At 03:05 13-12-01, Nagasiva wrote:
>apparently Matthew C Weigel <mcweigel+@cs.cmu.edu>:
> >> Now I find myself facing accusations of 'being afraid of the Truth' or
> >> 'having an image to maintain' for not accepting a controversial, not
> >> entirely correct, and Sinocentric answer to the question ``What is
> >> qi/ki/ch'i'' to replace the current (toothless and not entirely
> >> correct) answer.
>
>faq-maintainers in forums where ambiguities in the subject matter divide up
>the forum's participants into factions (such as 'esoteric', 'religious', or
>other, often theoretical, topics) are likely to be subject to a great deal of
>pressure and misperception, even when they are attempting to remain neutral.
>
>the accusations of which you speak here are common in contentious forums
>such as alt.philosophy.taoism, alt.zen, alt.magick, etc. sometimes these
>are used in order to argue for a particular perspective on the subject,
>and sometimes they are intended to rattle the faq-maintainer or dispute
>(ad hominem) the contentions prevalent or reflected in the faq maintained.
First of all, it looks like things are a bit easier for me, as I am the
maintainer of a FAQ for a forum with a much more 'concrete' topic, being
Rugby Union. Having said that, there are a couple of my cents worth that I
would like to add to the discussion. I think this matter could in a way be
solved using some sort of disclaimer.
It a common opinion that there is nothing official about a FAQ, even when
it has been approved for posting to *.answers. It is a posting made by an
individual, albeit a special posting, as it is usually compiled in
association with group regulars. Still, in the end, the statements you make
are exclusively yours, unless you explicitly credit another with one point
in the document.
So if 'they' think you're afraid of the truth, that's no big deal. There is
no way that a FAQ needs to be completely true, particularly when dealing
with topics in which the truth is unclear. Essentially, they are attacking
your views, just like they would in a 'normal' posting. You could make
clear that if it's the FAQ they wish to attack, there is only one way of
doing so, which is creating a 'rival' FAQ. After all, there is nobody,
including the folks at *.answers, who can stop you at doing so.
Here is the statement I've made on this in the FAQ for
rec.sport.rugby.union (section 1.8):
"The status of documents like this is being discussed over and over again
in all sorts of fora. I concur with the majority view that sees a FAQ as
little more than a posting that is being made regularly. The statements
made here are mine and the reason many RSRU regulars might refer to the FAQ
every now and then is that they share these views, not in the last place
because many of them have helped creating and maintaining the FAQ. Approval
for *.answers does not change anything to this. Approval is, after all,
based on form not content. The bottom line: the FAQ is not law, the FAQ is
not official, its information is not official and a group convention is a
convention not because the FAQ says so, but because it is felt so by the
readers of the group. In fact, you might want to go and create your own FAQ
and get it approved."
All the best,
-- Mees Roelofs (roelofs@f2s.com * ICQ:68345974) "Faith can move mountains, but a tanked-up Boeing is quicker." (Bill Taylor)************************************************************* To unsubscribe send a message to majordomo@faqs.org as
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