>3. Do one short "Welcome" message that is a digest, then a mega-FAQ that
>explains everything very clearly
IMO, any truly clueless reader will fail to read the FAQ no
matter what. Just imagine how many posts comp.mail.sendmail gets
from folks who "can't send mail" to someone. Sigh....
Nevertheless, I think a "These are the things you really *must*
know" short FAQ, followed up by a "Here are the other things you
should know" is the best solution. Following the 80/20 rule, the
first part will probably cover only 20% of the material, but will
solve 80% of the most common problems (for those inclined to ever
acquire a clue), while the second part will cover the other 80% of
the material and will likely only address 20% of the remaining
problems. Of course, each part will require 80% of your time for
maintenance. ;-)
By way of comparison, the comp.mail.sendmail FAQ now has a single
section in excess of 60KB (and the other is over 50KB), and I'm going
to have to seriously break it down into multiple parts (which may
entail another complete re-write/re-organization) to get each section
in under my self-imposed 32KB limit (many Usenet/mail gateways have
problems around the 32KB barrier, especially if the addressee is on
another network, such as Fidonet).
When I do that, I suspect I'll also create a mini-FAQ that will
probably get posted weekly that contains primarily pointers to the
"real thing" on the web, plus a few of the infrastructure-type
questions that really need to be addressed (such as, is this really
the right newsgroup to post to?).
--
Brad Knowles, MIME/PGP: brad@his.com
comp.mail.sendmail FAQ Maintainer <http://www.his.com/~brad/>
finger brad@his.com for my PGP Public Keys and Geek Code
The comp.mail.sendmail FAQ is at <http://www.his.com/~brad/sendmail/>
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