On Tue, 31 Oct 2000, Peter Peltonen wrote:
> "Gregory J. Barlow" wrote:
>
> > I am not against a good FAQ, I think it would be nice. I certainly dont
> > enjoy having to answer the same question of newbies every week or
> > so. There are two problems. Who is going to maintain it? And will most
> > new users actually read it?
>
> I think new users will read it. At least if I think myself when I'm starting
> to use new software I always read the FAQ. At least when I bump into
> problems :)
Most of the people asking this stupid question over and over again are not
new users, they are people who are upgrading from the 5x series to the 6x
series. I also think you put a bit too much faith in people. It would be
great if they did, but in reality, they dont.
> Maintaining is a bit harder. But if you think it this way: it's the same
> effort to write the answer once in the FAQ that it is writing it to the
> list.
But one person doesnt answer every question on the mailing list. If you
have a central FAQ, one person has to do all the work.
> If you don't have the time to maintain the FAQ, then it might help putting
> there instructions how one should find information (man blackbox, search the
> archive, read the change files etc.) before asking a question. It probably
> won't remove all the newbie questions but it could reduce the amount of
> them.
Another problem is, the people involved in development are not the same
people involved in documentation. This is neither a good nor a bad thing,
but it means that the blackbox homepage is less a center for docs and more
a center for access to blackbox stuff.
> Every time a question that is being asked you can just say: RTFM (--> FAQ
> x.x) or something else very guruish!
And how is that any better?
I would be quite happy if there was a FAQ, as long as I didnt have to
maintain it. I just dont think it would be quite the silver bullet you
make it out to be.
--
Gregory J. Barlow http://barlow.ncssm.net
NCSSM 99 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
NC State [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
"If we knew what it was we were doing, it would not be
called research, would it?"
- Albert Einstein
