16 ms·

FAQs: Why we don’t have them (2013)

242 points by open-source-ux 5y ago

vmoore 5y ago
Anyone else know a site has an FAQ but would rather reach out on social media, despite the careful inclusion of an FAQ?
marginalia_nu 5y ago
FAQs are great. Look at this: http://www.walshcomptech.com/repairfaq/REPAIR/whole/F_monfaq.html http://www.walshcomptech.com/repairfaq/REPAIR/whole/F_monfaq... I don't even have a CRT monitor and I still cherish that document.
tomcart 5y ago
Erm: https://www.gov.uk/search/all?keywords=faq&order=relevance https://www.gov.uk/search/all?keywords=faq&order=relevance
- alecbz 5y ago
  I think this is coming from one particular government department, not all of gov.uk
necovek 5y ago
> We are often asked... So what they are saying is that this is a FAQ? :) Is it just that British English calls them "Often Asked Questions"? Ok, they do them one-per-page on a blog, I've seen them done like that in the past too.
gpmcadam 5y ago
> We are often asked to put content in Frequently Asked Question format (FAQs). They’re a popular convention on the web, but we don’t recommend them and here’s why: Ironic?
dblock 5y ago
Or your entre website can be the FAQ. https://www.drawingwithrussians.com/faq.html https://www.drawingwithrussians.com/faq.html
- ValentineC 5y ago
  The concept is fabulous. I hope to be able to attend this if I'm ever in New York one day!
crtechmbd 5y ago
I am experimenting with the idea that FAQs can be crowdsourced so the best FAQs bubble to the top. Looking for feedback on how to make the product usable https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anywyse/gfohefaikkfjlddgdigfpjhijljmneik?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anywyse/gfohefaikk...
RedNifre 5y ago
This is not surprising to me. I never ever found my questions in any of them, thus reading them has always been a waste of time for me.
zestyping 5y ago
This is surprising to me. I often find FAQs pretty useful.
- reedf1 5y ago
  I think they are useful to an expert user.
  - lmm 5y ago
    Disagree; rather they're useful for a badly designed site. I can think of several sites I've been to recently where the only way to get to anything was the FAQ.
- o_m 5y ago
  It makes sense if you are the size of gov.uk, but I agree, FAQs are really useful, and in my experience web editors don't have as many writing blocks when writing lists.
bananamerica 5y ago
I find FAQs are often useful and even interesting.
rich_sasha 5y ago
UK government online services are, in general, excellent. Easy to follow, clear, reliable. Accessible from almost any hardware, wouldn’t surprise me if my calculator could render it. They put to shame most (all?) commercial sites I can think of. I never felt in need of an FAQ on their websites.
- toto444 5y ago
  I was of this opinion until I caught COVID and tried to understand the rules for self isolation. I am quite an edge case in this regard. I found multiple pages saying the same thing with a different ambiguous wording. Some pages even explicitly contradicting each others. It's added a lot of stress to the whole self isolation + sickness situation.
  - nicoburns 5y ago
    To be fair to the GDS team, I think it’s the policy itself rather than the presentation of it that’s confusing and self-contradictory in this case.
    - zinekeller 5y ago
      Yeah, the first months were a mess. Contradictory instructions abound, even if you read all of the ordinances, you are still left unsure if you're on the right side of the law (or worse, simultaneously on the correct and wrong side of the law!)
  - steerablesafe 5y ago
    I know you are replying about "gov.uk" being clear or not, but I would just like to add that a FAQ would probably not cover an edge case.
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    I put that more down to inept guidance given by the government rather than the excellent work of the folks maintaining government websites. When the government doesn't even follow it's own recommendations and different MPs offer different opinions (and even the PM giving advice that contradicts his own earlier advice!!) it doesn't exactly make the job easy for anyone who needs to document the rules.
unbanned 5y ago
FAQs are needed for, poorly accessible information, poor communication with feature rollout, poor onboarding.
chrnad 5y ago
I get the point they're making but I really like FAQ's. They help with the "know what you don't know" sort of thing at a glance. Perhaps not useful on a gov.uk site, but generally speaking.
- gouggoug 5y ago
  This article argues FAQs _don’t_ help you know what you don’t know at a quick glance. > questions take longer to scan and understand than simple headings and you can’t take any meaning from them in a quick glance.
  - walshemj 5y ago
    The article also getting on for almost 10 years old.
- globular-toast 5y ago
  The comp.lang.c FAQ is one of my favourites: http://c-faq.com/ http://c-faq.com/
- low_tech_love 5y ago
  I don't understand why people can't simply say "we don't want to do X because of this and that", they have to necessarily say "I don't want to do X, so X is bullshit and nobody else should do it either".
LudwigNagasena 5y ago
> Twitter agrees The worst argument ever. Of course it agrees, it is an echo chamber full of terminally online people where you can find any type of opinion unless it was specifically banned by Twitter admins.
- sva_ 5y ago
  > terminally online Urbandictionary: > The term for when a person has gotten so deep into social media that they dedicate themselves to issues that have no relevance in their day to day life Good one
  - watwut 5y ago
    In an odd roundabout way, "terminally online" or "extreme online" are terms used on twitter and pretty much nowhere else.
- gouggoug 5y ago
  I read that last argument as more tongue in cheek than anything else; especially considering the preceding arguments are very well laid out and compelling.
antisthenes 5y ago
FAQs are great for not-very-frequently updated content of moderate complexity and finite scope. Something stable enough that 80%+ of the FAQ will remain relevant 5 or 10 years down the line.
UweSchmidt 5y ago
FAQs are a relic from the old days when websites dealt with obscure topics, provided a lot of value for free with no monetization goal and didn't owe the random visitor anything. These days it's worth looking into why certain questions are asked "frequently" and if the information can be strutured better in the first place. I also suspect no one is really asking much these days, people just bounce.
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  You do know that search engines look for and surface a sites marked up FAQ's - by not having a FAQ your giving up that space possibly to a bad actor in the case of Government sites.
- dspillett 5y ago
  > FAQs are a relic from the old days when websites FAQs are a relic of an older time than that. They date from Usenet groups & mailing lists and similar back when connectivity and storage were expensive and content would expire unless you archived it locally, so you might not know your question has been answered many many times. So FAQ posts appeared and were reposted periodically (even if there were no new updates) so new users would catch them and users that have been away for a while can easily catch up if their have been recent major changes. They are a bit less relevant for web hosted content, where a frequently asked question implies your content needs an update or a rearrange because the information wasn't easily findable elsewhere. Also, they have evolved from their original form and are often no longer questions that have been asked on that site but common questions that come up elsewhere, or questions that the author otherwise expects people to ask, at which point the definitely should be worked into other documentation instead IMO. Having said that, a FAQ is easier to put together, can perhaps be done by someone who doesn't have direct write access to the main documentation, and if the information is the sort of thing people should know that you don't want to waste space with to keep other information concise. In this way they can be a useful “background primer” for the relatively uninitiated without padding the main information, but that isn't _really_ a FAQ apart from the name (the name sticks because some people will look for a FAQ before looking for, for instance, a tutorial).
- asdff 5y ago
richrichardsson 5y ago
I don't agree with: > "What are FAQs?" "FAQs are a way to show you've thought about what your users should know but haven't thought about your users." Every FAQ I've ever written has been literally a Frequently Asked Question. If I notice users asking the same question, I add it to the FAQ. I also try to think about how I could make the process simpler so that they don't need to ask that question in the future, but sometimes that's just not possible. Most of my FAQs are also covered in the manual I provide with my software, but who ever reads a manual?
- shikoba 5y ago
  Maybe FAQs are just a simplified manual. Those are often missing. I don't want to read a 30 pages manual before using something.
  - akvadrako 5y ago
    Unlike a simplified manual, FAQs should cover common edge cases. Things which would look like details and don't clearly fit into the manual's sections.
    - dmitriid 5y ago
      > FAQs should cover common edge cases. If these cases are common, they are not edge cases, and they should be described in the actual documentation, guides etc.
  - majkinetor 5y ago
    No its not. I have simplified manual too and a FAQ. Simplified manual shows most important things. FAQ doesn't have to, users can frequently ask totally unimportant things.
- dash2 5y ago
  Doesn't a manual also show you've thought about what your users should know, but not about your users?
- 5y ago
DnDGrognard 5y ago
Someone doesn't understand how google works these days - sounds like an excuse for not putting the work in.
- pdpi 5y ago
  The gov.uk pages are incredibly well written in general, using very careful language to make them both accessible and precise. They’re also well optimised for search, and the answer to almost all my questions is at the top of Google search results. That’s the whole point — they don’t have an FAQ page because they put in the work.
  - DnDGrognard 5y ago
    Have you actually used Google recently? the FAQ and PAA results are what you would want to target with faq pages. FAQ's and its mark-up are about the search experience and not once the user has landed on the site eg for searches like "renew car licence online"
james_in_the_uk 5y ago
Why don't I agree with this? Well drafted FAQs are rarely "frequently asked" but they have become a conventional way of conveying extra information. We're all in the habit of checking FAQs if we need more info. Why re-invent the wheel? A mix-and-match style can work well Employed judiciously, FAQs can help promote clear drafting by moving points of complexity out of the main body of text. A post-script list of questions is more intuitive than a disconnected list of additional headers. For example, public facing docs need to work for readers with different levels of literacy. FAQs at the bottom of a document are a lightweight way to add additional nuance for those who want to dig a bit deeper. What does user testing say? Not clear from the UK.gov blog post. Gives the impression that this is just one person's position. It wouldn't be the first time that UK Government takes a belligerent approach ;) It would be more convincing if the argument was backed with research. Citing a dude on Twitter doesn't cut it.
majkinetor 5y ago
FAQ is valuable. You cant mistake FAQ for bad or incomplete documentation. Its just one focused document on particular aspects of the entire system. People ask about the same or similar things, its a known phenomena. People don't RTFM and manual may be overwhelming. You get value in reading the most frequent questions as a user too, and although all the facts can be deducible from the manual, they are here on one place now, isolated from the rest of the docs. Compare this to quick/short introduction most manuals have and you get the same duplication problems and the same beneficial points. In conclusion, FAQ is legit.
- mankyd 5y ago
  Agreed. Honestly, I often jump to a faq early in my research when I'm thinking to myself: "just give me the highlights." It's context dependent though. If it's a one page, cliff notes style faq, great. If it's a large, searchable, knowledge base, then that's just documentation masquerading as a faq - often poorly so.
  - Veen 5y ago
    > I'm thinking to myself: "just give me the highlights." That's the problem though. The "highlights" should be front-and-center in the main content. If it isn't then the content is poorly designed, and the FAQ is just a way of working around bad content without fixing it.
- atoav 5y ago
  > People don't RTFM and manual may be overwhelming. I think the point they are getting at here, is that if you write your information in the right way, people won't need a FAQ. As devs we all know the difference. There is documentation that is just a good read – not in the sense of "simple to read", but in the sense of "this is something I actually enjoy reading". If this is the case and all questions are answered, you won't need a FAQ. Granted – there will still be people who will go like "LOL didn't read" – but what makes you think these will read a FAQ? If we follow their line of thinking, you should have a "Occasionally asked Questions" section for all the questions that sometimes could arise in certain readers, but arise to rarely to put it into the actual text.
spion 5y ago
Given that this appears to be a page about a frequently asked question, I guess they have at least one.
moksly 5y ago
If people are frequently asking the same question then your information and how you deliver it is lacking. You can solve this by making a FAQ, or your can write better information. Having recently moved from Python (where the documentation is amazing) to TypeScript/JavaScript (where the documentation is horrendous) this issue has never been clearer to me. The only Python library that I’ve ever had to go outside the documentation to understand has been pandas. I can’t think of a single TypeScript issue I’ve run into that hasn’t ended with me going through an infinite amount of web searching and wading through a gazillion useless suggestions. It might just be me of course. I never really liked the Microsoft documentation pages either, so maybe I’m just an oddity that can only read Python styled documentation, but maybe not. I mean, why does the Express library have a “security FAQ” which seems like it should basically have been a simple part of the “start here” guide? I’m probably missing something, but reading the security FAQ left me with the feeling you would be an idiot not to use the helmet library with express (at least until you know enough to know when not to use it), and if that is so, then it really shouldn’t be a separate FAQ should it? I know I went down a side track, but it’s really the most perfect real world example I have of why this article is exactly right.
- retube 5y ago
  > TypeScript/JavaScript (where the documentation is horrendous) Clearly you've never had to do anything in VBA....
- vbezhenar 5y ago
  It's odd but when I have to write something with Python, its documentation really is terrible. There's not even index of functions in particular module, I have to open it, then find that function with ctrl+f. E.g. https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html Compare to golang: https://pkg.go.dev/os https://pkg.go.dev/os it provides list of all functions in particular module which I can glance over quickly and find what needed. That's small thing, but really makes me spend so much more time when I need to use Python for something. I guess that's not an issue for experienced developers who memorized all functions they need. And I never had issues with JavaScript thanks to wonderful MDN.
tlocke 5y ago
I agree that information shouldn't be duplicated, but in one of my projects I've taken the opposite approach and made the FAQ the only place that certain information is presented. It's for the library https://github.com/tlocke/pg8000 https://github.com/tlocke/pg8000 and I've called them 'Examples' rather than a FAQ, but each time I get a question that isn't covered by the examples I add in a new example. I'd be interested to hear what people think of this approach.
- c0balt 5y ago
  It's a good approach for giving people a point to start/ be inspired by though it will take an increasing amount of time to maintain when your interface changes etc. Reminds me of the aweso.e examples for actix-web that include a lot of common use cases and patterns.
mcmUK 5y ago
FAQs are for seeding Google with answers to questions people are asking about your products and services off-site.
- Veen 5y ago
  Yes, they're used to populate the People Also Asked snippets. In fact, many SEO types recommend writing all blog articles in an FAQ format. It's why you'll often see a bunch of tangtentially related questions and answer sections in recipes, blog articles, and the like. The reasoning is that people search for questions so content framed as a Q&A will get picked up for PAA and rank higher generally. Particularly SEO focused bloggers build whole articles by scraping People Also Asked questions for related keywords, dump the questions into a document, and write the answers. Tools like Answer Socrates[0] will do the scraping for you. [0]: https://answersocrates.com/ https://answersocrates.com/ Personally, I reckon Google is smart enough to know that "## Cooking Potatoes in the Oven" is likely to provide the same information as "## How Do I Cook Potatoes in the Oven?". And, as the article points out, it's better for readers. I'm not convinced most people search for questions anyway; I'd just type "potatoes oven".
onion2k 5y ago
There's a lot of replies here about how FAQs are useful because users don't bother to read the manual. But... When was the last time anyone read a manual? Software these days is so easy to use, and so much effort goes into UX, that most software doesn't need a manual. Games don't have them. Websites don't have them. Web apps don't have them. The same should be true for other sorts of processes. Things should be simple enough that users can understand them without needing documentation (there will be exceptions, obviously, particularly around safety). If you've put the effort into building something that people can use without reading a manual you shouldn't be getting many questions, and especially not the same questions frequently.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
tikkabhuna 5y ago
I write internal documentation of our tools or thirdparty tools we use. FAQs are helpful when the topics are very short and/or not linked. They're a stepping stone of getting something documented whilst you find a proper home for it. I agree with the GDS's view though, especially when its public facing and intended to be read by one of the broadest userbases you can get. When writing a FAQ consider where else you could put that information. The counterpoint I would use is Amazon's documentation. Each product has an FAQ that rehashes other text in a Q&A format. Personally I love it. Its easy to reach for and its very "no frills". However, the target audience is going to be very different to the GDS. Far more technically literate and likely know what question they want answered.
Angostura 5y ago
I normally have the highest regard for GDS, but I'm entirely convinced they are correct in this case. Last month I was browsing my energy supplier's website and was thinking how refreshingly easy their FAQ approach made things: https://help.so.energy/support/solutions/folders/7000045023 https://help.so.energy/support/solutions/folders/7000045023 It's not called an FAQ and not every item is couched as a question - but it's basically an FAQ
jcims 5y ago
I don’t know, I think this shifts the blame to the user for the sake of some kind of ideological bent. It’s basically saying ‘we know how to document, if you have questions learn how to read.’ Having a FAQ allows for quickly addressing structural issues in information presentation. Creating one ex nihilo is corny, but when the questions actually start rolling in there have a place to be answered while the docs are adjusted. In my opinion the goal should be to starve the FAQ, not pretend it doesn’t exist.
anotheryou 5y ago
It's a quick fix to redundant support request and therefore a totally valid solution. If you are in control of your product you can of course try to answer these questions by UI before they arise, but it's a longer route and if you are e.g. a reseller it might not even be possible. Further some users intents might come up in very diverse situations and you can't clutter all these UI locations with the relevant info for all cases. Once things get more complex, some menus might need nesting and you might also not want to have even more menu entries by duplicating functionality everywhere (that's the MS word solution to this problem I think. You can make text bold in 5 different places at least) It's totally fine to have an FAQ about "how to make text bold" which will hint you at keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, the right click, formatting templates etc.
- frosted-flakes 5y ago
  Microsoft Word has one primary button to make things bold, and that's in the Home tab. Since it's such a common tool, it also appears in the cursor toolbar, so make that two. Of course, you can also use keyboard shortcuts or add it to the user-customizable Quick Access Toolbar, but that applies to anything.
alin23 5y ago
For my products, FAQs have always been about edge cases where I usually have no control in fixing/implementing. For example for Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi), an app that controls monitors through the DDC standard: 1. Some monitors may flicker/blackout when Lunar changes brightness 2. The volume can't be changed for specific monitors 3. In a 3-monitor setup, 2 of them change brightness as expected, the other doesn't change at all All of those issues happen a lot (so they're common) but only for specific setups (so they're edge cases). I have no control over them, they happen because something in the hardware setup is blocking DDC requests for changing brightness/volume etc. The issue is not detectable, the app gets a successful reply from the monitor, just like everything worked. Best I can do, is a lengthy FAQ: https://lunar.fyi/faq#brightness-not-changing https://lunar.fyi/faq#brightness-not-changing
- elliottinvent 5y ago
  This is what I came here to say. I think FAQs for edge cases or very specific questions are very useful. FAQs can also be a good way to address negative stuff and especially naysayers of a technology or concept - it's difficult to do that directly in content without it getting messy. For example, a project I'm working on stores data in DNS [0] and some of the feedback we get from technical folks (including HN) is "you can't use other people's infrastructure to do this!" [1] Addressing this in the spec or content is difficult but having a really clear question of "Is it ok to use other people's infrastructure to serve data?" and having a detailed exploration of that question – far more than you might be able to do in the general content – has real value in my opinion. 0. https://www.num.uk https://www.num.uk 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632195
- pornel 5y ago
  That sounds like a troubleshooting section.
  - alin23 5y ago
    Indeed, it is more related to troubleshooting. Which is why Lunar has an automated diagnostics tool which can tell the user if the problem comes from the monitor, and shows some troubleshooting steps specific to their monitor: https://files.lunar.fyi/lunar-diagnostics-demo.mp4 https://files.lunar.fyi/lunar-diagnostics-demo.mp4 And yet, after finishing the diagnostics process, the users still send me emails saying that they paid for the app and I should fix Lunar to support their monitor.
thenoblesunfish 5y ago
FAQs can be used out laziness and and can be a sign that design is lacking, it’s true. But the fact that Stack Overflow exists is testament to the fact that there is a certain class of questions that have answers which depend on ugly reality and hacks around all the leaky abstractions and less-than-optimal things we use every day.
- Closi 5y ago
  Alternatively, rather than view all Stack Overflow questions as inevitable, we could view Stack Overflow as a failure of the core documentation or system to address user issues sufficiently. And better documentation should result in fewer SO questions. In terms of the point of this article I think it is still in-line with what you are saying - as Stack Overflow answers are useful to solve an issue but are much harder to parse/read than properly written documentation on the same topic.
leephillips 5y ago
I am so cheering this on. Whenever I see a FAQ I think, “Lazy, didn’t want to bother organizing the information, doesn’t know how to write documentation.”
SmartestUnknown 5y ago
FAQs can be useful if they are used as a questionnaire to test our own understanding of the content. But FAQs being the only source of information is pretty terrible and very lazy. Lately, on many Indian government websites, I’ve seen that they straight up just have a list of FAQs and nothing else which infuriates me a lot.
low_tech_love 5y ago
"Twitter agrees" --- proceeds to show one tweet that agrees. This whole thing is just like saying "you wouldn't need bug fixing if you had no bugs". People ask questions, no matter how good the original content is.
junon 5y ago
FAQs, like programming languages, are just tools. There are lots of places they're useful, and lots of places they're not well suited. Trying to convey a main point, or talking about a single topic and informing the reader? Frontloading is going to be more informative. Lots of disparate pieces of bite-sized information? FAQs display that information quite nicely. I don't think I've ever personally thought "wow I wish this wasn't an FAQ". They're usually the first things I jump to if they're available. They give me a lot of valuable information very quickly. Also, the appeal to Twitter is hilarious coming from a government agency.
bell-cot 5y ago
For an official government web site, FAQs have an additional downside - some people will (perhaps maliciously) regard the FAQ answers as the law. Or as official policy. Or similar stunts. This can get you into having lawyers regularly review the FAQs, answers that are half disclaimers, and other messes. That said, there are many cases where I find FAQs useful. Especially for learning the basic (and oft undocumented) assumptions behind something. Or as a TL;DR alternative to marketing blather, clueless salespeople, and mediocre documentation.
spawarotti 5y ago
Isn't Stack Overflow one big FAQ? So arguing FAQs shouldn't exist is like arguing SO shouldn't exist? Nice in theory, but in practice...
jollybean 5y ago
Perhaps FAQs should just reference the material, that way they don't go out of date.
newaccount74 5y ago
I disagree. FAQs are very useful. The difference between a FAQ and the manual is that typically the manual is comprehensive and organized by topics, while the FAQ is sorted by how frequently people need the information. If you have a FAQ, then users can scan a dozen questions and see if their question is answered, and in 90% of cases they find the answer. So the benefit of a FAQ is that you have a single page that contains the most important information across all topics. You don't need to know how the docs are structured, you don't need to know the terms of art to search for, you can just scan a few lines of questions on a single page, which people can do very quickly. I guess you could put the same information into a document titled "Overview" or "Quick Start" or "Most Important Info" but using the common term "Frequently Asked Questions" makes it easier for customers to know where to start looking.
- ozim 5y ago
  FAQs are very useful if they really are FAQs like stackoverflow. If there is some person "making up" FAQs it is rubbish. When CEO orders that "we need to make FAQ, make one" but no one is actually asking any questions that is the worst. FAQ should be consisting of actual questions and then best would be each variation of way how people asked it to point to the right answer. Ideally FAQ should be curated by a person or first line support. Synthetic FAQ is the same as documentation - someone writing things up and organizing it in a way they think. Ideal FAQ should help find question and answer that is already asked by someone else in a way that broadest possible audience would ask it.
  - newaccount74 5y ago
    Stack Overflow is not a FAQ. Stack Overflow is a Q&A site with millions of questions. A FAQ is a list of 5-20 questions that quickly answer questions without having to read the docs or trying your luck on Google.
    - akyoan 5y ago
      Sure, but some of its questions are frequently asked. That’s what the parent was referring to: real questions by real users that sometimes are upvoted by thousands of users. You can even get a FAQ in a standard format by visiting the “Popular” tab.
softwaredoug 5y ago
I disagree with the duplication point. One thing I’ve learned is people consume information in very different ways. Some people read lengthy articles, others want the same information in a sound bite. It’s OK to duplicate information to meet the needs of different audiences. Further there’s the adage that people don’t hear something unless it’s said to them 5-7 times. I think that applies here. I know from managing people you have to be a broken record. It’s annoying, but it seems to be a truism no matter where you go. You always need to be communicating and overcomminicating.
- rkangel 5y ago
  I instinctively want to agree with you but Apple has persuaded me I'm wrong. Conventional wisdom has always been that not all users are the same: customisation and different workflows are needed for different people, particularly power users. Yet Apple's philosophy is to work really hard to find what they think is the best way to do something and polish the hell out of it. Power users like us software developers sometimes moan about it, but that doesn't stop us queuing up to buy iPhones!
  - marcosdumay 5y ago
    Most people do not queue up to buy iPhones.
    - rkangel 5y ago
      I didn't mean it literally (at least these days). But I don't think you can deny that iPhones are incredibly popular with everyone.
      - marcosdumay 5y ago
        Most people don't buy anything from Apple. You just decide that it's ok to require everybody to do things the same way because a group of people buy some stuff that gives them no choice.
patwolf 5y ago
I was trying to figure out something regarding county zoning by reading a 300-page pdf of county ordinances. Eventually I did a google search and found a FAQ on the county website that had a simple explanation of what I was looking for. I do understand the argument that a need for a FAQ is symptom of poorly-structured content. But I do think context matters--if it's the federal government providing information about social security benefits, then sure, spend the time and resources to make good content. However, for the case of this small county government with limited resources, the FAQ is a very efficient. I'd rather a small number of my tax dollars be spent on the FAQ than a lot of my tax dollars on rewriting the PDF.
- skyeto 5y ago
  Wouldn't a better alternative be a summary of the 300 page document? Both that and a FAQ wouldn't be the canonical sources in a legal capacity, but a summary has the benefit of deduplication and is probably nicer to read (depending on how much you want to cross-reference in the FAQ)
- thesuitonym 5y ago
  But by the same token, instead of having a FAQ with headings like, "What is the minimum setback for structures?" you could have had a simple document with headings like, "Minimum Setbacks for Structures." One of the points in the document was that you can still have a document that's structured like a FAQ, just don't make it questions, make it answers.
  - asdff 5y ago
    I think part of the faq benefit is that its designed for people who hone in on faq pages already. Some people are not researchers. They are delegators. They'd rather come to your office and ask you "what is the minimum setback for structures" knowing full well its probably listed somewhere on your website/documents/etc, but they'd rather delegate the effort of looking up that information to you. A faq page attempts to catch these people, and say "hey delegators, check here if your question has already been answered first before you spam our customer support." In that case, a document that's like a faq but not a faq won't do you any good. These people will just ignore it like the primary document and pound your customer support resources.
atlasV 5y ago
these random decisions makes GDS extremely unviable ..
thesuitonym 5y ago
I don't live in the UK, so I can't say how usable their online services are, but I surely love seeing this type of content from them. It's clear people have put some serious thought into UX design.
0xbadcafebee 5y ago
"If you have frequently asked questions, it's because you haven't answered them in your content." Errr.... no. You have frequently asked questions because some questions need to be answered frequently. If you have the answers in one place, the user doesn't have to waste as much time searching for it. Here's some examples of frequently asked questions: Q: Does God exist? Q: What is the meaning of life? Q: How can I be happy? Q: Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 but buns come in packs of 8? I'm sure you could tell users to search the entire web and hope they pull together the right answers. Or you could just do the research, summarize the answer, and provide links, all right next to the question you know lots of people are asking. This will save the users valuable time and ensure they get the correct response. Here's a point-for-point rebuttal of the article's reasons: 1. "They’re too slow" ... "questions take longer to scan and understand than simple headings and you can’t take any meaning from them in a quick glance." It doesn't take a genius to scan the list of questions above and find your question. If the question you have is in the FAQ, it is almost always faster to read the list of questions than reading all of the documentation. And the meaning is found in the question combined with which specific category of FAQ it's found in. 2. "They lead to duplication" Yes. Duplication is the most efficient way to ensure important bits of information make it to the right people. Different people look for and absorb information in different ways. Some skim, some hunt, some meticulously read. Some are in a hurry, some are calm and contemplative. And some people just miss critical information when it's buried somewhere. Duplicated information increases both the likelihood and speed at which the information makes it to the user. Of course, it's a pain to maintain for the content manager, but that's the content managers' job. Don't make the user's life worse to make your job easier. 3. "They’re tonally wrong" ... "The best way to do that, is to write simply and clearly and remove all duplication and superfluous text." Oh, piss off. Duplication is fine, see point 2. 4. "Twitter agrees" Oh, piss off! See point 3.
alilleybrinker 5y ago
Years ago I wrote the official Rust FAQ [1] (now defunct). The questions were selected based on surveys of Rust users on the major Rust community spaces at the time, and a link to the FAQ was added near the top of the "Documentation" page of the old Rust site. It was also translated into multiple other languages as part of internationalizing the site. That said, I think it had minimal impact. Often when I would discuss it with others, their response was to be surprised that Rust had a FAQ. There were good answers in there, to questions people genuinely asked frequently, but putting so many useful answers next to each in a single page people were unlikely to discover did not end up being very helpful. Still learned a lot writing it though! [1]: https://prev.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html https://prev.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html
cannabis_sam 5y ago
FAQs are a microscopic problem, compared to the practice of putting up entirely scripted first level support people who are essentially contractually required to NOT provide any useful explanation or information. It’s obviously not these individuals fault, but fuck every single institution or company employing this type of idiotic and wholly garbage triage..
fudged71 5y ago
This is assuming that a user makes their way to your webpage at all. How many questions are asked in natural language on Google or through a smart assistant? Google has standardized the Q&A format for fast answers through their search engine without needing to view the page at all. Without recognizing this use case they are making information more opaque
- walshemj 5y ago
  Try " renew driving license" in the UK the first PAA link is for freaking Dubai.
yawnxyz 5y ago
Honest question: is a FAQ a "curated wiki" where the writers anticipate (or have fielded enough of the same questions) to bring those things they're too annoyed to answer, over and over, to the front? I think the goal of what you're working on is also important: - For a marketing page, the content should deliver what the FAQ delivers, which should in principle make the FAQ redundant - For technical documentation and wikis, there will be too much information to deliver succinctly. But, some content are probably more visited or relevant. Why not pull up the visitor data (or tabulate the list of "where is XYZ questions") into a "Frequently Requested Content"?
jquast 5y ago
FAQ was for newsgroups, to reduce the noise of so many people asking the same questions, answered by "read the FAQ" which was usually posted periodically, http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-tutorial/faqs-frequently-asked-questions.html http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-tutorial/faqs-frequently...
lupire 5y ago
They are basically saying "We don't make mistakes so we dont need FAQs" with a dash of "we don't know how Hyperlinks or Transfusion works". It's Incompetence painted over with Hubris.
Abimelex 5y ago
I totally agree with the blog post, personally, I never read FAQ, but the one argument "The content in our support pages is now appearing in search" is on the other hand the actual reason for some pages having FAQ. It's an easy way to generate some SEO content.
wly_cdgr 5y ago
Not the first pretentious nonsense I've seen on that site. Someone there thinks they're some kind of UX messiah and has unfortunately been able to secure a milk crate and a bullhorn It's ok, time will wash this away

Anyone else know a site has an FAQ but would rather reach out on social media, despite the careful inclusion of an FAQ?

FAQs are great. Look at this: http://www.walshcomptech.com/repairfaq/REPAIR/whole/F_monfaq.html http://www.walshcomptech.com/repairfaq/REPAIR/whole/F_monfaq... I don't even have a CRT monitor and I still cherish that document.

tomcart 5y ago

Erm: https://www.gov.uk/search/all?keywords=faq&order=relevance https://www.gov.uk/search/all?keywords=faq&order=relevance

alecbz 5y ago
I think this is coming from one particular government department, not all of gov.uk

necovek 5y ago

> We are often asked... So what they are saying is that this is a FAQ? :) Is it just that British English calls them "Often Asked Questions"? Ok, they do them one-per-page on a blog, I've seen them done like that in the past too.

gpmcadam 5y ago

> We are often asked to put content in Frequently Asked Question format (FAQs). They’re a popular convention on the web, but we don’t recommend them and here’s why: Ironic?

dblock 5y ago

Or your entre website can be the FAQ. https://www.drawingwithrussians.com/faq.html https://www.drawingwithrussians.com/faq.html

ValentineC 5y ago
The concept is fabulous. I hope to be able to attend this if I'm ever in New York one day!

crtechmbd 5y ago

I am experimenting with the idea that FAQs can be crowdsourced so the best FAQs bubble to the top. Looking for feedback on how to make the product usable https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anywyse/gfohefaikkfjlddgdigfpjhijljmneik?hl=en https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/anywyse/gfohefaikk...

RedNifre 5y ago

This is not surprising to me. I never ever found my questions in any of them, thus reading them has always been a waste of time for me.

zestyping 5y ago

This is surprising to me. I often find FAQs pretty useful.

reedf1 5y ago
I think they are useful to an expert user.
- lmm 5y ago
  Disagree; rather they're useful for a badly designed site. I can think of several sites I've been to recently where the only way to get to anything was the FAQ.
o_m 5y ago
It makes sense if you are the size of gov.uk, but I agree, FAQs are really useful, and in my experience web editors don't have as many writing blocks when writing lists.

bananamerica 5y ago

I find FAQs are often useful and even interesting.

rich_sasha 5y ago

UK government online services are, in general, excellent. Easy to follow, clear, reliable. Accessible from almost any hardware, wouldn’t surprise me if my calculator could render it. They put to shame most (all?) commercial sites I can think of. I never felt in need of an FAQ on their websites.

toto444 5y ago
I was of this opinion until I caught COVID and tried to understand the rules for self isolation. I am quite an edge case in this regard. I found multiple pages saying the same thing with a different ambiguous wording. Some pages even explicitly contradicting each others. It's added a lot of stress to the whole self isolation + sickness situation.
- nicoburns 5y ago
  To be fair to the GDS team, I think it’s the policy itself rather than the presentation of it that’s confusing and self-contradictory in this case.
  - zinekeller 5y ago
    Yeah, the first months were a mess. Contradictory instructions abound, even if you read all of the ordinances, you are still left unsure if you're on the right side of the law (or worse, simultaneously on the correct and wrong side of the law!)
- steerablesafe 5y ago
  I know you are replying about "gov.uk" being clear or not, but I would just like to add that a FAQ would probably not cover an edge case.
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  I put that more down to inept guidance given by the government rather than the excellent work of the folks maintaining government websites. When the government doesn't even follow it's own recommendations and different MPs offer different opinions (and even the PM giving advice that contradicts his own earlier advice!!) it doesn't exactly make the job easy for anyone who needs to document the rules.

unbanned 5y ago

FAQs are needed for, poorly accessible information, poor communication with feature rollout, poor onboarding.

chrnad 5y ago

I get the point they're making but I really like FAQ's. They help with the "know what you don't know" sort of thing at a glance. Perhaps not useful on a gov.uk site, but generally speaking.

gouggoug 5y ago
This article argues FAQs _don’t_ help you know what you don’t know at a quick glance. > questions take longer to scan and understand than simple headings and you can’t take any meaning from them in a quick glance.
- walshemj 5y ago
  The article also getting on for almost 10 years old.
globular-toast 5y ago
The comp.lang.c FAQ is one of my favourites: http://c-faq.com/ http://c-faq.com/
low_tech_love 5y ago
I don't understand why people can't simply say "we don't want to do X because of this and that", they have to necessarily say "I don't want to do X, so X is bullshit and nobody else should do it either".

LudwigNagasena 5y ago

> Twitter agrees The worst argument ever. Of course it agrees, it is an echo chamber full of terminally online people where you can find any type of opinion unless it was specifically banned by Twitter admins.

sva_ 5y ago
> terminally online Urbandictionary: > The term for when a person has gotten so deep into social media that they dedicate themselves to issues that have no relevance in their day to day life Good one
- watwut 5y ago
  In an odd roundabout way, "terminally online" or "extreme online" are terms used on twitter and pretty much nowhere else.
gouggoug 5y ago
I read that last argument as more tongue in cheek than anything else; especially considering the preceding arguments are very well laid out and compelling.

antisthenes 5y ago

FAQs are great for not-very-frequently updated content of moderate complexity and finite scope. Something stable enough that 80%+ of the FAQ will remain relevant 5 or 10 years down the line.

UweSchmidt 5y ago

FAQs are a relic from the old days when websites dealt with obscure topics, provided a lot of value for free with no monetization goal and didn't owe the random visitor anything. These days it's worth looking into why certain questions are asked "frequently" and if the information can be strutured better in the first place. I also suspect no one is really asking much these days, people just bounce.

DnDGrognard 5y ago
You do know that search engines look for and surface a sites marked up FAQ's - by not having a FAQ your giving up that space possibly to a bad actor in the case of Government sites.
dspillett 5y ago
> FAQs are a relic from the old days when websites FAQs are a relic of an older time than that. They date from Usenet groups & mailing lists and similar back when connectivity and storage were expensive and content would expire unless you archived it locally, so you might not know your question has been answered many many times. So FAQ posts appeared and were reposted periodically (even if there were no new updates) so new users would catch them and users that have been away for a while can easily catch up if their have been recent major changes. They are a bit less relevant for web hosted content, where a frequently asked question implies your content needs an update or a rearrange because the information wasn't easily findable elsewhere. Also, they have evolved from their original form and are often no longer questions that have been asked on that site but common questions that come up elsewhere, or questions that the author otherwise expects people to ask, at which point the definitely should be worked into other documentation instead IMO. Having said that, a FAQ is easier to put together, can perhaps be done by someone who doesn't have direct write access to the main documentation, and if the information is the sort of thing people should know that you don't want to waste space with to keep other information concise. In this way they can be a useful “background primer” for the relatively uninitiated without padding the main information, but that isn't _really_ a FAQ apart from the name (the name sticks because some people will look for a FAQ before looking for, for instance, a tutorial).
asdff 5y ago

richrichardsson 5y ago

I don't agree with: > "What are FAQs?" "FAQs are a way to show you've thought about what your users should know but haven't thought about your users." Every FAQ I've ever written has been literally a Frequently Asked Question. If I notice users asking the same question, I add it to the FAQ. I also try to think about how I could make the process simpler so that they don't need to ask that question in the future, but sometimes that's just not possible. Most of my FAQs are also covered in the manual I provide with my software, but who ever reads a manual?

shikoba 5y ago
Maybe FAQs are just a simplified manual. Those are often missing. I don't want to read a 30 pages manual before using something.
- akvadrako 5y ago
  Unlike a simplified manual, FAQs should cover common edge cases. Things which would look like details and don't clearly fit into the manual's sections.
  - dmitriid 5y ago
    > FAQs should cover common edge cases. If these cases are common, they are not edge cases, and they should be described in the actual documentation, guides etc.
- majkinetor 5y ago
  No its not. I have simplified manual too and a FAQ. Simplified manual shows most important things. FAQ doesn't have to, users can frequently ask totally unimportant things.
dash2 5y ago
Doesn't a manual also show you've thought about what your users should know, but not about your users?
5y ago

DnDGrognard 5y ago

Someone doesn't understand how google works these days - sounds like an excuse for not putting the work in.

pdpi 5y ago
The gov.uk pages are incredibly well written in general, using very careful language to make them both accessible and precise. They’re also well optimised for search, and the answer to almost all my questions is at the top of Google search results. That’s the whole point — they don’t have an FAQ page because they put in the work.
- DnDGrognard 5y ago
  Have you actually used Google recently? the FAQ and PAA results are what you would want to target with faq pages. FAQ's and its mark-up are about the search experience and not once the user has landed on the site eg for searches like "renew car licence online"

james_in_the_uk 5y ago

Why don't I agree with this? Well drafted FAQs are rarely "frequently asked" but they have become a conventional way of conveying extra information. We're all in the habit of checking FAQs if we need more info. Why re-invent the wheel? A mix-and-match style can work well Employed judiciously, FAQs can help promote clear drafting by moving points of complexity out of the main body of text. A post-script list of questions is more intuitive than a disconnected list of additional headers. For example, public facing docs need to work for readers with different levels of literacy. FAQs at the bottom of a document are a lightweight way to add additional nuance for those who want to dig a bit deeper. What does user testing say? Not clear from the UK.gov blog post. Gives the impression that this is just one person's position. It wouldn't be the first time that UK Government takes a belligerent approach ;) It would be more convincing if the argument was backed with research. Citing a dude on Twitter doesn't cut it.

majkinetor 5y ago

FAQ is valuable. You cant mistake FAQ for bad or incomplete documentation. Its just one focused document on particular aspects of the entire system. People ask about the same or similar things, its a known phenomena. People don't RTFM and manual may be overwhelming. You get value in reading the most frequent questions as a user too, and although all the facts can be deducible from the manual, they are here on one place now, isolated from the rest of the docs. Compare this to quick/short introduction most manuals have and you get the same duplication problems and the same beneficial points. In conclusion, FAQ is legit.

mankyd 5y ago
Agreed. Honestly, I often jump to a faq early in my research when I'm thinking to myself: "just give me the highlights." It's context dependent though. If it's a one page, cliff notes style faq, great. If it's a large, searchable, knowledge base, then that's just documentation masquerading as a faq - often poorly so.
- Veen 5y ago
  > I'm thinking to myself: "just give me the highlights." That's the problem though. The "highlights" should be front-and-center in the main content. If it isn't then the content is poorly designed, and the FAQ is just a way of working around bad content without fixing it.
atoav 5y ago
> People don't RTFM and manual may be overwhelming. I think the point they are getting at here, is that if you write your information in the right way, people won't need a FAQ. As devs we all know the difference. There is documentation that is just a good read – not in the sense of "simple to read", but in the sense of "this is something I actually enjoy reading". If this is the case and all questions are answered, you won't need a FAQ. Granted – there will still be people who will go like "LOL didn't read" – but what makes you think these will read a FAQ? If we follow their line of thinking, you should have a "Occasionally asked Questions" section for all the questions that sometimes could arise in certain readers, but arise to rarely to put it into the actual text.

spion 5y ago

Given that this appears to be a page about a frequently asked question, I guess they have at least one.

moksly 5y ago

If people are frequently asking the same question then your information and how you deliver it is lacking. You can solve this by making a FAQ, or your can write better information. Having recently moved from Python (where the documentation is amazing) to TypeScript/JavaScript (where the documentation is horrendous) this issue has never been clearer to me. The only Python library that I’ve ever had to go outside the documentation to understand has been pandas. I can’t think of a single TypeScript issue I’ve run into that hasn’t ended with me going through an infinite amount of web searching and wading through a gazillion useless suggestions. It might just be me of course. I never really liked the Microsoft documentation pages either, so maybe I’m just an oddity that can only read Python styled documentation, but maybe not. I mean, why does the Express library have a “security FAQ” which seems like it should basically have been a simple part of the “start here” guide? I’m probably missing something, but reading the security FAQ left me with the feeling you would be an idiot not to use the helmet library with express (at least until you know enough to know when not to use it), and if that is so, then it really shouldn’t be a separate FAQ should it? I know I went down a side track, but it’s really the most perfect real world example I have of why this article is exactly right.

retube 5y ago
> TypeScript/JavaScript (where the documentation is horrendous) Clearly you've never had to do anything in VBA....
vbezhenar 5y ago
It's odd but when I have to write something with Python, its documentation really is terrible. There's not even index of functions in particular module, I have to open it, then find that function with ctrl+f. E.g. https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html https://docs.python.org/3/library/os.html Compare to golang: https://pkg.go.dev/os https://pkg.go.dev/os it provides list of all functions in particular module which I can glance over quickly and find what needed. That's small thing, but really makes me spend so much more time when I need to use Python for something. I guess that's not an issue for experienced developers who memorized all functions they need. And I never had issues with JavaScript thanks to wonderful MDN.

tlocke 5y ago

I agree that information shouldn't be duplicated, but in one of my projects I've taken the opposite approach and made the FAQ the only place that certain information is presented. It's for the library https://github.com/tlocke/pg8000 https://github.com/tlocke/pg8000 and I've called them 'Examples' rather than a FAQ, but each time I get a question that isn't covered by the examples I add in a new example. I'd be interested to hear what people think of this approach.

c0balt 5y ago
It's a good approach for giving people a point to start/ be inspired by though it will take an increasing amount of time to maintain when your interface changes etc. Reminds me of the aweso.e examples for actix-web that include a lot of common use cases and patterns.

mcmUK 5y ago

FAQs are for seeding Google with answers to questions people are asking about your products and services off-site.

Veen 5y ago
Yes, they're used to populate the People Also Asked snippets. In fact, many SEO types recommend writing all blog articles in an FAQ format. It's why you'll often see a bunch of tangtentially related questions and answer sections in recipes, blog articles, and the like. The reasoning is that people search for questions so content framed as a Q&A will get picked up for PAA and rank higher generally. Particularly SEO focused bloggers build whole articles by scraping People Also Asked questions for related keywords, dump the questions into a document, and write the answers. Tools like Answer Socrates[0] will do the scraping for you. [0]: https://answersocrates.com/ https://answersocrates.com/ Personally, I reckon Google is smart enough to know that "## Cooking Potatoes in the Oven" is likely to provide the same information as "## How Do I Cook Potatoes in the Oven?". And, as the article points out, it's better for readers. I'm not convinced most people search for questions anyway; I'd just type "potatoes oven".

onion2k 5y ago

There's a lot of replies here about how FAQs are useful because users don't bother to read the manual. But... When was the last time anyone read a manual? Software these days is so easy to use, and so much effort goes into UX, that most software doesn't need a manual. Games don't have them. Websites don't have them. Web apps don't have them. The same should be true for other sorts of processes. Things should be simple enough that users can understand them without needing documentation (there will be exceptions, obviously, particularly around safety). If you've put the effort into building something that people can use without reading a manual you shouldn't be getting many questions, and especially not the same questions frequently.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]

tikkabhuna 5y ago

I write internal documentation of our tools or thirdparty tools we use. FAQs are helpful when the topics are very short and/or not linked. They're a stepping stone of getting something documented whilst you find a proper home for it. I agree with the GDS's view though, especially when its public facing and intended to be read by one of the broadest userbases you can get. When writing a FAQ consider where else you could put that information. The counterpoint I would use is Amazon's documentation. Each product has an FAQ that rehashes other text in a Q&A format. Personally I love it. Its easy to reach for and its very "no frills". However, the target audience is going to be very different to the GDS. Far more technically literate and likely know what question they want answered.

Angostura 5y ago

I normally have the highest regard for GDS, but I'm entirely convinced they are correct in this case. Last month I was browsing my energy supplier's website and was thinking how refreshingly easy their FAQ approach made things: https://help.so.energy/support/solutions/folders/7000045023 https://help.so.energy/support/solutions/folders/7000045023 It's not called an FAQ and not every item is couched as a question - but it's basically an FAQ

jcims 5y ago

I don’t know, I think this shifts the blame to the user for the sake of some kind of ideological bent. It’s basically saying ‘we know how to document, if you have questions learn how to read.’ Having a FAQ allows for quickly addressing structural issues in information presentation. Creating one ex nihilo is corny, but when the questions actually start rolling in there have a place to be answered while the docs are adjusted. In my opinion the goal should be to starve the FAQ, not pretend it doesn’t exist.

anotheryou 5y ago

It's a quick fix to redundant support request and therefore a totally valid solution. If you are in control of your product you can of course try to answer these questions by UI before they arise, but it's a longer route and if you are e.g. a reseller it might not even be possible. Further some users intents might come up in very diverse situations and you can't clutter all these UI locations with the relevant info for all cases. Once things get more complex, some menus might need nesting and you might also not want to have even more menu entries by duplicating functionality everywhere (that's the MS word solution to this problem I think. You can make text bold in 5 different places at least) It's totally fine to have an FAQ about "how to make text bold" which will hint you at keyboard shortcuts, the menu bar, the right click, formatting templates etc.

frosted-flakes 5y ago
Microsoft Word has one primary button to make things bold, and that's in the Home tab. Since it's such a common tool, it also appears in the cursor toolbar, so make that two. Of course, you can also use keyboard shortcuts or add it to the user-customizable Quick Access Toolbar, but that applies to anything.

alin23 5y ago

For my products, FAQs have always been about edge cases where I usually have no control in fixing/implementing. For example for Lunar (https://lunar.fyi https://lunar.fyi), an app that controls monitors through the DDC standard: 1. Some monitors may flicker/blackout when Lunar changes brightness 2. The volume can't be changed for specific monitors 3. In a 3-monitor setup, 2 of them change brightness as expected, the other doesn't change at all All of those issues happen a lot (so they're common) but only for specific setups (so they're edge cases). I have no control over them, they happen because something in the hardware setup is blocking DDC requests for changing brightness/volume etc. The issue is not detectable, the app gets a successful reply from the monitor, just like everything worked. Best I can do, is a lengthy FAQ: https://lunar.fyi/faq#brightness-not-changing https://lunar.fyi/faq#brightness-not-changing

elliottinvent 5y ago
This is what I came here to say. I think FAQs for edge cases or very specific questions are very useful. FAQs can also be a good way to address negative stuff and especially naysayers of a technology or concept - it's difficult to do that directly in content without it getting messy. For example, a project I'm working on stores data in DNS [0] and some of the feedback we get from technical folks (including HN) is "you can't use other people's infrastructure to do this!" [1] Addressing this in the spec or content is difficult but having a really clear question of "Is it ok to use other people's infrastructure to serve data?" and having a detailed exploration of that question – far more than you might be able to do in the general content – has real value in my opinion. 0. https://www.num.uk https://www.num.uk 1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632195 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632195
pornel 5y ago
That sounds like a troubleshooting section.
- alin23 5y ago
  Indeed, it is more related to troubleshooting. Which is why Lunar has an automated diagnostics tool which can tell the user if the problem comes from the monitor, and shows some troubleshooting steps specific to their monitor: https://files.lunar.fyi/lunar-diagnostics-demo.mp4 https://files.lunar.fyi/lunar-diagnostics-demo.mp4 And yet, after finishing the diagnostics process, the users still send me emails saying that they paid for the app and I should fix Lunar to support their monitor.

thenoblesunfish 5y ago

FAQs can be used out laziness and and can be a sign that design is lacking, it’s true. But the fact that Stack Overflow exists is testament to the fact that there is a certain class of questions that have answers which depend on ugly reality and hacks around all the leaky abstractions and less-than-optimal things we use every day.

Closi 5y ago
Alternatively, rather than view all Stack Overflow questions as inevitable, we could view Stack Overflow as a failure of the core documentation or system to address user issues sufficiently. And better documentation should result in fewer SO questions. In terms of the point of this article I think it is still in-line with what you are saying - as Stack Overflow answers are useful to solve an issue but are much harder to parse/read than properly written documentation on the same topic.

leephillips 5y ago

I am so cheering this on. Whenever I see a FAQ I think, “Lazy, didn’t want to bother organizing the information, doesn’t know how to write documentation.”

SmartestUnknown 5y ago

FAQs can be useful if they are used as a questionnaire to test our own understanding of the content. But FAQs being the only source of information is pretty terrible and very lazy. Lately, on many Indian government websites, I’ve seen that they straight up just have a list of FAQs and nothing else which infuriates me a lot.

low_tech_love 5y ago

"Twitter agrees" --- proceeds to show one tweet that agrees. This whole thing is just like saying "you wouldn't need bug fixing if you had no bugs". People ask questions, no matter how good the original content is.

junon 5y ago

FAQs, like programming languages, are just tools. There are lots of places they're useful, and lots of places they're not well suited. Trying to convey a main point, or talking about a single topic and informing the reader? Frontloading is going to be more informative. Lots of disparate pieces of bite-sized information? FAQs display that information quite nicely. I don't think I've ever personally thought "wow I wish this wasn't an FAQ". They're usually the first things I jump to if they're available. They give me a lot of valuable information very quickly. Also, the appeal to Twitter is hilarious coming from a government agency.

bell-cot 5y ago

For an official government web site, FAQs have an additional downside - some people will (perhaps maliciously) regard the FAQ answers as the law. Or as official policy. Or similar stunts. This can get you into having lawyers regularly review the FAQs, answers that are half disclaimers, and other messes. That said, there are many cases where I find FAQs useful. Especially for learning the basic (and oft undocumented) assumptions behind something. Or as a TL;DR alternative to marketing blather, clueless salespeople, and mediocre documentation.

spawarotti 5y ago

Isn't Stack Overflow one big FAQ? So arguing FAQs shouldn't exist is like arguing SO shouldn't exist? Nice in theory, but in practice...

jollybean 5y ago

Perhaps FAQs should just reference the material, that way they don't go out of date.

newaccount74 5y ago

I disagree. FAQs are very useful. The difference between a FAQ and the manual is that typically the manual is comprehensive and organized by topics, while the FAQ is sorted by how frequently people need the information. If you have a FAQ, then users can scan a dozen questions and see if their question is answered, and in 90% of cases they find the answer. So the benefit of a FAQ is that you have a single page that contains the most important information across all topics. You don't need to know how the docs are structured, you don't need to know the terms of art to search for, you can just scan a few lines of questions on a single page, which people can do very quickly. I guess you could put the same information into a document titled "Overview" or "Quick Start" or "Most Important Info" but using the common term "Frequently Asked Questions" makes it easier for customers to know where to start looking.

ozim 5y ago
FAQs are very useful if they really are FAQs like stackoverflow. If there is some person "making up" FAQs it is rubbish. When CEO orders that "we need to make FAQ, make one" but no one is actually asking any questions that is the worst. FAQ should be consisting of actual questions and then best would be each variation of way how people asked it to point to the right answer. Ideally FAQ should be curated by a person or first line support. Synthetic FAQ is the same as documentation - someone writing things up and organizing it in a way they think. Ideal FAQ should help find question and answer that is already asked by someone else in a way that broadest possible audience would ask it.
- newaccount74 5y ago
  Stack Overflow is not a FAQ. Stack Overflow is a Q&A site with millions of questions. A FAQ is a list of 5-20 questions that quickly answer questions without having to read the docs or trying your luck on Google.
  - akyoan 5y ago
    Sure, but some of its questions are frequently asked. That’s what the parent was referring to: real questions by real users that sometimes are upvoted by thousands of users. You can even get a FAQ in a standard format by visiting the “Popular” tab.

softwaredoug 5y ago

I disagree with the duplication point. One thing I’ve learned is people consume information in very different ways. Some people read lengthy articles, others want the same information in a sound bite. It’s OK to duplicate information to meet the needs of different audiences. Further there’s the adage that people don’t hear something unless it’s said to them 5-7 times. I think that applies here. I know from managing people you have to be a broken record. It’s annoying, but it seems to be a truism no matter where you go. You always need to be communicating and overcomminicating.

rkangel 5y ago
I instinctively want to agree with you but Apple has persuaded me I'm wrong. Conventional wisdom has always been that not all users are the same: customisation and different workflows are needed for different people, particularly power users. Yet Apple's philosophy is to work really hard to find what they think is the best way to do something and polish the hell out of it. Power users like us software developers sometimes moan about it, but that doesn't stop us queuing up to buy iPhones!
- marcosdumay 5y ago
  Most people do not queue up to buy iPhones.
  - rkangel 5y ago
    I didn't mean it literally (at least these days). But I don't think you can deny that iPhones are incredibly popular with everyone.
    - marcosdumay 5y ago
      Most people don't buy anything from Apple. You just decide that it's ok to require everybody to do things the same way because a group of people buy some stuff that gives them no choice.

patwolf 5y ago

I was trying to figure out something regarding county zoning by reading a 300-page pdf of county ordinances. Eventually I did a google search and found a FAQ on the county website that had a simple explanation of what I was looking for. I do understand the argument that a need for a FAQ is symptom of poorly-structured content. But I do think context matters--if it's the federal government providing information about social security benefits, then sure, spend the time and resources to make good content. However, for the case of this small county government with limited resources, the FAQ is a very efficient. I'd rather a small number of my tax dollars be spent on the FAQ than a lot of my tax dollars on rewriting the PDF.

skyeto 5y ago
Wouldn't a better alternative be a summary of the 300 page document? Both that and a FAQ wouldn't be the canonical sources in a legal capacity, but a summary has the benefit of deduplication and is probably nicer to read (depending on how much you want to cross-reference in the FAQ)
thesuitonym 5y ago
But by the same token, instead of having a FAQ with headings like, "What is the minimum setback for structures?" you could have had a simple document with headings like, "Minimum Setbacks for Structures." One of the points in the document was that you can still have a document that's structured like a FAQ, just don't make it questions, make it answers.
- asdff 5y ago
  I think part of the faq benefit is that its designed for people who hone in on faq pages already. Some people are not researchers. They are delegators. They'd rather come to your office and ask you "what is the minimum setback for structures" knowing full well its probably listed somewhere on your website/documents/etc, but they'd rather delegate the effort of looking up that information to you. A faq page attempts to catch these people, and say "hey delegators, check here if your question has already been answered first before you spam our customer support." In that case, a document that's like a faq but not a faq won't do you any good. These people will just ignore it like the primary document and pound your customer support resources.

atlasV 5y ago

these random decisions makes GDS extremely unviable ..

thesuitonym 5y ago

I don't live in the UK, so I can't say how usable their online services are, but I surely love seeing this type of content from them. It's clear people have put some serious thought into UX design.

0xbadcafebee 5y ago

"If you have frequently asked questions, it's because you haven't answered them in your content." Errr.... no. You have frequently asked questions because some questions need to be answered frequently. If you have the answers in one place, the user doesn't have to waste as much time searching for it. Here's some examples of frequently asked questions: Q: Does God exist? Q: What is the meaning of life? Q: How can I be happy? Q: Why do hot dogs come in packs of 10 but buns come in packs of 8? I'm sure you could tell users to search the entire web and hope they pull together the right answers. Or you could just do the research, summarize the answer, and provide links, all right next to the question you know lots of people are asking. This will save the users valuable time and ensure they get the correct response. Here's a point-for-point rebuttal of the article's reasons: 1. "They’re too slow" ... "questions take longer to scan and understand than simple headings and you can’t take any meaning from them in a quick glance." It doesn't take a genius to scan the list of questions above and find your question. If the question you have is in the FAQ, it is almost always faster to read the list of questions than reading all of the documentation. And the meaning is found in the question combined with which specific category of FAQ it's found in. 2. "They lead to duplication" Yes. Duplication is the most efficient way to ensure important bits of information make it to the right people. Different people look for and absorb information in different ways. Some skim, some hunt, some meticulously read. Some are in a hurry, some are calm and contemplative. And some people just miss critical information when it's buried somewhere. Duplicated information increases both the likelihood and speed at which the information makes it to the user. Of course, it's a pain to maintain for the content manager, but that's the content managers' job. Don't make the user's life worse to make your job easier. 3. "They’re tonally wrong" ... "The best way to do that, is to write simply and clearly and remove all duplication and superfluous text." Oh, piss off. Duplication is fine, see point 2. 4. "Twitter agrees" Oh, piss off! See point 3.

alilleybrinker 5y ago

Years ago I wrote the official Rust FAQ [1] (now defunct). The questions were selected based on surveys of Rust users on the major Rust community spaces at the time, and a link to the FAQ was added near the top of the "Documentation" page of the old Rust site. It was also translated into multiple other languages as part of internationalizing the site. That said, I think it had minimal impact. Often when I would discuss it with others, their response was to be surprised that Rust had a FAQ. There were good answers in there, to questions people genuinely asked frequently, but putting so many useful answers next to each in a single page people were unlikely to discover did not end up being very helpful. Still learned a lot writing it though! [1]: https://prev.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html https://prev.rust-lang.org/en-US/faq.html

cannabis_sam 5y ago

FAQs are a microscopic problem, compared to the practice of putting up entirely scripted first level support people who are essentially contractually required to NOT provide any useful explanation or information. It’s obviously not these individuals fault, but fuck every single institution or company employing this type of idiotic and wholly garbage triage..

fudged71 5y ago

This is assuming that a user makes their way to your webpage at all. How many questions are asked in natural language on Google or through a smart assistant? Google has standardized the Q&A format for fast answers through their search engine without needing to view the page at all. Without recognizing this use case they are making information more opaque

walshemj 5y ago
Try " renew driving license" in the UK the first PAA link is for freaking Dubai.

yawnxyz 5y ago

Honest question: is a FAQ a "curated wiki" where the writers anticipate (or have fielded enough of the same questions) to bring those things they're too annoyed to answer, over and over, to the front? I think the goal of what you're working on is also important: - For a marketing page, the content should deliver what the FAQ delivers, which should in principle make the FAQ redundant - For technical documentation and wikis, there will be too much information to deliver succinctly. But, some content are probably more visited or relevant. Why not pull up the visitor data (or tabulate the list of "where is XYZ questions") into a "Frequently Requested Content"?

jquast 5y ago

FAQ was for newsgroups, to reduce the noise of so many people asking the same questions, answered by "read the FAQ" which was usually posted periodically, http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-tutorial/faqs-frequently-asked-questions.html http://www.harley.com/usenet/usenet-tutorial/faqs-frequently...

lupire 5y ago

They are basically saying "We don't make mistakes so we dont need FAQs" with a dash of "we don't know how Hyperlinks or Transfusion works". It's Incompetence painted over with Hubris.

Abimelex 5y ago

I totally agree with the blog post, personally, I never read FAQ, but the one argument "The content in our support pages is now appearing in search" is on the other hand the actual reason for some pages having FAQ. It's an easy way to generate some SEO content.

wly_cdgr 5y ago

Not the first pretentious nonsense I've seen on that site. Someone there thinks they're some kind of UX messiah and has unfortunately been able to secure a milk crate and a bullhorn It's ok, time will wash this away