Ping Huang writes:
> Lani Teshima-Miller suggested:
> > The easiest thing to do is to partition your FAQ into smaller
> > sections--like creating chapters in a book. If you don't want to
> > bombard the usenet with all FAQ sheets at once, you can rotate the
> > posting schedule--two files per week throughout a four-week or
> > one-month schedule, for example.
> Note this doesn't really help solve the problem which Michael Price
> posed. Splitting up the FAQ into smaller chunks and rotating through
> them still means that if he posts chunk A today, and tomorrow a reader
> suggests some changes, chunk A isn't due to be posted again for quite
> some time, and the copy archived remains out of date until then.
The archived copy is only out of date provided the FAQ maintainer
has time to make the changes immediately. :) In a large FAQ,
it's more likely that the change suggestiosn will get put into
a queue, and be processed with other changes for that section
at some later date. As someone with a large (600K and growing)
multipart (something like 40) FAQ (Conventional Fusion FAQ &
Glossary on sci.physics.fusion), I find that I generally
can't be continuously revising every section of the FAQ "in parallel".
I start with one section, update it with all the comments received,
and then go on to the next one. I found that when I was writing
my multipart FAQ, I would get a number of comments early on, but
after a few revisions the number of comments dropped dramatically,
and were much less important. So immediate revision became much
less crucial. And the FAQ has so many parts that I simply can't
continuously revise them all, not if I want to keep writing
the parts that aren't done yet. So it doesn't matter that
much that my posting frequency is only every 90 days; in fact,
this gives me enough time to complete the revision cycle once
every posting cycle, and people don't have the opportunity to
complain that their revisions haven't been included in the
most-recently-posted-version. :)
The sci.physics.fusion newsgroup has a slow rate of "newbie
accumulation," and a relatively small amount of traffic, but
a wide variety of questions that people frequently like to ask,
so having a large FAQ posted infrequently is reasonable.
The pace is a little slower and it's not necessary to have the
full FAQ continuously available in the newsgroup. There is
a bimonthly "Intro to the Fusion FAQ"-type posting which
advertises the existence of the FAQ when it hasn't been recently
posted. So I don't think trimming the FAQ just to make it easier
to post frequently is worthwhile, and I don't think it's necessary
to post the FAQ every month.
On the other hand, I think *some* posting of the FAQ *is*
necessary. Having the FAQ posted instead of merely archived
on the WWW or an ftp site makes it much more widely available.
It also promotes discussion of the FAQ in the newsgroup, which
makes it easier for me to get feedback and make improvements.
It also seems to have a tendency to boost the signal/noise
ratio, perhaps by providing an example of the sort of post
that *should* be in the group. (I'm still observing to
see if this is really true.)
I think that different groups have different natures, and
there's no "best" way to organize/segment/post an FAQ which
applies to all groups. Just as an FAQ for sci.physics.fusion
will necessarily have a different style than one for, say,
alt.beer or comp.sys.mac.games, it can also have a different
architecture and posting methodology. I think the best way for
FAQ maintainers to deal with the "to split or not to split"
issue, the "how often should I post" issue, and so on, is
this: learn the pros and cons of each posting method, and then
calibrate your approach to the nature of the actual groups you
are posting into. Use your sense of the newsgroup and what
it needs as the basis for your decision. Not all groups
are the same, not all FAQs are the same, and not all FAQs
should be posted the same way in all groups.
********************
Bob Heeter
rfheeter@pppl.gov
http://w3.pppl/gov/~rfheeter
Author/Editor/Maintainer of Conventional Fusion FAQ & Glossary
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