Posting the C++ FAQ
Marshall Cline
read the following first, and *especially* **please** answer with respect to
how the decision will effect newbies, not just you. Ultimately there's no
way to please everybody, but I think we ought to favor newbies over
regulars. After all, the goal of the FAQ (and a large percentage of the
ng's readers) is to grow the community, and that means newbies.
So should the body of the FAQ be posted?
Con: the FAQ is large, and therefore it adds some download time for those
who have a slow internet connection and who choose to download all the
*bodies* of the newsgroup at once.
Pro: those people should just put the FAQ (or me) in their kill-file, then
the only "con" goes away.
Pro: the benefits outweigh the costs, since posting the FAQ helps many but
hurts only a few. It only hurts those who have a slow internet connection,
and who choose(!) to use a newsreader without a "kill-file" feature, and who
choose(!) to download *all* the message *bodies* at once.
Pro: the benefits are mostly to newbies, and the costs mostly to regulars.
IMO that's the right trade-off.
Pro: most newbies expect it to be posted, and look for it in the ng
(probably since most newsgroups post their FAQs).
Pro: RFC 1855, Netiquette Guidelines, says, "Make sure your Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQ) is posted at regular intervals..." (3.3.1). RFC 1855 is
non-binding, but it is relevant since it's probably another reason newbies
expect the FAQ to be posted. (Note: the FAQ is distinct from the welcome
message, and RFC 1855 says *both* should be posted regularly. It's not an
"either or" thing; it's a "both and" thing.)
Pro: lots of tools are built with the assumption that the FAQ gets posted,
and it would be nice if our ng took advantage of those tools. E.g.,
news.answers, comp.answers, and archives like
www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-bng/comp.lang.c++.html,
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/lang/c++/,
ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/comp.lang.c++/,
http://groups.google.com, etc.
So even though it hurts a few (hopefully a *very* few), it helps a lot more,
and I think it's worth it.
Comments?
Marshall
Neil Butterworth
"Marshall Cline" <cl...@parashift.com> wrote in message
news:Dof79.1825$2s3.59...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
> So should the body of the FAQ be posted?
No - please!
> Con: the FAQ is large, and therefore it adds some download time for those
> who have a slow internet connection and who choose to download all the
> *bodies* of the newsgroup at once.
Which is most people in the UK, not mention large areas of Europe, Asia,
Africa and lts of other places.
> Pro: those people should just put the FAQ (or me) in their kill-file, then
> the only "con" goes away.
So a lot have people have to perform an action which they will only be aware
of having to do after downloading the FAQ a number of times and wondering
why their download times are slow and why their phone bills are high?
> Pro: the benefits outweigh the costs, since posting the FAQ helps many but
> hurts only a few.
Only if "many" read the damn thing. And, no offence, but I don't think the
FAQ is of very high quality, which is why I never direct people to it.
> It only hurts those who have a slow internet connection,
> and who choose(!) to use a newsreader without a "kill-file" feature, and
who
> choose(!) to download *all* the message *bodies* at once.
Lots of people there, I would say.
> Pro: the benefits are mostly to newbies, and the costs mostly to regulars.
> IMO that's the right trade-off.
How so? This newsgroup is not comp.lang.learnc++, it is supposed to be about
discussion of the C++ programming language, not helping newbies (or at least
nt directly).
> Pro: most newbies expect it to be posted, and look for it in the ng
> (probably since most newsgroups post their FAQs).
Is that true? None of the ones I use do.
> Pro: RFC 1855, Netiquette Guidelines, says, "Make sure your Frequently
Asked
> Questions (FAQ) is posted at regular intervals..." (3.3.1). RFC 1855 is
> non-binding, but it is relevant since it's probably another reason newbies
> expect the FAQ to be posted. (Note: the FAQ is distinct from the welcome
> message, and RFC 1855 says *both* should be posted regularly. It's not an
> "either or" thing; it's a "both and" thing.)
I think the regular post by shiva is quite sufficient.
> Pro: lots of tools are built with the assumption that the FAQ gets posted,
> and it would be nice if our ng took advantage of those tools. E.g.,
> news.answers, comp.answers, and archives like
> www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-bng/comp.lang.c++.html,
> ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-hierarchy/comp/lang/c++/,
> ftp://rtfm.mit.edu/pub/usenet-by-group/comp.lang.c++/,
> http://groups.google.com, etc.
Great - so you end up with N copies of the FAQ on Google?
> So even though it hurts a few (hopefully a *very* few), it helps a lot
more,
> and I think it's worth it.
>
> Comments?
Don't do it! It will be the moral equivalent of spam.
NeilB
krsn
> Don't do it! It will be the moral equivalent of spam.
spam B A D
Daniel T.
>Feedback requested re whether to post the contents of the FAQ. But please
>read the following first, and *especially* **please** answer with respect to
>how the decision will effect newbies, not just you. Ultimately there's no
>way to please everybody, but I think we ought to favor newbies over
>regulars. After all, the goal of the FAQ (and a large percentage of the
>ng's readers) is to grow the community, and that means newbies.
I think posting the FAQ as written would not benefit anybody. Regardless
of how long it would take to download, it would be so large as to cause
newbies to barely skim it rather than it doing any good.
I could see creating a FAQ-extra_lite for posting which would only have,
say, the top 30 questions in it or so (including lots of references to
the normal FAQ-lite,) but the FAQ as it sits is simply too large to be
useful without the search and indexing features provided at the web page.
JOMO.
--
Is your company in Tampa?
Improve it's understanding of OO.
Hire me... <http://home1.gte.net/danielt3/resume.html>
Jon Bills
"Neil Butterworth" <neil_but...@lineone.net> wrote in message
news:3d5d8...@mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com...
>
> "Marshall Cline" <cl...@parashift.com> wrote in message
> news:Dof79.1825$2s3.59...@newssvr11.news.prodigy.com...
>
> > So should the body of the FAQ be posted?
>
> No - please!
>
> > Con: the FAQ is large, and therefore it adds some download time for
those
> > who have a slow internet connection and who choose to download all the
> > *bodies* of the newsgroup at once.
>
> Which is most people in the UK, not mention large areas of Europe, Asia,
> Africa and lts of other places.
What? Most people in those places, aswell as having slow connections, choose
to download all the bodies of the newsgroups at once?
Jon.
Neil Butterworth
"Jon Bills" <jon_...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:ajk5h6$bqh$1...@venus.btinternet.com...
Yes, because it reduces the time online. Reading and responding to a single
email on-line can take longer than downloading all the posts.
NeilB
Jon Bell
I don't think it's necessary to post the entire body of the FAQ very
often; simply post a pointer to its Web site periodically.
>Pro: RFC 1855, Netiquette Guidelines, says, "Make sure your Frequently Asked
>Questions (FAQ) is posted at regular intervals..."
I don't know when RFC 1855 was written, but it was surely before the
advent of the World Wide Web. I think nowadays, virtually everyone who
has access to Usenet also has access to the WWW. Many or most people who
read news do so with Web-aware newsreaders that can fire up a browser when
they click a link in the body of the message. Others (like me) can simply
copy and paste a URL into their browser.
>Pro: lots of tools are built with the assumption that the FAQ gets posted,
>and it would be nice if our ng took advantage of those tools.
True; but for those it would suffice to post the FAQ only when it has been
revised enough to be worth archiving a new version. Perhaps once a year?
Note also that the rtfm.mit.edu archive (for one) allows you to specify a
"home URL" for the FAQ, where one can find the most up-to-date version,
regardless of the one in the archive. Simply putting the home URL in the
body of the FAQ, near the beginning, would have the same effect in other
archives. ("For the most up-to-date version of this document, go to...")
Actually, nowadays when someone asks how to find the FAQ for a newsgroup
in general, I usually tell him/her to use Google Groups. Searching for
postings containing the word "FAQ" will turn up requests for the FAQ,
pointers to the FAQ, and the FAQ itself if it's been posted at all.
--
Jon Bell <jtbe...@presby.edu> Presbyterian College
Dept. of Physics and Computer Science Clinton, South Carolina USA
Tom Plunket
> Feedback requested re whether to post the contents of the FAQ.
What about something like:
The FAQ is here: http://url
Please read it; it answers many of your questions.
-tom!
Gafoor
news:3d5d8...@mk-nntp-1.news.uk.worldonline.com...
but
> > hurts only a few.
>
> Only if "many" read the damn thing. And, no offence, but I don't think the
> FAQ is of very high quality,
What do you mean ?
Do you mean - it's full of mistakes or do you mean that
it doesn't contain the right questions ?
E. Robert Tisdale
> So should the body of the FAQ be posted?
No.
The purpose of the C++ FAQ
is to reduce the number of stupid questions and,
more importantly, the number of stupid answers
posted to the comp.lang.c++ newsgroup.
Posting the C++ FAQ defeats that purpose.
Tim Slattery
Shiva does that a couple of times a week (see the posts titled
===Welcome to comp.lang.c++! Read this first.). BTW, the URL for the
FAQ is http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
--
Tim Slattery
Slatt...@bls.gov
Mike Wahler
E. Robert Tisdale <E.Robert...@jpl.nasa.gov> wrote in message
news:3D604807...@jpl.nasa.gov...
Pleaee note that FAQ means 'frequently asked questions,'
not 'stupid questions.'
-Mike
E. Robert Tisdale
> Please note that FAQ means 'frequently asked questions,'
> not 'stupid questions.'
No. FAQ is an acronym for Frequently Answered Question.
Stupid questions are not a problem
in the comp.lang.c++ newsgroup.
Stupid answers are a problem.
New subscribers will post questions
that have been asked and answered many times already.
There is nothing we can do to prevent that.
What we can do is discourage other subscribers
from following up with dozens of answers
that are inaccurate or incomplete
which provoke even more subscribers to respond
in order to correct those answers.
New subscribers should not be expected
or admonished to read the C++ FAQ.
The C++ FAQ is no longer a compendium
of frequently asked and answered questions.
It is an enormous document which requires
hypertext links and a search engine
to navigate efficiently.
New subscribers will waste hours of their time
trying to find answers to their questions in it.
Aspiring C++ gurus and other subscribers
who frequently answer questions posted
in the comp.lang.c++ newsgroup
should be expected to read the C++ FAQ
and understand it well enough to locate
and cite relevant answers to these questions.
Each citation should include
the Uniform Resource Locator (URL)
for each relevant question as well as
the C++ FAQ itself
http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/
Jon Bills
> Mike Wahler wrote:
>
> > Please note that FAQ means 'frequently asked questions,'
> > not 'stupid questions.'
>
> No. FAQ is an acronym for Frequently Answered Question.
Really? If I go to http://www.parashift.com/c++-faq-lite/ and read what it
says at the top of the page, it tells me FAQ stands for "Frequently Asked
Questions".
Cheers,
Jon.