> Again, I think we are all seeing a small microcosm of the future
> where everyone can maintain FAQlike documents with a minimum of
> hassle and a maximum of benefit to others.
I don't quite share your faith in the future. For one thing, the
'easier' it becomes for people to maintain FAQlike documents, the more
problems we are going to see with the (lack of) quality of those FAQs,
not to mention the difficulties involved in keeping everything
organized and findable for the readers. WWW and gopher are *not* the
solutions to everything. They don't scale very well.
> Finally, it appears to me that the current FAQ system at rtfm.mit.edu
> is bulging at the seams. It is really just a matter of time before the
> onslaught of FAQs overwhelms the systems that are currently handling
> them.
I don't quite share your fears for the future. I think it should be
emphasized that the only problem with rtfm at the moment is the load
on the physical computer. The *logical* equipment that's in place to
handle the faqs (i.e. the software, and the whole concept behind it of
how the faqs are processed, arranged, stored, made available etc.)
works well, and is (in my opinion) far from reaching any 'breaking
point'.
Sure, you *could* redesign the system from scratch, and very probably
find a much more efficient way to handle large amounts of FAQs, I
won't deny that. But there is no need to panic, as yet.
> Mr. Kamens, perhaps you could post more information on this
> subject-- when you are leaving and how operations will be affected
> in your absence. You posted a list of the new maintainers, but
> obviously other realms will be affected, such as not being able to
> update the posting scripts?
The moderators of *.answers are also taking over all other aspects of
rtfm that Jonathan used to take care of. This includes e.g. the
faq-maintainers list, the rtfm archive, the autoposter, etc. We're
inheriting the whole kablooie.
> I think we are going to realize how much we have taken for granted
> as JIK goes away for awhile.
All I can say is that over at rtfm we are working very hard to make
sure that jik's absence does not cause such feelings of regret in the
Usenet community, at least not when it comes to the handling of
*.answers and rtfm.
-- Leo Breebaart -- [for the *.answers moderating team]
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