--
Mika Tuupola http://www.appelsiini.net/~tuupola/
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Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 10:42:02 +0200
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From: "Michael Turner" <leap@gol.com>
To: <keitai-l@appelsiini.net>
Subject: Does keitai-l need a member-maintained FAQ?
Date: Thu, 22 Mar 2001 17:44:43 +0900
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Please read Juergen's earlier-posted
wwwc.catalog.com/vivian/lifecycle.html
before reading the rest of this, especially
if you feel moved to reply. My topic has some
incendiary potential; tread carefully.
Recently, I've noted an increase in "newbie" questions.
This is a good-news/bad-news situation. Good,
because it signals an increase in interest. On the
other hand, if this increase portends some dramatic
upsurge of such questions, keitai-l could go to
level 5 and 6 in short order and we all lose.
Gerhard Fasol has been quite prompt in getting to
these questions in recent days - questions which
probably bore the pants off Renfield Kuroda by now -
and that's good. That's the level 4 spirit, which
Ren has so far epitomized on this list (IMHO).
On the other hand, Gerhard is pointing to "the
imode FAQ" at Eurotechnology.com as if this
were the only one in existence in English. It's
only a matter of time before that "the" starts
to irritate people who have poured effort into
their own FAQs, or even just those who prefer
one FAQ over another. I haven't been one of
those people, so far, but I can relate.
In fairness, keitai-l is, if anything, already biased
toward another company among the mobile-media
information services in English. Right now,
www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l points ONLY to MMJ.
New readers might be excused for assuming that
MMJ's FAQ material was unique.
If I may propose a solution:
- a keitai-l FAQ that covers more than just i-Mode
but that still covers i-Mode well;
- volunteer member contributions and support;
- credit to companies where it's due, with URLs.
- hosting of this FAQ at www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l;
- mailing of this FAQ (or newbie-targeted portions
thereof) to every new subscriber, and to the
whole list on a regular basis.
(I'd also like to see an FQA - a Frequently Questioned
Answers list. I.e., an index of debatable points. E.g.,
"What is WAP?" is FAQ-fodder, whereas "WAP is The Way"
would be an FQA entry. But maybe that can wait.)
Anyway, I'd like to start REALLY raw with this: by sifting
through the keitai-l archives in reverse chronological
order, looking for anything with a question mark
attached. These questions (which might be only
lightly edited) will become the text on links that point
straight back into the keitai-l archive (in lieu of
carefully-crafted FAQ-style answers.)
This approach - a quick and dirty superstructure over
keitai-l itself - gets us quickly past a question that we
can revisit later - "Who is going to write this thing?"
The first answer can be "We all did. Already."
People should understand that this raw FAQ is linking to
AN answer, not THE answer, necessarily; and, often, to a
DISCUSSION rather than to a CONCLUSION; and not
necessarily to the ONLY discussion (nor even to the
BEST one.)
People should also understand the keitai arena is rather
turbulent and answers can go stale almost overnight -
keitai as a phenomenon is, after all, still in its adolescence;
and the price of puberty is infernal ignorance.
As certain Questions emerge as truly more Frequently
Asked, and as others are recognized as identical
to those already listed, some consolidation will be in
order, of course. More structure will eventually
be needed in any case.
In the meantime, linking questions into an e-mail archive
can lend keitai-l FAQ answers an unusual degree of
graceful degradation - readers can, for example, check
the date of the mail and see that it's over six months
old and take the answer with a grain of salt if it refers
to a product or a company's plan; they can e-mail one
of the correspondents listed in the e-mail header and
ask "Is this still true? Or was it ever? "
I hope this works. I hope this proposal hasn't ruffled any
feathers. I hope that the most Frequently Asked
Question on keitai-l does NOT suddenly become
"Is Michael Turner Out of His Friggin' Mind?" (Yes,
he is, just to get *that* one out of the way.)
-m
leap@gol.com
www.idiom.com/~turner/keitai-l-faq.html
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[ Did you check the archives? http://www.appelsiini.net/keitai-l/ ]
Received on Thu Mar 22 11:42:34 2001