(LD == L. Detweiler, M=mathew (or Medusa))
M>There are some tasks which a good FAQ editor performs which cannot be
M>performed simply by making a link to an existing document. To me, a
M>good FAQ is one which condenses and summarizes information, and
M>presents it in some sort of prioritized order, with a sense of "flow"
M>from section to section. You can't do that simply by transcluding
M>other people's text verbatim.
LD>I stand by my comments. the distinction between FAQ writing and good
LD>hypertext document creation is blurring into oblivion. Yes, there is an
LD>art to both. But *anyone* can do this. It is nothing but *good
LD>editing*. I don't understand what you are saying. Is it-- `faq writing
LD>is hard. therefore, we should limit the people who are allowed to do
LD>this.' well, @#$%^&*
Let's everybody remember the whole initial purpose of the FAQ -- to reduce
the bandwidth spent on frequently asked questions. Now, FAQ's have evolved
into useful documents in their own right, and that's fine. I know my FAQ
contains a number of hypertext pointers to my ftp archive, which answers
questions that are hardly ever asked...
There's no question that FAQ writing is hard (well, I consider mine to be
a real pain sometimes). There's also no question that anybody who wants
to write their own FAQ may certainly go ahead and do it. There are some
minor nits about header formatting to make the automatic archival software
happy, but it's hardly a big deal (to most people :-).
As far as FAQs evolving into nothing more than lists of hypertext pointers,
this is only somewhat true. Those pointers still have to point *AT* something,
and that's our job. To write the *something* to be pointed at. The only
distinction that's blurring is how people will access FAQ's, whether via
netnews or WWW or Xanadu or whatever. Who knows, maybe someday netnews
readers will look for a magic header which says the article is HTML, then
they'll trigger xmosaic (or whatever). This may even be the ultimate
solution to the current congestion problems with WWW (i.e.: the
increasingly slow access times to www.ncsa.uiuc.edu).
Maybe, someday, newsreaders will know all about the WWW and when you enter
any group, there will be a little button on the bottom saying "FAQ...".
==========================================================================
As far as collecting pages of nothing but pointers:
Sure, anybody can write a page of their favorite links (even I did -- see
my .sig for the URL), but I would never consider my "Cool Links" page to
be such an asset to greater humanity that I should splat it across all of
Usenet! Rather, maybe somebody will think it's cool, and they'll leave
a pointer to it (much like I leave pointers to other "collection" pages).
If lots of people think my page is cool, then lots of people will keep
pointers to it, or hotlist entries, or whatever.
I'd argue the value of my node is proportional to how many people reference
it, rather than how many things I reference. This is one of the ways of
judging a good research paper -- how often it's cited, rather than the
length of its bibliography.
==========================================================================
LD>just because you hide behind your tentacle and conceal your
LD>affiliations to Xanadoodoo does not give you any authority to smear the
LD>systems that *millions* of people are using *today*. or, go ahead and
LD>smear them, and see how many enemies you make. (that reminds me,
LD>E.Hughes, founder of the Cypherpunks and the Master Cyberspace
LD>Medusean-Tentacle Religion, supposedly works with T.Nelson...)
This crud, however, has no place on faq-maintainers. Please lay off
this Medusa rhetoric, already. We've heard it all before. On the
other hand, if you continue typing all this verbiage, you'll be wanting
to look into my Typing Injury FAQ sooner or later. Feel any tingling
or numbness in your hands?
-- Dan Wallach "One of the most attractive features of a Connection dwallach@cs.princeton.edu Machine is the array of blinking lights on the faces Phone#: 609-452-8446 of its cabinet." -- CM Paris Ref. Manual, v6.0, p48.(World-Wide-Web) http://www.cs.princeton.edu/grad/Dan_Wallach/top.html
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