RE: Structure and substance: stability and flexibility

[Mike Stockman <stockman -at- jagunet -dot- com>]

On 6/13/00 12:07 PM, Carnall, Jane (Jane -dot- Carnall -at- compaq -dot- com) wrote:

>Content and structure are each as important as the other. Without structure,
>you have no useful content.

Interesting how you go from Andrew's "content is more important than 
structure" to "without structure..." Nobody ever said, anywhere in this 
discussion, that we should be without structure, therefore nobody is 
disagreeing with you. It's easy to pose an extreme position and argue 
against it, but that's not a discussion.

Of course, given the choice between the two extremes (which nobody is 
likely to do, but for the sake of argument), a mass of disorganized 
information (content without structure) is still marginally more useful 
to a desperate user than an empty outline (structure without content). 
That's an unrealistic situation that nobody is proposing, however.

I have been on many, many projects where formal processes and structure 
were piled on unnecessarily, in spite of the obvious lack of knowledge 
and understanding on the part of the writers. The content suffered, and 
all the people running the show could think of was to implement more 
processes. Those cases gave me a distaste for process and structure at 
the expense of content.

----->Mike

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