# If anyone else has any further thoughts, feel free to make suggestions.
I have a couple. I initially floated an idea of "categories" of the
existing FAQs into topic areas so that I could expand faqs.org to support
both Usenet generated and user submitted pointers to non-Usenet based
documents. The conversation went no where. Having a new means to distribute
FAQs here is a natural outgrowth. I have looked into an faqlib type of
facility and actually got quite a bit down the road. That was about the
same time as the categorizing discussion. What ever happens some sort
of categorizing will be needed to group the existing faqs and add to
the archives.
# 2. Things are starting to get a bit creaky, e.g.
# - spammers can occasionally mangle the archives
# - half or more of my time as *.answers moderator is taken up with
# "maintenance" like deleting bogus FAQ submissions (ie postings to
# *.answers that aren't FAQs and aren't recognized by the current filters)
Yes.
# - increasingly often, FAQ writers are keeping web-only versions and thus
# not posting, so rtfm and it's echoes aren't quite the repositories they
# used to be.
Absolutely. This is the real problem.
# 3. To avoid confusing the existing software and mirrors, which expect to find
# textual USENET postings, we'd probably need yet another set of directories
# for holding HTML faqs. I dunno how the actual rtfm maintainers would
# react to this; I don't know them or their environment very well [*.answers
# moderators are essentially guests at rtfm]
There should be no reason they couldn't be combined so that both web and
usenet faqs are available from the same facility.
# 4. The bunch-of-new-directories approach strikes me as a short-term one;
# perhaps with the new millenium approaching we need to rethink the whole
# issue of how FAQs are handled.
I agree, it is a short term approach and that things would be better addressed
by figuring out where we see FAQs being used in the future. I'll throw in my
2 cents...
The approach that I see working is to create a repository that has
files and links categorized, that allows for local storage for authors
as well being able to install pointers to the authors Internet based
FAQ pages. It should also provide authors the ability to edit their files
directly on the repository if they need to. The Usenet related things we
take for granted such expiration and crossposting should also be addressed
so a reference that is short lived would be automatically removed or cross
linked under different categories if appropriate. The repository should
also have some sort of user notification service so a reader can track
changes to specific FAQ without having to constantly check back. The
repository could tell them when to check. And there needs to be a real
integration with the search engines, not just one of them.
FWIW: faqs.org is now serving up nearly 100,000 "FAQ" pages a day. I expect
that next month it will exceed it.
-- Kent Landfield Phone: 1-817-545-2502 Email: kent@landfield.com http://www.landfield.com/ Email: kent@nfr.net http://www.nfr.net/ Please send comp.sources.misc related mail to kent@landfield.com Search the Usenet FAQ Archive at http://www.faqs.org/faqs/ Search the RFC/FYI/STD/BCP Archive at http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/
[
Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive |
Search Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997
]
© Copyright The Internet FAQ Consortium, 1997
All rights reserved