Gents (and there may be ladies out there too - although I have not had many hints that is the case, yet )

Following this original post, I have seen some genuine enthusiasm for the idea of an up-to-date FAQ. That's exactly what I was hoping for, and I am pleased at the response. Thanks!

However, in spite of the obvious enthusiasm, people are forgetting to do what I asked; while this might sound a bit pompous, can I ask that you please post your suggestions to me by e-mail as requested. Otherwise, it will rapidly become impractical to manage. Although I will try to keep an eye on it for now, I'm afraid I must insist that only contributions/suggestions submitted by email will be considered for inclusion.

The reasons for this are as follows:

1) I don't always read all threads, all the time. Hence, if you just stick a "place marker" on a candidate question that comes up in discussion, I am not guaranteed to see it.

2) As I have already found, scanning back through some 5,000 thoroughly interesting (and boring), short (and very long) and descriptive (and curt) posts on many, many topics to pick out suitable FAQ candidates is a pretty tough piece of work. I am not shirking this (already), but if I am to produce anything useful in a reasonable amount of time without incurring a huge phone bill I need to cut to the chase and gather concrete suggestions.

3) If you mail it to me, it goes into a mail folder where I can:
- find it quickly
- archive it
- re-read when neccessary without having to search for it
- make sure I can keep a record of who contributed it and properly credit you for your effort.

I am reluctant to ask PaulH for complete dumps of the postings since the whole board relies on his good graces and those of his colleague who supports this board by the provision of a T1 connection. He does not need any more maintainence, or other tasks, than he already has; so this has to be done by grunt work, and I want to minimise this with your help. I already have a good start in the form of the original FAQ material, but for it to grow, be useful, and remain current, I have to divide the work among little bottle imps such as yourselves popping suggestions into my mailbox.

You can help by picking something out as you spot it and mail it to me. It doesn't matter if 10 people all suggest the same thing; in fact, that would make it more likely that the suggestion is an excellent candidate for inclusion in the FAQ! I can act as editor, and modify/include/exclude as would be relevant.

If you just point out in a discussion thread that "this is FAQ material" then it is instantly 100% more difficult to do. Don't forget - in the background, I also have a mortgage to feed and two kids to maintain 24/7 - they need fixing occasionally too

Looking forward to hearing from all you imps out there....