billd@fps.com (Bill Davidson) (04/18/91)
I've been trying to think of a good way for a FAQ posting to come up first thing when you subscribe to a new group that has one. It seems to me it should be done with a header in some way but I'm not sure what the best approach is (new header, control message?). I've come up with a few ideas, none of which I like. Has anyone else given this serious thought? --Bill Davidson -- SONY - Because Caucasians are Just Too Damn Tall -- "Crazy People"
brad@looking.on.ca (Brad Templeton) (04/18/91)
Yes, but it requires a change to the software. All newsgroups should support special "out of band" articles which are not part of the numbering system. They could either be numbered with special numbers (p1, p2, p3, etc.) or more preferably given names. The newsreaders should be trained to be able to offer people these articles, including the following standards: a) Intro to the newsgroup b) Charter of the newsgroup and policies c) Frequently asked questions (several files of this) d) Sources of information (archives, ftp sites) The newsreader should be trained to be able to present a menu of these items. When a group is subscribed to for the first time, the menu is shown. Or the user can request the menu at any time. Such articles would be updated in place with special articles with special headers indicating which file to replace. Instead of an article number, the news software would take a filename and write to it instead. (to avoid conflict with subgroup names, filenames would be of the form P_keyword or something like that.) One special file would be the menu file used by the newsreaders. It would be updated as well. Updating articles would have to be approved. -- Brad Templeton, ClariNet Communications Corp. -- Waterloo, Ontario 519/884-7473