While this question was originally posed about Usenet/Internet
questions, those haven't been mailbox-fillers for me. What I do get is
more volume asking for my supposed "expertise" on the newsgroup
topic---generally, in areas where I am not "the expert" and where a
posting to the group would have produced a response from someone more
prepared to give the answer.
> I generally get around 2 or 3 questions per day. In the true
> spirit of the net, I take this as it comes, and spend some time
> answering the questions... If I didn't want to help anybody
> out, I would not bother posting my FAQ.
>
I think that this is a basic of agreeing to become very visible in the
group as FAQ editor. Technically, one can say that the job consists of
reading the group, catching the questions that keep getting asked, and
putting a summary of the responses along with the question in the FAQ.
I had no illusions, when I signed up to do this, that I would not be
regarded by some as the "resident wizard" on all of the topics
discussed in the newsgroup, and that some would approach me as though I
were somehow possessed of divinely-revealed truths unknown to anyone
else. I think that visibility as FAQ editor is going to draw mailed
questions based on a notion of trust that the FAQ editor actually knows
something. I feel a bit like Lewis Carroll's "Father William" who, as
a youth did not stand on his head because "I feared it might injure the
brains/But not that I am perfectly sure I have none, I do it again and
again." I'm also stuck with the realities of advanced age in that the
newsgroup is about things that nobody has done in any serious
professional sense for maybe thirty years, that isn't taught in
schools, and for which there is neither a readily-available in-print
literature, nor out-of-print sources that are particularly satisfactory.
I take the time---and I'll agree that it's time-consuming---to evaluate
these requests that get E-mailed to me. Generally, what I feel is an
appropriate response is to reply that the question has merit, and that
while I have some opinions, it would be more appropriate to post the
question to the group, and that I'll be happy to join in the responses,
but that letting the group participate will be more beneficial to the
questioner than a private response. Net.courtesy being what it is (a
real zero, I am afraid), more often than not the reader wants
encouragement that the topic is within the charter and some
psychological defense against being flamed. Fortunately, our group
does not have any serious flame problems, nonetheless, I know of
several people who are very reluctant to post because of flaming.
Another common request is to tell the reader whether topic
thus-and-such is within the scope of the group charter. That always
warrants a response, and it also requires some knowledge of parallel
newsgroups to point the user to. I have found it important to be
explicit, when saying "this is out-of-scope" to also say that "this
response is not a flame."
How many years have I told people that the only dumb question is the
unasked question? I have to presume that if someone is asking me a
question, they need, or have a desire, to know the answer, and are not
testing my knowledge. And I have to accept that signing up to do the
FAQ means that I would get the lion's share of such questions. If I
weren't willing to answer people's questions or to make some attempt to
help them when they ask for it, I shouldn't be doing the FAQ.
Yes, doing some of this gobbles up my time. But it has had a
tremendous payback for me in that it has brought me back in touch with
some of the joys of my childhood, and made sense of some choices I made
when I was younger that I sometimes questioned in recent years. This
FAQ activity is relevant to my current professional work, and I am
learning some things I needed to know that will make what I do
professionally of more value to it's intended audience. So the time
investment has been well=justified.
-- *********************************************************** Hank van Cleef vancleef@bga.com vancleef@tmn.com ***********************************************************
[
Usenet Hypertext FAQ Archive |
Search Mail Archive |
Authors |
Usenet
]
[
1993 |
1994 |
1995 |
1996 |
1997
]
© Copyright The Landfield Group, 1997
All rights reserved