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Subject:Re: An Engineer has infected my young mind! From:Stina Lane-Cummings <stina -at- real -dot- com> To:techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com Date:Fri, 19 May 2000 11:48:24 -0700
On a tangential note, it has been my experience that there are two
characteristics of coworkers who offer unsolicited opinions about the
documentation:
- Somewhere in their past, they have writing experience. They may have
written other documentation for the company, maybe just a readme file, or
perhaps they won a prize for How I Spent My Summer Vacation. Once you
uncover what they perceive as their qualifications, and acknowledge that
they're in the Writers' Club, they leave you alone to do your work.
- People who care this much about documentation can and should be
converted to allies. The conversion is usually a matter of discussing
philosophical aspects of the documentation (possibly limited to a tiny
area), asking them to give feedback on early drafts, or perhaps asking
advice regarding their area of expertise. Because their concern was heard
and converted to action, these people have nearly always become my
strongest supporters.
