And in <v01510102addc7dfbb7e9@[198.69.29.18]>, Wolf wrote:
> One reader has commented to me that all of the portions of the FAQ appear
> within one message thread on his newsreaders. He has suggested that the
> sections of the FAQ should appear in separate threads.
These comments offer more proof (as if any more were needed)
that in an infinite network (such as, for example, the one we're
using), for any idea, no matter how reasonable, someone holds a
contrasting idea, and someone else disagrees so strongly with the
original idea that he's moved to complain about it.
FAQ lists have been around a lot longer than the complainants
Mitch mentions. If a polite and nonjudgemental explanation of
the way things work won't satisfy them, they'll just have to be
ignored. (They won't go away, and they can't be convinced.
Usenet isn't what they want, but it's pretty close, and they
can't implement something that is what they want or that has the
mass and penetration of Usenet, so they keep complaining. See
the news.admin newsgroups for more details.)
Threading the parts of a multi-part FAQ list is, as someone else
has already explained, a feature. It was requested by users;
that's why the feature exists. If someone's preference is for
it to be some other way, that's fine, but they too will have to
have it gently explained to them that the consensus agrees
otherwise. If someone is afraid that an FAQ list will be "lost
in the noise" if it appears as only one thread, then the
newsgroup may have more serious problems than an FAQ list can fix
(and de-threading an FAQ list just to increase its visibility
does smack a bit of spamming). In any case, as others have
explained, if a particular FAQ list maintainer wants to it's
possible to get the automated FAQ poster in question not to
thread (or, of course, to use some other posting mechanism).
Steve Summit
scs@eskimo.com
[
Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive |
Search Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997
]
© Copyright The Landfield Group, 1997
All rights reserved