FAQ's and how to get people to read them

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Article #350

#350

From: Thomas Koenig
Date: Tue, 12 Jan 1993 11:29

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On some of my favourite newsgroups (can anyone say comp.os.linux?), the
signal/noise ratio is pretty bad.  Much of the noise comes from people
who have not RTFAQ.

The creation of news.answers with its ftp archive has helped a lot, but
a certain level of expertise is needed to access them.  The
news.announce.newusers articles provide useful pointers, but not enough
people read them.

So, is there a technical possiblity of making sure that people know that
FAQ's exist?  Maybe checking for the existence of an FAQ in the newsgroup
(by looking for the crossposting to news.answers) and asking them

"There is a list of frequently asked questions with answers for the
newsgroup you are about to post to.  Do you want to view it before
posting?  [yn]"

would do the trick...
-- 
Thomas Koenig, ig25@rz.uni-karlsruhe.de, ig25@dkauni2.bitnet
The joy of engineering is to find a straight line on a double logarithmic
diagram.

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Path: arc1-ca.pugleaf.net!sparky!uunet!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!howland.reston.ans.net!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!ira.uka.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!ig25
From: ig25@fg70.rz.uni-karlsruhe.de (Thomas Koenig)
Newsgroups: news.admin.misc,news.future,news.groups,news.misc,news.software.readers
Subject: FAQ's and how to get people to read them
Date: 12 Jan 1993 11:29:09 GMT
Organization: University of Karlsruhe, Germany
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