Re: STC Letter to the Editor

[SteveFJong -at- aol -dot- com]

In his latest marketing piece, Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com> throws a 
lot of wild punches at the STC competitions that miss, but one, I think, that 
connects and merits discussion.

It's easier to deal with his misses first, at least from my perspective as an 
organizer of the Boston/NNE competition. His list of competition 'reforms' is:

>> 1. All can enter, not just STC members.

Andrew is misinformed; this is already the case.

>> 2. NON-STC judges.

Andrew is misinformed; this is already the case.

>> 4. Wipe out all the regional competitions and have one national one.
>>  Make it a real honor to win. 

To win an international award, an entry must first win an Award of 
Distinction from a local competition. If he thinks the competition is already 
too easy, why advocate making it easier?

Also, Andrew opines: 

>> The main reason behind these pointless beauty contests is because STC
>> wants the business community to accept people who have ZERO
>> technical skills as legitimate authors and writers.
>> Therefore, these competitions are merely another tactic to
>> give legitimacy to bad material.

This is not what STC is trying to do, nor why STC runs competitions. (If it 
is, I've been missing the memos for ten years now 8^)

However, Andrew's reform #3, while it contains a gratuitous swipe at people 
like me, contains a point worth considering:

>> 3. Finalists must be run through a rigorous testing with actual users,
>> not STC members who are jockeying for positions of power. 

The most valuable feedback we can get is from users; the most important 
quality element of a technical document is accuracy. Therefore, "rigorous 
testing with actual users" would be a fine thing, and I would accept its 
results implicitly. 

Now: would everyone whose companies subject their documentation to rigorous 
user testing please stand up? No? I didn't think so. How about companies that 
submit their *products* to rigorous user testing? [crickets chirp] I know 
it's done, but regrettably rarely in software. So while I endorse the concept 
wholeheartedly, I recognize that it's pie in the sky.

His further analysis trumpets his bias:

>> The judges are selecting winners based on superficial aspects like design
>> and layout. They are not judging the technical or informational merit
>> of the material because - they don't understand the material.

Concerning judges who "don't understand the material," consider this trivial 
procedural snippet:

>To adjust the timeout interval, do this:
>  1) Select Tune > Timeout Interval; the Timeout Interval window opens
>      (Figure 3-4).
>  2) Enter a value between 0 and 600. (The default is 30 seconds.)
>  3) Click Enter to save the change, or Cancel to abandon the change.
>The timeout interval is changed.

Now, it could be that the menu item or window name is wrong; it could be that 
the data range or default is wrong; it could be that a confirmation message 
appears that must be dealt with, or that the change doesn't take effect until 
a restart. This is a QA engineer's level of knowledge, but I won't presume 
the judges can't handle it; some writers can, some cannot. But it's a moot 
point: judges can't assess accuracy because - they don't have the product.

A deeper level of understanding might lead a judge to say, "Hey! No one 
should ever change the timeout interval" or "An appropriate timeout interval 
for an Internet application should not exceed one minute," but that's deeper 
even than the typical engineer's understanding. ("I dunno--the spec says zero 
to ten minutes, so that's what I implemented.") That would be grand; but 
then, that's more an assessment of the product, isn't it?

I do endorse the idea that accuracy is of paramount importance, but I 
acknowledge that we're not in a position to assess it because we don't have 
access to the documented products. User testing is a good idea, and I think 
STC should do it. However, I would raise the entry fee to $10,000 8^)

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