FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

[Kayleigh McMillan]

(12-08-2012 07:46 PM)Tad Carlucci Wrote:  Long ago, shortly after when we changed the name to the Internet Protocol, I was the principal maintainer of the reference implementation of one of the core protocols. Back then it was all LISTSERV and USENET and every week I had my servers push out the FAQ. One of the other team members had been maintaining the FAQ and it was getting to huge.

When I took over the project, the documentation was a shambles: if it existed, it was way out of date.

While those of us working on the project were of the opinion that "RTFM" was sorta snarky, it came up often because other users would jump and say it before we could give a more full answer. Of course, early on, "RTFM" was more of a joke, since there was no FM to R. So one of the first jobs was to WTFM so users could RTFM! One of my first goals was to eliminate as many FAQs as possible .. by correcting the program and updating the documentation.

FAQs are good, when done right. But the project team should realize that, if an issue occurs often enough to become a FAQ, it probably means there's something wrong with the program or its documentation.

ROFL that is just hilarious!