Frequent questions

The term frequently asked questions (translation into Spanish of the English expression Frequently Asked Questions, whose acronym is FAQ) refers to a list of questions and answers that frequently arise within a certain context and for a particular topic.

In Spanish, the following acronyms can be used:

• P+F., FAQs.
• PP. FF., recently used, unused (more used is the English acronym F.A.Q.).
• P.U.F., frequently used questions, although less used.

History

The first FAQ systems were developed in the sixties and were interfaces built with natural language and their access was quite restricted; among the systems created under this scheme was baseball (1961), which answered questions about the United States baseball league in a period of one year. There was also the lunar system (1972), which answered questions about the geological analysis of moonstones obtained in support missions on trips to the moon; based on these systems and after the success obtained from them, more were developed; which were based on a knowledge database written manually by experts.

Although the term PP. FF. It is of recent use, the concept is very old. For example, Matthew Hopkins wrote The Discovery of Witches (1647) in question-and-answer form. Another famous example of this concept is Ripalda's catechism or also the first versions of the Communist Manifesto, the Principles of Communism written by Friedrich Engels in 1847.

In the context of the internet, PP. FF. they originated from the NASA mailing list in the early 1980s. The first PPs. FF. they were developed in 1982, when information storage was still very expensive. In the SPACE mailing list, it was assumed that users would store previous messages, but in practice this did not happen. For this reason, the dynamics of the mailing list began to transform into a repetition of questions that had already been answered in previous messages.

The custom of publishing PP. FF. spread to other mailing lists. The first person to post a PP list. FF. weekly was Jef Poskanzer on USENET net.graphics/comp.graphics. Today, on USENET, ask for issues resolved in the PP. FF. it is considered a fault of netiquette, since this would indicate that the user did not bother to consult the list before asking.

Current use

Today, the term is used to refer to lists of frequently asked questions or any list of questions, regardless of whether they are asked frequently or not.

The term PP. FF. —and the concept of question lists—has transcended the realm of the Internet, and today it is common to see it in information brochures about consumer articles.