[wp-forums] Why the forum FAQ

[Les Bessant]

I didn't comment on this yesterday because I didn't have anything
particularly useful to add other than saying that having a FAQ in the forums
makes a lot of sense to me. It hadn't occurred to me that there would be
objections...

FWIW, I mostly agree with Podz on this. Codex is a huge and valuable
resource, but for new users in particular, it's not the easiest thing to
use.

The only thing I'd differ on is stickiness vs. tagginess. I'm not convinced
that the tag cloud thingy is all that useful, and I don't know how many
people coming across the forums for the first time would understand what to
do with it.... 


________________________________

Les Bessant les at lcb.me.uk
Losing it[1] - http://lcb.me.uk/

-----Original Message-----
From: wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com
[mailto:wp-forums-bounces at lists.automattic.com] On Behalf Of Podz
Sent: 06 December 2005 10:17
To: Forums
Subject: [wp-forums] Why the forum FAQ

1. Not everyone uses Codex.

2. From the front page of Codex, the FAQ is not very clearly linked.

3. The format of Codex does not lend itself to people who are worried
/confused and searching for information .

4. This http://codex.wordpress.org/FAQ leads to TEN MORE FAQ's so you
are asking someone who could be worried / confused to make decisions
about which category their problem falls into.

5. The forum FAQ can be edited very quickly by any moderator to reflect
what is happening. If there is a sudden influx of the same issue - as I
am sure there will be on the release of 2.0 - then the mods can edit the
first post in that thread to bring information to the fore. This can
only benefit users.

6. If someone wants to take that information and add it to Codex, do so.
I mentioned this in a previous post here.

7. Because I mentioned it to this list and was met with two positive
responses. If we always did things by committe then we'd never get anywhere.

8. Because having more mods now means we can do this and do it better.

9. If Codex was the answer to all problems, why have we got the forums ?

10. Because sometimes those Codex FAQ answers generate more questions
which it does NOT ANSWER.

11. Because between us all we can highlight those really good answers
for people.

12. Sticky ? Probably at some point, but Techgnome had by far the best
answer to this - get a tag in the cloud.

Now if someone wants to discuss this, please do from the point of view
that Codex is not a religion nor the answer to all the worlds problems.

And now I'll have a coffee.

P.