Re: Making threads last

The Low Golden Willow (phoenix@ugcs.caltech.edu)
Wed, 23 Apr 1997 11:07:02 -0700 (PDT)


On Apr 23, 6:41pm, Anders Sandberg wrote:

} What I would like to see if we could distill the results of some threads
}
} The main problem to solve is how to get these editors: while I think just

The mailing list for Julian May's Galactic Milieu did something like
this. We wanted to coalesce the common discussions and the usual
arguments over them. One volunteer did the basic structure and made up
a list of questions and argument topics.

The writing of answers was done by whoever cared about that topic to put
forward summaries of their arguments and sometimes summaries of opposing
arguments as well. For example, I picked up "Who is Fury?" among other
questions, and had the fun of presenting my beliefs as well as the range
of common other beliefs. The organizer then collected the summaries and
stuck them back into her structure. Voila, super-FAQ, and very little
to talk about afterwards. Much more useful than an archive.

Who did what sections, or even paragraphs, is clearly labeled at each
place. Instant local immortality for anyone who worked on the FAQ.
Forevermore anyone who looks up certain questions will see my name and
the wisdom and fairness of my summaries. :)

So we could try something like that.

sci.crypt's cryptography FAQ is fairly neat; I don't know how it was
made.

Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix

And even priests were coming to spend some time in it, because of the
collection of religious books. There were one thousand, two hundred and
eighty-three religious books in there now, each one--according to
itself--the only one any man need ever read. It was sort of nice to see
them all together. -- Terry Pratchett, _Small Gods_