MFAQEmail

From Openmoko

Make them want to come to us...well, not make them, but provide the easy way to amenably and quickly get the right info in their inbox. Use the tools we've got to scale the effort in our favor as best we can.

The goal is to make it

1. --easy for us to broadcast corrections,
2. --easy for us to track misinformation thoroughly, and
3. --easy for news publishers, writers, and geeks to find corrections.

Create an OpenMoko misinformation FAQ (mFAQ).

Hmm...let's see...a wiki page on corrections errata--sort of like newspapers do when they publish details incorrectly. Newspapers follow-up with corrections. But we're not making the errors (rather, we're finding them). We're not obligated to make the corrections (rather, we truly desire the corrections to circulate), and better yet, the mFAQ becomes a living document, forever providing news publishers, writers, and geeks with the Facts™ (read:FAQs!).

We do it without malice or blame.

Since we're just now publicly starting up, starting a wiki mFAQ compendium of corrections makes sense, can quickly reign in the misinformation this early on, and state the correct information.

An idea for a suggested set of procedures might be:

---

1. An openmoko community member (OCM) notes the published error
2. OCM enters error info on the mFAQ wiki (keep it simple but complete)
   1. Article title, or platform feature in error
   2. Date
   3. URL
   4. Notes
3. If the OCM can follow-up with the author, notes can be made in (4). If not, leave it blank and post a note in community asking for follow-up help. (Question: can the openmoko site track open and closed misinformation articles, sort of how bugs are tracked? It's just an idea. If the site tool can accommodate tracking this, then the mFAQ would only be updated with completed contacts and corrections, not open items for follow-up.)
4. The OCM provides the author with the URL to the mFAQ for their future reference, and suggests they freely circulate the mFAQ URL to others as necessary. (This keeps the author informed, and propagates the correct information out into the ethos. I'm not sure about putting email addresses on the mFAQ. It would be nice to track the author's name and email, but putting it on the wiki doesn't seem right. Thus my idea of using a site tool to track the misinformation and contacts, saving email addresses and names for follow-up in the site tool rather than the wiki, since by keeping them in the site tool they're not as publicly available as on the wiki.)
5. If the OCM can't follow-up, the entry remains open until another community member puts the monkey on his or her back and contacts the author.
6. The OCM suggest that the author join the [announce] list. :-j