Reorganization

[Dave Kristofferson]

> I brought this up earlier, but perhaps not as clear as how I'll try to put 
> it now.  (Again), What about a "bionet.help.dir" which is posted as a non-
> posting board by the readership but only by a moderator?  The first posting 
> could serve as a "directory" of sorts which contains the article # for 
> various FAQs; the FAQs themselves are posted in individual and subsequent
> articles/postings.  In this way someone could read the directory (i.e., 
> first posting of the board to which they could always return to by its 
> article #, i.e., read "xxx") and see what article # pertained to a subject
> of interest, then go to that article using "read #xxxx".

This looks like it might service USENET users but what about the
e-mail crew?  I think that novice users who are hooked in by e-mail
would respond more postively to something that they receive in their
mail on a, say, monthly basis, than to something that they need to
query an e-mail server for.

> I know DAVE K. has offered a FAQ sheet; does this mean that it will be 
> posted periodically?  

Yes, just as the BIOSCI info sheet is now.

> Would you have to scan the entire sheet before you 
> find your question of interest?  

There seems to be little way to avoid this, but a table of contents
can help.  I don't want to assume that the reader knows any kind of
searching/indexing techniques.  Breaking the mesage up into many parts
would annoy people that don't want to read the FAQ (they'd have to
delete many e-mail messages instead of one).

> Is what I've suggested above not feasible?  Individual help/postings could 
> be added easily.  When someone asks about a FAQ which doesn't appear on the 
> directory listing, it could be added (sent to the moderator) with the same 
> effort of addressing that one person.  The directory could look something 
> like:
> 		FAQ TOPIC			    ARTICLE #
> 
> 	<<<<DIRECTORY>>>>				1
> 
> 	1. POSTING ETIQUETTE				2
> 		a. Bionet boards to post to
> 		b. What should be/not be posted
> 		c. How to post
> 	2. Archival Sites				3
> 		a. What are they?	
> 		b. Where are they?
> 		c. What is their coverage area?

The stuff above is reasonable for a BIOSCI usage FAQ sheet; the
following material is more appropriate for a BIO-SOFTWARE FAQ sheet
which is not what I am volunteering to put together.  This would be a
nice piece of public service work for someone else with more time
available than I.


> 	3. File Transfer Protocols (FTPing)		4
> 		a. How to FTP (send/get files)
> 		b. What to do once you access an
> 			archival site (i.e., how
> 			do you find their directory?)
> 	4. What is WAIS?				5
> 	5. What are Zip files?	How to use them?	6
> 	6. When files are sent to you in several	7
> 		parts, how do you concatenate them?
> 	7. What are uuencoded files? How to use them?	8

				Sincerely,

				Dave Kristofferson
				GenBank Manager

				kristoff at genbank.bio.net