Re: FAQs - Good or bad?

Subject: Re: FAQs - Good or bad?
From: Jeffrey Osier-Mixon <jefro -at- jefro -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 13 May 2005 12:30:00 -0700


Anecdotally, I have noticed that most technical writers dislike the FAQ format, most sales and marketing folks like it, and most engineers couldn't care one way or the other because they don't plan on reading it regardless of format. But my experience (14 years) could easily be too small a sampling.

Personally, I dislike the FAQ format because there are so many better ways to get information---such as search engines, where one can ask one's own question and base the results on keywords. When I see an FAQ I feel forced to conform my question to how I think someone else might have asked, and the answers very often are tangential to what I want to know. Give me a good well-structured reference manual and a search engine any day.

Here's an idea... write the well-structured manual with a good index, put a search engine on the front, and /call/ it a self-driven FAQ. Type your question, and look! Many potential answers just pop right up!


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Follow-Ups:

References:
FAQs - Good or bad?: From: Steven Brown
Re: FAQs - Good or bad?: From: Lisa Wright

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