RE: Stupid users (was the "top this" thread)

Subject: RE: Stupid users (was the "top this" thread)
From: "Anita Legsdin" <anita -dot- legsdin -at- watchmark -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2003 12:35:29 -0700


Salient points from Mark, but I reply with another story (this one is true). I once was responsible for a portion of a user guide. Several bug reports were registered by the customer's testers, saying that various procedures just didn't work. After some investigation and much hair pulling, we discovered that the program (let's call it Program X) wasn't running at the time they tested our procedures! Now, because of pressure from the customer, all procedures begin with "Make sure Program X is running before starting the following procedure. Refer to [xref here] for instructions on how to start Program X." Duh? Evidently not.

Anita

-----Original Message-----
From: Mark Baker [mailto:mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com]
Sent: Friday, October 03, 2003 9:52 AM
To: TECHWR-L
Subject: RE: Stupid users (was the "top this" thread)



Would it were that easy! But telling users hundreds of things they do know
is just as bad as not telling them things they don't know. All too often,
documents are unusable simply because the needles are hidden in bigger and
bigger haystacks.

>From a purely practical point of view, you cannot assume complete ignorance
on the part of the user. You have to assume all sorts of shared knowledge
even to begin a communication.

. . .
We cannot write everything to the lowest common denominator. We need
documents that are written with a high level of assumed knowledge, and the
obligation of the reader of such a document is to repair any deficits in his
knowledge before he reads the book. The obligation of the writer is not to
make unreasonable or arbitrary assumptions about what the typical educated
audience for his book knows, and not to leave out things that are essential
to the subject he is presenting.



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