How to manage FAQs

[pmasiar]

We all want better FAQs. If newbies read FAQ, they will get answers sooner, and rest of us can solve more interesting problems like explaining 22th time why build-essential are essential, or how to start learning programming.

Suggestions for Programming Talk FAQs (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=686191)

Easy way to weasel out is to let mods maintain FAQ, and curse newbies who will not read it.

Harder way is to propose a process which does not rely on mods only, and uses efforts of whole community.

Everyone likes "clean FAQ" pages, but IMHO requirement of maintaining by mods only stifles discussion - many people will not bother to contribute if it requires to email busy mod.

So I propose:

1. "clean FAQ" page edited by mod, closed thread
2. in the footer of "clean FAQ" is link to discussion thread. First post is copy of "clean FAQ". Any discussion is incorporated into clean version by "thread owner", and mod can copy-paste it to "clean" once a while.

This way, we can have both discussion and clean version, and not rely completely on mod to edit everything for us.

My goal is to have 1-2-3 top-level FAQs, from where by couple click on obviously named links any newbie can get to answer. If "clean FAQ" uses this definition, then sticky Learning Computer Programming FAQ (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=667422) needs to be reformatted, focusing on one or 2-3 closely related questions. Goal is, newbie does not have to scan over pages of irrelevant content to get to answer - because he will not, he will ask instead. :-)

Any suggestions? Will it fly? Do I wrote it clearly enough?

[popch]

We all want better FAQs. If newbies read FAQ, they will get answers sooner, (...)

Easy way to weasel out is to let mods maintain FAQ, and curse newbies who will not read it.

Harder way is to propose a process which does not rely on mods only, and uses efforts of whole community.

Everyone likes "clean FAQ" pages, but IMHO requirement of maintaining by mods only stifles discussion - many people will not bother to contribute if it requires to email busy mod.(...)

Any suggestions? Will it fly?...

Those requirements would be met quite accurately by a Wiki, I think. I realise that this would involve an extra 'interface' in the user's experience which might ruin the advantage of the additional assets proposed.

Can vBulletin combined in an easy manner with a Wiki?

[aks44]

@popch:
So we're still confronted to the Wiki idea again...

Not that it's a bad idea (in fact it's probably the best idea to enable real collaborative work), but as you pointed it out: how to integrate it seamlessly with UF?

The main problem I see with an external Wiki, is that people using the search function of the forums will not find the information they're looking for. So IMHO we have to find a way to achieve what we want using the forum software (a Wiki can still be useful for *advanced* topics though, just not for "Frequently Asked Questions" IMO).


@pmasiar: I'm unsure that we really need "clean FAQ" pages. If the thread owner does his/her job then the reader should not have to read the rest of the thread, which can then serve as a discussion for improving the OP. We'd then just need a single "entry point" sticky thread (prolly maintained by a mod) to act as a link farm to other FAQs.

I agree with hierarchical FAQs though, something like

Unique link farm (sticky, maintained by mods)
Big topics link farms (maintained by users)
Specific topics
More specific topics if needed, etc.Each level being a summary of sub-topics.

IMO due to the sheer amount of information we are trying to put together, the current stickies should be split in several "Big topic" FAQs, like one per currently existing header (well, you get the idea).


YMMV of course :)



Side note: when this whole FAQ thing started, I was far from thinking that just its organization would require so much talk... how wrong was I! ;)