I apologize for the sketchy nature of this proposal - this is all I have time for tonight. Abstract -------- Volunteers are wanted to help building a comprehensive, powerful, easy to use and innovative documentation tool for LISTSERV based on gopher and the LISTSERV database functions. Only moderate knowledge of LISTSERV is required for the bulk of the work ("task 1" below). Contributions are expected from list owners and user support people who could eventually recover their investment in time through a reduction in end user questions. Description ----------- Most of the questions asked by regular end users, list owners and LISTSERV maintainers alike have been answered many times on mailing lists such as LSTSRV-L and LSTOWN-L, or are available from release notes and other documents that can be easily searched using the LISTSERV database functions. Unfortunately, users are too lazy to learn how to use the database functions and keep posting the same questions to the lists (or, in more optimistic terms, one could say the initial investment of learning how to use the database may not seem warranted to a user who is confident he will not need to ask more questions in the near future). In addition, because the same questions are asked all the time, database searches will typically find dozens of answers, some of which are incorrect or incomplete. The users want "safe", "official" answers. FAQ files would probably not help, due to the volume of questions. There would have to be thousands of lines of FAQ, probably split into several files, and users who are not familiar with editors will have a hard time finding their question. The project is to have a number of independent groups extract answers from the list archives and consolidate them into comprehensive, up to date and accurate "answer sheets" which will then be made available via gopher in the usual tree-based fashion. The "credo" of the project is that, if this tree structure is made intuitive enough, users will easily find the information they are looking for in little more time than it would take them to send mail to user support or to a mailing list - and they may find answers to other things they were curious about on the way down the tree. If this proves successful, the project can then be extended by having actual tutorial items inserted in the hierarchy. The organization ---------------- In order to get the work done faster and to allow people with a moderate amount of time to contribute, the work is carried out in parallel by a number of independent groups. Each group is coordinated by a knowledgeable LISTSERV user, preferrably with user support experience. Ideally there should be another 5-10 editors in the group, preferrably at the same geographical location. Task 1 ------ The group coordinator is sent 10-25,000 lines of source material, as per his request. This will normally be list archives in chronological order. The coordinator splits the material in chronologically contiguous files of a manageable size and spreads the work among the editors for "task 1". The editors simply edit the files and identify question-and-answer sequences. The original question is extracted from the posting in which it first appeared, with the name of the poster removed and '>' signs placed in column 1. The 'Date:' and 'Subject:' fields of that original posting are kept, and the editor changes the subject if it is not meaningful. All other header fields or signature data are removed. The editor then looks for answers to the question, discarding duplicates and answers which later turned out to be incorrect. One or several answers are selected and appended to the question file; the 'From:' line containing the name of the person who answered is kept, all other header fields are removed and so is unrelated information. Each question is filed into a separate disk file. When the editor is done, he reviews his list of questions and removes or merges duplicates. Except for "official" announcements from release notes or the like, the answer sheets should not exceed 2-3 pages. When everything is ready, the editor forwards all the files to his coordinator. As you can see this is something which can easily be asked of students working for user support or similar. Three sessions of a couple hours each should be able to accomplish quite a lot without boring the students too much - this isn't worse than reading a backlog from some large usenet groups to find the answer to some particular problem. The students can be motivated by being told that they will learn a lot about LISTSERV in the process (and LISTSERV knowledge is usually a plus if you are looking for a part time user support involvement to help paying your studies). And, of course, everyone will receive credit. Task 2 ------ The coordinator receives all the question files from his group and first repeats the process of eliminating duplicates. An EXEC will be provided to make a subject list from the question files. Questions which have become obsolete are eliminated or replaced with a short writeup if the coordinator feels the question is likely to be asked anyway. After checking the validity of the answers, the 'From:' fields are removed and the various answers are merged into a more coherent writeup, if necessary. The 'From:' fields are only kept when it is important to know who provided the answer - for instance in comparisons between LISTEARN and LISTSERV it will be important to identify replies from Turgut and from me. Above all, the coordinator makes sure the subjects are meaningful and makes a first rough classification of the questions according to a short document to be provided before the project starts. Minimally, the questions will be marked as maintainer, list-owner, general user, mailing list, file server, database, etc. A few XEDIT macros will be provided to make this task easier. The coordinator finally ships the couple hundred remaining files to the central coordinator. Task 3 ------ The central coordinator(s) repeat the process of eliminating duplicate questions and are responsible for quality control and classification of the questions in a gopher tree. There is a fourth task to actually implement the whole thing on a gopher server and make a LISTSERV database interface, but it is not described here. How to apply? ------------- Reply to me and let me know which sort of tasks you would be willing to do and how much volume you think you can handle. You can also reply to the LSTSRV-L list if you want to make comments about the proposal. Do not reply to LSTOWN-L unless your comments are specifically aimed at list owners. Eric