In my case, by being a borderline obsessive-compulsive. I was mostly a
lurker in talk.religion.buddhism after it started last year. Every once
in a while the oldest of all Frequently Asked Questions would float by
("is there a FAQ?"), followed by various forms of "no but there should be".
Finally I couldn't stand it any longer, and volunteered to coordinate the
thing -- assuming people could be found to write the answers on doctrine,
which I didn't feel fully comfortable with. Nobody volunteered, and I
couldn't stand the thought of posting something that was only half-baked.
I wrote the harder sections myself, posted the whole thing, and scurried
for cover in expectations of being flamed by our scholars. Instead there
were compliments and a small number of suggestions for clarifications
(immediately and gratefully accepted).
Our group is a "gateway" for new folks, in the sense that it may be one of
the first newsgroups a new AOL (etc.) customer looks at. It therefore
seemed desirable to have a fairly detailed orientation section along with
the Buddhist stuff. New readers seem to like it; older ones probably get
tired of seeing it, though. Not sure what to do about that.
Paola Kathuria asks:
> How much time do y'all spend on your FAQ(s)?
More than is necessary, probably. I've ended up tracking several mailing
lists, to learn about new resources as they come online. On a few
occasions it has also been possible to share useful information with
members of those same mailing lists. Following all the mail is hard.
This is a much more rewarding job than I anticipated. I've become very
"attached" to it. :-)
john
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