The list of TeX Frequently Asked Question is one of the most useful online resources for TeX users. Since the list was first published some years ago by UK-TUG it’s grown to include over 400 questions and answers. Most of the work has been done by one person, Robin Fairbairns. Robin’s contributions to the TeX community, both in maintaining the FAQ and running one of the three core CTAN nodes, are really vital to all TeX users.

At the moment, there’s a thread on comp.text.tex where the subject of adding new information to the FAQ has been mentioned. Getting new material (for the FAQ or anything else) is always a problem, and so most of the text in the FAQ is written by Robin. That’s a lot to do for one busy person, and we all need to play our part. The question is how to do that. The advantage of having one person writing everything is that the quality is good, and there is care taken to keep material up to date. So if you spot a gap, your best sending some (good) text as detailed in the FAQ itself. One suggestion that’s come up is setting up a wiki, with the idea being that contributions there can then be used as ‘source’ for adding to the FAQ. Time will tell if this comes to pass: it might be interesting, but I suspect the same people will still be doing the writing!