Re: Lost knowledge

[nathan@visi.com (Nathan Mates)]

In article <330277e9.5128027@167.152.149.11>,
Edhel Iaur, Esq. <drsmooth@relex.com> wrote:
>These remind me: Shouldn't the FAQ be split up somehow?  It's no
>wonder that so many people never read it--it's huge!  Maybe if it was
>organised like one of those leaf-identifying books, and it got
>gradually more and more specific:

   Three words as to what the FAQ already has:

   Table of Contents

   It's already categorized into all sorts of categories in an almost
outline format. Scan for the appropriate category, then look for a
relevant link. You're only one link or two away from pretty much all
parts of the FAQ. Even if you're reading this offline, you can still
take the section number iun the table of contents and use your
favorite word processor to find it real quick. 

   Also, I used to have all the questions of the FAQ identified by a
single (semi-page) number. Inserting sections could be a royal pain,
having to renumber all of the next sections. If these were anywhere
near 'page numbers', that's fine for a hardcopy book that never
changes its contents.  However, with all the updates to the FAQ, I'd
have to count pages like BASIC lines, going up by 10 at the start and
inserting crud that way.

   Going to a A.B section number layout avoids most of those problems.
Ading a new entry under hardware (section 4.*) doesn't make me have to
change the number for the resources section. No way am I going to go
back anytime soon. [And if I did, I'd write some scripts to renumber
it automatically] If you want, you can call these sections 'chapters'.


   I rather prefer to list all the subsections for each section off at
the main table of contents, so that people know *exactly* what's in a
section, and can go straight to that one without having to nagvigate
yet another set of selections. Or, if you think the section is not
relevant to a question, just scroll down to the next section header
and see what it's about. Both the web version and the textified one
indent the subsections, so it's trivial to see where the next section
is. 

   Putting several layers of 'click here... go there' before you get
anywhere near any content only gets in the way of finding things. If
people can't handle an extensive list of choices presented to them in
the table of contents, it's doubtful they'd navigate several
submenus. [In fact, I think those are the people who'd be very
unlikely to have bothered to look for the FAQ in the first place.]

   Because it is a set of web pages, you could put an alternate 'front
end' on it, but I'd rather be adding more sections and a single
descriptive link from the table of contents, than worrying about
making sure ten pages point to every item I've got.

Nathan Mates
--
<*> Nathan Mates http://www.visi.com/~nathan/      <*>
# What are the facts? Again and again and again-- what are the _facts_?
# Shun wishful thinking, avoid opinion, care not what the neighbors
# think-- what are the facts, and to how many decimal places?  -R.A. Heinlein