In my view, the problem with how we're dealing with FAQ files
now is that we're not differentiating them from the flood of
other information that is innundating the neophyte user: it's
just another posting, or it's off on some mysterious, hard to
deal with, remote FTP site (rtfm).
My suggestions for making this work better, therefore:
1. Add some hooks to newsreaders so that when users subscribe
to a list, if there's an FAQ, they see a question like:
There's a Frequently Asked Questions document that you will find a
valuable introduction to this group: shall I email you a copy? [yn]
If they answer 'no', then the program reminds them that they
can get the FAQ at any time by typing "faq <groupname>".
2. Let's create a new command 'faq' that takes the name of a
Usenet group as its single argument and obtains that doc from
whatever site it needs to check.
3. Add a '/faq' directory at the top level of RTFM, and within
have one-part, normalized named, versions of all known FAQ
docs so that users can learn that the file "/faq/groupname.faq"
ALWAYS works if there's an FAQ for that document.
That's some of my thinking on this. Reactions?
(note that I don't address topic-oriented FAQ documents like my own:
my list is not about a specific newsgroup and would need to be handled
a bit differently...)
-- Dave Taylor
taylor@mentor.cc.purdue.edu Educational Computing Group
dtaylor1 on IDEANET at Purdue University
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