
Infrequently Asked Questions of FAQs - duck
http://www.alistapart.com/articles/infrequently-asked-questions-of-faqs/
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lincolnq
If a site has an FAQ page, I'll read that first because it (perhaps oddly)
usually gives me the best detailed overview of what the site is. I will just
read the FAQ top-to-bottom. A recent example was for NearlyFreeSpeech.net --
somebody linked it on HN a couple weeks ago, and I got that it was hosting but
I didn't understand their philosophy or business, really, until I discovered
and read their FAQ. This is a frequent experience, although some sites do a
good enough job of explaining what they do that I don't need their FAQ.

I said it was odd, but it actually makes sense: even if the questions are
made-up, the format encourages the author to think about what questions will
be relevant to people -- it makes them address "what do we do" in a people-
centric rather than feature-centric way. (And we all know that's good
business.)

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astine
The question and answer format of a FAQ has some advantages over general
exposition as a means of explaining some things to users even not when
addressing specific user questions.

Sometimes, as a user, I don't know what questions I should be asking. A FAQ
allows one to explain something in a sort of dialectic, giving me not only the
information I would have received just by reading the site, but also helping
me to better understand the mind of the author. It acts as a summary of what
the author sees as the most relevant points, or essential knowledge and is
arranged (usually) in a more readable format for me at least, than of the
large paragraphs elsewhere on a site.

In fact, the OP demonstrates this value by writing his post in the format. He,
likely meant to be ironic, but I was much better able to understand the intent
of each segment of the article because it's title was in the form of a
question. I knew going in, what I was supposed to learn from each segment.

I took studying classes back in highschool and I remember that they taught me
to read books in several passes. The first pass is to give you a general idea
of what is being discussed to give you an opportunity to form questions which
can be answered on the second pass. A third pass can be used to addr3ess any
questions brought up by the second, and so on. This kind of learning is
supported by FAQs in that they allow one to largely skip the first step.

IMHO

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KC8ZKF
It is my recollection that FAQs were a product of Usenet, where there really
were frequently asked questions. The salty dogs who ran the group would get
sick of seeing the same questions over and over, so they would compile them
all in an article which would be posted on a regular basis. You were supposed
to read this before asking any question. It didn't work.

~~~
btilly
Actually it did work. It just didn't work perfectly.

A lot of people really would read the FAQ and not ask questions. I did that,
and so did many others. So adding a question to a FAQ would reduce the
frequency of the question, but not eliminate the occurrence.

But then there was the second, bigger, benefit. Which is that when people
asked that question people could just said "Read the FAQ" rather than
laboriously typing up the answer. Which saved work answering the question, and
served to point other people to the FAQ.

~~~
KC8ZKF
I'll grant you that. Of course there was a price to pay. The FAQ had to be
maintained, sometimes meta-discussions about the FAQ ate up more time and
bandwidth than just simply fnord answering the questions, and sometimes the
FAQ was used as a weapon to discourage n00bs.

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markkanof
FAQs have become so ingrained in the culture of the internet that a lot of
people think it is an absolute necessity when building a new website.

I've seen a meeting about website content turn into a brainstorming session to
come up with questions that a visitor to the site might ask. So instead of
just not having the FAQ initially and waiting until a question is asked a few
times to add it to the FAQ people come up with all sorts of ridiculous
questions that will never be asked by any real user of the site.

Seems like not the best idea.

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orborde
I really like the way that this is organized as a FAQ itself. It has a very
nice completeness to it in that way.

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imp
This is my favorite page of infrequently asked questions. It's for an outdoor
concert hall. Scroll down to see some of the odd questions:

 _"My father is hard of hearing and although I tell him your system amplifies
sound sufficiently for him to hear, he's still afraid he won't hear what's
going on. Do you have anything else that can help him out?"_

and

 _"My mother used to perform at Cain Park in the 1930s-50s and hasn't been
back since. She'd love to see a show there now, but she's in a wheelchair and
doesn't think it would work out, getting her in and out. Is she correct?"_

<http://www.cainpark.com/facts_faq.asp>

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moe
Very nice article.

I especially like that the article itself is laid out like a FAQ, with all
headlines being questions.

