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Thus far everyone has suggested publishing substantial
content that's mostly right, so let me take a
(tentative) contrarian approach.
Perhaps we should publish substantially less content
that is known to be 100 percent right. Why? Because if
our readers use documentation and find an error (or
multiple errors, as John's scenario implies), our
credibility suffers. Subsequently, readers' confidence
in the remaining documentation is reduced and they may
choose not to continue referring to it.
Now in fairness, you could take the other side of
arguement: If our readers refer to a document and
cannot find what they're looking for, they'll be less
likely to refer to it in the future. True enough.
Maybe it's a personal worldview, but I almost assume
that any document or book that I read is going to be
incomplete, if only because most systems and areas of
knowledge are so expansive that no one could be
expected to completely document everything.
But hey, I'm really not sure, that's why I offer this
tentatively. It's a great question.
Steven Brown
Technical Writer
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