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Subject:RE: If you were making a FAQ... From:"Porrello, Leonard" <lporrello -at- illumina -dot- com> To:"McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>, "techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com> Date:Thu, 30 Aug 2012 20:54:21 +0000
a) Would you include it in online help (WebHelp) if that was the primary documentation for your product?
No, for a couple reasons. If I had the content while writing the help, I would want to work it into the guide. An FAQ in a user's guide basically says, "here's a bunch of information that our writers couldn't figure out how to include in the guide." If for some reason I couldn't work the content into the guide, I'd have it on a web page. FAQs change and grow as users encounter new issues. Will you expect a user to wait until the next rev of a doc to get the latest FAQs? If not, do you really want to maintain one set of FAQs in the documentation and another (up to date) set on your corporate web site?
b) If yes, then would you make it one big FAQ topic/page, or would you make each Q and A a separate topic/page under a FAQ "book" in the ToC?
Regardless of where your FAQs live, how many FAQs are you comfortable scanning through on a single page? More than seven or eight, and I start to get annoyed (even more so since I am probably looking through FAQs only after I have encountered a problem and I have not found an answer in the body of the guide). So, in any case, you'll want to categorize your FAQs.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+lporrello=illumina -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+lporrello=illumina -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of McLauchlan, Kevin
Sent: Thursday, August 30, 2012 1:03 PM
To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
Subject: If you were making a FAQ...
a) Would you include it in online help (WebHelp) if that was the primary documentation for your product?
b) If yes, then would you make it one big FAQ topic/page, or would you make each Q and A a separate topic/page under a FAQ "book" in the ToC?
Why?
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