[TAG] Talkback:125/collinge.html

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Benjamin A. Okopnik (ben at linuxgazette.net):

> I don't know that an FAQ entry would be of much use; in my estimate,
> the percentage of our readers who have looked at our FAQ is very
> small.

Interestingly, one of the less-appreciated but substantial benefits of a
FAQ has nothing to do with whether people ever bother to read it before
asking its questions or re-raising its tired old subjects.  That is:
When somebody _does_ go there for the 1000th time, you can definitively
answer, with near-zero effort, with just a URL.

Over the years, I've used this trick to dispose of innumerable topics
after getting tired of discussing them.  My first-level expectation is
that hardly anyone will read my answers until I send their URLs.  Note:
I _do_ take advantage of that expectation to expose readers to adjoining 
text on related questions.

> However, it might make sense to add some sort of a note regarding this
> issue to the top of the strip.

My opinion, yours with a small fee and disclaimer of reverse-engineering
rights:  Less is better.  E.g.,

   Format:  Flash

...where "Flash" is anchor text hyperlinking to a FAQ, for which
http://linuxgazette.net/124/misc/nottag/flash.html might serve nicely.

Metacomment:  Computerists tend to overestimate public willingness to
deal with explanatory text.  The public at large tends to react badly to 
verbosity, assuming its contents to be

o  unimportant, and/or
o  open to debate

This is why we have "STOP" signs, rather than "Stop, though of course 
there are lots of exceptions including the need to do anything required
to avoid dangerous situations" signs.