Re: New web site design

[Alan Shutko <ats acm org>]

Paul Barnfather <plb@clanger9.demon.co.uk> writes:

> Perhaps we could put a Faq-O-Matic service on there? They seem to maintain
> themselves (AFAICT)...

Or not, depending.

The problem with FAQ-O-Matics is that it's a crapshoot as to whether
anyone will actually add FAQs to them.  Or you'll get FAQs, but no
answers.  The only FAQ-O-Matics I've seen which answered most FAQs
were seeded from a real FAQ, and there wasn't much added.  Even then,
though, it was a bit harder to find stuff than in the original FAQ.

Of course, I haven't seen many FAQ-O-Matics, so it may work well for
some projects.  But it seems to me that unless you have a bunch of
people chomping to add FAQs to it, it won't be any better than a
regular FAQ.  If you have one person raring to add FAQs, it will be as
good as a regular FAQ (though slightly less organized/coherent), and
if you don't have anyone regularly updating it, it'll be pretty
useless.  

-- 
Alan Shutko <ats@acm.org> - In a variety of flavors!
164 days, 22 hours, 5 minutes, 36 seconds till we run away.
If we won't stand together, we don't stand a chance.