grady@postgres (Steven Grady) (12/29/87)
I have been USENET reader for about 3 years, and I notice there are a large number of frequently asked questions, considerably more than appear in the news.announce.newusers document. Each newsgroup has its own questions, many of which spark off exactly the same discussion every time the question comes up. Also, there always follow the same old flames about posting the same old questions. Not only is this annoying for the people who've read it before, but it increases the noise to signal ratio. Just as an example, it took me about 1 minute to come up with these: comp.emacs: Where can I get {GNU emacs, MicroEmacs, Jove}? comp.os.minix: What is minix? Where can I get minix? comp.unix.wizards: Isn't rm * terrible? comp.windows.x: Where can I get X? How does X compare with NeWS? rec.arts.startrek: "One to the fourth power" rec.games.misc: How can I get the Babelfish in HHGttG? How do I solve zork[1-3]? rec.puzzles: about a hundred common puzzles rec.humor: about a thousand common jokes I think I could come up with a dozen more with a few minutes thought. One solution is to add more questions to the "frequently asked questions" list in new.announce.newusers, but I suspect that article would get too bulky far too quickly, to the point where a new user would be intimidated by it. I propose instead that some mechanism be devised for each newsgroup to have a list of FAQs. I am not very familiar with the news software (except inews, but that's another story), so I have no idea how it would be implemented, but I suspect it might be worthwhile. I do see some problems, such as how to prevent these lists from getting too long ("Oh, but MY joke is funny - it should DEFINITELY be included in the canonical list of frequently posted lightbulb jokes"), but I believe they are not insurmountable. I have some further thoughts on the matter, but first I want to hear if other people agree with me, or if the idea has already been considered. Steven grady@postgres.berkeley.edu ...!ucbvax!grady
nyssa@terminus.UUCP (The Prime Minister) (12/30/87)
In article <25@pasteur.Berkeley.Edu> grady@postgres.Berkeley.EDU (Steven Grady) writes: > I have been USENET reader for about 3 years, and I notice >there are a large number of frequently asked questions, >considerably more than appear in the news.announce.newusers >document. Each newsgroup has its own questions, many of which >spark off exactly the same discussion every time the question >comes up. ... > I propose instead >that some mechanism be devised for each newsgroup to have a list >of FAQs. I am not very familiar with the news software (except >inews, but that's another story), so I have no idea how it would >be implemented, but I suspect it might be worthwhile. This has been done in rec.arts.drwho. There was a group of frequently asked questions, such as "Can there ever be a woman Doctor?". I took the most common answers, and now, once per month, I post the frequently asked questions. I also post a convention list and an explanation of the postings. This has been going on since summer. Originally, I also posted a series of files which could be bulky, but which would be of interest to Doctor Who fans. These included a program guide, an article on companions, Tom Baker's scarf patterns, etc. Due to the volume, I dropped these from the monthly postings and established an archive facility. Anyone can request one of these files in a mail message, and it will be forwarded to them. (Assuming either (a) my mailer can understand their address or (b) they provide a good address via a "Send-To:" line in the message.) A list of this archive is sent out with the monthly postings. The scripts that I use are rather simple, the monthly posting is just three lines long. The server is longer, but it has to handle the addressing, etc. If anyone wants to see them, all the need do is ask. In short, the idea of a "newsgroup archive" is not a bad idea, but it does need someone willing to handle the work. Set up was time consuming; but running it is now almost entirely automated...