FAQs and consolidating it

[Karsten Wade]

On Wed, 2004-01-28 at 07:20, Grant Hill wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> > Some folk have gathered it up and created unofficial FAQs. Excellent.
> > 
> > As part of the documentation project, I think we should gather all the
> > FAQs out there, write it up in a useful format, and be able to host it
> > at fedora.redhat.com.
> 
> This is certainly a sane idea that I'd like to see implemented.  I guess
> thats almost volunteering to help ;-)

As Dave pointed out, it's relatively straightforward to use a <qandaset>
to accomplish a FAQ, and we should certainly produce a template for all
Fedora FAQs and make it available in the docs project CVS modules.

As for maintaining FAQs of disparate projects ... second-layer
maintenance work will grow to be non-trivial.  The developers are right
there with the issues and are better maintainers of their own FAQ. 
However, they are not going to learn DocBook for this, right?  If we
convert all those FAQs and help maintain them, we'll have to act as a
clearinghouse for updates -- taking in the updates from the developers,
fixing the XML, and getting them uploaded to fedora.redhat.com/.  That
could get out of hand really fast.

Taking care of a master Fedora FAQ is not specifically what this project
set out to do, but I think it sounds like a sane idea and can be adopted
by the project.  If such a FAQ is not full of answers to technical
questions but instead has pointers to other FAQs and the specific
tutorials with the answers, it would be easier to maintain.

In that scenario, anyone here can choose to maintain one or more FAQs
personally, and make sure they get linked to from a master FAQ.  At the
same time, the docs project isn't saddled with maintaining any number of
disparate FAQs.

The process would go like this:

1. Various official and semi-official Fedora FAQ authors/maintainers
provide a summary of the FAQ's scope and a URL (at our very nice
request)
2. Fedora Docs FAQ team reviews these, then includes all useful links
into the master FAQ
3. Periodic/regular maintenance includes link checking to ensure FAQs
are still alive and relevant
4. Irregular maintenance includes responding to email from FAQ
maintainers and others

I recommend we volunteers:

1. Make up a template for a FAQ.  I think Dave volunteered to do that?

2. Start to compile and write a master FAQ using the template, with
pointers to every FAQ we know of personally which should be in there. 
It can include links to the other FAQs on fedora.redhat.com.

3. Contact the various FAQ authors out there about providing a summary
and URL to the master FAQ; at the same time, offer them the FAQ template
to use if they wish.  Include links to the Fedora Doc Guide and the
anonymous CVS access details.

4. Get the master FAQ available on fedora.redhat.com.  I'll volunteer to
do that.

5. Publicize the beast on various fedora-foo lists.

At least, these are the ideas that come to my mind. ;-D

- Karsten
-- 
Karsten Wade   :      Tech Writer, RHCE     :  o: +1.831.466.9664
kwade at redhat.com : http://rhea.redhat.com/ :   c: +1.831.818.9995
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