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Subject:RE: When is it too much information? From:"Cardimon, Craig" <ccardimon -at- M-S-G -dot- com> To:'Kathleen MacDowell' <kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com>, 'yehoshua paul' <ysp10182 -at- gmail -dot- com> Date:Mon, 18 Feb 2013 15:35:48 +0000
@Kathleen: I usually end up changing the heading and dividing into sub-topics.
-----Original Message-----
From: techwr-l-bounces+ccardimon=m-s-g -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+ccardimon=m-s-g -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com] On Behalf Of Kathleen MacDowell
Sent: Monday, February 18, 2013 10:34 AM
To: yehoshua paul
Cc: tech2wr-l
Subject: Re: When is it too much information?
I'd put in some type of note about obviously changed interfaces, on the chance customer support will start getting calls about the program being broken. If it isn't something obvious to the user, at whatever level, then I wouldn't. In some sense, the developer and/or support people would be a good judge of that. I also think you're lucky to be getting suggestions from support. In my experience they don't share too much, but that's probably because support was paid :-)
Re Craig's question: Can you give an example of what you're thinking about?
Obviously there are times, but it seems hard to think of an explicit rule/guideline aside from what one would use for clear, informative writing. Maybe one rule would be when the topic can be approached from several directions. Then maybe change the heading and divide into sub-topics?
On Mon, Feb 18, 2013 at 9:07 AM, yehoshua paul <ysp10182 -at- gmail -dot- com> wrote:
> While reviewing the latest release notes that my company sends out
> every couple of weeks, one of the support guys suggested that I add
> the following words (or something similar) to one of the change
> descriptions: "The user does not need to do anything." What changed is
> information that was displayed in one area of the UI is no longer
> displayed. The support guy thought the users might think they need to
> do something, now that they no longer see this information.
>
> I told him, if the users needed to do something, I would write this in
> the release notes like I did with some of the other changes, and
> include the relevant steps, or the appropriate reference to the online
> help. If I didn't write anything, why would the users think they need to do something?
> His argument was that it doesn't hurt to add the sentence, and it may
> prevent confused customers from calling customer support.
>
> What do you guys think? Would adding a superfluous sentence (in my
> opinion) help or hinder users.
>
> Yehoshua
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--
Kathleen MacDowell
kathleen -dot- eamd -at- gmail -dot- com
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