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Comment by alin23 | Hacker News Reader

For my products, FAQs have always been about edge cases where I usually have no control in fixing/implementing.

For example for Lunar (https://lunar.fyi), an app that controls monitors through the DDC standard:

  1. Some monitors may flicker/blackout when Lunar changes brightness
  2. The volume can't be changed for specific monitors
  3. In a 3-monitor setup, 2 of them change brightness as expected, the other doesn't change at all

All of those issues happen a lot (so they're common) but only for specific setups (so they're edge cases).

I have no control over them, they happen because something in the hardware setup is blocking DDC requests for changing brightness/volume etc. The issue is not detectable, the app gets a successful reply from the monitor, just like everything worked.

Best I can do, is a lengthy FAQ: https://lunar.fyi/faq#brightness-not-changing

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This is what I came here to say. I think FAQs for edge cases or very specific questions are very useful.

FAQs can also be a good way to address negative stuff and especially naysayers of a technology or concept - it's difficult to do that directly in content without it getting messy.

For example, a project I'm working on stores data in DNS [0] and some of the feedback we get from technical folks (including HN) is "you can't use other people's infrastructure to do this!" [1]

Addressing this in the spec or content is difficult but having a really clear question of "Is it ok to use other people's infrastructure to serve data?" and having a detailed exploration of that question – far more than you might be able to do in the general content – has real value in my opinion.

0. https://www.num.uk

1. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27632195

That sounds like a troubleshooting section.

Indeed, it is more related to troubleshooting. Which is why Lunar has an automated diagnostics tool which can tell the user if the problem comes from the monitor, and shows some troubleshooting steps specific to their monitor:

https://files.lunar.fyi/lunar-diagnostics-demo.mp4

And yet, after finishing the diagnostics process, the users still send me emails saying that they paid for the app and I should fix Lunar to support their monitor.

> For my products, FAQs have always been about edge cases where I usually have no control in fixing/implementing.

If they're edge cases, they don't fit the "F" in "FAQ".

I don't mean that edge cases are frequent, only that they're frequently asked about.

The edge cases happen for less than 2% of my users, but there's a very high chance of receiving a complaint about that edge case.

If I have 10k users and 100 of those encounter an edge case and 50 of those send me emails in the span of a week, I consider that a frequently asked question about an edge case

The half dozen most encountered edge cases in any given system will often generate the vast majority of the support requests.

Or: The F in FAQ is about the Frequency amongst Questions that are actually Asked.

Given you italicised both common and edge cases I presume you're expecting the following;

You're use of edge cases is non intuitive; If you mean the points in your FAQ are common for the rare setups they effect then perhaps it works. If the effected set ups themselves are common then the issues are not edge cases.

Edge cases by definition are extreme and thus not normal and thus not common.

It’s a bit confusing, I know.

In my view, there are tens of thousands of ways you can arrange your monitor setup.

Given the factors:

  monitor
  cable
  hub/dock/adapter/dongle
  monitor port
  maybe KVM
  Mac device port
  Mac GPU
  Mac CPU architecture
  monitor firmware
  Mac firmware and drivers

There are way too many different types of setups. But most of them work, that’s why I think the ones that don’t work are edge cases.

But I also view them as common because the users that stumble upon those edge cases tend to also complain about them.

They’re not common as in, the app only works for <50% of the users. They’re common as in, I get a ton of email from those 2% of users and I have to respond with the same info every time. So I’d rather have an FAQ where I can direct them to avoid repeating myself.

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