4 ms·

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

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
If you get a thousand people asking the same thing on your customer support channels all the time, its worth it to make a faq. even if you had whatever information documented thoroughly, there are a contingent of people who don't care. They'd rather ask for information from someone who would know, a customer support representative or whoever, than look it up themselves somewhere on your website. A faq page specifically targets these people and says "you have questions, skim this first please."

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

If you get a thousand people asking the same thing on your customer support channels all the time, its worth it to make a faq. even if you had whatever information documented thoroughly, there are a contingent of people who don't care. They'd rather ask for information from someone who would know, a customer support representative or whoever, than look it up themselves somewhere on your website. A faq page specifically targets these people and says "you have questions, skim this first please."