I've thrown a bunch of updates at the FAQ, and brought some of the original questions up to date with current practice:
http://www.faisal.com/docs/ror-list-faq.xhtml
As always, feel free to send me comments, new questions, flames, etc.
-faisal
Faisal N Jawdat wrote:
I've thrown a bunch of updates at the FAQ, and brought some of the original questions up to date with current practice:
To help improve this forum, the regulars here should borrow two excellent techniques which news:comp.lang.c++ has used successfully.
We need to automatically post that FAQ once a week, in a post called "Read this FAQ before you post".
And each time anyone asks a question which the FAQ covers, don't answer it. Briefly (and politely) provide a link to the page in the FAQ with the answer. Follow up with the friendly admonition "always check the FAQ before posting".
These behaviors will make this forum much more useful to everyone, and we will attract more senior regulars. People who currently don't have time to wade thru all the posts that just say "how do I start programming Rails without reading a stupid book?"...
Know a clean way to do this? Failing that I'll probably just set up a cron job to mail out an html-to-text version of the file.
-faisal
Faisal N Jawdat wrote:
We need to automatically post that FAQ once a week, in a post called "Read this FAQ before you post". Know a clean way to do this? Failing that I'll probably just set up a cron job to mail out an html-to-text version of the file.
-faisal Hi Faisal,
I wonder if it's better to mail out only the questions with links to the answer. That way, the email size will be smaller but people will still know which questions have been answered in the FAQ.
You've done a great job with the FAQ - one suggestion I have is to name/ number the sections and the questions in the sections so that people can answer new mails with statements like "See question 2.3 in the FAQ"
I'll contact you separately myself to add to the answers to some of the questions.
Cheers, Mohit. 7/10/2007 | 11:12 AM.
Faisal N Jawdat wrote:
We need to automatically post that FAQ once a week, in a post called "Read this FAQ before you post".
Know a clean way to do this?
No. Unless it's in the Google interface (what are the odds??).
Google for [Shiva "comp.lang.c++" welcome message] and work your way out to how he does it. He posted that once.
Failing that I'll probably just set up a cron job to mail out an html-to-text version of the file.
That's probably how. But don't mail the FAQ out; mail out a "welcome" message that directs people to the FAQ. Mail out the Meta-FAQ.
We need to automatically post that FAQ once a week, in a post called "Read this FAQ before you post".
Know a clean way to do this? No. Unless it's in the Google interface (what are the odds??).
How long would it take to write & cron a ruby script to parse the FAQ and spit out an email to the list? 
Only takes 1 email and everyone will get it.
Cliff
