Ask Jon Ledbetter, how much work it is to polish a FAQ into perfection. I won't submit anything half-finished if it is to be "frozen" and displayed as such for ages here. On the other hand, I don't have time to perfect it (e.g. I am "working" on a document on resets and similar stuff, similar to Jon's in format - it is already 2 months and it is FAR from being publish-able).

On the other hand, if I know that it is easy to modify the wording of FAQ (thanks to the web interface); and others will help me, I would start a few topics, maybe just putting down a skeleton, a few points, to be filled up with flesh and blood later; or just writing a few words not being afraid they are not accurate (as per facts as well as the language) - somebody will certainly correct me soon.

Btw, "wiki" means "quick", and it really works, believe me.




The key point is scrutiny. Here, scrutiny is - apparently - strong.

Also, in wikipedia, many of the contributions are made by people who are not really experts in the field, simply because they feel they need to add an article on an interesting topic. It is similar to what the journalists do - they fulfill a certain demand, even if they don't have the required knowledge or their knowledge is not of the required depth (we all know what is the average quality of "technical" articles in the newspapers and non-technical journals). The quality of audience - hence the potential editors' - is completely different here (unless we start FAQ's e.g. on cooking :-) ).


You already have my remarks. I thought about it more yesterday, and it would be absolutely sufficient - or maybe even better - to modify the Forum's software so that the initial post remains editable for the original author forever. And perhaps create an another class of mails, similarly what you did with the General Chat. That's all.

Although this is not completely the same as the "true" wiki, I believe that HERE it would work. The original author would be most probably willing to modify it himself based on the comments - the same way as Jon did it with his documents - and the comments would be hanging on the same thread. The interface is already familiar to majority of us. If the older versions of the original document could be made available in some form (perhaps forming a separate thread), the better; but the original post needs to keep its number to facilitate linking.

JW