The FAQ
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The FAQ was a long list.
That list was only ever going to get longer, it was never going to shrink. If anything it would have been split into more pages.
That list had questions that I – because of feedback – wanted in more than one place. I had people saying they had looked in the faq, they told me what questions that they had used and they had missed the information. They had been thinking differently, they had needed an answer that was in another part of the faq but because the list was already long I couldn’t then make it longer to do the necessary duplication.Tags let me do that.
I can tag posts with many tags and know that someone will see them if they happen to use the tag. Sure someone might look for ‘Photos’ or ‘Pictures’ or ‘jpg’ and I’m hoping that ‘Images’ isn’t too much of a leap in the dark.
The fact is that tags work here. There are tags on every blog, if someone’s tags don’t get on the tags page I get email, the tags in this forum work.
Tag clouds are all over the place, it’s not a unique phenomenon to us here.A simple list does serve some people but to create a list wouldn’t help. Feedbacks I got told me that the list was too long, it was confusing. That tag list on the FAQ – one click and they see all the questions for that tag. One click. I don’t think that the added ability to sort questions is outweighed by one click.
With respect to the 3 of you – you know your way around here. The people sending in feedback saying the list was too long did not and it’s there for them too.
Add a list? Then people would click to see all, scan it, feel confused and send me questions – which would be in the faq.
The FAQ gets a lot of traffic and we do listen to feedback – and that feedback said we needed to change.
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As Podz describes a list is unlikely to compliment the current design. This matches my experience.
A “Getting Started” experience would compliment the current experience (including http://wordpress.com/features), but that also takes advanced technical communication skills and lots of time and dedication.
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Okay, okay “tags” she said … well, here’s a perfect head banging example. Picture this you’ve got a customer rolling up the driveway while you are trying to help someone on the forum find out what size of image they need to create for their regulus blog header.
(1) I typed “images headers” into the FAQs search box and got back “not found search again”.
(2) I then typed in “headers sizes” and got back “not found search again”.
(3) I then typed in “customizing blog headers” and got back “not found search again”.
(4) As I know the information is there and already have wasted time I want to look at a list but there isn’t one, so now I have to think “how would I phrase that as a question”. I typed in “what is the size of a header image for a regulus theme blog?” and got back “not found search again”.
(5) My eyes narrowed to tiny little slits (if you know what I mean) I took a deep and ragged grumpy nose snorting breath, smiled sweetly at the customer and gave them some stuff to look at to keep them busy and went for it again. I typed in “picture” and I got this list
Search Results* How big can my images be?
* How do I link to other pictures?
* How do I upload pictures?
* How do I get text to go around a picture?
* I cannot upload images
* My flickr widget pictures don’t change
* What is allowed in a picture filename?
* Can I change colours and pictures on my blog?
* Posting Photos from FlickrAha! I went for the first link and finally found what I was looking for.
SHEESH! what a time waster.
Yes, it’s true that I’ve been around for 6 months now and that I know my way around. It’s also true that my computer desk and the walls around it are covered with little yellow sticky notes that contain for example header sizes, which I have now memorized.
I know I sound ungrateful but I’m not happy and I’m struggling to make another choice between my ears. **sob** -
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Gottcha [she grinned]. If you apply the KISS principle, look for the “images” in the fog bank and you’ll score :P
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Yikes, I didn’t mean to start anything or get Podz all riled up. As pointed out, it’s him that has to deal with the users who can’t find what they’re looking for, so, if this new method works, then great. Frankly, given the shear magnitude of subjects involved, I can’t imagine there being any one perfect solution. Personally, I’d love to see the whole thing done as a mind map with clickable links at every node, but even that would tend to lose some people.
Anyway, I’ll put together a podcast FAQ to describe a method for podcasting from the WP.com free account–or at least making it look like you are. Is there anything new (within the past four or five months or so) that I should know about WP.com RSS feeds, feed enclosures, or special arrangements that have been made with outside feed aggregators (like FeedBurner) to combine multiple feeds or replace the default WP feeds? I haven’t been keeping up with the MU updates here, and any of that kind of stuff would have an impact on podcasting.
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