It seems to me that this point is one of the key ones underlying any efforts
to improve FAQs for the future. In the web-based world, why should any one
Web page have any authority over any other? Some kind of reasonably
respectable filtering process would seem to be necessary. Why would any
future FAQ mechanism(s) have any more authority than, say, the Mining Company?
If a lone iconoclast/free thinker/crackpot wants to post ten "Einstein was
wrong" FAQs, why should his/her posts/FAQs be treated any differently than any
others?
The current situation is
On the low-authority side:
- Anyone who can master the rules for getting a FAQ approved can create a FAQ
This filters out lots of people who shouldn't post FAQs (those inclined to
take the easy way out), but perhaps far more who should (those dedicated to
their subject, but with low patience for news.answers arcana)
- The rules for filtering out things from news.answers are deliberatly
content-neutral -- they're based only on whether you follow the rules for
creating certain headers that let the transport and archiving software work.
- Once someone starts autoposting a FAQ, it's really easy to let it slip more
and more out of date. Most of mine are probably too outdated to be useful,
except those few where I happen to get a lot of feedback (case tools
listings, and college e-mail)
On the high-authority side:
- A FAQ has to be posted to a regular newsgroup. This means if it contains
inaccuracies, the community will notice and eventually either convince the
author to make corrections, or create a rival FAQ (or, in at least one
instance last year, flame at the news.answers moderator for several weeks
to try to get us to de-approve the FAQ)
I must admit that when someone suggested we contact Dejanews to see if they'd
be willing to link to the FAQs from appropriate newsgroup-reading entry
points, I did nothing because I couldn't see how to argue why the current FAQs
database was any more authoritative than anything else, e.g. any of the search
engines or hierarchically-arranged internet portals.
I'm not sure I'm comfortable with "distributed authoring" as suggested above -
but perhaps something along those lines would be needed just to add the touch
of authority that would get people to pay more attention.
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