Re: Why we have FAQs [Re: Slightly puzzled]

[dempson@actrix.gen.nz (David Empson)]

Jack Friess <jfriess@wctc.net> wrote:

> The question, I think, isn't whether or not we should have a FAQ (the
> one we have, thanks to you, is great), but, rather, how to get people to
> it with them _feeling_ turned off, or that someone is implying they're
> stupid.

It seems to me that all is required is a polite reply, preferably in
E-Mail, providing a partial answer to the question, and a pointer to the
FAQ for further information.

> I was thinking about this even before Tony raised the question. What 
> would be the problem with posting an a short, permanent (I suppose it
> might have to be continully reposted) article entitled:  "AAA: Newcomers
> read me first".
>
> And then in the article invite prople to check out the 
> FAQ, before posting their question?  We could also include other A2 
> information and/or links to FTP sites, etc.

I can see three problems with this suggestion:

1. Not all news reading programs will sort the article subjects into
alphabetic order, so there is no guarantee that this article would be
seen first.

The news readers I have used in the last five or six years (UNIX shell)
didn't sort the articles, except by thread; I didn't see an alphabetic
listing until I started reading news on a Mac via a PPP account.  As the
latter method (or similar) is becoming much more common, this may not be
as much of a problem.  (I've seen many cases where people have used this
method to try to get their article to appear first.)

2. Some people don't even bother to read a newsgroup before they post
their question, thus they will not even know that this message exists
(let alone the FAQ itself).

There is no solution to this problem other than education, or extreme
methods such as forcing people to read news.announce.newusers before
they can post articles.

3. Apart from the length, this is precisely the purpose of the FAQ
itself, and would be duplicating some of its content.

A modification would be to organise the FAQ so that very frequently
asked questions are posted in a single small message, and the rest of it
appears as several larger messages.  This should be reflected in the
subject lines.

-- 
David Empson
dempson@actrix.gen.nz
Snail Mail: P.O. Box 27-103, Wellington, New Zealand