scs@eskimo.com (Steve Summit):
# The "traditional" approach, if it can be successfully
# accomplished in a given instance, has a distinct
# advantage: the questions it covers have some real chance
# of matching the questions which a reader is trying to
# answer, even if the reader has tried and failed to find
# an answer using more traditional references. In fact,
# the process of identifying questions to be answered in an
# FAQ list by noticing which questions are asked in an open
# forum automatically discovers those questions which the
# traditional references, for whatever reason, do *not*
# answer.
Al Gilman <asgilman@access.digex.net>
#...or don't make sufficiently prominent. Lots of our FAQs in
#Lynx land are answered in the documents, if you can ever figure
#out how to find it... There is a generic problem in software
#that the people who know the answers don't understand the
#coordinates of question-space.
#
#Well put, Steve. The traditional FAQ is based on listening to
#the customer. That is one of the foundations that made
#news.anwers and RTFM such a great invention. What it gathers is
#not just any answers. It collects the answers to the questions
#people need answered.
and I'd like to point out something which at times only certain
Usenet groups or participants presume about the value of a 'FAQ'
in the traditional *or* precis-oriented documents: that they are
important means of reducing the NOISE-LEVEL in a contained forum
like a Usenet group by minimizing redundancy.
it is this element of the 'FAQ' which I think is most often
overlooked in a mad rush for 'providing answers'. just as Steve
has said that "real-life questions do not always lend themselves
to orderly categorization", so too is it true that real-life
*answers* do not always lend themselves to presentation within
the space of an information file, be that in response to
frequently asked questions or as part of an Internet reference.
nagasiva (tyagi@houseofkaos.abyss)