Should we have a FAQ?

[mwaters]

Hi Brian,

I see you have two 'what's that noise' posts. :-)
Shouldn't there be just one post here?:

Station Hardware and Firmware
Assembly, Setup, Optimization, Feature Requests
Sub Forums: Troubleshooting, Antennas, and 1 more.

[allsorts]

• The FAQ should only be on system blue, because that's where most questions of a general nature will come up.
  
• Only relative simple things should be included in the list (see below), specialized technical question will still need to go to the normal forum.
  
• The list should be short, otherwise people won't read it anyway. I think it should completely fit onto the screen, say less than 25 lines.
  
• The whole effort should be limited and we should gather feedback from readers before considering going on
  

All sensible, though I assume that the 25 line limit is per question/answer rather than the whole thing! And getting feedback from readers may well be next to impossible.

This list is an example of what could be in such a FAQ:

1. What do I have to know to be able to assemble and run such a system?
   
2. How do I get one of these system blue?
   
3. How do I check where I am on the waiting list?
   
4. I received the kit, how do I solder the stuff together?
   

That's the sort of stuff but IMHO 4. would be covered by 1. as that would say you need to be able to solder through hole components to a PCB or know a man who can...  B-)

So we want an FAQ, we have an outline of what it should contain. great but:

Who has access to maintain it?
Open access will have it vandalised within hours....

What software do we use to generate it?
Most CMS systems aren't really suited to this task. I have Perl script I used to make the HTML of an FAQ I wrote/maintained about 15 years ago. Single scrollable file, logically laid out so if read from start to finish told you everything you needed to know. The source is a simple custom tagged plain text file. It's offline but I could put in online for a while, it's plain, it's simple, as it follows "content over form" rather than "form over content" that many sites do these days. The style can be updated of course.

I'm not a fan of a page based systems, you can't search the whole FAQ with your browser for a start and clicking next/back/index buttons that move about the screen depending on answer length is a PITA. Scrolling is so much easier...

And a biggie, where do we host it?

[mwaters]

[quote pid='15859' dateline='1506510677']

I'm not a fan of a page based systems, you can't search the whole FAQ with your browser for a start and clicking next/back/index buttons that move about the screen depending on answer length is a PITA. Scrolling is so much easier...

And a biggie, where do we host it?
[/quote]

I thought it was going to be right here, nothing other than the way this site works right now.

[Rechard83]

Nice idea, thanks.

[gerbold]

Try this: https://docs.lightningmaps.org/doku.php?...upport:faq
It is basically a copy of the documentation from System RED but much applies to System BLUE as well.

[Beluga]

Hi admin, I am new in this forum so when I was reading this thread carefully I noticed that a member above (please see he has posted in this thread) has added a link to his I think weight loss blog or maybe something else blog I don't know in the quoted text above. I don't know if it is okay to do it but personally I felt that it is irrelevant to the topic that is why I am informing about this so that you can double check.

If I have done something wrong in posting this message then I apologize.

Thanks.

[mwaters]

You haven't done anything wrong. But the Report button would probably get the moderators' attention faster. In any case, I don't see the spam that you refer to, has it been deleted?

[Beluga]

You haven't done anything wrong. But the Report button would probably get the moderators' attention faster. In any case, I don't see the spam that you refer to, has it been deleted?

Sorry, I didn't notice the report button earlier but now I have reported because the spam link is still there at the time I am posting this message.

[mwaters]

Is/was it in this thread? I didn't see the spam link. Just curious.

[dupreezd]

You haven't done anything wrong. But the Report button would probably get the moderators' attention faster. In any case, I don't see the spam that you refer to, has it been deleted?

Sorry, I didn't notice the report button earlier but now I have reported because the spam link is still there at the time I am posting this message.

I had a look as well and could not find anything.

Please email me directly with a screen shot if you don't want to post here.

Thanks