Create a true FAQs section

Larry Meyer

Wooden Canoes are in the Blood
I have been posting to the forum for some time and one thing that seems plain is that it might be time to create something like a true FAQs section of the website. While there is a FAQs section on the forum, its content is sparse. On the other hand, many of the same (“frequently asked”) questions keep popping up, especially in the ever-popular Wood Canvas/Fiberglass section.

A forum like this is great, but I’ve also seen online forums grow constipated with reiteration.

My personal candidates for inclusion in a WCHA website FAQS section would be answers to these questions.

I just bought a wood-canvas canoe that needs restoration. How do I get started?

I just bought a wood-canvas canoe covered with fiberglass that needs restoration. How do I get started?

I want to fiberglass a wooden canoe. Should I do this?

What is the North Woods canoe stroke?

How do I strip the varnish on this blankety-blank canoe?

The canoe I am restoring had a keel on it. Should I put a keel on it too?

These are all subjects I’ve treaded on before and oft times I’ve just dipped into the file and reposted what I posted before. I’m sure others have candidates for inclusion in the above list. While I appreciate that there are always new slants to everything and rookies like it when they get personal attention, it would seem to me about time to canonize some of the more brilliant, but routine, innovations and insights that have surfaced in the forum and carve them in the stone of a FAQs section.
 
This is a great idea and I think that all of the volunteer webmasters would welcome FAQ additions like these and more. Please feel free to put together a good summary for each of these questions and send it to webmaster@wcha.org for insertion in the FAQ. Thanks,

Benson
 
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Hi Larry,

Nearly all those questions were answered in a FAQ section of the old forums that was lost in the crash. The intention has always been to recreate them, but it just hasn't happened yet. It is also planned to add similar stuff to the main website, but again, time eludes. As Benson says, anyone who wishes to put together such stuff and submit it is most welcome to, and we would appreciate it.

Cheers,
Dan
 
Sorry about that. Didn’t mean to appear critical. I keep forgetting about the crash!

Maybe a prod to folks like me to get to work on this would be to start a list (such as the one I offered) of desirable FAQs and then have regular posters volunteer to work on writing an answer for each question. There are regular “authorities” on different subjects and it shouldn’t take that long.
 
I've seen discussion boards where they take some of the more popular threads and save them to a "Hall of Fame" category where they stay on top and can be readily found. That might be easier than writing definitive answers to a bunch of questions that have already been discussed at length.
________
T500
 
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Yeah, that’s kind of what I have in mind. I can think of a number of post that deserve some permanence.

My thinking in part is shaped by what happened at website for old model Volvo owners: it started as a discussion forum, but soon evolved into virtually the unofficial Volvo repair site. Extremely useful and saved me a ton of money. Then it got hacked or content stolen and distributed all over hell and back. Now it seems to exist only as a very difficult to use archive of 20 years of posting that takes hours to cull thru.

I would say lets post here some nominations for memorable posts and subjects to be covered and maybe nominate some posters to cover the subjects.
 
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