Re: Procedure for changing the FAQ

[Eli Zaretskii]

> From: Glenn Morris <address@hidden>
> Date: Tue, 22 Apr 2003 16:45:07 +0100
> 
> Updating the FAQ is an etc/TODO item. Is there any kind of procedure
> to be followed for this?

Nothing special, the FAQ is just another part of the Emacs
documentation.  Treat it as you would anything else in the `man'
subdirectory.

> I assume one can just go ahead and update any old URLs, package
> versions, etc.

Yes, that's one thing that needs to be done occasionally.

> But what about more drastic changes? For example, I think the "Emacs
> Lisp Archive" is long dead, so I would propose to delete all
> references to that and replace them with the "Emacs Lisp List" (and/or
> the Wiki), which I think is the best current source for Emacs
> packages. But others might not agree with me.

If no one disagrees, please go ahead and do this.  However, it might
be a better idea to leave the reference to the archive and say that
it was not updated in years.

> What about adding new FAQs?

Yes, please!

> Does any kind of consensus have to be reached on what constitutes a
> FAQ?

Searching gnu.emacs.help and counting the number of times a question
was asked will do, I guess.  Asking here will also help, as several
maintainers do read gnu.emacs.help and have some idea about what's
asked frequently.

> Similarly, should some kind of
> discussion as to what is the best answer to any given FAQ take place?

I think it's a good idea to run the answer by this list.

> Basically, my question is: is it OK to make non-trivial changes to
> the FAQ without discussion?

It's okay to do that, yes.  Personally, I don't recommend that, but
I'm known to disagree on this with others, and I cannot call myself an
active developer lately, so my opinions hardly matter too much.

> Is man/faq.texi even the master copy of the FAQ or not?

Yes.

> It refers to address@hidden as the FAQ maintainers.

As the Copyright line shows, Reuven Lerner does not maintain the FAQ
actively for a few years now; we do.  You will see in "cvs annotate"
that many non-trivial changes were done by us in the FAQ over the last
years.