possible solutions to the FAQ problem

[hp_lexicon]

Hey, gang:

When I originally offered to place the FAQs on the Lexicon server it 
was because nothing else was being offred and everything was at a 
standstill. The result was that we went from a lot of talk and a 
bunch of files in different formats that no one could access to a 
working site. At that time we talked about the fact that I was 
already very busy with the Lexicon and wouldn't have time to do 
frequent updates and that no one would be able to do the final 
uploading except me, but even with those things it was still the 
best alternative we had. 

We tried to find ways for the files written in various formats, from 
Word to pure text to heavily-tagged HTML, to be standardized into a 
form that would be easily uploaded to the server, but there didn't 
seem to be a way to do that. Paul had some kind of conversion thing 
going for a while there, but it still didn't do all editing that was 
necessary, such as placing the index at the top of the page, making 
the layouts consistent, and so on. As a result, any file uploaded 
required quite a bit of my time to get it into usable form. That 
really was a problem for me since I don't a lot of extra time, 
especially during the school year. 

I have absolutely no problem with moving the FAQs to another server 
so that someone else could take over editing and maintaining them. 
It's fine with me. What we would need to do is set up the space and 
just move the files. There aren't very many of them. Depending on 
how we move them, we may need to do a bunch of link-tweaking, but so 
be it. 

There is a better solution, in my opinion. If we want to leave them 
on the Lexicon server, we need to attack the problem of all the time 
it takes for me to convert the wide variety of formats and layouts 
and styles of the original files. The way to do that is to enlist 
someone to do that formating for me so all I have to do is the final 
upload. It's not that hard to do--it's pretty simple, actually. If 
someone wants to take the time to learn to use an editor like 
Composer (sorry, no FrontPage or Word, they mess up the code 
terribly) they could easily make the final pages and then just email 
them to me. I've had people do that with Lexicon pages they were 
working on and it works great. It just means appointing an editor. 
I'll work with them so they know the style/formating requirements 
for the page and just upload whatever is sent to me.

Really, that would be the easiest and best solution in my opinion. 
No one has to move the files or fix the links or anything. If 
there's someone who would be willing to take on that job, our 
problem would be solved. 

To recap:
The problem boils down to the fact that I don't have time to do all 
the editing required to turn raw files into finished pages. If 
someone would be willing to do that, they can email them to me and 
I'll upload them within a day or two. If everyone would rather move 
the whole site, that's fine too, but it would be more work up front. 

Steve