Albert Reiner
Thu, 07 Oct 2004 10:21:50 -0700
> But are the WWW4Mail servers still useful? As we all know, WWW4Mail is
> very good -- but why would you use it if you don't know when, or if,
> you will get a reply?
I often find myself in a situation where I want to check some URL
occasionally, and it doesn't matter at all whether it takes a couple
of days or not.
> The context here is the next version of the ACCMAIL FAQ. My principal
> idea is that it should focus on how to perform tasks, rather than list
> servers which might or might not work. For example: "How can I use
> email-only methods to get the latest news about XYZ?", or "How can I
> use email-only methods to research my postgraduate dissertation on
> subject ABC?"
I do not really like this idea, at least as the overarching principle
of organization and at the granularity of your examples: basically
this amounts to a tutorial on what you can do on the internet - a huge
task (that I believe others have undertaken already) that is likely to
stall and is not really related to AccMail methods.
ISTM that the focus of the ACCMAIL FAQ should really be on how to
ACCESS something by e-mail: The user should already know what he/she
wants to get, and the FAQ should answer the question of how he/she may
do so by e-mail. Whether this is for a thesis or something else is
quite irrelevant. So the more reasonable tasks would be, e.g., "How
can I find the list of newsgroups some server carries?", "How can I
read some newsgroup?", "How can I read a specific newsgroup posting
with known message ID?", etc., which would be answered by the list of
possibilities that might include some superficial comparison
including, e.g., typical latency.
But once someone decides to use, say, www4mail, there is no reason to
spread out the relevant documentation all over the FAQ; instead, I
would very much prefer it to remain in one place.
All this suggests a separation of the FAQ into several parts:
- introduction, basic information on how to access the various parts
of the FAQ;
- types and addresses of servers
- server statistics (separate so far)
- "net" tasks ("how can I read that newsgroup?")
- "real-world" tasks ("how can I research my thesis?")
- useful addresses
Although a single large file is certainly convenient to get, it may
not be as convenient to use.
Another aspect is my expectation that the more extensive the changes
to the FAQ are with respect to 10.2, the less likely are translators
to update the non-English versions.
> These are not abstract needs -- they are real tasks. To carry them
> out, readers of the FAQ should know which of the available resources
> are most suitable. If you need one web page, and you can wait for it,
> WWW4Mail is fine. But research often involves following a succession
> of links -- and for that, the current WWW4Mail servers would be no
> good at all.
Again I would refrain from this kind of statement - it depends on your
expectations and the way you organize your work more than on anything
else, I think. I like the statement "WWW4Mail servers tend to be slow
to respond, look at the statistics to get a feeling for that" much
better than "WWW4Mail is no good at all if you need to follow a
succession of links".
Regards,
Albert.
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