From owner-freebsd-doc@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Dec 4 23:52:27 2004 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 736A316A4CE for ; Sat, 4 Dec 2004 23:52:27 +0000 (GMT) Received: from mail.soaustin.net (mail.soaustin.net [207.200.4.66]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4A43D43D49 for ; Sat, 4 Dec 2004 23:52:27 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from linimon@lonesome.com) Received: by mail.soaustin.net (Postfix, from userid 502) id E8214148D7; Sat, 4 Dec 2004 17:52:26 -0600 (CST) Date: Sat, 4 Dec 2004 17:52:26 -0600 (CST) From: Mark Linimon X-X-Sender: linimon@pancho To: Chuck Swiger In-Reply-To: <41B1F194.6060807@mac.com> Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: TEXT/PLAIN; charset=US-ASCII cc: FreeBSD-doc@FreeBSD.org Subject: Re: Merging the FAQ -> handbook, build time options, proof ofconcept patch X-BeenThere: freebsd-doc@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Documentation project List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 04 Dec 2004 23:52:27 -0000 On Sat, 4 Dec 2004, Chuck Swiger wrote: > If you can't answer a frequent question with a paragraph or so, I would be > happy if the FAQ gave a brief intro and a link to a more comprehensive > description elsewhere. Whether elsewhere is in the handbook, some other > article, or elsewhere on the web shouldn't matter. That's a good point. > Heh. My take on this is that whenever someone answers a question on a > mailing list with "This is a FAQ", such material actually ought to be > in the FAQ. Another good point, but possibly >1 FAQ. e.g. one for the 'what is FreeBSD' stuff, another for 'WARNING - WRITE_DMA'. The former would hold really general things that rarely change. The latter would hold stuff that always changes. > In particular, searching the FAQ either via the find mechanism in one's > browser or via http://www.freebsd.org/search/search.html about an error like > "ad0: WARNING - WRITE_DMA interrupt was seen but timeout fired LBA=2928095" > produces nothing. > > Another example would be searching for "why does ruby dump core when I run > portupgrade?"... More good points. A related one is that our mailing list search feature doesn't really apply itself well to these kinds of things -- you will get a match on 20 different people asking the question, and perhaps 1 or 2 where the question is answered. This is, of course, a more general problem of searching -- you can become equally frustrated by doing a Google search. Arguments in favor of moving those kinds of questions into some other venue than the existing FAQ is that 1) it wouldn't necessarily have to be in DocBook, so the barrier to creating new entries would be lower, meaning that 2) we'd have a lot more developers contributing stuff to it. mcl