I am a bit surprised that no one mentioned the name of the current FAQ
poster. During the "comp.lang.javascript FAQ question" discussion
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http://groups.google.com/group/comp..._frm/thread/2aa1140c148de30b/8954de60cffe6dab>
Bart Van der Donck volunteered to restore FAQ posting and he's
showing his commitment to this extra free job since August 2006. As he
is the only person so far who did and does something (not just
wishfully discussing) - then in my strong opinion he should be the
first person to propose. Only if Bart Van der Donck doesn't want this
extra job, other candidatures could be considered.
I myself is not fully satisfied with the outcome of the linked July
discussion. As the result of two FAQ maintainers in the row "left to
stay", we are having a rather abnormal situation with
1) hosting and server access from Jim Ley
2) "keys" hidden by Richard Cornford
3) regular postings in the newsgroup by Bart Van der Donck
Someone may call it as an "extended security" but I see it as a
ridiculous situation reminding me the late Roman Empire (on the falling
apart stage
.
This way the most important step would be to finish the transition
started at July. Whoever will be the new FAQ maintainer, all previous
FAQ maintainers has to finally step aside.
If no agreement be possible by the "triumvir members" then it is
more easy just to resign all of them and start over.
Another problem to be addressed immediately is the procedure itself of
FAQ topics add/update/remove. So far it simply doesn't work: each
<FAQENTRY> transforms into endless discussion resulting in FAQ remained
untouched. While it can be normal for many legislative bodies
, it
is hardly acceptable for technical newsgroup. IMO the whole procedure
should be strictly defined and formalized. A variant could be:
1) Initial <FAQENTRY> post with action indicated:
<faqentry action="add">
<faqentry action="update">
<faqentry action="remove">
Each <faqentry> has to be well-formed XML fragment with indication of
title, number, <del> and <ins> parts (for update requests)
2) Initial post starts one week (seven days) discussion period
3) Initial poster either accounts the critics or not in the CFV (Call
For Votes) <FAQENTY> variant she has to post after the stage 2) is
expired. If no CFV post made then the Initial post is counted as the
CFV.
4) Within three days after that anyone can make a voting post. The
Usenet post must contain one and only one of the following vote
statements:
YES
NO
ABSTAIN
Names are required for this vote. ABSTAIN votes are not counted in the
results. The version passes the vote if there are at least 5 votes
received and at least 50% + 1 vote are YES.
Another question to resolve is FAQ versioning. It is important to keep
ability to link/refer a FAQ topic directly rather than just saying
"search for it in group FAQ". I saw somewhere posts made in c.l.j. at
different time solving this problem, but I cannot find them again right
now.
P.S. comp.lang.javascript FAQ history:
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http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.javascript/msg/8954de60cffe6dab>