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I think an outside source (and by "outside" I mean not paid by the company
that sells the product being documented) have significant advantages in
perspective.
When a user buys a third-party book, there is no question about who the
writer serves.
Those of us who work in-house like to call ourselves user-advocates, and
some of us try hard. I know I do. But we know who signs the paychecks and
the user isn't buying documentation. We present the point of view of the
vendor of our respective products. We compromise with our sales and
marketing people. We compromise with our designers and engineers. We serve
the employer or client. We do it by taking the user's point of view, but we
do not serve the user.
We have significant advantages in timing, information, and authority. We may
know the facts before they are real. We have access to the full detail. And
what we write is the official word.
Each has a place. No Microsoft publication can say "Don't ever use Master
Documents in Word. They blow chunks. Always have, always will." But when I
read about an odd procedure in the Word help file, I am pretty confident
that it's a procedure that is supposed to work, bugs aside, will work, and
will continue to work until Microsoft comes up with another way to do the
same thing.
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Office:
mike -dot- huber -at- software -dot- rockwell -dot- com
Home:
nax -at- execpc -dot- com
