In article <199402050551.WAA16189@longs.lance.colostate.edu>,
L. Detweiler <ld231782@longs.lance.colostate.edu> wrote:
>I stand by my comments. the distinction between FAQ writing and good
>hypertext document creation is blurring into oblivion. Yes, there is an
>art to both. But *anyone* can do this. It is nothing but *good
>editing*.
I disagree also. My FrameMaker FAQ has some references to info
sources and programs, but its greatest value is the explanations of
how to do things that are not explained in the vendor-supplied
documentation.
> I don't understand what you are saying. Is it-- `faq writing
>is hard. therefore, we should limit the people who are allowed to do
>this.' well, @#$%^&*
FAQ writing is hard. Therefore the proportion of *good* FAQs will be
small, if everyone writes FAQs. At the moment, it takes significant
effort and determination, not to mention technical skill, to write an
FAQ. This weeds out a few lusers. If it gets to the stage where BIFF
can write an FAQ, we'll be back where we started.
Also, since the FAQs are posted regularly to the relevant groups,
there is a level of "peer review". If there is a bug in my FAQ, or a
better way around a problem, someone tells me, and (eventually) I
usually change the FAQ.
I had an instance last year where someone said that one of the FAQ
answers was wrong. This happened to be the first most significant
answer in the FAQ. The new commenter was wrong; they mis-interpreted
some info from a magazine. If they had been able to instantly get
their answer published broadly as an authoritative answer, they would
be spreading misinformation. The regularity and visibility of
the FAQs in the relevant newsgroups provides a level of checking.
Caveat: This is not foolproof. Anyone could post a bad FAQ regularly
to an unmoderated newgroup. But, there would be significant peer
pressure to stop it if the information was wrong.
=-=-=-=-=-
Bob McCormick email: bobmcc@tcs.com
Teknekron Communications Systems, Inc. vox: +1 510-649-3881
2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, 94704 USA fax: +1 510-649-3600
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