Re: 5 new entries for FAQ - Mailing list pgsql-general

From Jim C. Nasby
Subject Re: 5 new entries for FAQ
Date
Msg-id 20050816062029.GD5928@pervasive.com
Whole thread Raw
In response to Re: 5 new entries for FAQ  (Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>)
Responses Re: 5 new entries for FAQ  (Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog@svana.org>)
List pgsql-general
On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 11:22:58PM +0200, Martijn van Oosterhout wrote:
> On Wed, Aug 10, 2005 at 03:33:16PM -0400, Bruce Momjian wrote:
> > For the batch job and single-CPU issues, they did not fit into existing
> > FAQ entries, and I am not sure they are asked enough to be added as
> > FAQs.  I am interested to hear other's opinions on this.
>
> Maybe, just looking through my email and my memories they've been a few
> times. How often a question needs to be asked before putting it in the
> FAQ is easier than answering it each time, well, that's a matter of
> debate.
>
> The other extreme is the Exim FAQ which is huge, but it has answered
> every question I've ever asked. Not sure if that's a goal though.

My experience is that long FAQ's are fine, so long as they're easy to
search through. This means you've got to support users who may not know
the magic word to search on. A good example is finding the limits for
how many rows in a table; searching on limit gets you nothing.

The alternative is to make it very easy for users to skim through the
TOC to find what they need. Right now that's not very easy to do because
2 of the catagories are over 9 items long (humans deal with info best in
chunks of 5-9 items; most people do best with 7 items or less).
--
Jim C. Nasby, Sr. Engineering Consultant      jnasby@pervasive.com
Pervasive Software        http://pervasive.com        512-569-9461

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