Section 12: Common Questions about the FAQ.


12.1) Why do I get the FAQ twice?

There are two ways this can happen. The first, and most common way, is when you see two copies of the FAQ, one set posted to comp.sys.acorn.announce and the other set posted to comp.sys.acorn.misc. This occurrence is caused by your news handling software being broken. The FAQ is, if you check the newsgroups line when it is posted, crossposted to both of these groups.

This means it is actually posted just the once and with all good news handling software you will read the post exactly once. Given that this is supposed to be standard behaviour for newsreaders I refuse to stop cross-posting purely because people are seeing the posts twice. Quite simply it isn't my problem and I will need other justification before I stop cross-posting.

The second way it can occur is when you see two copies of the FAQ in the same group. Careful checking of your newsbase should reveal that one copy is about 30 to 32 days older than the other. This comes about because I use the Expires: header to ensure that a copy of the FAQ is always present in all well configured newsbases. Because I currently don't use the Supercedes: header this will result in, for one or two days, two copies of the FAQ being present.

My general stance on this is that it is not a major problem as the amount of disc space involved is small compared to general size and flow of information that a news stream entails anyway. Certainly I have been meaning to add the Supercedes header to the posted copy of the FAQ but it is currently a very low priority task.

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12.2) Why does the full FAQ have to be posted?

Simply because of the wide distribution that the FAQ has. Every time the FAQ gets posted it gets automatically archived into various FAQ databases, propagates on ancillary networks only loosely connected to the net (BBSes in particular) and reaches a wide variety of people whose skills at navigating the net vary considerably. Occasionally it gets copied onto CD ROMs, Magazine discs and extracts get used in various publications from time to time.

All this just from the posted copy of the FAQ.

Given this wide reaching nature and the general idea of an FAQ being to reduce network traffic by providing the answers to common questions immediately then I see clear justification for continuing to post the full FAQ.

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12.3) Isn't the FAQ overly long?

In a word, no.

To be slightly less terse it is worthwhile doing a comparison of the c.s.a FAQ with other newsgroup's FAQs. For this task I used a 'snapshot' CD ROM of the rtfm.mit.edu FAQ archive that was taken in March 1995. Here are a few sample sizes :-

FAQ                                      Size in bytes
---                                      -------------
comp.sys.acorn (as posted 6th Jan 1999)  176,678
soc.feminism (resources list)            239,256
comp.sys.amiga (introduction)            167,632
comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware                 318,882
comp.sys.apollo                          162,638

As can be seen by the above table the size of the FAQ is neither overly large nor is it particularly uncommon. This FAQ has grown by about 60K over the last three years (not too bad IMHO!). Having said that, this table was compiled in 1995 by Philip Banks, so the other FAQs are likely to have grown in size too.

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12.4) If I find something wrong or am unhappy with the FAQ, what do I do?

Email me first about it.

I mean it. Generally errors or bad information that has crept into the FAQ has been through circumstances beyond my control. Often a lot of the information I am provided with I simply can not check directly myself. So I accept a lot of what I am given on trust and generally try to exercise care with what I include into the FAQ.

If, after getting a reply back from me, you are still unhappy then by all means grumble about it on the newsgroups. But I want the chance to explain things first. I take a very dim view to people posting complaints to the newsgroups, first, about the FAQ, especially ones that imply or impugn improper conduct on my part. I tend to view such posts as attempts to publicly force my hand and make me do whatever said poster wants done to the FAQ.

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