I'd PM the author but I'm scared... who exactly is he and where did all those 66 FAQs come from? Are they recognised as useful by the rest of GameDev? I'm not trying to offend; I normally don't read blogs/articles without hearing from several sources that they're great so I'm just trying to establish the author's credibility...

Tom was alreay involved in games when I was still playing on my first console (namely, the Vectrex). I'm 38 now, go figure.
I'd say his FAQ's are a must-read for every aspiring (indie-) developer.

He's a member of these forums.
Tom Sloper.

I'd like to add that I made a lot of mistakes covered in his FAQ's myself, so I can affirm first-handedly that everything in there is the harsh but honest truth. Put off the pink goggles and just swallow it.

Don't PM him.

Beyond everything said here, his resume is on his site. You can clearly see he's been working in the industry longer than I've been alive. I'm pretty sure that validates his advice.

What Nick says.

Personally, I think that reading both Tom's and Dan's FAQs, followed by a short test to make sure you have read and understood them properly, should be a prerequisite to either joining this site, or the games industry in general ;-)

I was lucky to have had a friend who knew about Sloperama, and sent me the link to the FAQ. I don't think there's a more useful and clearly written rundown of "How to" on the internet. His resume is also on the site. I'm not sure why you didn't at least read that before asking people here. How do you know I'm credible about his credibility, after all? ;)

His site is pure gold for anyone who's serious about getting into the game industry and who also will read all of them and comprehend them.

Cool. 7 recommendations from 7 replies is enough for me...

What's the whole "don't PM me" thing about? Is it just because he gets loads of PMs, or because he doesn't check them, or because he really is as grumpy as he appears in his posts?

All of the above? :D

I have a similar policy on IRC. I flat-out ignore PMs from people, unless they're people I'm already very familiar with who I trust not to waste my time. Nearly every rosy-cheeked newbie who wanders into the channel will send me a PM after my first cursory message related to their problem.

There are two reasons I do this:

a) I'm already probably following the conversations in four channels or so, actively, and I'm sitting in something like ten, on average. I'd rather not have another window open, thanks. Also, I'm an ass, so I probably I don't like you.

b) If you keep your conversation in the channel, you get the benefit of other people -- who may be better-versed in the subject material -- being able to chime in. You get more eyeballs on the problem. Also, our conversation is available to everybody and everybody can benefit from the discussion (this is similar to what Jeff Atwood over at the Coding Horror blog wrote about once on the subject of blogging about your technical discussions versus confining them to email, et cetera).

(a) is only slightly sarcastic, and (b) is really the primary reason. I wouldn't be surprised if Tom's reasons are quite similar -- I presume, after all, a good part of the reason he built the FAQs website to begin with was so he wouldn't have to type out the same answers over and over and over.

Also Tom gets a thumbs-up from me as well, for whatever it's worth.