[pct-l] PCT FAQ

[Brian Lewis]

I hesitated to get into this discussion, but I thought about a FAQ for the
PCT a lot, both in preparing for, and even while walking the PCT this year.



There are a lot of different ideas and concerns, to include the technology
that's used, inclusion of pure facts only or "opinion" items too,
maintanence of a FAQ (keeping it up-to-date), deciding on the level of
detail (from "top 10" questions only to a comprehensive database), and not
letting any personal biases towards questions skew the "answers".



I created and maintained a pretty extensive FAQ for a volunteer group not
too long ago; I don't think that a FAQ would kill the PCT-L.  In fact, I
found it pretty nice to be able to respond to perennial discussion list
questions for this other group via a web link directly to a specific FAQ
entry.


My personal "ideal" FAQ for the PCT would be created and maintained by a
small group of ego-less people driven by a desire to serve the overall PCT
hiking community, who would build a reputation for objectivity.  I'd include
"opinion" stuff --- too much that's important has more than one point of
view.  Just be careful to fairly present different points of view.   And I'd
be pretty comprehensive, growing the FAQ as new questions are asked or new
and useful information or viewpoints are available.   This needn't feel
complicated to the user if the right hierarchy is established with the right
granularity.    There are certainly models out there to consider, such as
http://www.python.org/doc/faq/ or http://blog.pandora.com/faq/ or
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gmh/faq.html#functional-languages or
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/learning/faq.php or
http://www.washington.edu/pine/faq/ or http://www.stata.com/support/faqs/
What these mostly random examples have in common is that they start with a
fairly small top-level menu, and are structured to be able to handle a
fairly large number of questions, and at least most of these are searchable.



I'd go with a pretty simple technology, to make it easy to replace or add
volunteers, as in the long term, maintaining the FAQ would be the key issue.
A lot of FAQ "answers" would include (or sometimes consist only of) links to
already existing information elsewhere.



There are challenges and potential risks to creating a FAQ, but if done well
I think the benefits far outweigh the costs.



There's been a lot of whole-list discussion and various concerns expressed;
IMO a good next step would be for a small group of people that are each
willing to commit to investing significant sweat equity do some off-line
design discussion, come to consensus, and then start building the FAQ.  Sounds
like fun to me; depending on final design, I'd like to be part of that.





Brian Lewis (Gadget '08)

http://postholer.com/brianle