FAQ-Why does it not work or does it help to have a FAQ section? A rambling on-

I belive for a FAQ to be helpfull it must be designed to be user-friendly. This may be in the eye-of-the-beholder but user-friendly means it must be quick and easy. Searching on words usually gives too many responses or they do not exists in the data base as created by the search engine being used. I am not a data base person but the idea is to allow the user to get to the subject quickly and easily. The FAQ section needs to be laid out in this manner to be effective and somebody has to do a lot of work to keep it updated.

Some people do not want to take the time to search or do not even look very hard to see if there is an answer to their question.

A decision tree with subjects that can be narrowed down quickly would to me seem to work very well. For instance if I wanted to know about breakin oil after a rebuild. I would type "oil breakin" and it would list all the posts that have to do with this subect. It would not give all post on oil which seems to happen usually or find no listing when I know that there some.

This has been a rambling on my part but I feel that there is a vast storehouse of knowledge in y'all and it needs to be stored and easily accesible for posterity so my grandson can fix my 8N after I am in that great pasture in the sky.

Thanks to y'all for helping me in the past and the help you will give me in the future when I am trying to put my 8N together after taking it apart over a year ago and forgetting where that 11/16" x1/1/2" bolt goes in the engine.

We need to be patient with the novice N owner and novice computer user.
Alex

Consider this, however, from one who has been here for a while too--if you strip away all the questions that are put up by newcomers (old stuff to us seasoned N'ers), what would be left? One of the neat things of the Board is to watch the turnover of people and watch the interaction. The newcomers need to have some place to go and meet other new people, so if by putting a FAQ's section up is an attempt to limit questions to only "unique" questions, I think there would be many friendships not formed, many opinions not shared, and eventually this whole thing would dry up and blow away.

If the repetative questions are boring--zing over to Tractor Talk or Tractor Tales. That strips away all of the repetative dribble.

That's my two cents worth.

JU

FAQ would be nice...but at what cost $$$ also, there always seems to be different people responding to 'repeat' questions and I see that
as a good thing by offering different perspectives than others have in the past.

In a way isn't this a Repeat Question that we have seen a lot of lately?

Thanks

The problems with a FAQ page in no particular order:
1. Someone has to create it and maintain it. To do that it must generate income or provide the page person with enough gratification to do it for free. 1a. Software to create graphics and html aren't cheap or easy to use. there is a considerable investment in time and money to get a page launched. Then ya never know if it's gonna fly.
2. You can never satisfy the audience. They either don't agree, want to validate your indformation and argue sources, or criticize the content, operation or design. 2a. The audience doesn't appreciate the amount of time and work it takes to do a set of pages that work.
3. People will not read it it first and then develop questions.
4. It takes away from the community of the web. Most people here want feedback, not facts necessarily.
5. It makes the author look self-serving:"Hey, the answer's in Ford-FAQ's. Go look it up."
6. The work is never finished. It's always a work-in-progress. The page has to be relevant, timely, and interesting. I like to make make pages that load quickly and have one screenful of information. I hate scrolling. I hate having to wait for a bunch of little cutesy gadgets to perform and pictures to load.

Usually a FAQ is a semi-static compliation of information, while an archive is a growing database that doesn't require an individual to maintain and update it. I like both, but it seems to me that the archive is most useful to me, because with creative searches I can find details that would probably not make it into a FAQ. But for the archive to work for new users of the board and cut down on the repetitive questions, it needs some tweaking.

For starters, a new user is not likely to even notice that there is an archive when they first look at this forum. A sophisticated experienced user of forums of this type may know that it's likely to exist but the average joe probably won't spot that little "View archives" note at the top. I'd like to see some large text displayed very prominently at the top of the main page that explains that there is an archive that likely has information about the user's questions. Then there should be some rudimentary explanation of how to effectively search the archive. And wouldn't it be nice if there was a function that said something like, "If your questions relates to one of the following, click on that subject for a search". Then have an extensive list of common subjects with some keywords (like "little lever under seat"), compiled for Kim by we users, to select from. This type of list would automatically retrieve the latest posts on that subject, along with the oldies.

A true FAQ is extremely hard to develop and maintain and I commend those who have attempted to do this. But it's tough to depend on them in the long run since the developers' circumstances may change (time, server availability, etc.). (A published book with all the esoteric info and trivia that we need would be great, but who has time to do that? And it wouldn't solve the FAQ problem here on the board.)

So I think a visible and friendly archive search function with some instructions and aids to "FAQ-like" searches would be about as good as we could hope for. In lieu of that, I hope we will continue to gently welcome new users who have old questions to the board by assuming they don't know about archives and giving them the help they deserve as N owners. A year from now they may have the answers to our questions.
Don

It would only take a few months to learn to write the necessary computer languages & set up the database archive, perform intelligent search functions, configure GUI displays, maintain the website and don't forget to buy a computer powerful enough to be able to do this as well as a high speed connection so people don't complain about your FREE site being slow and lacking function.

I am sure many people agree this is a wonderful site and is done very well. I am one, and I can fully appreciate the work it takes to keep this site up and running, because I worked on my University Web Page team.

Lets be grateful for what is here, instead of complaining that it isn't good enough. . .I haven't seen the other boards on this site complain about these issues over and over, why do some of the N owners?

My intent in the post was not to critize the current FAQ here at this site but to see if somebody has a better way of presenting and locating a vast amount of information. We are inundated with information these days and we want it now. I am not at all qualified to design a good relational data base system and there are probably others who already have.

I think we need to be tolerant of the new user to this site and help him or her find an answer to a question that is very pressing at the moment. I see by some of the replys to my post that there are several who have good ideas and are knowledgeable about data base systems. The key is the resources to accomplish the task.

Alex