What are FAQs?
FAQ stands for Frequently Asked Questions, as you are likely already aware. What you probably also know is that the FAQ page pretty much always includes the answers to those questions, not just the questions themselves. So technically they should be called Frequently Asked Questions & Provided Answers. “FAQPA” doesn’t have the same ring to it, though, so we’ll be sticking with FAQ.

Who cares which questions are asked most frequently?
Well, you do, in theory, and we do too. The idea is that you think like other people do, more or less. So if MixedInk makes other people wonder about certain things, there’s a good chance that it makes you wonder about the same things. Instead of you and every other person with a question asking separately and us sending you each an individual response, why not save everyone the time and just gather all the questions and answers in one place?

Why spend an entire blog post on FAQs?
Good question. We just wrote the FAQs for our site, and we were so excited to share them with you! But we realized we probably ought to wait till the site launches (soon!) to do that. So this was sort of a consolation prize.

So can we at least see some of your FAQs? You promised a “sneak preview” in the title of this post.
Sure! Here’s a taste of what’s to come:

Why use MixedInk?
In order for your opinion to matter, you have to lump yourselves together with lots of other people by voting, signing a petition, going to a rally, etc. That means you have to give up control over the message you deliver. MixedInk helps you express yourselves together without losing your individual, nuanced voice. Since MixedInk is democratic, it ensures that you have more control over what you say together.

For companies, nonprofit organizations and campaigns, it can be difficult and expensive to wade through thousands of emails, blog posts, comments and phone calls to understand what stakeholders are thinking and saying. MixedInk provides a way to harness the energy, ideas, and opinions of their most passionate members, consumers, and employees.

How many people can participate in responding to a MixedInk topic at once?
In theory, there’s no limit to the number of people that can contribute at the same time.

How can the software automatically put so much text from so many people together?
It can’t – we don’t automatically assemble a collective piece of text. We just give users the tools for them to do it themselves, by working (playing, really) together.

Is it simple majority rule?
For now, yes. Later on, we’ll make it possible to see how contributors can be divided into different camps based on the opinions they express. In the meantime, any contributor who feels he or she is in the minority can set up a new topic and ask that only those with shared views participate.

Can I republish a final collective response written using MixedInk?
You certainly can – and we hope you do!

All text that is authored by a group using MixedInk is published under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 license. That means you can republish the content as long as you mention: “This text was created by [number] people using the democratic collaborative tool at MixedInk.com. It may be republished only if accompanied by this addendum.”

If you are republishing it online, you must also include a link to the page where you found the text.

That’s all?!? You teases!
If you’re so anxious to find out more, why haven’t you signed up to be a beta tester yet?

Right. So how did you write the FAQs for MixedInk, which hasn’t launched yet, given that you don’t know which questions are actually going to be “frequently asked”?
OK, smarty pants, you got us there. We don’t know which questions will be frequently asked. We had to guess. But we’ll update the FAQs later when we find out what questions people actually ask.

Do other sites abuse the FAQs like this?
We don’t know for sure, but it sure seems like it to us. We feel lucky if half of the FAQs are remotely relevant to our concerns, so we’d bet they were also written without actually being “frequently asked.”

That doesn’t justify the practice of determining FAQs without user input, however.

If your collaborative writing software is so darn great, why don’t you just let your users write your FAQs?
Hmmmm… we hadn’t thought of that. Seems like a good idea. Maybe we’ll try that when we are fortunate enough to have users.

Other sites’ users could write the FAQs for them, too.
Another good idea – you’re full of them. Maybe we should hire you.

Where can I find your FAQs after you launch?
We’ll put them up here: http://www.mixedink.com/faq. (Note that this link will not work until we launch.)

Where should I go if I’m tired of reading this senseless drivel and actually want to learn something about FAQs?
Here’s a few sites we consulted as we constructed our FAQs:
http://www.faqs.org/faqs/faqs/about-faqs/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FAQ
http://www.querycat.com/ (database of FAQs from the entire internet)

Is your blog always going to be this…playful…from now on?
Probably not. Must be the holidays

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 13th, 2007 at 1:41 pm and is filed under MixedInk, collaboration, collaborative writing, faq, user-generated content. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.