It seems like most FAQ maintainers make a valiant initial effort, then get a life and don't have time to keep their FAQs up to date. Also, I often find out a solution to a problem, and feel like I could write a single FAQ answer on it in a few minutes, but where to post it?

Thus the FAQ-O-Matic was born. FAQ-O-Matic is a couple sleazy Perl scripts that allow people to submit FAQ answers to this database, so it can stay current, with just a tiny bit of work on any one person's part.

Yes, a bad guy could come along and wipe out all the FAQ entries. Please don't. But to give the good guys some measure of comfort, each submission is stored in an RCS file, so if someone does tamper, we can recover the database. Furthermore, version 2 keeps track of who makes changes.

Guidelines for submissions:

1. Please try to be fairly unbiased in matters of opinion. Mailing lists are the place to start flame wars (just kidding :v), but definitely not here.

2. FAQ-O-Matic 2 no longer allows you to insert HTML, since it caused more trouble than it provided benefit in version 1. However, it recognizes and "linkifies" strings that look like URLs (http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~jonh ). A space after a URL is swallowed so the linkifier knows where the URL ends.

3. FAQ-O-Matic 2 allows you to move questions and even categories around. Since these are fairly wholesale changes, please discuss reorganizations on the list or talk to the faqomatic admin (jonh@cs.dartmouth.edu ) or the moderator of the section you'd like to rearrange before doing so. But if you have a good idea for organization, please don't hesitate to help out! Organization is the weakest part of a FAQ-O-Matic.

4. The FAQ-O-Matic now asks for your email address, so submissions are automatically attributed.

5. If you only have a question, not an answer, you should post it to a mailing list, not here.

6. Please refrain from crude or inconsiderate language. Please don't use this as a forum for advertising. However, mention of worthy commercial products is certainly appropriate (even if you sell said product). Just don't overdo it. :v)
jonh@cs.dartmouth.edu