> We should be assuming a minimal level of common "competence". If a
> prospective FAQ author doesn't know how to use their editor, they
> couldn't post anything properly in the first place, and would be
> unlikely to even consider writing one.
Hmmm. I don't want to pick on Chris in particular, but I couldn't let
the above statement pass without comment. We should be careful not to
paint FAQ maintainership as some sort of technical priesthood. The
measure of success of an FAQ maintainer should be how informative and
useful his or her postings are to the target audience, not whether he
or she is technically competent at handling an editor. Someone may be
an recognized expert on a particular topic and be altruistic enough to
expend considerable effort in writing and compiling information for an
FAQ, and yet not know how to convince editor and news posting software
to do what he or she wants; if their efforts at creating an FAQ are
rejected out of hand simply because of their technical incompetence,
that would represent a wasted opportunity.
(Granted, there is a certain minimal technical competency barrier in
effect for FAQ maintainers to get their postings approved for
*.answers, although we try to do what we can to keep that low. The
existence of the faq-server posting service, and our approval of proxy
posters [i.e., person FOO maintains the contents, but person BAR takes
care of the technical details of posting], are specific examples of
things which help lower some technical barriers.)
== Ping Huang
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