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It is my recollection that FAQs were a product of Usenet, where there really were frequently asked questions. The salty dogs who ran the group would get sick o
by KC8ZKF 17y ago
It is my recollection that FAQs were a product of Usenet, where there really were frequently asked questions. The salty dogs who ran the group would get sick of seeing the same questions over and over, so they would compile them all in an article which would be posted on a regular basis. You were supposed to read this before asking any question. It didn't work.
- btilly 17y agoActually it did work. It just didn't work perfectly. A lot of people really would read the FAQ and not ask questions. I did that, and so did many others. So adding a question to a FAQ would reduce the frequency of the question, but not eliminate the occurrence. But then there was the second, bigger, benefit. Which is that when people asked that question people could just said "Read the FAQ" rather than laboriously typing up the answer. Which saved work answering the question, and served to point other people to the FAQ.
- KC8ZKF 17y agoI'll grant you that. Of course there was a price to pay. The FAQ had to be maintained, sometimes meta-discussions about the FAQ ate up more time and bandwidth than just simply fnord answering the questions, and sometimes the FAQ was used as a weapon to discourage n00bs.
- Isamu 17y agoFAQs were very successful on Usenet and listservs, as evidenced by their enduring popularity. They served to pass along the accumulated wisdom of the newsgroup (even if they didn't eliminate the repeat questions.) But getting back to the article, this may not be the best way to provide help or additional info on a website. In particular don't use the label "FAQ".