[plug] Re: FAQs and Newbies (was: Cheap Linux??)

[Christian]

Peter Wright wrote:
> >
> > It would be a good idea - except no one would bother to look at it.
> 
> Perhaps a slight exaggeration. :)

Yes.  But only *very* slight. :-)

> > FAQs are only really useful when newbies (who usually ask the frequent
> > questions) take a look at them before posting to a list - and newbies
> > (almost by definition) don't do this.  The majority of list traffic
> > would become: newbie asks question, newbie gets referred to FAQ.
> 
> If you can only earn the newbie qualification by asking FAQs, it'd
> hardly be surprising that "newbies" would tend to do it a lot. :)

I'm not saying that only newbies ask FAQs or that the defining
characteristic of a newbie is the asking of FAQs.  Rather I'm saying (or
now repeating really) that newbies a) tend to come across the
obvious/common problems frequently and b) don't check the
FAQs/HOWTOs/Manual pages before asking questions about them.  Hence, a
good percentage of newbies questions could be answered by FAQs.  The
more clueful people often come across the same problems but either can
solve them by themselves or are able to look up the answers for
themselves.

> I suspect your perception has been coloured by the fact that the more
> clueful people don't tend to appear "newbie-ish" initially, so they
> don't get included in your evaluation set of newbies.

Hmmm... not really - at least I don't think so.

There are probably three types of newbies:

- clueful newbies
 = very familiar with another system and have the capability of looking
up the answers themselves - just don't know where to look (and,
occasionally, how to interpret what they find).

- clueless newbies
= smart people but not really familiar with the idea of looking up
answers themselves and/or of the general arrangement of the system
they're using.  Once they get the gist of how everything fits together
they don't stay a newbie long.

- lame newbies
= not used to looking things up or thinking for themselves or with the
general architecture of the system they're using.  They tend to stay
newbies a long while or give up and go back to Windows wondering how
they'll ever be able to nuke someone or spoof their IP address now.

I base these categories on years of answering newbie questions on IRC.
:-)  Actually, there is more of a continuous spectrum than three
distinct sets...

Hmmm... maybe I'm writing my thesis on the wrong subject... ;-)

> Maybe we could experiment with adapting one of the IRC "answer" bots
> that are out there (I read about them in a Perl Journal article a
> little while ago). Mail appears that fits the criteria of being:
> below a certain length, containing FAQ keywords, containing question
> marks), etc. can be answered by the answer bot mailing them the
> relevant FAQ chunk. Oooh! and the bot could include a (completely
> unreliable) score for how clueless it rates the person's question.
> Even more fun.

Love it!  Sounds terrific... so long as it emails the person off-list.
:-)

> This would have the additional advantage of being very irritating for
> people who write mails that accidentally fall into the FAQ category,
> and causing great amusement for everyone else, not to mention endless
> threads of witty arguments on the nature of truth and the quest for
> knowledge.

Endless threads of witty arguments on the nature of truth and the
question for knowledge?  Hmmm... exactly what this list needs! :P

Regards,

Christian.

-- 
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