There are a fair number of posts that should be just a few clicks away. One suggestion is that they be made "sticky" (i.e., always at the top of the list). That might not be a great solution, however; eventually we could develop a lot of posts like that, and you might even get to the point where you'd need to go to page two just to get to the list of new posts.

I suggest that this is because a bulletin board like this isn't the best medium for gathering accumulated wisdom. It's great for having discussions, but not for summing up a discussion or integrating the results of many different discussions. The best medium for that (that I know of) is a wiki. I hesitate to suggest new infrastructure, but there's plenty of free wiki software out there, and you might be able to find a few smart people who might be willing to help with the setup if it improves Hatrack River. (Software engineers / computer scientists on the "Hatrack Experts" thread include WouldBe, lehollis, trousercuit, KayTi, JeffBarton, TaleSpinner, AaronAndy, and Jon Ruyle. There are probably more lurking out there. I'll bet that at least one of them has already set up a wiki for one reason or another, and might be willing to help the Hatrack River Webmaster set one up here.)

There are alternatives.

One might be a Web page submission process, where, at the end of a particularly good post, someone volunteers to summarize the post, and the Hatrack River Webmaster posts it as static HTML to some sort of "knowledge bank" with a link back to the original thread. This is clearly less flexible and more resource-intensive in the long run, but doesn't require the up-front effort of creating a wiki.

Another might be a thread that's designed strictly to hold links to other threads. It could have dozens or even hundreds of topics, but since it would only be a repository for links, it wouldn't itself contain any significant information. Once a week / month / whatever, if there had been no additions to it, someone would bump it to the top. This has zero up-front effort and less long-term effort, but is a little clunky and doesn't provide for summarization in the same way a wiki would.

Finally, linking out to a separate wiki hosted by a hatracker might be effective, but I think the issues with that are pretty obvious.

That's all I have, but maybe other people have some ideas?

Regards,
Oliver

Also, my first thought when you suggested the "summarizing" idea was that you have to be crazy. Have you ever actually administered a bulletin board site before? Have you any clue how many additional hours that would force Kathleen to put in? I'm sure she'd like to keep a life, on top of being the Hatrack administrator.

I'm just spelling it out like it is, because Kathleen is way too polite to say "You're nuts!"

That's presumably well within the capabilities of the existing software and after it's created, almost zero administration. Someone hunting the answer to a specific question has only one forum to search - using the existing search feature.

Of course it may not be a real problem, because there's only been one question so far, about gravity. Maybe we don't have the right experts. Perhaps we need experts in anti-gravity, faster-than-light engines, interstellar navigation, elven history, care of dragons, dilithium crystal mining, art of the 23rd century, Venusian geography, the history and future of time travel ...

I've run several email groups before, and am running one now, and believe me, I have no intention of asking Kathleen to summarize anything. But Kathleen's not the Writers Workshop: we are.

So if someone contributed content about (say) POV in a thread, and people thought it was a great explanation, that material could be excerpted quickly and posted to the Wiki on its own page. People could add to it, change it -- always with the opportunity for reversion to the old version, of course -- and add examples and links. That's the nature of a wiki, and it's immensely useful -- in a different way than this bulletin board system is useful.

The difference between that and this kind of BBS is that this would all be done in one page, rather than in a thread format. That could make the information much easier to digest than if you have to read an entire thread to get the point.

I may be crazy, but not for thinking of this.

I've always see the FAQ as more operational that literary. It _is_ an option, though.

Personally, I really like the idea of a writing tips and tricks wiki. I have actually dabbled with the idea of a Writing Links webpage. When Hatrackers or other online surfing leads me to an interesting page out on the WWW, I create a favorite to it. I have something in the neighborhood of 100 links, organized in 7 or 8 folders, and I've only been collecting links since Jan. Some I've only just glanced at, say by clicking a link in a Hatrack post to a recommended site. I looked, thought the information might be relevant to me in the future, and I created a link to it in my favorites. Others I read every day or have added to my blogroll. I have agent and author blogs, writing how-tos (including links to Hatrack threads where techniques are discussed), markets, critiquing sites, space research (I write mostly sci-fi), etc.

I often tell my local writer's group about a site I've found or been linked to by Hatrack, and they often want a link to the site. I feel kind of foolish, like I'm holding this vast store of information, since I spend a lot of time online and have this huge collection of links. I'm sure I'm not the only writer with one. The value, though, is in knowing whether the information/content contained on a site is valid, valuable, useful, accurate. In short, the value comes from me recommending to someone else "oh yes, read Miss Snark's blog if you want to understand about agents" not just saying "Google Writers Agents and see what comes up."

So - long way of saying, there's tremendous value added by the writers themselves providing some kind of context on the information they recommend. A FAQ can serve this purpose - sort of. But a FAQ, to be most useful should be brief. It can be brief with "suggested links" but the FAQ itself should be brief. Hatrack posts (this one included, LOL) are RARELY brief. This is where I see the value in Oliverhouse's recommendation of summaries of useful threads. I also suggest a listing of recommended websites, complete with some sort of one-sentence description/recommendation from the person who recommended the site.

A wiki provides an ideal interface for something like this, and ideal for a community like this, because it enables EVERYONE (who is willing to spend the 5 mins it takes to learn how to use a wiki) to contribute, edit, and update content. So, for example, if I wanted to I could dump a huge list of websites I recommend with a one-line explanation of what you'll find there. Later on, another user could come along and alphabetize my list. Later still, another could sort and organize the list, create bullet points, sub-bullets for sites that are related to one another, etc. All the while other writers could be adding links to the list. The community can contribute to the organization of the information.

I think Hatrack is pretty awesome as-is, however I also think that we could work together to create resources for all writers that would be more helpful to new writers, easier to find things for experienced writers, and fun and interesting. We're all writers, right? Writing is the fun part - even if it's posts, descriptions, reviews of sites, etc.

OSC and other professional writers have put plenty of great content on their sites for writers, however I think there is tremendous value in the wanna-be writers supporting each other. I also think a clearinghouse would be nice, since I have yet to find a collection like what I describe. I have seen them for other industries, other domains - heck, that's how things like craigslist got started...but I haven't seen anything for writers. Funny, that.

Wikis are a really interesting technology, however the other solutions you suggest are nifty, too, oliverhouse.

And Elan, oliverhouse was definitely not suggesting to increase the workload of one person, as he later clarified. I have administered a variety of online sites and have participated in some for 5+ years by now. The work that would need to be done is not a one-person kind of job. The premise is that a workgroup/online community decides to create an artifact, something that will be useful for a wide audience - and they come together to contribute that content. I help administer a large non-for-profit website complete with an active BBS with more than 20k registered members (10-20% of whom are active almost every day) and thousands of pages of online content, all of it written or posted by volunteers. When people care about what they're doing, they'll often give of their time in great quantities.