news@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Remote news user) (02/15/91)
I am collaborating with a bunch of people to maintain the FAQ. The one posted by John Garnett represents the skeleton we will work from. We will try to make sure everything in the FAQ is as accurate as possible, but we need your helps, comments, and most importantly the questions you believe every new reader to this list ought to know. A mailing list to deal with FAQ reviews has been set up- next-faq@media.mit.edu Already a lot of changes have been made, will probably post a new one once there is enough new information to justify it. Pascal Chesnais, Research Specialist, Electronic Publishing Group Media Laboratory, E15-351, 20 Ames Street, Cambridge, Ma, 02139 (617) 253-0311 email: lacsap@plethora.media.mit.edu (NeXT)
benseb@grumpy.sdsc.edu (Booker Bense) (05/30/91)
In article <1487@nada.cs.utexas.edu> garnett@cs.utexas.edu (John William Garnett) writes: >In article <CNH5730.91May23101252@calvin.tamu.edu> cnh5730@calvin.tamu.edu (Charles Herrick) writes: >>Am I alone in thinking that >>Izumi's post should be in the NeXTFAQ. >>-- > >It is much too long to be included in the FAQ. However, I do agree that >a pointer to the posting should be included in the FAQ. In addition, >it may be a good idea to store the posting in the /pub/next/FAQ directory >on sonata.cc.purdue.edu. I'll make the suggestion to the right people >(in case this note goes unread). > chains. Rather than attempt to answer every question in the FAQ, it's broken up into several general subject areas and the regular posts are offset by a week or so. In many groups the FAQS have become so unwieldy that they are being ignored. You have to keep them less than 3 screens or so if you want people to read them. Another advantage is that with minimal coordination, the task of maintaining the FAQ can be split among several people. This allows ``experts'' to separate the wheat from the chaff. - Foolishly, I recently volunteered to start a FAQ for another group (sci.math.symbolic) and have rapidly come to see the wisdom of this approach. Chains have the same title each time they are posted and thus can easily be put in your kill file. It's rather simple to flag them in the title so you only see them when they contain new information. Short messages often stay around long enough to be read. Collected wisdom once a week will calm the nervous into waiting before posting , particularly if the subjects of the other chains are briefly mentioned in the beginning of each chain. Clearly, comp.sys.next needs a ``disk'' chain and I am in no way volunteering to maintain it. - The convention I have decided on for chains in sci.math.symbolic is FAQ <subject> <(New)> - Until the gigabit network is everywhere, we all have to cooperate in keeping the bandwidth down,(if we want all this cool stuff for free, that is ). I think chains are a good idea and would encourage the ``keepers of the FAQ'' to think about using them. - Booker C. Bense prefered: benseb@grumpy.sdsc.edu "I think it's GOOD that everyone NeXT Mail: benseb@next.sdsc.edu becomes food " - Hobbes