FAQ means frequently asked questions. On websites, they are a set of questions and answers.
FAQs signal poor products. They obfuscate.
FAQs are not helpful.
Not frequently asked
FAQs aren’t responsive to frequently-asked questions. FAQs are the questions someone wished people asked.
But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose your FAQ is real: it’s responsive to questions are frequently asked.
Congratulations, you’ve found a unicorn. But again, for the sake of argument, let’s pretend this unicorn is real. Why are people are frequently asking questions? Here’s why:
Your product sucks
A FAQ’s main point is papering over failure.
Good products and good documentation minimize questions.
Improve your product! Invest in eliminating user questions.
FAQs obfuscate
FAQ-style documentation obfuscates. By bloating heading length, they make it harder to find information.
Simple heading
FAQ-bloat heading
Data types
Which data types may I choose? (300% bloat)
Log in
How do I log in to AwesomeApp? (350% bloat)
Scholarships offered
What types of scholarships does State University offer? (400% bloat)
One-on-one contact always disallowed
“The Barriers to Abuse states ‘One-on-one contact between adult leaders and youth members is prohibited both inside and outside of Scouting.’ What does ‘inside and outside of Scouting’ mean?” (source) (725% bloat)
FAQs are bad habits
Sometimes good documentation is harmed by conveying it as a FAQ. This comes from a baseless belief that friendly, approachable formats are wordy or busy.
Never do this! Construct your documentation in a straightforward way.
FAQs are a last resort
If you feel you need a FAQ, do these first:
Improve your product to eliminate questions.
Improve your documentation to eliminate questions.
Do anything other than a FAQ.
If after following these steps, you still need a FAQ, then fine, do it. But only do it with a plan to eliminate it. And only do it if it’s answering questions customers are frequently asking.
The FAQ is a last resort. It makes you look bad. It needs to disappear at the earliest opportunity.
The Beats Fit Pros amplify wind noise. Above about 5 mph, wind causes a roar. Turn on noise cancellation, the wind roar gets much louder!
Beats’s website laughably claims the Fit Pro is for “athletes of all kinds” and “workouts”. Nope! Low-speed, old-man biking means deafening wind noise.
This is bad design, not my bad use. Proof: Nose facing the wind means deafening roar. Ear facing the wind, the noise stops! Huh?
Wind noise is bad when my nose faces the wind. If the ear faces the wind, the noise stops. Totally! This is defective by design, not an issue with fit or use.
Audio quality punches low. It’s less pleasing than the Jabra 75t. Bass response is much weaker.
And that Apple H1 chip? Gimmick! Compared to the older Jabra 75t, the H1 just annoys. For example, if you adjust either earbud, your music stops until you hit play again on the phone. Sorry, I’m not learning how to fondle the earbuds in a way that that resumes music. I just don’t need the music-stopping gimmick!
Skip Apple-anything for earbuds. With poorer quality, poor design, and having Apple-gimmick chips, nearly anything else is better than Apple.
I know, it’s silly. It’s a gambit to get my Facebook friends to accost me for a $2 bill. (Only ten $2 bills have been distributed in the past 26 months.)
As self-created recordings of my own bike rides, these videos are my original creations. Despite that, since late June, every video ends up with a copyright notice:
Partial still of my video with a bogus copyright notice on top.
When I click on the notice, I get an error:
When I try to get more info on these bogus copyright notices, I often get an error. Did Facebook design this into the system to protect thieves?
Refreshing that page, I finally get useful info:
Facebook says a thief’s property matches part of my video.
Huh, so Facebook alleges that a thief’s fake property matches part of my video. Let’s click See details and find out more:
Faecbook says a recording of my bike ride has someone else’s “music”? 🤣🤣🤣
Facebook says the 14.72 minute recording of my bike ride has 93.25 minutes of someone else’s audio? 🤣 So many problems with this.
What are these 72 territories where the claim is asserted?
72 countries where my audio is muted, due to someone using Facebook to steal my intellectual property.
Heres’ the 72 countries where Facebook allows a thief to steal my intellectual-property rights:
If I hit Continue (see two screenshots above), I pass through some perfunctory dialogs:
Perfunctory dialog explaining the basics of copyright.
Continuing, copyright tips that are inapplicable to someone who, like me, puts his original creation on Facebook:
Another perfunctory dialog giving irrelevant information to people who own the rights to their own media.
Finally, I get to do something:
Dialog allowing me to choose my next step: accept changes, submit dispute, or remove video.
Selecting Submit dispute then Continue brings more perfunctory dialogs:
Perfunctory dialog explaining what it means to dispute a copyright claim.
Now I can submit the dispute. I filled out the Submit dispute dialog:
Submit dispute dialog, filled out with relevant information.
Pressing Submit nearly always brings me to a final dialog, saying that my dispute was accepted and more information that is irrelevant to people uploading their original creation:
Dispute-accepted dialog.
Now the original support message says the audio was restored:
Facebook’s support message changed, now indicating that the audio is restored.
This is not an isolated occurrence. It has been happening since June 28. Here’s a screenshot of my Facebook support inbox:
Sampling of where Facebook aided a copyright thief many times.
This usually works but not always. I am incapable of shoving the thief off of one of my June videos. Every dispute attempt on that video ends in an error:
I always get an error after disputing a particular June video.
Is this an example of Facebook providing even more aid and comfort to intellectual-property thieves?
This experience concerns me on several levels:
Facebook allows thieves to use its system to steal rights to others’ intellectual property.
Facebook does not tell me which part of my original creation is triggering the thief’s false claim.
Facebook does not identify the thief to me.
Facebook’s interface appears to be designed to assist the thieves, using error messages to thwart intellectual-property owners.
At what point will Facebook suspend my account due to too many intellectual-property issues?
Here’s the same video, on YouTube (no fake copyright violations!):
The video where Facebook lets a thief steal my intellectual property. Also, this is more than 2 minutes longer than Facebook’s video. I haven’t analyzed why.
I challenge you to spot a copyright violation in it.
Technical notes that may be inconsequential:
The video that Facebook sees is the broadcasted video, which is what the GoPro sends to Facebook through my phone’s hotspot. The above YouTube video is straight off the GoPro’s SD card. Having artifacts of running through a hotspot with variable speed, such as occasional skips or glitches, the broadcasted video will be lower quality than the SD-card-sourced YouTube video.
My videos are usually much longer. The one that is the subject of this post is short because the camera turned itself off during my ride. That happens once or twice a month in hot weather, possibly due to overheating. The battery was at 77% when I restarted the camera.
On occasion, when I ride by someone who has a speaker going, my video may pick up a brief recording of whatever music is playing. This is again unusual and is a brief recording further harmed by a lot of wind noise. These possible incidental recordings have never before triggered a copyright notice, so I don’t think they explain this issue. I once inadvertently included an incidental recording into another video–not bike-ride related–and I remember Facebook identifying the copyright holder, unlike what happens in this incident.
By declining to set the record straight, Apache is misinforming a lot of users, as the OpenOffice brand appears to have parity with LibreOffice:
Apache needs to declare OpenOffice dead, focus attention elsewhere, and redirect people to LibreOffice. Why is Apache not doing this?
P.S., Yes, I know, OpenOffice is not technically “dead”. Some users still cling to it for legacy reasons, and there could be a case for some maintenance releases. That doesn’t excuse Apache’s refusal to acknowledge reality, which is certainly misleading users.
I hate cold sales calls or emails. All of these end up on a block list. If I want your service, I’ll initiate the contact.
Skype for Business lacks a native call-blocking functionality. Here’s a workaround, if you also use Outlook.
How to block spam callers
Follow these steps:
Open Outlook.
Create a new contact and fill in these fields:
Full Name: Blocked Contact (xxx-xxx-xxxx) where xxx-xxx-xxxx is the phone number of the spam caller. That format is my preference, not a strict requirement. It’s also fine to use (xxx) xxx-xxxx, although that format has little meaning anymore since the area code is never optional when dialing numbers.
Email: blockedxxx@fake.com where xxx is a unique number. I simply increment that number from the prior-spam-caller’s contact card.
Business (in the Phone numbers section): xxx-xxx-xxxx, which is the phone number of the spam caller.
Hit the contact’s Save & Close button.
If you get a Duplicate Contact Detected dialog, it’s because crude Outlook functionality suspects this contact may duplicate another one. It may happen because the name and email address data on each blocked-caller contact is similar. Select Add new contact, then press Update.
Open Skype for Business.
Search on the phone number of the blocked caller.
You’ll get two results: the phone number itself and the Outlook contact, named Blocked Contact (xxx-xxx-xxxx). Right-click on the Outlook contact (again, the one named Blocked Contact) and select Change Privacy Relationship > Blocked Contacts.
Now the caller will usually be sent directly to your voice mail!
Why “usually”? On occasion, Skype for Business takes a few seconds to associate an incoming call with a blocked contact, so you may get some rings before the caller is sent to voice mail.
