[MUD-Dev] META: FAQ and Thread Summaries

[coder at ibm.net]

On 03/12/97 at 09:22 AM, cg at ami-cg.GraySage.Edmonton.AB.CA (Chris Gray)
said: >:  1) Should we have a FAQ?

>Have people specifically asked for it? 

Yes.

>How many? 

Without grepping my mail folders, I'd guesstimate a little under a dozen. 
Its been close to 50% of the recent list additions.

>If enough have, then it
>might be worthwhile to see if we can come up with an easy-to-maintain
>FAQ.

I also see a secondary value in having a FAQ -- the new organisation of
ideas presented in a FAQ will (hopefully) engender new threads and
consolidation of old ideas using those juxtapositions.  Hopefully.  We've
made an awful lot of forays out into new ground on this list.  I'd like to
see some of those thrusts tied back together.

>:  2) What should be in it?

>Well, I like your idea below: brief blurbs from list members who want to
>have a blurb in it (no requirement). Then, if thread summaries become
>available, perhaps a very brief description of the threads that are
>available in summarized form.

Nod.

>:  3) Who should own it?  Volunteers?

>I suspect you would have to own it, but perhaps not. As for writing it,
>hopefully it could be just a collection of things from members, with a
>bit of glue around them.

Yup.

>:  6) How should the thread summarisier be appointed?  Self-elected?
>:Appointed by list owner?  Appointed by thread participants?  Determined by
>:volume of contribution to thread?

>We *could* try to work on a volunteer basis, where someone interested in
>a thread decides to volunteer to keep track of it. That would consist of
>archiving the discussions in a separate file, and, when the thread dies
>out, making that file available to the membership somehow (perhaps
>sending it to wherever the current list archives are). The only hard part
>here, perhaps is recognizing when a new, distinct thread is starting, so
>that going back through notes isn't necessary. For example, who would
>have guessed we would end up with a mini-thread on the real-life ecology
>of forests (now wandering into plains)? In situations like that, building
>a thread requires access to past notes that contain contributions on it.
>I could do that, since I'm archiving nearly all notes, but others may not
>be set up to do that.

As list owner I'm willing to make the entire list archives, encluding all
of last years list traffic (Wout's list and the CC list) available to
anyone who wants to summarise a topic or thread.  This would be a
guaranteed compleat copy of *every& message that hit the list for this
year, and a probably compleat copy for the traffic before that.

Of course the archives back to February of this year are available to any
list member as is; the only addition is the older traffic which is
woefully poorly organised.

--
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw at null.net
----------(*)                              Internet: coder at ibm.net
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...