RE: reasons, political or otherwise, for omitting info (was @internet standards and clarity)

Subject: RE: reasons, political or otherwise, for omitting info (was @internet standards and clarity)
From: "William Sherman" <bsherman77 -at- embarqmail -dot- com>
To: "'TechWR-L'" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 24 May 2012 17:29:14 -0400

So they are stupid instead of sinister. Well, take care all the same. The
stupid can often be more dangerous since they can chop your legs from under
you without warning, whereas you know the sinister are always planning to
chop your legs.


There are often times to be vague on purpose, many of them legal, as you
want to point them in the right direction without demanding which foot goes
where.

Sometimes you need to simply say " remove item xx from ..." rather than a
detailed procedure as there may be customer or production variations or
revisions and you can't cover each and every one. I'd venture to say that
your engineer is being vague since he really isn't thinking. He knows it is
standard XXX and assumes that anyone would know it is Standard XXX and would
be surprised that anyone could possibly get that wrong.




-----Original Message-----

...

Knowing the people involved, I'm sure that it's largely a matter of lack of
clarity & precision in their own writing -- a nicely ironic scenario here
:-). And we're having a sensible discussion all 'round to get to where
everyone is on the same page with regard to providing the info that's most
necessary to ensure that the doc readers successfully do what they need to
do.

Yes, sometimes that means that there are reasons for a product's docs to
*not* sound like there's one hard & fast method or set of rules (or given
standard) that can possibly address all the possible situations. That's part

of deciding what is appropriate content *within the context of how things
are in real life* vs. some theoretical ideal.

...


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Follow-Ups:

References:
Re: "Internet Standard (STD)" - phrase known by Web programmers ?: From: Laura Lemay
Re: "Internet Standard (STD)" - phrase known by Web programmers ?: From: Monique Semp
RE: "Internet Standard (STD)" - phrase known by Web programmers ?: From: McLauchlan, Kevin
reasons, political or otherwise, for omitting info (was @internet standards and clarity): From: Monique Semp

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