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Subject:RE: Tech writing class From:APEERY -at- FAMILYDOLLAR -dot- COM To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Wed, 23 May 2001 12:20:41 -0400
Note 1: This is a response to Chris's original post. I've lost that
original, so I'm responding through Laura A. MacLemale's response. Mea
culpa.
Note 2: I take Chris's remarks to be about uncooperative SMEs, rather than
about how to frame questions as efficiently as possible. If I got this
wrong, sorry Chris!
I've seen comments like this from many posters over the months, and I've
always felt I must be missing something. Sometimes I succeed at getting
information from SMEs, sometimes I fail. But either way, it's no skin off
my nose. If an SME is not cooperating, I e-mail them a final request for
information/cooperation, and copy my manager. And that's pretty much it.
The ball is in the SME's court. I am not a manager. My job does not
include getting other people to do their own work. It's not that I'm
unconcerned about my customers, but rather that there are, and should be,
limits to what I can effectively do in creating documents.
If I get some kind of heat from above, my response is, "Yes, this is a
problem. If it has been agreed that this document must get done, then
perhaps that person's manager should have a talk with them." Ok, I wouldn't
be quite that smug and annoying, but you get the idea.
Am I way off here? The above method works swimmingly for me, but maybe I'm
not understanding something.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Laura A Mac Lemale [SMTP:lmaclemale -at- paychex -dot- com]
> Sent: Tuesday, May 22, 2001 8:58 AM
> To: TECHWR-L
> Subject: Re: Tech writing class
>
...Chris <cah_91 -at- yahoo -dot- com> wrote:
> "Also, one thing that wasn't mentioned is that you have to be able to pull
> information from a busy SME. How do
> you teach this? Beats me. But it's a point that has to come across."
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