But, Dave, if SAS-L did have that fabled FAQ, you could then reply 'RTFFAQ' to the still too many underprepared supplicants!

-----Original Message----- From: David L. Cassell [mailto:cassell.david@EPAMAIL.EPA.GOV] Sent: Thursday, June 12, 2003 7:46 PM To: SAS-L@LISTSERV.UGA.EDU Subject: Re: Newsgroups & Usergroups need for SAS-L FAQ

Carey Smoak <carey.smoak@ROCHE.COM> wrote: > I agree that a good a FAQ would be helpful.

I don't. Not in general. There are far too few people who do their homework before consulting SAS-L. There are still too many people who can't even look over posts of the previous few *hours* to see if their problem has been answered. As it is, we can point people to posts on the SAS-L Archive site which answer their questions, and we may still hear back (sometimes privately), "But that doesn't answer my question down to the spelling of variable names and the placement of semicolons. So get off your butt and do my work for me!" [I wish I could put a smiley here.]

There is the occasional querent who does their homework first. That person will indeed be helped by the FAQ. But that person is usually helped by the SAS-L archives and SAS tech support. So will the FAQ help enough people? I can't begin to estimate the N on that.

> But there is an > alternative to people who do not want to get 50 e-mails a day. I do > not subscribe to SAS-L. Instead I access it through Charlie > Partridge's website (www.sconsig.com). So, I can go to his website > and look at SAS-L anytime I want. Perhaps this is what is really > needed. A permanent website for SAS-L so that people don't have to be > bothered by 50 e-mails per day.

That's Patridge. Partridge is someone else. A family who sings, or something. :-) But www.sconsig.com is but one option, as Jack carefully pointed out. {Thanks, Jack!}

So what do we do? Send a copy of the FAQ to every poster from hotmail.com who isn't already registered with Joe Kelley? :-) :-)

David -- David Cassell, CSC Cassell.David@epa.gov Senior computing specialist mathematical statistician