As a fairly new FAQ maintainer, I wonder if someone could expand upon some of
these a bit more. I don't understand why you should even care about where
the FAQs go, other than the *.answers groups.
> (1a) Your Newsgroups line must consist of all of your 'home' newsgroups,
> followed by all of the subject-relevant *.answers groups,
> followed by news.answers. If you regularly post to
> comp.sys.foo,comp.answers,news.answers, and you write to us
> asking to add alt.comp.sys.bar, we're going to ask that you
> add alt.answers as well.
>
> [In practice, we tend to allow the *.answers groups in any order,
> and don't insist on news.answers being last.]
This is one I'm really confused on. Especially since this was one of the
reasons given for my FAQ to be denied the first time. Looking through the
guidelines, it says that the newsgroups should be listed in a certain order,
but that it isn't necessary. Then, I sent in my FAQ and got a note back
saying there was a specific order. Perhaps an update to the guidelines is
in order?
> (1b) If your newsgroup splits, we need to be informed of where your
> FAQ is going to be posted.
Can someone explain why? Why do you give a flying flip where its posted to?
If I suddenly decide to post my FAQ to alt.i.like.this.newsgroup.name, why
should it matter to you? Because of the archiving? Doesn't your software
handle it automatically?
> (2) If you change your Subject line, you must get approval beforehand.
> Otherwise, the software that keeps the most recent copy of your
> FAQ in our archives gets confused, and keeps one or more stale
> copies around. Even simple things like adding "(FAQ)" or "READ
> BEFORE POSTING" to the end of the subject line create an
> exception that must be dealt with by hand.
>
> (2a) Case matters. If you capitalize a word, that counts as a change.
Isn't the "Archive-title" (or "-name") a required header? If so, what does
the subject line matter?
> (3) If you split a FAQ, or add another part to a multi-part FAQ, you
> must get approval beforehand.
>
> (4) If you start posting your FAQ from a different address, please let
> us know about it. The current guidelines say that you don't
> have to do anything if it's an 'obvious' change, but what's
> obvious to you may not be obvious to us. Keeping an eye on
> changes of address is the only way to catch when our
> simple-minded archiving software grabs a post from
> J.Random.Poster with the same subject line as your FAQ, or when
> a crazed gateway spits out a mangled version.
Oh yeah... Tom Christiansen is no longer handling the Perl FAQ, but you already
know that. My address was spp@cis.ufl.edu it is now spp@vx.com or
..uunet!vx!spp. ;)
Steve
spp@vx.com
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