> Here's a question I've been wondering about for some time: How and why
> do people get into the FAQ-maintaining business? I know some newsgroups
> have a formal selection process with a vote and everything, but I
> suspect this is the exception. I'd be interested in hearing how you
> became maintainers.
My FAQ didn't grow out of a usenet newsgroup, just out of my own
initative. In the summer of 94, while attending classes at the University
of Florida, I thought it would be a neat idea to write an internet
document on the new Jacksonville Jaguars NFL football team. So I did. I
posted it to the Jaguars newsgroup alt.sports.football.pro.jville-jaguars
(which was mostly dead at the time.) I also uploaded it to a few
football-related FTP sites, and began the *.answers process. A lot of
football fans on the 'net saw the FAQ and thought it was a good idea. A
couple of guys who were Carolina Panthers fans asked if they could use my
FAQ as a template for theirs. I started a World Wide Web site, and a
newsletter. Later, I got access to a listserv and now use that to send
out the FAQ and newsletters to over 150 subscribers.
Then, something amazing happened. I got email from the computer editor of
the jacksonville newspaper. He was surfing around in Yahoo, and saw my
Jaguars WWW site. He told me that one of the business editors of the
paper wanted to write an article about that Website. The editor
interviewed me over the phone, and also showed the website to some of the
officials from the Jaguars organization. They were amused and
enthusiastic. One of them said to the reporter, "We think it's great that
this enterprising computer science major at the University of Florida
is doing such a thing. We ought to sit down and meet him one day and buy
them lunch."
So they did. They called me up, gave me a tour of the new Gator Bowl in
Jacksonville and bought me lunch. They told me that the NFL had plans to
put up their own site (which since, they have) They encouraged me to
keep maintaining my site since it's from a fan's perspective, not a team
perspective. I gave their Director of Communications a copy of my FAQ,
and he gave me a media guide, roster, and a bunch of other information to
help out the FAQ.
Anyways, that's how I've been doing. Although my FAQ isn't a mainstream
type of document (such as the Copyright FAQ or the comp.lang.c FAQ), it
still has a steady following. In the future, I hope to write another
FAQ, one that IS in the mainstream... but I don't know what topic I
should write it on.
-Jim
__________________________________________________________________________
James L. Burk http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~jburk
The Jaguars WWW Site: http://www.cis.ufl.edu/~jburk/jags
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." -- M. Twain
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