Back in December, Ping Huang wrote:
> clewis@ferret.ocunix.on.ca (Chris Lewis) said:
>> We should be assuming a minimal level of common "competence". If a
>> prospective FAQ author doesn't know how to use their editor, they
>> couldn't post anything properly in the first place, and would be
>> unlikely to even consider writing one.
>
> Hmmm. I don't want to pick on Chris in particular, but I couldn't let
> the above statement pass without comment. We should be careful not to
> paint FAQ maintainership as some sort of technical priesthood. The
> measure of success of an FAQ maintainer should be how informative and
> useful his or her postings are to the target audience, not whether he
> or she is technically competent at handling an editor...
> if their efforts at creating an FAQ are
> rejected out of hand simply because of their technical incompetence,
> that would represent a wasted opportunity.
Call me a net.elitist, but I *do* feel that assuming/requiring a
certain level of net savvy is appropriate. Originally, FAQ lists
were inextricably interwoven with the dynamics of their
associated newsgroups and of Usenet as a whole. They dealt as
much with netiquette as with the subject matter of a particular
group. They were written to forestall endless repeated
discussion, and they were written by netters who had enough
experience with the net, and with the habits and patterns of a
particular newsgroup, to know how that might be accomplished.
Of course, today, we're watching the usage of the term "FAQ list"
mutating. (Language evolution before our very eyes!) Like
RFC's, FAQ lists don't mean what they once did: within a few
years (if it hasn't happened already) the common usage of the
term "FAQ" will be "the net.equivalent of anything you'd find in
the reference section of a library"; the specific connotation of
"a list of frequently-asked questions, with answers, posted to a
Usenet newsgroup to try to keep traffic down" will have been
pretty much superseded. As the mandate behind FAQ lists changes,
the implicit requirement that an FAQ list be written by a
seasoned participant of a newsgroup seems to be decreasing.
I don't want to disenfranchise anyone who just started using the
net and has a lot of expertise to offer but doesn't know much
about Usenet, but I'm not sure there's much to be gained, from
the original standpoint of FAQ list maintenance, in working hard
to make it falling-off-a-log easy for *anyone* to imagine that
they can create an FAQ list right off the bat. They might,
instead, have to spend a month or two learning about how the net
works, or find a net-savvy co-maintainer to work with.
Once upon a time, it was recommended that you read a group for
several months before posting. Obviously, posting something
authoritative like an FAQ list shouldn't require anything less!
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
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