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I'm taking this public - so I removed the original poster's name.
I wrote...
>> It isn't so much that people know where Kansas
>> is,its can they locate a resource that can tell them where Kansas is.
As
>> a tech writer, we have an opportunity to make those resources available
>> to people.
Then the responder replied...
> That can be fairly dangerous, though, without having memorized at least
> *some* basic knowledge. If you don't know where Kansas is, then all
> someone has to do to ruin your vacation is to label it "San Francisco".
>
> That's an admittedly overly-facetious example, but my point still
> stands-- if you're dependent on external sources for facts, then those
> who control those sources control reality. And in an era when ownership
> of media outlets is consolidating rapidly, all it takes is for someone
> near the top of AOL/Time Warner to make up their minds, and then we'll
> have always been at war with Oceania. Er, something like that, anyway.
Excellent point. Which is why it is important for technical writer to
develop a sense of the topic. If you cannot accurately evaluate the
information given to you for correctness, relevance, weight etc. If you
have no understanding of the topic you cannot accurately evaluate the
information given to you.
I have a writer who discovered this lesson just last week. One of the
engineers at a client site told him something totally erroneous about the
product. Since he was new to the project, he didn't have any frame of
reference to judge that information and hence, went off and made a major
change in the document. When I saw the change, I approached the writer and
said "you've been talking to Joe (not his real name) haven't you?" This
engineer is notorious for injecting his own personal philosophies about
the product into every conversation. If you didn't know any better, you
might believe him.
This is where so many writers get into trouble. They implicitly trust the
SMEs, when those SMEs are more like SMNs (subject matter novices).
Now, I know what your thinking: "if I can't trust the SMEs who can I
trust." Yourself. You own the documents and they are your responsibility.
You need to make sure the information is correct. This is why tech pubs
groups where the writers are isolated from other aspects of the
organization (such as QA, support, marketing, etc.) constantly struggle.
Their isolation ruins their ability to be objective.
Andrew Plato
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