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40 responses total.

You might want to have a FAQ like on usenet for new users that is frozen.

Producing a FAQ list would be a real boon to grex.
It could also be a Herculean task. We should start small and add to it
later. What are the 5 or 10 questions most frequently asked by new users?
Does the current info conference contain these questions? (I think so.)

Posting the FAQ list to grex.* would be good too.

I'll download the conference and play with it, but I'm not making any 
promises.  :)

EEEEEEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeeeekk!  I was using this as a place to find Q & A
for the new GREX manual.  Please leave a copy where I can get at it...or
I'll give you a disk if you can/will save it for me.  Thanks.

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Make the manual into item 1 or something, when Misti gets it done.

The manula will be *much* too big and unwieldy for an item.  I will
put an offer in an item for people who want a copy.

     This was a good idea, what happened.  I'd guess people got swamped.
     One problem with info as currently constitued is that there is a lot of
duplication (he said, stating the painfully obvious.)  Is there a mechanism
to control item creation so that it isn't quite so haphazard?  How many
different rn/trn items are there?  Or Email/elm/pine/mail items?  It seems
as though most people with a question deciede it's easier to start a new
item than to find an already extant item that might be of use.
     One thing we might try is to refer people to items that already exist
to answer their questions, or at least to get the question in the right
place.  This would have the advantage of making Info more coherent.
     Another thought, divide Info up into more specific conferences, say
News, Grexinfo, Internet or something like that.  Each conference would
probably stay more manageable.
     Cheers
     Chris

One thing that happened is that the FW got a new job, which has in turn taken
her out of the country for extended periods.

I don't know of a reasonable way of controlling item formation - we *want*
people to ask questions, and often they (make that *we*) don't know where to
look for answers that might be there.

IMO, something needs to be done to organize & prune the material that's
already there (keeping some of the flavor, junking a lot of repetition).
Maybe freeze certain items, depending on what the result is.  Then let it
grow on its own for a while and repeat, ad infinitum.  I'd volunteer but
#include        <stdexcuse.h>

Perhaps when I get some free time I'll try to incorporate some of the
stuff from this conference into my Grex FAQ.

It might help to now and then give the commands for browse, scan and
find (and how to use them and what they do). I use them to find relevant
items within which to ask new questions. 

OK, Rane, we're waiting ...
(stupid ascii sf here)

Gulp! Is this a test? Well, what I DO is enter [scan "keyword"] at
the OK   prompt, to search for the keyword in Item titles, or enter
[find "keyword"] at the OK prompt, to search for the keyword in any
title or response (and if I don't mind the wait). How'd I do? Huh?
Huh? (I'll be happy with 65%...)

Scan   is the same as   browse   .  At the main prompt (by default, "Ok:"),
if you use them with no parameters or with item # ranges, they will list the
item headers.  If you add a parameter (a string in quotes), they will scan
the item headers for that string, displaying any which match.

Find   scans the item/response text for a string you specify (in quotes).
Again you may limit it to certain item numbers or item number ranges.
This is also valid (for the current item only) from the "respond or pass"
prompt.

Both of these are case-insensitive on the searches.  I don't know of any
way to specify a certain range of responses within an item.

You can get help on these (at a prompt at which they're legal commands)
by entering    help browse    or   help find  .

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I kan beekom ur inosent viktum fer testin al dat stuf, u rite gud enuf fer me.

(nearly a year goes by...)

;)

I could volenteer to be a co-f-w for here....

I think that there should be a board for the short questions.  Or maybe just a
thread.  Then you could link it to a new thread if it is a legitimate
discussion question. Or maybe, you could make default threads for certian
problems, like pine, elm, rn, etc. commands that people need help on...

"board" = conference and "thread" = item ?

Actually that is not a bad idea.

If, when the conference is restarted, there is one item dedicated to each
of the main programs that are supported on grex at the very beginning. 
For example, possible general items could include: PicoSpan, elm, pine,
/bin/mail, irc, tin, trn, rn, lynx, talk, etc....

If this were done, it would (maybe) stop some of the extra posts on the
same subject, and have a single point of presence to scan for helpful
information.

Even with the tangle that info has become, I have pretty good success
with find "keyword". It would help if find gave adjacent lines
(hmmm - is there an option to make it do that?). Curby's suggestion is
even better, of course. I would then suggest that the basic info about
each of the commands be included in #0, so addiiional responses will
concern mostly explications, variations and extensions.

In general, it's handy when the people entering an item don't give
a generic name like "Stupid beginner question" but rather a title
that includes the gist of the problem.  curby's idea does this.
Makes the 'find "keyword"' command much more likely to find items
relating to the program you're having a problem with.  What do we
do about programs with multiple problem areas (such as csh, csh
script programming, csh dot files)?  Let 'em be entered that way
(as if you could stop people anyway...)?  Or considate all csh
questions in The Csh item?

The suggestion was to divide items by commands, or functions.
csh is the latter when viewed as a shell, but it is also composed
of a lot of the former. I'd say, have items for both.

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(I think it might be helpful to pull together some of the items from this
info conference and, oh, organize them somewhat. Of course, you'll need a
volunteer to do this...)

I just read newinfo, and I think it would be much better to switch over to
that.  There may be more information here, but it is really hard to find,
especially for a confused newbie.  The new conference has lots of
information in it, and it's all findable.

(what scg said.)

;)

Given the huge size that info seems to grow to so quickly, and the
resulting slowness of using the "find" command, I wonder if it
would help to split info into a couple conferences...not sure how
that would be split...maybe a frozen info cf with basic, classic
info and a roll-yer-own info cf of new questions?  Hmmm...just
trying to see if we can speed things up without a restart.  Oh well.

(what scg said)

<davel faints>

FYI,

The suggestion that I made was not mine.  I just rephrased what wirehead
said in the the response before.

One of the secrets of success  ;-).

(you know, curby, that's one of the secrets to being successful in life.)

(Yup, leave your marks on the backs of others...)

Uh... ya.

I think that in its current state, info is marginally useful to old hands
like me who know generally where the good stuff can be found.  For a
novice user, being confronted with 171 items is probably a bit daunting. 
I strongly suggest at minimum pruning, and would actually be in favor of a
restart along the lines mentioned earlier.

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HEY! Only I can make insightful comments.  Everyone else had better stop
copying off of me!

  Could certain questions and the best answers thereto be somehow copied
into a FAQ file on each command or other topic area? That might allow the
rest of the conf to grow more slowly, assuming a FAQ menu can be set up. 
And it would be quicker to read through, with lots of not-quite-the-answer
stuff deleted. 

- Backtalk version 1.3.30 - Copyright 1996-2006, Jan Wolter and Steve Weiss