If a site has an FAQ page, I'll read that first because it (perhaps oddly) usually gives me the best detailed overview of what the site is. I will just read the

If a site has an FAQ page, I'll read that first because it (perhaps oddly) usually gives me the best detailed overview of what the site is. I will just read the FAQ top-to-bottom. A recent example was for NearlyFreeSpeech.net -- somebody linked it on HN a couple weeks ago, and I got that it was hosting but I didn't understand their philosophy or business, really, until I discovered and read their FAQ. This is a frequent experience, although some sites do a good enough job of explaining what they do that I don't need their FAQ. I said it was odd, but it actually makes sense: even if the questions are made-up, the format encourages the author to think about what questions will be relevant to people -- it makes them address "what do we do" in a people-centric rather than feature-centric way. (And we all know that's good business.)