65457 - FAQ for mozilla.general newsgroup

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(www.mozilla.org :: General, enhancement)

Description

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

I'm sure the .general newsgroup would benefit from an FAQ that contains pointers
to the most important general docs on mozilla.org, e.g. the community page, the
roadmap, the milestone page, ...

Please create such an FAQ and publish it on mozilla.org. Its URL should be
designed to survive the website redesign planned for the near future.

Comment 1

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

There's no *guarantee* that any URLs will survive the reorg ;-) (With one or two 
very well known exceptions...)

I am negotiating with gerbil (the guy who currently maintains the very cool 
non-mozilla.org Mozilla FAQ) to move it to mozilla.org. After that happens, 
we'll see where we are on the whole FAQ issue. It could be that we could 
persuade him to take this issue under his belt.

Gerv

Comment 2

[Mitchell Baker]

After the reorg, the important docs should be easier to find.  That's part of
the goal of the reorg.  Ideally, the FAQ requested should not be necessary.

And until then, I'm afraid an FAQ posted somewhere will be no easier to find
than the actual documents themselves.
Mitchell

Comment 3

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

This is partly covered by bug 66387, of course - the results of that should be 
very useful, and maybe we can persuade gerbil to expand to answer some of the 
most common questions raised in n.p.m.general.

Gerv

Comment 4

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

Mitchell, you didn't get my point.

1. .general is a high-traffic newsgroup (at least it was when I was reading it)
2. A lot of questions asked there would not need to be asked if the poster knew
where to find the answers.
3a. Answering these questions manually takes a lot of time that could be better
spent doing something else.
3b. Not answering these questions loses potential contributors (worst case) or
contributes to mozilla's bad reputation in the public (best case) because nobody
likes being ignored.
4. An FAQ solves this problem.
5. The fact that FAQs are in use for many other newsgroups shows that having
FAQs is a good thing.

Maybe you aren't reading .general. But those who do agree that having an FAQ is
a good thing. That's why so many people have been creating all the Mozilla/NS6
FAQs recently:
http://www.gerbilbox.com/newzilla/
http://www.computeralt.com/~scott/ns6faq.html
http://www.objective2k.co.uk/goodmozillauser.htm

> After the reorg, the important docs should be easier to find.  That's part of
> the goal of the reorg.  Ideally, the FAQ requested should not be necessary.

Some people (like me) find out about the newsgroups before they find out about
the website. A well structured website is fine, but you need to know about it
before you can use it. An FAQ is still necessary. And if it consists only of a
few pointers that's fine. But at least there has to be one. And if it only links
to http://www.mozilla.org/community.html . Maybe I should draft one to make it
clearer what I mean...

> And until then, I'm afraid an FAQ posted somewhere will be no easier to find
> than the actual documents themselves.

That's a completely different issue. Advertising the FAQ is bug 65451. And that
has nothing to do with the website reorg. It will be the same problem before and
afterwards. But before you can advertise it on the newsgroup, you must _have_
one and it must have a well-defined URL. So this bug has to be fixed: an
official URL of the FAQ for the .general newsgroup is needed. Only _then_ it can
be advertised and improved. But first it has to exist.

Comment 5

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

<ahem> May I also politely point out that this bug is definitely Not Mitchell's 
Problem, despite the fact that she's the default owner for mozilla.org 
Miscellaneous. I suggest that the best course of action for this bug is for you 
to coordinate with gerbil to try and work out what you might want, and if he can 
fit this in to the new FAQ structure.

CCing him, and assigning to [e-mail]. Anyone, feel free to take 
responsibility for this :-)

Gerv

Comment 6

[Asa Dotzler [:asa]]

maybe this belongs in the Documentation Product (Documentation for Mozilla
users, developers and web developers) rather than the mozilla.org Product (Tasks
related to the running of the mozilla.org organization itself)?  

Comment 7

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

If you think this is a documentation issue, fine. I had assigned this to
Mitchell for two reasons:
1. mozilla.general is and will be the first contact with mozilla.org for many
people. The impression people get here will last long. I assumed that Mitchell
(and [e-mail] in general) care about mozilla.org's reputation.
2. She is the author of http://www.mozilla.org/editorials/mozilla-overview.html
which may play an important role in the FAQ for .general .

I apologize if my comments were impolite. I did not intend to offend anyone. The
reason for my strong reaction was that Mitchell's comments sounded much like a
wontfix, and I wouldn't have filed this bug if I didn't think that something
needs to be done about this.

I will attach a draft FAQ shortly so that my idea becomes clearer.

Comment 8

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

Attachment: a (very rough) draft of ideas for an FAQ for mozilla.general

Comment 9

[Dawn Endico]

it looks good although you broke your own rule. its html!  =)

Comment 10

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

Well, this is intended to be put on a web page. :-) If it is ever going to be
posted to the group itself, it should be converted to plaintext before...

Comment 11

[Andreas Franke (gone)]

The link to Scott's NS6 FAQ is broken. That FAQ has moved here:
http://homepages.together.net/~chroma/ns6faq.html

Comment 12

[James Cox]

accepting QA for mozilla developer docs.

some of these bugs have been around for a _long_ time. Reporters, would you
please review the bugs, see if the issues have been resolved, and close bugs
appropriately.

I will do a full review of all bugs not touched in one week (8th April). 

Thanks.

</spam>

Comment 13

[Daniel Wang]

does anyone think we still need this bug?

Comment 14

[Brian Heinrich]

> does anyone think we still need this bug?

Yes.  Yes, we do.

Even assuming that the n.p.m.* groups on n.m.o are gonna be abandoned and left
to l'users, we (as a community) do need some sort of resource to point to for
questions that are, in fact, frequently asked.  See, /e.g./,
<news://news.mozilla.org:119/bb6bse$fhu$[e-mail]> (altho' the question
there is specifically about *.mail-news).

Just how we're gonna go about /getting/ such FAQs in place, given the general
disarray of the d11n project, is another matter. :-(

Since this blocks bug 65447, perhaps we can remove the dependency and just go
with the more general bug?  Just a thought. . . .

Anyone else have any feelings on this?

Comment 15

[Daniel Wang]

Attachment: an FAQ, finally

Finally, an FAQ
* Top-posting vs bottom-posting
* Public but not for end users?
* All I wanted was how to do XXX, but instead I was asked to fix it?
* I was told this is a developer newsgroup, but I don't see any development
  discussion here.

This is a general FAQ and should apply to every forum. Question is: where
should I put it?

Comment 16

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

We already have a general FAQ for the newsgroups, don't we?

Gerv

Comment 17

[Daniel Wang]

> We already have a general FAQ for the newsgroups, don't we?

Until six hours ago, we don't . So, where does this FAQ go?

Comment 18

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

You're right - the text I was thinking of used to be at the top of
community.html, but it's not any more.

I'm not quite sure the text is right yet. For example, the preferred posting
style in Mozilla newsgroups is interspersed and well-trimmed, not
"bottom-posting". Also, it's not very helpful - it says "use user support
forums", but doesn't say where they are. 

Gerv

Comment 19

[Daniel Wang]

Attachment: make etiquette.html shorter

not much here, so let's merge it into etiquette.html first.
remove stuff I think we don't need

Comment 20

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Reassigning Daniel's www.mozilla.org bugs to default assignee.

Comment 21

[Reed Loden [:reed]]

Gerv, do we still need this change?

Comment 22

[Gervase Markham [:gerv]]

Naah. We seem to do OK.

Gerv