Faq

Just a quick question: how are we going to link to our Programming FAQ page when there's already a board FAQ link here? Won't that get a little confusing?

Originally posted by Govtcheez
Just a quick question: how are we going to link to our Programming FAQ page when there's already a board FAQ link here? Won't that get a little confusing?

Why not just concatenate the faq's into one?

We need some automatic way to reference the FAQ so that when a newbie asks a common FAQ question a robot automatically posts an answer. What do you think?

It'd be REALLY tough to have it automatically do that, but we could make it easier. I'm looking into it as we speak. I found something on Sourceforge called FAQ-Pool that might do the trick.

Why don't you just draw up a FAQ and when somebody asks a dumb question that matches what's in the
database, he gets shuttled over the the FAQ page?
You could do it with hypertext and string matches,
couldn't you?

rick barclay

it'd have to recognize certain words just like some evil government echelon program to pick out OSAMA and COLUMBINE can draw attention to this board.

suspected echelon words: OSAMA BIN LADEN COLUMBINE ECHELON NSA U.S.S.EISENHOWER BUSH ASSASINATE CLINTON CHENEY SCHOOL OF THE AMERICAS.. those are just the one's i remember.. i bet this board is like tagged for watching now!

You could predict the probability that the question is in the FAQ based on the frequency of certain words in the question and the size of the population of words. If a a high cumulative amount of the words fall withing one standard deviation of the mean than call the FAQ.

an FAQ question thing like that could easily be written in ASP.

ya ya dont lecture me about it being VBScript.....

It's possible that something like that could be done, but I'm kindof a perfectionist, so I'd hate all the false positives and negatives we'd get.

About shuttling them somewhere:
How would we shuttle them? Intercept their message before it gets posted and instead direct them to the faq?

Hehee, I just had a neat idea--instead of accepting anyone's first post, redirect them to the faq(and tell them why they were redirected). That should do the trick in most cases.

> how are we going to link to our Programming FAQ page when there's already a board FAQ link here?

If you haven't noticed, there's a link to the FAQ at the bottom of the page. So from now on, just say read the FAQ at the bottom of the page.

The bases for this arguement is that many well known programmers at this board get tired of re-itterating the reply: Read the FAQ!

Many of us know that there is a document, however newbies somehow mysteriously do not see it and we are often fooled into answering the same questions over and over again even though we know better. And the newbies know that they should know better than to ask stupid questions.

After seeing many of the same questions repeat themselves the battle seems hopeless.

Regarding the FAQ link at the bottom:

I think it should read Programming FAQ instead of Board FAQ. When I see a link that says "Board FAQ" it makes me think of the FAQ link at the top of the page that talks about how to post messages and edit your profile.

It might be a good idea just to set up a separate page
and call it "Examples," or some such. That's what I'm
hoping to do at my own site.

The idea of a searchable database looks good at
first glance, but then when you look at some of the
posts and the atrocious spellings by some members
(no names, please), you realize that this idea most
probably is futile.

My idea of an examples page is simply one where
a previously posted piece of code is dissected line
by line for the benefit of those (like myself) who
need to know every little why and wherefore before
they begin to understand what they are looking at.

Who wouldn't volunteer to do something like that?

If the webmaster here says no, we can try it over
at my site, where I've had a similar discussion
with people nice enough to offer me help developing
flashdaddee.com.

rick barclay