Re: Cross-posting to *.answers (was: de.rec.fahrrad FAQ part 0)

Eternal the Impossible Dreamer (bnb@ukc.ac.uk)
Sat Feb 19 09:33:52 1994

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In your message of 18 Feb 1994 20:58:49 -0500 you said:
>Quoting an irate FAQ maintainer, someone-or-other said:
>[...]
>>You didn't like the headers, and the easiest
>>thing for me was to switch it back to what worked fine before." I
>>asked for him to explain his objections, and he never replied.
>
>I certainly understand his objections. I started the OUTPOSTS FAQ
>(ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/Groups/outposts.faq), was informed it should fit a
>certain spec, found that spec, and found it to be a singularly anal and
>restrictive format. I ignored it, and continued spreading the FAQ via
>mailing lists, non-*.answers newsgroups, etc.
>
>Some of us *do not have the time* to learn the hermetics of the secondary
>headers of FAQs, and some of us really don't *care* whether it has fancy
>Expires: and such headers in the real header section (ever heard of a date
>and a version number? Works fine for software, works fine for FAQs).
[stuff deleted]

The secondary headers of an FAQ are vital, in particular the archive name
is vital and its the only secondary header that you HAVE to have. When
used correctly (although my experience says far too many people just
put their FAQ in the root of the tree) it makes finding an FAQ at an
archive site much easier, people who don't care for this are not helping
their goal of helping people.

As reguards the primary header the standard only requires a sensible set
of headers that you should be putting on the article anyway, since most
FAQ's have a sensible set of headers news systems can be configured to
make use of them, thus making it easier for people to find things in the
news system because they time out correctly etc.

The standard document is long, but if you are going to inflict your FAQ on
the *very* large number of people on USENET, and have it created as an
"offical" document then I think its only fair that you should spend the
time to get it right.

--
Brian Blackmore, The University of Kent at Canterbury, United Kingdom.

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Maybe in reply to: Jonathan I. Kamens: "Cross-posting to *.answers (was: de.rec.fahrrad FAQ part 0)"
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