Actually, at a properly configured site, that often happens for free:
the FAQ, having been cross-posted to news.answers, has been granted
a longer expire time than everything else in the group, and therefore
is sitting there at the top of the unread-articles list.
Of course this fails when the FAQ has just been reposted. (Maybe using
Supersedes: lines is not such a great idea after all?) It would certainly
be nicer if newsreaders automatically made the FAQs more visible.
But the first thing you realize when considering this is that much of
the problem exists at sites that *aren't* properly configured, and
likely are running out-of-date software to boot. Nifty new newsreaders
are going to have only a very incremental and slow impact on the
situation.
The only thing I can see that might have a near-term impact would be
a change in the social mores on the net, such that posting questions
that are answered in the FAQ is strongly discouraged. I'm not holding
my breath for that one either :-(
> 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.
Not a bad idea. It should index on the Keywords: entries as well as
the group names. But heck, the rtfm WAIS server already indexes on the
entire text of the FAQs. Again, the real problem is not the software,
it is (a) getting into the hands of *everybody* and (b) getting them
to use it.
It's too easy to post a dumb question, rather than taking a few moments'
work to try to look up the answer. Making it easier to look up the answer
is part of the solution, but only part.
regards, tom lane
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