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How To Build And Maintain A Good FAQ
comforteagle writes "FAQs have been around since the beginning of the web & most of them still suck. Most of us who build FAQs rely on handcrafting them, but this really isn't necessary anymore. Sean Kerner has written The FAQs on FAQs as an introduction to getting up to speed fast with a FAQ, letting opensource software do the majority of the work, and allowing the author to concentrate on providing good answers. He shortly reviews a few apps, but settles on phpMyFAQ."
FAQs have been around since the beginning of the web & most of them still suck
While I agree with the second part of this statement, FAQs significantly pre-date the web. They were certainly common back in the pre-Web Internet days of Usenet newsgroups - I contributed to several back in the late 80s. Did they start with Usenet, or do they predate that too? Perhaps we need a FAQ FAQ?
Now I feel old.
Sailing over the event horizon
FAQs have existed for a long time before the web (eg, the FAQs for the various newsgroups), and they worked well before becoming fancy.
The comp.lang.c FAQ is probably the best example. It is rather big, and has always been so as long as I can remember. It is also pretty usable, even when it is viewed as a single flat document. You just need something to search it, whether it is more, emacs, or a browser.
(S(SKK)(SKK))(S(SKK)(SKK))
I maintain(ed) a Usenet FAQ for about six years or so for Eudora/Mac
It takes effort. Since the application I was writing for was still being released, information would change with every new version. Of course, you had to keep questions specific to a certain beta version as long as they remained "frequently asked".
It also requires following the newsgroup on a very regular basis, and watching for the trends (and the questions that are getting asked a bit).
For a while I looked at things to turn the flat text file I was posting to the group into a nice HTML version. I ended up doing what I think that 90% of Usenet FAQ-writers did - did most of by hand. I just wrote the FAQ in HTML and then exported to plain-text to post and email.
Some suggestions tp anyone thinking about maintaining a Usenet FAQ:
1) Do not list your email address anywhere in it unless you want people contacting you with every question imaginable.
1a) Refer everyone who emails you to the newsgroup, even if it is an easy question. If you answer the quick question, then they email you back with a more complicated one.
2) Be honest and succinct.
3) Find a program or script to regularly post the FAQ to the newsgroup.
4) Get it set up so that you can post the FAQ to *.answers This will help with propagation and will automatically get several copies up on the web.
5) Realize it is largely a thankless job.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
Too many websites have FAQs that list questions the company wished users would ask. No good. FAQs have a simplistic information design that does not scale well. They must be reserved for frequently asked questions, since that's the only thing that makes a FAQ a useful website feature. Infrequently asked questions undermine users' trust in the website and damage their understanding of its navigation.
That comment comes with an appropriate cartoon.