RE: Tech reviewers doing their job?

["Lisa Bronson" <Lisa -dot- Bronson -at- ipaper -dot- com>]

That's how the reviewers found out about it... they started getting phone
calls directly from the customers, and couldn't understand why.  :-)

Lisa



                                                                                                                                 
                    "Ed Manley"                                                                                                  
                    <edmanley -at- bell       To:     "Lisa Bronson" <Lisa -dot- Bronson -at- ipaper -dot- com>, "TECHWR-L"                            
                    south.net>            <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>                                                           
                                         cc:                                                                                     
                    07/12/2002           Subject:     RE: Tech reviewers doing their job?                                        
                    01:29 PM                                                                                                     
                                                                                                                                 
                                                                                                                                 




Kewl trick, Lisa, but the depressing afterthought is that the audience
didn't read it either, else a late-night call from some tickled reader
would
have given the reviewer a heads-up!
Oh well...
Ed



Good morning,

I was talking with a couple of engineers this morning, and was pleasantly
surprised to hear them discussing technical publications.  :-)

One of them said that at a former employer, the people who reviewed the
documentation had gotten into the habit of "pencil whipping," whereby they
signed off on the documents without actually reading them.

Of course, phone calls to support increased as reviews decreased.  Finally,
the writers came up with a plan to convince the reviewers to do their jobs.

After some time passed and the reviewers began complaining about a new rash
of phone calls they were getting.  ;-)

The writers asked them if they had reviewed the documentation prior to its
publication.  "Of course," was their indignant response.

"Well, apparently you didn't, because if you had, you would have noticed
that we put your name and day and evening (home) phone numbers in each of
the manuals you were responsible for reviewing!  Had you been doing your
job, you would have seen it, and had the authority to remove it from the
text!"

(The reviewers tried complaining to the writers' manager--they were not
successful, though, because he had been in on the plan from the beginning!)

Happy Friday!
Lisa B.






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