This is not to say that he has some valid points. My point is that those
points can be accommodated without undue difficulty.
On Tue, 12 Dec 1995, Dave Schweisguth wrote:
> Omer writes:
> > My own 6.2 agorot (2 cents in the current rate of exchange of Israeli
> > Shekels): I think that the news.answers mechanism of distributing FAQs is
> > not so relevant nowadays, when several can publish any information they
> > want in WWW sites.The news.answers was relevant in the pre-WWW era.
>
> One can hardly require everyone who is now posting an FAQ in the traditional
> manner to switch to WWW overnight. As long as there are useful postings which
> aren't otherwise archived, news.answers is necessary. Efforts to make a WWW
> presence easier for FAQ maintainers are of course all to the good, but let's
> not start the revolution before we've got some ammo.
1. It is not necessary to switch to HTML format overnight. WWW browsers
can fetch and present (even if less perfectly) text files - they should
not have the html extension. (At least the lynx viewer can, and my
mini-FAQ is available also this way, even though it is text-only file.)
2. Why do the postings have to be archived at all? I think that the
archiving was relevant in the era before WWW search engines. Now it is
not that relevant. People who have perverse interest in collecting old
versions of FAQs can do this on their own.
> > I suggest that news.answers be replaced by a special purpose FAQ search
> > engine.FAQ maintainers will register their FAQ WWW pages with the special
> > search engine.The search engine maintainer will also provide Web-by-mail
> > service for those who need the FAQs and don't have WWW access.The
> > messages in news.answers group will consist only of URLs of FAQs and FAQ
> > WWW search engines.
>
> Replaced? No. Joined? Certainly.
When I say "replace" - I mean that all those busy and hardworking
volunteers be released from their tasks of checking and approving FAQs
for posting to news.answers. In my proposed scheme of things, the group
news.answers will continue to exist but its postings will include only
lists of FAQs, instructions for using the suggested search engine and for
using the associated Web-by-mail service. I think that no more than two
volunteers will be needed to maintain the new setup.
> If the LOPIP ("list of periodic informational postings") included the URL:
> aux header, it would be about half of what you want. If it could be rendered
> in a nice searchable WWW format, it would be the other half. The latter
> sounds like a good project if you want to put your shekels where your mouth
> is.(Unless it's been done, but I'm not aware of it.)
Instead of putting my Shekels where my mouth is, I'm calling for someone
else to develop a perl script to HTMLize the current LOPIP and convert it
into a searchable database. Since there are several perl scripts which
HTMLize FAQs, this should not be a giant leap. If no one else comes
forth and volunteers in say a week, I may jump ahead, learn whatever is
necessary and do it. But someone else will have to provide WWW site and
volunteer to maintain the stuff after my initial work.
> > Another component which would be helpful in solving the puzzle is some
> > volunteers who have WWW sites and are willing to host FAQ pages of people
> > who do not have their own WWW sites.
>
> This is certainly true. I suspect that there are any number of WWW sites
> which would be glad to host irrelevant FAQs for the sake of attracting
> attention to the rest of the site, but a single, central, neutral site
> would keep us out of conflicts-of-interest and provide some consistency.
Why do we need at all to guard against conflicts-of-interest and provide
consistency?
Besides that, the FAQs may reside in various WWW sites. The searchable
database of URLs of the FAQs can be the central neutral site (of course it
will have to be mirrored around the world).
--- Omer
Internet: xlacha1@wizard.weizmann.ac.il
WWW home page: http://www.weizmann.ac.il/~xlacha1/
DEAF-L FAQ home page: http://www.weizmann.ac.il/deaf-info/
Insensitive Media home page: http://www.weizmann.ac.il/deaf-info/cc/
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