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I've been on this list, off and on, for quite a long time--8 or 9 years, I
suppose. And while I, too, will miss Mr. Plato, and do not discount his
significant contributions to the list, I'll be quite honest and say that
MOST of his public posts (I'd say 8 out of 10) seemed to boil down to 1)
technical writers should be more technical and 2) the STC is the devil's
tool (exaggerating for effect, here).
While I agree with him on #1 (although doubtless we would disagree about how
MUCH more technical TW's should be) and don't completely disagree with him
on #2 (I am not a member, and found the last conference I attended to have
limited value and application to what I do day-to-day, but in general feel
that STC has more value/influence for academics than actual practitioners) I
wonder how much we'll actually miss him saying these same two things over
and over and over again. Once again, I do NOT discount his substantive and
interesting posts on various topics--but they are definitely overshadowed by
his continued harping on the points above.
That said, sometimes I am embarassed to call myself a TW when I see some of
the personalities on display here. So many are pedantic, humorless,
defensive, and nitpicking/micromanaging to the point of paralysis. I
occasionally want to yell (as Mr.Plato often has) "just WRITE something!
Don't worry so much about the process and start PRODUCING! And maybe you
would have a better relationship with your SMEs if you weren't so pedantic,
humorless, defensive, etc. ..."
How you react to Mr. Plato probably says more about you than it does about
him.
Back to work, me...
Nora
Senior Technical Writer, Charles Industries, Ltd.
nmerhar -at- charlesindustries -dot- com
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