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I'll explain this from the perspective of an end user of documentation
that's had some feedback mechanism namely, Microsoft's MSDN user
documentation site for Team Foundation Server.
Essentially readers can leave comments at the bottom of each topic.
When TFS v1.0 came out, there was an article on recovery the database. But
for some reason a crucial step was left out. Interestingly, there was a
comment by a user who detected that error, who then wrote a quick solution
for users, like us who faced the problem caused by the missing step.
A few weeks or months later, Microsoft's Team Foundation team posted a new
version of the TFS administrator's online guide - problem topic was updated
(CHM and webhelp) with the fix incorporated. Job done. Satisfied users.
This is the type of productive two way contextual communication between
reader and writer that makes good business sense as well. It was something
that was very apparent before in some of the major open source technical
manuals but have since found their way,in a good way, into driving updates
for commercial product's documentation.
If you've used the PHP or Apache Tech reference documentation site, you'll
notice the same thing, users can add comments to the bottom of topics like
article and news websites today. Very often for amateru coders you get the
added benefit of good code samples that isn't covered in the technical
documentation. Great help!
Daniel
-----Original Message-----
From: Rick Stone [mailto:rstone75 -at- kc -dot- rr -dot- com]
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2009 7:18 AM
To: Robert Lauriston; techwr-l
Subject: Was: ISO better tools - Now Feedback
Hi all
Okay, it would be way cool if someone could please post something that
substantiates the use of feedback mechanisms such as how many views, etc.
I see these questions all the time across various fora. Company X advertises
that their tool Y is capable of tracking all this wonderful feedback about
how many times topic Z has been hit.
Can someone please advise how this helps me in the real world? Sure, topic Z
may be more popular than topic A. Does that make topic A more valuable than
topic C that seldom gets hit? Does it mean that topic C becomes an eventual
candidate for deletion and removal from the help system? What about topic Z?
Does it mean that you do something special with it? Develop an FAQ that
contains topic Z perhaps?
Or what about statistical reports that infer a user normally traverses a
path from topic Z to topic B to topic D before finally stopping at topic L?
How do you know topic L is really the topic that solved the issue and not
simply where everyone eventually concludes the help had nothing they were
looking for and they gave up?
These reports are great and all, but how do real world help authors use them
when the moment release 7.1 is made public management is pouncing on you
asking why documentation isn't yet complete for 7.2 or 8?
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