Infrequently Asked Questions of FAQs | Hacker News Reader

Infrequently Asked Questions of FAQs

alistapart.com

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If a site has an FAQ page, I'll read that first because it (perhaps oddly) usually gives me the best detailed overview of what the site is. I will just read the FAQ top-to-bottom. A recent example was for NearlyFreeSpeech.net -- somebody linked it on HN a couple weeks ago, and I got that it was hosting but I didn't understand their philosophy or business, really, until I discovered and read their FAQ. This is a frequent experience, although some sites do a good enough job of explaining what they do that I don't need their FAQ.

I said it was odd, but it actually makes sense: even if the questions are made-up, the format encourages the author to think about what questions will be relevant to people -- it makes them address "what do we do" in a people-centric rather than feature-centric way. (And we all know that's good business.)

The question and answer format of a FAQ has some advantages over general exposition as a means of explaining some things to users even not when addressing specific user questions.

Sometimes, as a user, I don't know what questions I should be asking. A FAQ allows one to explain something in a sort of dialectic, giving me not only the information I would have received just by reading the site, but also helping me to better understand the mind of the author. It acts as a summary of what the author sees as the most relevant points, or essential knowledge and is arranged (usually) in a more readable format for me at least, than of the large paragraphs elsewhere on a site.

In fact, the OP demonstrates this value by writing his post in the format. He, likely meant to be ironic, but I was much better able to understand the intent of each segment of the article because it's title was in the form of a question. I knew going in, what I was supposed to learn from each segment.

I took studying classes back in highschool and I remember that they taught me to read books in several passes. The first pass is to give you a general idea of what is being discussed to give you an opportunity to form questions which can be answered on the second pass. A third pass can be used to addr3ess any questions brought up by the second, and so on. This kind of learning is supported by FAQs in that they allow one to largely skip the first step.

IMHO

It is my recollection that FAQs were a product of Usenet, where there really were frequently asked questions. The salty dogs who ran the group would get sick of seeing the same questions over and over, so they would compile them all in an article which would be posted on a regular basis. You were supposed to read this before asking any question. It didn't work.

Actually it did work. It just didn't work perfectly.

A lot of people really would read the FAQ and not ask questions. I did that, and so did many others. So adding a question to a FAQ would reduce the frequency of the question, but not eliminate the occurrence.

But then there was the second, bigger, benefit. Which is that when people asked that question people could just said "Read the FAQ" rather than laboriously typing up the answer. Which saved work answering the question, and served to point other people to the FAQ.

I'll grant you that. Of course there was a price to pay. The FAQ had to be maintained, sometimes meta-discussions about the FAQ ate up more time and bandwidth than just simply fnord answering the questions, and sometimes the FAQ was used as a weapon to discourage n00bs.

FAQs were very successful on Usenet and listservs, as evidenced by their enduring popularity. They served to pass along the accumulated wisdom of the newsgroup (even if they didn't eliminate the repeat questions.)

But getting back to the article, this may not be the best way to provide help or additional info on a website. In particular don't use the label "FAQ".

FAQs have become so ingrained in the culture of the internet that a lot of people think it is an absolute necessity when building a new website.

I've seen a meeting about website content turn into a brainstorming session to come up with questions that a visitor to the site might ask. So instead of just not having the FAQ initially and waiting until a question is asked a few times to add it to the FAQ people come up with all sorts of ridiculous questions that will never be asked by any real user of the site.

Seems like not the best idea.

I really like the way that this is organized as a FAQ itself. It has a very nice completeness to it in that way.

This is my favorite page of infrequently asked questions. It's for an outdoor concert hall. Scroll down to see some of the odd questions:

"My father is hard of hearing and although I tell him your system amplifies sound sufficiently for him to hear, he's still afraid he won't hear what's going on. Do you have anything else that can help him out?"

and

"My mother used to perform at Cain Park in the 1930s-50s and hasn't been back since. She'd love to see a show there now, but she's in a wheelchair and doesn't think it would work out, getting her in and out. Is she correct?"

http://www.cainpark.com/facts_faq.asp

Very nice article.

I especially like that the article itself is laid out like a FAQ, with all headlines being questions.

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