Forum2News_Exporter@mts.rpi.edu (Barry Bailey) (11/01/90)
Thanks for the suggestions and rationale regarding FAQs newsgroups, everyone is so supportive (opposed to combative (sp?)) (no sarcasm implied, to uze pess'amistsss... :-] I too believe that the FAQs would use too much bandwidth if posted in its entirety on a regular (weekly, monthly) basis. As a regular reader of any newsgroup I would be put off a bit by having to page through a 5 to 10 screen list of questions I will have memorized by the fourth of fifth time (please forego technical commentary pertaining to USENET browsers/editors - I am forced to page through every screen of newsgroups I have selected). So far I like most the suggestion someone made about having a batch program spit out a posting, listing the location and contents of the FAQs newsgroup. If the newsgroup entries consistently had reasonable SUBJECT lines one could imagine the program automatically compiling the table of contents from SUBJECT lines. Over the years the newsgroup would have to purged on occasion, but even with hundreds of questions the table of contents would only get to be a few screens long, instead of hundreds of screens long. As an addendum to the above, it might be useful to cross post each new FAQs entry to this newsgroup (programmatically?). Each new FAQ could have a one line advertisement of the FAQs newsgroup. This arrangement would logically hit every new USENET user within the span of time it takes to come up with a new FAQ or at least between postings of the table on contents. end 'o ramblings barry I wish my postings pertaining to WINQVT, KERMIT, LANS, etc. got this much attention (sarcasm implied, to all uze pess'amistsss :->
jls@hsv3.UUCP (James Seidman) (11/02/90)
In article <9848.6572.forumexp@mts.rpi.edu> Forum2News_Exporter@mts.rpi.edu (Barry Bailey) writes: > I too believe that the FAQs would use too much bandwidth if posted in > its entirety on a regular (weekly, monthly) basis. I'll point out that a *lot* of other groups post their FAQs either monthly or every other week. A monthly posting really isn't that big a deal in terms of bandwidth, and manually fiddling with the "Expires:" field can make sure that, at least on most systems, the article will always be around for people to access. Also, if it's only going to accessible through, say, a mail server, then you're going to have to cope with the inevitable flurry of "I tried to mail to FAQ-request but it bounced! How to I get through to it? Can someone mail me a copy of the FAQ?" which will take a lot of bandwidth in its own right (and be more annoying). -- Jim Seidman (Drax), the accidental engineer. "There's a certain freedom to being completely screwed." - The Freshman UUCP: ames!vsi1!hsv3!jls Internet: hsv3.UUCP!jls@apple.com