Re: I know you're tired of hearing this, but ... re FAQs

On 01 Jul 2005 WazoO entered spamcop.help and left 
news:[email protected]:

> Actually, yes ... and I'm even looking for input from all those that
> have me kill-filed due to the "Forum" thing ...
> 
> I admit it took me most of the day to figure out how the flow
> all worked and how to stick my data into the stream, but ..
> I finally got there.  So yes, here's the repeat request ...
> what FAQ questions need to go at the top of the list?
> Going back to the referenced "first-time visitor to the
> SpamCop site" .. figure three normal causes;
> 

OK, well I was a little concerned that you might expect us here to link to 
the forum FAQ to answer FAQs here, I can't do that only because we may 
never hear from them again; they may start using the forum which isn't much 
help to use here. I would rather say "here is your answer [answer] ... you 
could try the forum as well", which would let them decide.

Now, for first time visitors, I see four types...

(1) Got the "blocked by Spamcop" message.
(2) Looking for help with their spam problem.
(3) Want to use the Spamcop block list.
(4) Abuse report recipient (mail admins)

I don't know if this is the best order, it's just the order I picked for 
now.
1 and 3 are pretty straight-forward, however many of the 1 types don't 
understand what Spamcop is. The 3 types probably understand what a block 
list is, but may not know how the blocklist works, or how it's updated.
Of course the 2 types probably don't know anything about Spamcop at all.

So I think the most important item would be "What is Spamcop?" in general, 
since this applies to those three. I don't know how I would organize that, 
but it should probably keep those three types in mind.

4 is probably a special case, I think they should have their own page, 
actually they do, don't they? I often forget about them, but they probably 
do need a special FAQ entry. However the report itself can supply the 
necessary info or links, there are those can't can't seem to read very 
well, they miss the link, that should be considered. It would probably be a 
good idea to have translations as well. I don't know how involved you can 
get into that, it seems like a special area, but still you probably need a 
special FAQ section to help keep them from asking stupid questions in the 
forums, regulars often aren't very nice to these guys and we don't want 
them rejecting reports.

So anyway, 1 - 3 and I'll skip 4 for now. 
So 3 is the easiest, they need to understand how the block list works, how 
to use the block list, and finally how to donate (which may involve going 
back to 2).
1 is similar to 3, so it can reuse some of the same info (can you put help 
text in one file and include it into several pages?). At some point this 
needs to be split up into admins and end users; admins can do something 
about the block, but end users can't and they need to contact their admin. 
Why do end users come here blaming spamcop for blocking their mail? Address 
that in the FAQ. Of course admins may need a link to (4).

Now (2) is the hardest. That's the one that gets split up so much that you 
get lost. Getting the other three out of the way first should help.

More details on how Spamcop works:
(a) Reporting service
(b) Mail filtering service

I don't know much about the mail reporting service, so I have to skip that, 
but I think much of the spam reporting info applies to mail members as 
well.

(1) What is spam?
(2) What is required to use Spamcop?
(3) Reporting rules.
(4) Member fees.
(5) Signing up.
(6) Member FAQs

This is just a logical order, you could actually replace (1) with (6), but 
we need to get 1 - 5 out of the way. Perhaps if they are logged in it can 
skip 1 - 5, that would make the most sense. It may seem that I forgot about 
members before this point, but if logged in it can actually skip right to 
the (6) section that applies to their type of account. From there it can 
always show a link back to the main help section, or for simplicity on the 
programming side, include "Members" in (2) of the first list.

(2) is added to answer questions like "what mail programs work with 
Spamcop?", "is there a fee?", "does webmail work with Spamcop?". Now here 
we can link to sections in (6) about how to use specific programs and 
services with Spamcop.

Member FAQs:
Now we enter the labyrinth. I actually need to look again at the FAQ-O-
Matic and your FAQ to get an idea on how that should be changed, or what 
might be missing.

Also there is at least one section I failed to mention, the Spamassassin 
section. This should probably be under (3) Want to use the Spamcop block 
list. (maybe that should end with a ?). That subject should cover that, and 
a subsection under that...
(a) For mail administrators
(b) For end users

Both a and b can use spamassassin or some other filter, but b can be using 
something like Mailwasher as well.

Now I think this is a logical order, but some may not like so many clicks, 
some expect one click to answer their question (dream on). I think a good 
way to deal with this is to include all links on one page in a list format, 
then use DHTML to colapse it. This is actually quite easy to do, if you 
want some code I can supply it, though I generally ignore browsers that 
don't support CSS2 and Javascript 1.5, so for them the list don't colapse 
or just stays colapsed depending on several things. For example I have a 
menu that is colapsed in Communicator, in IE5.0 the first item is expanded 
(I don't know why), and in non-css browsers the list is expanded. Anyway I 
designed it so that you can get to every page without expanding the list, 
if you can't do that then the list can just be expanded by default, only 
using Javascript to colapse it. Also you can use server-side script or 
Javascript to expand the members section for members that are logged in 
(or have a cookie set).

-- 
| Ric
|