All right, time to hear from one of the bad guys....
I "maintain" the FAQ for the alt.sex.wanted newsgroup. But maintenance
in my case is a bit of a joke. First off, I haven't reposted the FAQ in at
least a year... probably a LOT more. Secondly, some of the information in it
is a trifle out of date, such as the reference to the quartz.rutgers.edu FTP
site (machine decomissioned). I never got around to reading the autoposter
instructions, so it isn't being autoposted.
On the other hand, I never intended it to be a final "here is is, shut
up" guide, since most of what people want who post that group (such as
easily reached highly attractive eager and oversexed partners) just ain't
out there; most of the where to look stuff is "I don't know, *I* don't care,
try over thataways". So, as I stick the amber CDROM from Walnut Creek in my
machine to examine the fossil, it's not that badly out of date. Most of the
advice in there is still perfectly good.
On the gripping hand, I was fighting a losing uphill battle from when I
first tried giving inteligent answers to the frequently asked STUPID
questions. Nobody listened, except a few giggling goons in the peanut
gallery. The group has since been overwhelmed by ads posted by people who
want money for a sex-related business, not sex for themselves. I've moved
e-mail twice, and still get the questions about it once in a blue moon, and
answer them as ever. I no longer actively read the group, after spending 2
years getting laid regularly and 1.5 years working on getting a life. And
no-one has expressed an interest in taking over and doing a better job.
So, is my 18K of fame justifying its waste of space? Should it be
deleted? Could someone care enough to do a better job? I dunno. Does my FAQ
make a good test case?
In more general terms, some questions that should be answered in with
the removal process:
1) Can the nominal maintainer be contacted?
2) Do you seek to change the maintainer, cease autoposting, or just
delete it outright?
3) How badly out of date are the contents?
4) Is anyone complaining yet? =)
And in an unrelated $0.02, the RTFM site question is a next-step problem
in the design of the Net. First came machines, then we started sending
things between them. Since the same stuff (questions) was being sent all the
time, we put the answers so they could be kept indefinitely. Then we
archived them, to (a) ease autoposting and (b) keep them in one, nice,
easily accessible basket. Now everyone goes there, since all of that cool
stuff is there....
We've now hit another spread it out point. My instant off the cuff 3AM
solution follows. Strongly encourage a migration to autoposting. Have mirror
sites pick up the updates by recieving them from the slightly-modified
autoposting bot. A central server contains all FAQS, but *not* accessably;
instead, it has pointers to other machines (say, the mirrors?) so people
read the news.* FAQS, the sci.*FAQS, and so forth over on another machine.
Central server is no longer the library, but the librarian.
And as I am making less and less sense, to bed.
AB^2
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