I think Jon did a fantastic job on his FAQ; in fact, I thought I had added that to the "things to read" list before posting a new thread. I guess I haven't. I need to add that.

Anyway, my feeling is that Jon's work is far more than what I'd consider a FAQ. I'd call it a full-blown "Introduction to 8052.com". I'd say a typical FAQ isn't going to exceed a page and most probably would fit in a paragraph or two. The idea is to answer straight-forward questions with straight-forward answers. While there are certainly some questions that might require an elaborate multi-page response, I don't think that's typical of most of the questions that we receive here--especially not the ones that are asked time and time again.

The other problem I have with Wiki is precisely that I don't want a work-in-progress. I have no problem with a FAQ being refined, the language being corrected, and corrections being made. But I don't think it's a good idea to put a bunch of skeleton/outlines in the FAQ system. If there is an entry on "How do I set the baud rate to 9600?", I don't want to go to that page and have it empty and have the system say "If you'd like to submit content for this FAQ, click here." If we do that, people are going to search the FAQ listing and get frustrated when entry after entry are incomplete works-in-progress. If it's visible to the public, it should be in a usable form.

I like Erik's and Jan's similar suggestions: The original author can edit it (and so can I, obviously) forever. This would be a relatively minor modification to the existing FAQ system.

I'm also intrigued about Jan's idea of using a modified version of the forum to accomplish this. The main thing is that I'd need to tweak it so that each question could be put in a certain FAQ category; so it would require a litte more work, but the existing interface would make it easy for everyone to submit entries. The benefit (or disadvantage?) is that people could then reply to the FAQ. The FAQ would essentially be the first message of a thread on that topic. Only the first message would be shown by default so as to hopefully provide a concise answer; but perhaps a link at the end of the FAQ entry would allow the user to view the full thread that launched off of that FAQ entry. That response thread would be heavily moderated to keep the responses completely on-topic with no inter-user tension permitted.

Only registered users could post a FAQ entry and every FAQ entry would have a link that would allow any registered user to submit observations/corrections directly to the author even if the user's account is configured not to allow that. I.e., posting a FAQ would indicate that the author is willing to receive mail about that FAQ via the system. That is, his email wouldn't be exposed, but members could submit corrections/comments via 8052.com that would be sent to the author and cc'd to me. Or anyone could just reply to the FAQ entry thread.

How does this sound?

Regards,
Craig Steiner
8052.com Webmaster