Re: Is a bad index better than no index?

["Maggie Secara" <maggiros -at- hotmail -dot- com>]

As a compulsive user of indexes, I'd ALWAYS rather there was an index of any 
kind, even an inadequate one.  (A truly bad index is one where the page 
number given doesn't actually contain a reference to the word I looked up.) 
As a writer, I kind of like the indexing task, although my preference is to 
do a section as I finish it, as opposed to trying to do the whole 500 pages 
at one go.  It's actually an exercise in imagination, if you think about it.

Indexing is something I often do when there is a little down time, like 
waiting for reviews to come back or when the network is down.  I'm not a 
trained indexer either, but I do try to think of every way someone might 
look for the same topic:

approving a work order
work orders
  approving
  creating
creating a work orders
new work orders

That kind of thing. All part of thinking "like a user". I know when I'm 
using an index, I sometimes have to consider how many ways someone might 
have indexed the thing I'm looking for.

Full text search is cool, but I do find it hard to imagine using a manual of 
any size *without* an index!  A poor one will make me swear, but not as much 
as no index at all.

Just my tuppence ha'penny, of course.


Maggie Secara