alt.food.wine FAQ?

Indeed. Selections of members' recommendations giving cross-sections of different areas of the wine market would definitely be useful (I do know that I'd certainly value a lot of people's opinions on wines from areas like Spain, Sth. Africa or anywhere in the USA) - both for the older and newer members.

Good idea/yes/I'll probably come up with some (it's 3 am here, so nothing comes to mind right now)/certainly, would be more than happy to.

Salil

Yes, I agree. Harm's FAQ would need to be updated, and of course is not hosted any more. But without an automated post to the group new users have no way to know about it anyway.

To my taste bi-weekly is probably enough, but I'm not very bothered about it.

I would certainly add a section about proper comportment in the group. It won't solve any problems, but at least it'll give us something to point at as we shrug. ;) Dale has made several posts of this nature over the years which address the issue very well; I'd grab some of his text.

And of course, anything that tells people not to cross-post! :)

-E

Don't forget the regular questions:

How to recognize a troll? How to trap Stealth Marketers? How to accuse new posters in groups of being Trolls or Stealth Marketers? How to mask IP addresses to make an regular contibutor look like an imposter of a new poster...

How to investigate and accuse everyone you don't care for of crimes in the community of enabling stealth marketers.

:-)

Sounds like an excellent idea, Mark. You certainly listed the most common questions. The only thing I might disagree with is the list of recommended wines. I'm not sure that should be included for a variety of reasons- it's comparatively subjective, and most likely to engender controversy.

I'd like to propose an alternative- you (bravely) take charge of posting a FAQ (I agree that bi-weekly seems reasonable, anyone looking at group should easily find). On or about the first of every month we could start a good QPR thread (I think that the most commonly asked question re wines by new posters is usually about good everyday wines, not splurge wines). I'd be happy to start, or whoever is so inclined.

To keep it from being too unwieldy, and encourage folks who might be hesitant to post actual notes* to post their favorite wines, it occurs to me we might include some guidelines in each monthly post. A few to consider:

1) a price limit, say $15 US or your local equivalent 2) each poster limited to one post of 5 value wines per month, to keep things from being dominated by a few 3) just post the wines, no commentary. This might be hard on verbose people like myself, but might encourage those who might otherwise be hesitant (if 7 people posted before you, each with comments, might not feel as comfortable just posting your wine. 4) No bashing of others' suggestions 5) Please try to be sure that the wines you suggest are reasonably available (only at one store, or at a winery is less valuable as a monthly resource) 6) A 3 month limit on posting any wine.

#3 & 4 might be impractical in a newsgroup, but I thought might encourage new posters. I'd be happy to start this (or let someone else do it) if the group seemed to consent.

Dale

*btw, I'd encourage anyone to post notes on what they thought about a wine. Most of taste is subjective, you like what you like. The only true objective disagreement you might get would be to comments about oak, tannins, etc. And disagreement just isn't that big a deal!

Yes. And I think that food/wine pairing should be high on the list. I haven't seen much in the way of resources for this.

I don't feel qualified (though I can answer the Ridel question by saying that Spiegleau most assuredly works)

Jose

The faq could be hosted on a web site, with (say) weekly pointers to that site, and (say) bimonthly postings of the FAQ contents here.

Jose

Quite a few groups post FAQs. However many just post a selected FAQ quite often with a link to the full FAQs. Some groups have such extensive FAQs that posting all of them at once is a bit excessive. An example of a group that does it is the Usenet group comp.language.javascript which has very extensive FAQs.

If you find you need a place to store all of the FAQs on the web, I have nearly unlimited disc space at my 2 domains and a 500 GB bandwidth per month that is not nearly being used. Thus I could put up the whole FAQs on a page or pages that will be available at all times. The FAQs would have to be sent to me by mail or put up on a temporary page so that I can copy them. To mail me, you would have to ask here so I can give you a temporary address. The address I use for posting is for outgoing mail only, and any incoming mail to this address is rejected without my seeing it.

That's a fine idea, Dale. I was a bit unsure about including the recommended wines in a FAQ, too, but it gets asked about enough that I thought that it should be addressed. Your solution is fine, though, and actually reduces the workload on the FAQ.

Or to divide it into different price categories, like under-$20 and $20 and over. That way people who are interested in that special gift for the boss, etc., could see what our favorite "splurge" wines currently are (for those of us who can and do splurge -- we've gotta give Bill S. something to do, after all)

Does that mean no disagreement, or just to keep it civil?

It sounds like a great idea to me, and could be started before the FAQ is complete, even.

Mark Lipton

Point well taken. What I have envisioned would not be a very large document, as it would just target a few very specific questions.

That's a very generous offer you've made. I have no intention of HTMLizing the text version of the FAQ, but if someone wants to volunteer for that task, I'd be happy to coordinate its transfer to your domain.

Mark Lipton

You keep forgetting the part of accusing people of sock puppetry and being stealth marketers.

Don't forget the investigative IP addresss checks on everyone so they know you are spying on them.

Great----the paranoids here want more control...what is this group becoming.

I agree that we need civility....but this idea of rules by a few that think that they control the group is not actually needed, wanted or otherwise.

Plus they keep leaving out the part when THEY accused me of something called Sock Puppetry. Not the other way around...

So I will post to them regularly when they are WRONG! And I will be civil.

Don't worry...they have killfiled me anyway.

If your FAQs are fairly short as you suggest, and you put them all up at once as a post, I would have no trouble copying them to the computer and converting to html. Then it is just one keyclick or two to upload to my site using ftp. The thing I would not want to do is start with some information on paper and have to type it all into the computer myself. Or a text file on a CD or DVD would work just as well as a post of the FAQs. Once you start posting the FAQs, if you do, perhaps we can then decide if also putting them on a web page might be useful. In the future it might be desirable to make an index if the FAQs grow greatly in size. Also, on the web, I can quite easily add pictures if that ever becomes useful for some discussions.

Ok, I'll start a Sept thread tomorrow AM. My thought was to encourage people to list their favorite (up to 5) wines for good value (I could do same for splurge wines). There's no way to stop folks from disagreeing, but I thought maybe with sufficient disclaimers that these are individual opinions, NOT getting into "dissing" others choice might be the style to aim for. I'll try to start once a month, but someone else can feel free to start it, too.

I wouldn't worry about this, even slightly: context is usually enough (sometimes with history providing some of that context). If I pontificate about chemistry and Mark points out that I'm being an idiot, I'm unlikely to take offense at the use of the descriptor 'idiot' :). Ad hominem attacks are unlikely to be mistaken for anything else, seems to me.

[And there you go - argument, and a disclaimer, all about the use of disclaimers on one's arguments...]