Re: Faq maintainers and commericialism: debate is elitist

Rich Kulawiec (rsk@gsp.org)
Thu, 8 Apr 1999 08:51:51 -0400

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In reply to: Russell Shaw: "Faq maintainers and commericialism: debate is elitist"

On Tue, Apr 06, 1999 at 06:04:56PM -0700, Russell Shaw wrote:
> Back when I wrote the book (which won an Amazon.com critic's award) I was
> seized by the utter elitism and outright distrust that so-called non-compensated
> FAQ writers regarded so-called "commercial" FAQ writers with. This view, which
> seems to be the overwhelming sentiment on this list, is that amateur devotees of
> a topic -- driven by labor of love and a presumption of objectivity -- are far
> better qualified to write FAQs than someone who writes and maintains FAQs for a
> corporate Web site. There's the arrogant and bigoted presumption that corporate
> FAQ writers are whores.

I'd say that the way that the term "FAQ" has been abused on a multitude
of occasions more than justifies taking this position. Most of the
commercial FAQs I have seen are thinly-disguised (or undisguised) pitches
for the products of the companies which paid for them to be written.
This is a bastardization of the purpose which drove the creation of
the term, the list of periodic postings, and news.answers.

This is no surprise: many people are quite willing to sell their
principles for profit. And others are willing to steal the work
of others for theirs. (I've had my FAQs swiped several times by
people who either reproduced them without permission in direct
violation of the terms contained in the FAQs themselves, or removed
my name, copyright, and the credits and claimed them as their own.)

There's nothing "elitist" or "arrogant' or "bigoted" about this.
It's simply an accurate assessment of the way that corporations
are willing to usurp the good reputations of others for their
own profit. By contrast, uncompensated writers are free to express
their opinions without the shackles of corporate PR departments
and the motivation of profit. (Has anyone else noticed that commercial
FAQs *aren't* FAQs: that is, they do NOT ask and answer "frequently
asked questions", but instead are more along the lines of "questions
that we thought up in our marketing department and which we don't find
too embarrassing to answer in public"? The *truly* frequently asked
questions, as found in the free and open dialogues taking place via
mailing lists, the web and Usenet, are rarely if ever addressed by
these corporate shills.)

---Rsk
Rich Kulawiec
rsk@gsp.org

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