A suggestion to the gods of pop-forum:
Many newsgroups and mailing lists regularly post
the FAQ for the group (typically once per month).
Even when the FAQ is long. This is usually done
automatically (easy enough to do, with cron or
whatever). This is a Good Thing. Most newsreaders
and mail reading programs can be set to automatically
discard the FAQ, so it needn't bother regular
readers. (Any decent mail program will even let you
discard it before downloading, if you have a dial-up
connection and are worried about the extra few seconds
to download a short FAQ once a month. Although one
must be concerned that, even if the mail program
is decent, the mail reader (human) is indecent, and
may not know how to tell their mail program to do this.)
In case of concerns about being a nuisance, a
compromise is to regularly mail a short message
saying from where the FAQ can be ftp-ed (or the
web address of a web version of the FAQ).
I've seen newsgroups where the FAQ is posted once
a month, with a weekly notice saying on what date
of the month the FAQ is posted. (One week is
a typical time for a news server to keep messages,
so this strategy guarantees a new reader can
find out something about a news group.) I think a
once-a-week post, even of this kind, is a trifle
excessive, but that's my own opinion.
It used to be that FAQs could be obtained from rtfm
at MIT somewhere, although I think they are now
at www.faqs.org ? I couldn't find one for
the comp.lang.pop newsgroup there, although
searching the site for "poplog," I found a few
mentions in other newsgroup FAQs. In any case,
it's nicer not to have to think about such things.
I mention this because (a) I want to consult the
pop-forum FAQ, (b) I've not received one since I've
been subsribed to the mailing list, (c) I don't
even know if there is such a thing.
I imagine that
if there is a web version of it, then it will be
at the poplog site -- but the existence and
location of this site (if such exists) is not
posted regularly either.
Minimal suggestion:
Someone (Steve Leach or Aaron?) should take
responsibility for posting regularly (e.g. once
per month) a short message giving the minimal
pointers for locating a pop-forum or poplog FAQ.
Maximal suggestion:
Ditto, but for the FAQ itself.
Regularly posting this information is particularly
important if the FAQ is not where you expect to
find it (e.g. at www.faqs.org ).
Here is a suggested initial list of questions
for the FAQ.
(1) What is poplog? (What is pop11? What is ML?)
(2) What OSes does it run under.
This should state any version dependencies,
for example, if poplog runs under Red Hat
Linux, which versions (of Red Hat and Poplog)
are mutually compatible.
(3) Where can it be downloaded from.
(3a) Resources needed (e.g. X-windows etc.), how
much RAM, disk-space etc.
(4) What other resources there are available (e.g.
poplog web-site(s)).
(5) Relevant publications/reference materials.
(6) Some "why doesn't this work" questions. [To
which the answer is: "Because you probably
left something unintended on the stack." :-)]
(7) Some "how do I ...?" questions. [Generally about
getting key bindings to work properly in xved???]
I'm sure the people who actually answer questions
can more easily think of what crops up regularly.
N.B. I'm not advocating incorporating all the poplog
documentation into a FAQ! The answers to questions
of type (6) and (7) might be RTFM, with a reference
to the appropriate HELP or REF file.
Of course, if my suggested questions can't be
answered by going back through the past year(s)
of pop-forum discussion, then they are clearly
not frequent questions!
It's probably not necessary for anyone (with time
and energy to spare) to go back through the last
year or so of discussion, to see which questions
are really the frequently asked ones. When
a draft FAQ exists, it will become possible to
be aware of whether a question has been asked before,
and is therefore worth including. It's much easier
to see when something should be included than it is
to see whether something in a FAQ is actually
unnecessary or inappropriate to a FAQ.
Jonathan
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