[ much deleted ]
> JIK's words:
> > 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.
>
> Yes, computers perform menial tasks well; but sometimes the appropriate
> place to attack a perceived problem is at the source, not at the
> delivery end (would you want every house to treat its own drinking
> water from raw sources?). The FAQ archive is a dynamic thing - new
> entries are made as more FAQ lists are assembled, among other things.
> The programming effort to make an automatic retrieval application cope
> with the nature of the news.answers directory hierarchy would be
> substantial, particularly if many people undertook it.
What about all of the software that automatically maintains mirrors of
anonymous FTP sites? They seem to be able to handle dynamically changing
directory structures quite well. And, since the rtfm.mit.edu archive
uses anonymous ftp, why do you need to reinvent software?
[ some more deleted ]
> I remain unconvinced by your arguments that "the current naming scheme
> really doesn't make it harded for automated FAQ retrieval" and that
> "the current scheme is far easier on users than [the suggested
> unique-name scheme]". Moreover, I find your unsupported assertion that
> "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." to be implicitly circular: it might be that most people don't
> recover more than a single FAQ or set of related FAQs at a time because
> the current convention makes it unnecessarily cumbersome to recover
> multiple FAQs at once.
Whenever I get a FAQ from rtfm.mit.edu, I am _always_ looking for a
specific FAQ. I am sure that the logs from rtfm.mit.edu support JIK's
assertion and mine. I remain unconvinced by your arguments that automatic
retrieval is cumbersome. There's probably a perl script floating around
out there that will retrieve your FAQ's for you.
Jeffrey C. Ollie
jeffrey-ollie@uiowa.edu
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