StackExchange as a whole seems to have chucked the FAQ concept, which has been with technical-internet spaces since the middle Usenet period, as a poor solution to a bad problem.
- FAQs mostly serve as a club to whack LazyNet denizens for being lazy.
- No matter how often you repost it with
***READ ME BEFORE POSTING!!***it won't be read by LazyNetters (and will annoy regulars).- The Web 1.0 variant of this, the Sticky Post, is ignored just as readily.
- The Web 2.0 variant, the intermodal that pops up when you click the
Ask!button, just gets clicked past like every otherclippyintermodal ever.
To overextend a metaphor, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make them drink, and you sure as heck won't make them drink by dumping a bucket of water over their head.
Required-reading FAQs can most definitely be created. A series of web-slides going over various aspects of the FAQ, followed by a brief quiz to test for retention, for example. However, it increases the barrier to entry, and StackExchange is all about low barriers to entry.
FAQs are broken and don't serve their originally intended purpose, so best to integrate them into a much larger 'how does this community work' document. Instead of a carefully honed topicality club to whack LazyNetters with, we're left with an encyclopedia-sized club to whack 'em with instead.
One of my biggest quibbles with the new system, is that the http://$mainsite/faq shortcut goes to http://$mainsite/help/ not http://$mainsite/help/on-topic like it should. We have 3 years of 'As you can see in the FAQ' comments pointing to the wrong spot now.
Grr, arrg.
The current system really should be modified in a few key ways. We'll probably have to resort to MSO to get it done, and deal with all that MSOness, but I think it's needed:
![How To Ask for new users][1]
- The low-rep/no-rep Ask! screen should be amended in the following ways:
- Keep the bolded text at the top. There is a reason 'not a professional' is one of our site-specific Close Reasons now.
- A link added below the bolded text linking to /help/on-topic, reading something like 'It is a good idea to review what else is on topic here'.
![New User header][2]
- The not-logged in header is actually pretty good. 'Professional' is thrown under the nose nose of anyone who comes here, and the Tell Me More link points to our about page, which also underlines Professional.
- Given the technical nature of our users, a LazyNet friendly link should be added below the button named 'Or you can just skip to what's topical here' that links to /help/on-topic. Yes, it pollutes the UI, but it's the kind of coddling behavior that'll actually funnel more people to the document we wish they'd all read. [1]: https://i.sstatic.net/rvcXK.png [2]: https://i.sstatic.net/deDdl.png
