Re: How did *you* get into this business?

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[I maintain several FAQs on rec.arts.bodyart, which discusses tattoos,
body piercing and other decorative body modifications]

The fellow who used to maintain the FAQ didn't do a good job at
maintaining it. Printed, his r.a.b. FAQ was eight pages TOTAL for both
tattooing and body piercing. A lot of people had more questions that
wanted to be addressed but he never updated the file, and rarely even
posted the FAQ. Worse, he was not a regular poster to the group
anymore. I suspect he was petering out.

Two years ago, myself and another woman felt we had a lot we wanted to
see added to the FAQ, and volunteered to prepare some of the
information for him. In the end, he gave us permission to take over
the FAQ--so instead of creating one, we expanded on one.

The first thing we did was break it up--I handled the tattoo FAQ while
the other handled the piercing FAQ. Since then, both of our FAQs have
grown and are now posted as 10 sections each, and are probably just
about the most comprehensive subject files available for the subjects
(at least for the piercing FAQ--there are some tattoo books that come
close to mine but they usually tend to be photo-heavy and text-light).
I also have created the "Welcome & Netiquette FAQ" for our group, as
well as a Meta-FAQ that gives nothing but directions on how to
retrieve our 20+ FAQs.

Recently, I created our Purple Pages Directory FAQ as well, for
professional tattooists and piercers who are online and need someplace
to advertise their services without posting ads to the newsgroup. I
think they enjoy finding their entry in the directory as well.

Paola Kathuria asks:
> How much time do y'all spend on your FAQ(s)?

Initially, a ton! It fluctuates--the actual maintenance of it will run
from one hour a month to 10 hours a week.

HOWEVER (and I'm sure a lot of others can attest to this)--being a FAQ
maintainer for me means reading and posting to the newsgroup very
regularly, and answering a lot of email from people. THAT usually
takes me 2 to 4 hours a day.

Lani Teshima-Miller (teshima@uhunix.uhcc.Hawaii.edu) "Sea Hare" o/ /_/_/
UH School of Library & Info Studies. "Whatever the cost of our o|<0_0>------*
libraries, the price is cheap compared to that of an ignorant \=^-| |_| |
nation." -Walter Cronkite [R.a.b.bit--FAQ Maintainer: "Think Ink!"] \_B}\_B}

• Next message: Lani Teshima-Miller: "Finding credibility by the industry, was: How did *you* get into"
• Previous message: Monee C. Kidd: "Re: How did *you* get into this business?"
• Maybe in reply to: Bill Keyes aka the Ferret-Meister: "How did *you* get into this business?"
• Next in thread: Jim Burk: "Re: How did *you* get into this business?"

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