I'd say greeting practices have a big impact, and shouldn't be swept
under the rug so easily. For comp.software.testing, we have an
improvement effort underway, and we're experimenting with using a
defined list of subject tags. Volunteers are monitoring the newsgroup
and sending email when someone posts a message with the realm of one
of the subject tags but doesn't use the tag. The response from
newsgroup participants has been encouraging, though I can't guess how
long people would use the tags without the active encouragement. We
also want to experiment with using a robot to send a FAQ pointer to
every new poster, but we don't have a volunteer to set that up yet.
> The only other idea I've come up with is rotational posting.
Interesting idea - I agree that being able to use a more specific
subject would make it more likely that people would read sections of the
FAQ file that interest them. But for a new person who doesn't read the
group long before posting a question, it's not likely to help, unless at
the bottom of each one you list all the other topics they can learn
about, and where to find them.
Would splitting out the FAQ file into numerous parts irritate long-time
users? I started putting a change log at the top of my (long,
one-piece) FAQ file so that they can quickly see whether there's
anything new of interest.
Another way to look at the problem - how many frequently *answered*
questions do you have? When people answer a FAQ, that irritates me at
least as much as the question. Instead, old-timers should point
people to the FAQ, then if they're nice, copy some of the relevant
information from there. In general - when someone post a FAQ, how
often do they and those that read it *know* it's a FAQ.
-Danny
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