As one who asked the same question here a few months ago, I should summarize
the responses I received. Thanks to those who responded then.
(And also, I apologize to any who've been seeing bounces. Yes, resun.com has
routing problems due to a badly configured MX mail forwarder that we are
working on getting fixed, but as the maintainers of this mailing list say, we
don't have control of the software on that system.)
Too many sites no longer respect Expires:. You have to assume that in many
places the FAQ posting will survive for 3-7 days, two weeks at the outside.
The "infrequent full posting with frequent pointer posting" method is popular.
It's difficult to gauge how well it works.
In fact, it's difficult to gauge how well any method works. Some experiments
with posting the pointer *daily* failed to eliminate "where's the FAQ" posts.
However, at least one maintainer has noticed that email requests drop off
after the FAQ is posted and rise gradually over the two weeks until the next
posting.
When I asked The Question, posting every approved article in news.answers
twice a month would have resulted in news.answers accounting for 3% of all
Usenet traffic. Though news.answers has grown since then, I'm sure it hasn't
grown as fast as the alt.binaries.* hierarchy, so the percentage surely has
not grown.
I eventually decided to change the misc.health.diabetes FAQ posting from
monthly to biweekly. I don't see enough requests for the FAQ to say whether
those have declined. I feel that the FAQ is probably available much closer to
100% of the time now, averaged over all sites and times, than it was before.
I didn't try the pointer method mainly because I don't have any autoposting
software under my control, only the server at rtfm.
No one expects that every posting represents an update. Though true new users
might misunderstand at first, Usenet readers generally understand that FAQs
are PIPs (Periodic Information Postings) and are posted at intervals
unrelated to content update. Many PIPs are posted for months, even years,
between updates. Mine's been posted once while I've been waiting for
permission to change the headers, and it looks like it's going to post again
before I can change it. The wheels of news.answers grind slowly at times, and
you should avoid tying your work and hopes to the news.answers wheel.
Edward Reid reide@freenet.tlh.fl.us
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