Maybe FAQs aren't very useful

Matthew Thomas mpt at myrealbox.com
Tue Apr 19 00:38:42 UTC 2005


Corey Burger wrote:
>...
> There are already pages for most of what you propose. What is really
> needed is a "1st 20 minutes FAQ". Wikis being wikis, you can create
> that page, so that all of us and the general public can make it most
> useful.
>...

Maybe it's time we went on an anti-"FAQ" jihad throughout the wiki. 
Answering frequently asked questions seems like a great idea from the 
writer's point of view (and I say this as a former FAQ author), but from 
the point of view of someone looking for help, they probably have 
*absolutely no idea* whether the question they want an answer to is one 
that's frequently asked by other people or not. (They may not even know 
what "FAQ" stands for.)

Instead we could sort documents by topic -- "Installation", "Hardware", 
"Playing movies and music", "Specialty software and how to find it", and 
so on. *Then* if wiki stats (or forum questions) show us that some pages 
are wanted much more often than others, quick links to those pages can 
be put at the top of category pages in addition to their places in the 
appropriate subcategories.

-- 
Matthew Thomas
http://mpt.net.nz/




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