0.1.1. Who died and made Vicki Richman the boss of the NWU FAQ?
Description
This article is from the Natl Writers Union FAQ, by Vicki Richman nwufaq@vicric.com with numerous contributions by others.
0.1.1. Who died and made Vicki Richman the boss of the NWU FAQ?
o Vicki's answer:
The First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, bozo -- read
it and weep!
o The disclamatory answer:
FAQ-writing -- or *maintaining*, as it's called -- has
become a literary genre. A genre has conventions, which
invoke one of two fates when violated:
a. The envelope is pushed, and the genre is never again the
same; or
b. The document and its author are discredited or ignored.
One of the FAQ conventions is that no FAQ should deny the
authenticity of any other FAQ on the same subject. Anyone may
write a FAQ; only the audience chooses among them. (The
audience of course includes the MIT moderators of the Usenet
newsgroup news.answers -- see Question 0.2.)
Accordingly, every FAQ should have a disclaimer -- like the
answers to Questions 0.1.x, which you are now reading --
acknowledging at least the possibility of another FAQ,
inviting contributions, corrections and addenda from diverse
sources, and identifying a person or a small group of
collaborators as solely and independently responsible for
the content.
Another convention is that no FAQ is carved in stone.
FAQs necessarily shatter the stone into electrons, which
continually flutter, float, flit about and displace each
other.
If the National Writers Union wrote its own FAQ, or
empowered an official FAQ-maintainer, its FAQ would be more
permanent, more authentic, than any other FAQ on the union.
It would be constitutional, biblical in nature, changeable
only clumsily -- by committee perhaps -- antithetical to the
FAQ genre. Such a FAQ would be like a candidate's press
release or a TV commercial that pretends to interview a
person on the street. Neither is journalism -- either is a
parody of journalism for political advantage or corporate
gain.
An official NWU FAQ would either push the envelope of
FAQ-maintaining to include public relations, advertising and
self-promotion, or be scoffed at by the FAQ congnescenti,
who would make it an object of Net ridicule.
In its present form, a FAQ is a cross between a dry, objective
technical manual and an intense confession of the author's
most secret vanities, fears and, of course, obsessions. It
reveals not so much about its subject as about its author's
personal relationship to its subject.
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