All the good points were answered, I'll just add a bit.
> # I wrote a FAQ some time ago and, for whatever reason, later abandoned
> # it. As far as I know, it's still in the archives. I think it's better
> # that it stay there, outdated as it is, rather than I remove it
> # completely. It might still be useful for someone.
>
> While that may be the case for your topic area, it may not be for others.
Consider the suicide methods FAQ, and several other FAQs in its
class that really wouldn't change much in time. Also consider FAQs
that are the hard core, "only answers whats asked in the newsgroup
by copying and pasting the response" FAQs, that may very well be out
of date but are keeping a *.fan.* newsgroup a tincy weeny bit more
quite. The perceived outdatedness of a FAQ depends totally on its
content and not the last posting time.
Moreover, as someone else had point out it would be difficult to
even "decide" if a FAQ should be removed because it is outdated.
Frankly I'm not a suicide methods expert so I wouldn't know if he's
missing something, or giving out information that's dangerous :)
AFAIK I recall Pam Greene mentioning that if a FAQ has not been
updated in 6 months someone else can step in and take over.
Something about getting copyright permission if they use the same
material etc. (hmm probably said that two years ago on this mailing
list)
> :) By stating what you just did you told the reader to go to the web
> first. :-) You could have said get it from rtfm.mit.edu but you didn't.
> In the perception of the reader is appears you prefer the web over the
> Usenet distribution. That was my point.
I have to admit that I intentionally don't mention going to rtfm. I
mention the newsgroups and the web page. Somehow I think I'm doing
the people at rtfm a small favor by taking off some of the load. Do
we really want to send everyone who wants to read FAQs to rtfm?
Maybe five years ago that could have been handled, but there are far
too many users now.
And incidently both the text and HTML versions of my FAQs are
available from the web. So it makes no difference to the reader.
Isn't that what its all about? Getting info out to the reader?
-- Thamer Al-Herbish PGP public key: shadows@whitefang.com http://www.whitefang.com/pgpkey.txt [ The Secure UNIX Programming FAQ http://www.whitefang.com/sup/ ]
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