FAQ titles

[rho]

One thing I've noticed in looking at the FAQs that you guys have written is that you seem to be going with the LJ style for the titles/questions in the FAQ, using two-part questions like "What is Quick Reply? How do I turn Quick Reply on or off?" and "What does my profile contain? Who can see the information on it?"

I'm not totally committed to this, and will happily change my mind if you disagree with me, but I've never really been much of a fan of this sort of naming. My general feeling is that if possible, we should try to have all the questions just be simple single questions, and that if that isn't possible, we should consider splitting up into two different FAQs.

What do you guys think?

Comments

[forthwritten]

I'm inclined to agree - we should either reformulate the questions or break them up further.

[0jack]

I think that this might be the best choice, especially if users can choose to open all FAQs in a section at once by selecting the section header. (I hope that makes sense.) I think that -- being as politic as possible -- many people are not best served by more information than they need coming up at once. It's not like we're going to "waste room" or something.

[greg]

Sure, I can go with that.

[ivorygates]

I'm not on the FAQs team, but I *do* constantly consult (and am frustrated by) LJ's FAQs. My opinion is: yes. Cafeteria plan (aka: one riot, one Ranger). That way, when User only wants one specific answer, User only has to open Specific FAQ #1428, instead of trying to skim the seven thousand words of All-Inclusive FAQ #29 and probably miss what they're looking for.

[liv]

I'm trying to keep each FAQ answering a simple single question. But sometimes two different questions are going to lead to the same answer. A reasonably knowledgeable user who knows the correct term might ask "How do I use $feature?". But someone who doesn't even know what the feature is called might ask "How do I make my journal do that thing where...?", and both of them basically want the same answer. So I'm occasionally going with the double title in order to gloss some jargon and help people who don't know the name of what they're looking for. But yes, one topic per FAQ is my golden rule.

[sophie]

If this is a problem, then it may be worth it to have some means of having FAQs 'redirect' to other FAQs transparently. That way you could list them separately, but could be redirected easily.

(just throwing stuff out there)