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Subject:Re: Reading Books vs. Asking Questions From:Steven Brown <stevenabrown -at- yahoo -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Thu, 28 Feb 2002 07:31:31 -0800 (PST)
<Chris discussed the use of FAQs in documentation.>
In my current position, I hear too many people
equating documentation with a list of FAQs. The anser
to each FAQ becomes a long paragraph with no context,
no formatting. The purchase of a knowledge base
(accessed via a natural language search engine) hasn't
helped matters; there's a risk of reducing every chunk
of information to a question and an answer.
We need to emphasize the 'F' in the FAQ. A
*frequently* asked question is one such as, "How do I
get to your store," or, "What are your hours of
operation?" It's not, "How do I configure the Acme
router when running a SolidState web server in a Unix
environment with an Oracle database?"
Don't even ask me about the proliferation of "best
practices," today's hot buzzword!
Steven Brown
Senior Technical Writer
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