I, for one, dislike the naming convention of using nonunique filenames
like "part1" under a unique directory. Since the filenames are nonunique,
it becomes cumbersome to recover FAQs in an automated way: one must move
the recovered "part1" files to, say, "unique_name.part1" before proceeding
to the next directory of interest.
I'd like to lobby for a name convention change, so that the names at the
file level are unique across the entire news.answers directory at
rtfm.mit.edu. The "part#" could be used as a suffix.
Speaking with my "*.answers chief moderator" hat on (a hat which,
incidentally, I will be wearing for only a few more months), I can say
that it's unlikely that this convention will change.
The "/part1", "/part2", "/diff", etc. convention was the de facto
standard for archive names before *.answers was created, and I see
little reason to change it. Doing what you suggest would either (a)
introduce unnecessary redundancy into archive names and force people
to type more in order to retrieve files (if we decided to leave the
directories in place and just duplicate the directory names at the
file level, e.g., "foo-faq/part1" becoming "foo-faq/foo-faq.part1"),
or (b) turn the entire *.answers hierarchy into one big directory
which would be far more difficult for humans to browse and slower for
machines to maintain.
I entirely disagree with your assertion that the current naming
schemde makes it "cumbersome to recover FAQs in an automated way."
One huge advantage of computers is that they can be made to perform
algorithmic, menial tasks repeatedly and correctly. If you're
retrieving FAQs automatically, you only have to fix your retriever
once to make it understand directories in the hierarchy and handle
them in any way you want (creating them locally and putting retrieved
files in them, using directory names as prefixes of the file names,
etc.). Therefore, your claim that automated FAQ retrieval is made
more difficult by the current naming scheme makes no sense to me.
If the current naming scheme really doesn't make it harded for
automated FAQ retrieval, then all that's left is the question of
whether or not the naming scheme makes it easier or harder for users
overall. In my opinion, the current scheme is far easier on users
than what you suggest, for the two reasons I listed two paragraphs
ago. The requirement that users retrieving FAQs with same part names
remember to specify a unique local names isn't such a big deal, since
most often, people retrieving FAQs are only retrieving a single FAQ
(or a single set of related FAQ postings, with unique names) at a
time.
Jonathan Kamens | OpenVision Technologies, Inc. | jik@security.ov.com
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