Catching up & What FAQs Should We Have?

[Penny Linsenmayer]

Hi all --

Sorry for being a full week behind the times here.  I read through 
the last week's worth in one sitting & took some notes, but I'm not 
sure if it will all make sense.  Bear with me...

MOVING THE FAQS TO FA'S SERVER -- Sounds great.

NAME CHANGE: ROLL OUT WITH NEW SERVER -- sounds great.

TACKLING THE TOP PRIORITY FAQS -- I think the team approach sounds 
really great.  As Cindy noted, the prior approach of assigning 10 
FAQs to one person made somewhat more sense back in the Day than it 
would now.  At the time the FAQ project was conceived, we had about 
12 people willing to help cull through messages & write FAQs.  We had 
a plethora of FAQ topics, so everyone took at least 5 FAQs on.  Simon 
and I were pretty much the only ones to complete our entire 
assignment, with Neil doing some heavy work as well.  

I agree that a Harry FAQ is top priority.  Yes, Neil is right that 
Simon had done a draft & it should be in the files area.  It might 
make a useful skeleton but would be drastically out of date at this 
point.

I think Hagrid, Malfoys and the Law & Justice topics are top 
priorities after Harry.  I do have a suggestion on Dumbledore.  Caius 
did a superb character summary of Dumbledore, and I'd recommend that 
we use that as a basis for starting on the Dumbledore FAQ.  

I have more to say on FAQs that can be eliminated, combined or added 
below.

FAQ STYLE -- I think I still like the idea of the FAQs being somewhat 
individualistic, though it might be good to identify some matters of 
form that we'd want to make uniform throughout all the FAQs (such as 
linking to message numbers).  Some FAQs lent themselves more to a Q&A 
format, while others were best served by something more narrative -- 
or at least that was our collective thinking in the prior years.  

Incidentally, the reason none of the FAQs that I did link to message 
numbers is that I lacked the techie skills to make this happen.  I 
simply composed in Word and hit "save as HTML" (which I understand 
makes many people break out in hives).  

FAQ TABLE OF CONTENTS -- I still like the idea of keeping the undone 
FAQs listed somewhere in the "Table of Contents" or Index page.  It 
*does* alert people that we're aware we need a FAQ on various 
topics.  I like Gwen's suggestion of Completed, Nearing Completion 
and various times of estimated completion for the remainder.  I hear 
Cindy's concerns, but I don't think it will be hard to revise so that 
the deadlines make sense if we get offtrack.

MESSAGES TO CULL -- I'm in agreement with Elkins.  Let's focus on the 
newest ones but definitely have it as a goal to get the pre-25,000 
messages done too.  

UPDATE DATABASE -- I signed up for one grouping.  Count me in as an 
active FAQ'er.  :--)

EXCEL OR WORD -- I'd have voted for Excel, which I think is a 
tremendously powerful program.  But, I can certainly work in Word 
easily enough.  

SUBJECT HEADINGS FILE -- Please!  Amen.  In the previous culling of 
the 7500 message archives, we had lots of people entering in subject 
headings & so lots of things that were similar were entered in 
separate lines.  

We can probably get rid of:

> Character Accents 
>Chronology and Timelines 
> Audio Versions 
> CoverArt & Covers from Around the World 
> Fan Clubs 
> Harry Potter Humor 
Merchandise

Penny