Date: Thu, 28 Mar 2002 09:57:59 -0800 (PST)
From: Judy Perry <jperryl_at_ecs.fullerton.edu>
>Of course YOU don't think it needs re-writing -- you already know most of
>what you need to know and, what you don't know, you know HOW to find.
OK. Here is my 0.02 Euros to this thread.
I think I know most of the things in the FAQ. But I definitely think
it needs to be re-written (I know you were replying to Eric L.
Strobel).
>I'm not trying to be whiny here, and I AM a teacher myself... but I can
>tell you that on the Hypercard list, nobody tells newbies who are
>wondering how to "play" a sound to go look it up.
I thought we were discussing the intimidating tone of the weekly FAQ reminder.
Let us go back to the days we had no maintained FAQ. People were
asking the same question over and over and over. With always the same
people answering that. And it wasn't the Juniors or I don't recall
how Jon called them. Steve Weyer, Sean Luke and Peter Rand, among
others, spent a lot of their time answering Newbie question. I think
they enjoyed it, we all enjoyed it, except that after a while, it
became painful for the readers, so we decided to start a new FAQ from
the existing sources and maintain it.
Nowadays, it seems to me (and I wouldn't use the hierarchy Jon put)
that there are a lot of questions asked that are answered in the FAQ
or could be answered there. But there is no question asked every 2
days, and I much prefer the list today than before the FAQ.
There is also a huge group of people who answers when they know the
answer and if they have the time. I admit that sometimes I go into
technical discussions and since I'm not really clear it seems to
Newbie that I'm not talking to mortals. But I try to answer even the
most basic question when I have the time to do so if it isn't
unanswered (since I'm on digest these days and I often don't read
them when they arrive, I usually think (correctly) that someone
answered them already). I think it's exactly the case of very
knowledgeable people such as Robert (ok, he won't admit it ;),
Laurent, Victor and so on.
Like Victor, when I know that the question is worded very close to
the way it was asked in the FAQ, I put the link. It means extra work
because I definitely don't know all the links by heart. I could just
put the answer. I don't recall having said: it is in the FAQ, try
Google: Newton FAQ or pasting the link to the FAQ main page. If I had
done so, please accept my apologies.
Additionally, the FAQ reminder now includes trying Google. I think
it's a great idea because I personally use Google a lot to paste a
link to answer a question. The person who asked the question might
think that I had them in my bookmarks, but no, I just needed to take
one or two keywords from the question, add Newton and click
"Recherche Google".
I can't really appreciate if this reminder is intimidating or not.
But I really like the idea of rewording it as a community experience,
so please, if anyone was intimidated, make suggestions to reword it.
And it might not please Victor because of extra bandwidth ;) (we
won't beat T-Shirts, will we? ;), but I think that the list is the
proper place for such a discussion.
Paul
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