Re: HUMOR: Docs you'd love to write

[Richard Mateosian <srm -at- C2 -dot- ORG>]

>Where's your sense of humor? If you don't want to read
>it, delete it.

If you look at the list as a cocktail party of technical writers, then
you're absolutely right. Of course, the list does have that character to
some extent, so a certain amount of off-topic banter is perfectly
acceptable. And the humor in question is related to tech writing, so there's
nothing wrong with posting that piece per se.

However, there are two big problems with reposting someone else's humorous
piece. The first is that it's likely to be going around, so many people will
have seen it before. For them it's just so many wasted bits. The second is
that many such postings are without permission or proper attribution. As
professional writers we ought to be concerned about that.

Another way to look at this list -- one the list owner calls our attention
to periodically -- is as one of many narrowly focused net resources that
people can go to for specific content. From that viewpoint you can exercise
your sense of humor to your heart's content on rec.humor and should stick to
tech writing issues on this one.

Anyway, thanks to all of you who sent me flames. It's been kinda chilly here
of late.  ...RM

Richard Mateosian        http://www.c2.org/~srm/   President, Berkeley STC
Freelance Technical Writer     srm -at- c2 -dot- org        Review Editor, IEEE Micro