the term is probably derived) or root at that host, possibly after removing an initial "www.".(1999-04-01) - excerpt from Dictionary.com
• The term webmaster has become a vague term encompassing anyone that has acheived a certain level of expertise making web sites (i.e. a Master of the Web). However the origin of the term is more akin to that of Postmaster, as in the person in charge of a post office. The Postmaster wasn't necessarily masterful at every nuance of delivering mail, rather he/she was simply the manager in charge of the office.
  If we stick to the definition of webmaster as akin to postmaster, the webmaster is the person in charge of the web server, making sure the server is up and running. He or she does not necessarily know how to produce the wide array of content and services on the server, but is simply in charge of keeping the server running smoothly. - excerpt from http://www.webmastermac.com/article.php?story=20040121012919589&mode=print
• Webmaster. An individual who manages a Web site. Depending on the size of the site, the Webmaster might be responsible for any of the following:
  Making sure that the Web server hardware and software is running properly
  Designing the Web site
  Creating and updating Web pages
  Replying to user feedback
  Creating CGI scripts
  Monitoring traffic through the site - excerpt from wobopedia.com

Hope this will enlighten the lost soul of the person that commented against me because of the term webmaster! Smile para masaya tayong lahat! Mabuhay ang Pilipinas!