RE: STC Letter to the Editor

[Shea Michael EXT <Michael -dot- Shea -dot- extern -at- icn -dot- siemens -dot- de>]

I'm coming late to this discussion but I cannot restrain myself from commenting.

Come on folks. I think we all agree that STC volunteers cannot ever judge the technical accuracy.  Yes technical accuracy is important. It can be life-threateningly important when we are documenting, let's say medical equipment.

However, you can have a technically accurate book in which information:

* cannot be found (because it isn't in the index)
* is buried in minutia 
* is poorly expressed
* is overlooked (because the text is poorly arranged or formatted)

These are things that STC volunteers can judge. They are also important to the task of communicating. How many of you have had frightfully intelligent teachers who put you to sleep because they lectured at their own feet or used vocabulary that was over your head? I'm sure that everything he or she said was technically accurate...but was it useful? No, because it could not be delivered in a way which could be understood!

Anybody can be technically accurate if their material gets reviewed enough. I think the true art is being technically accurate AND delivering the right information, to the right people, in an understandable manner, at the right time!

Suggesting that the competition be based on user feedback is a noble gesture, but laughable. How many writers out there ever recieved any reader feedback whatsoever. We all are aware of the poor rate of return on surveys. Besides some documents are only ever read by a handful of people.

Let's try to be realistic here folks and not quixotically charge the windmills of technical accuracy.

-Michael Shea

-----Original Message-----
From: Grant, Christopher 
Subject: RE: STC Letter to the Editor



> What I did say, which you ought to 
> understand because you retyped it, is that assessing the technical
accuracy of a 
> document as part of the competition requires access to the product it 
> documents, which STC does not have; and that such an 
> assessment would, if done right, be too valuable a service to offer merely
for the 
> Competitions entry fee.

<snip>

Given the admission of this inability to assess technical accuracy, I do not
understand how the STC can get away with holding "technical communication"
competitions and have folks take them seriously.  I can throw a "medical
treatments" competition, but if I only base it on judging the physical
appearance of doctors, how friendly they are to their patients, and how nice
their facilities are, is there really any legitimacy there?

> Do you have any suggestions how to assess the technical accuracy of a 
> document without access to the product it documents? Does anyone?

Base the winners of the competition on REAL end-user feedback about docs,
and not on the opinon of judges who've never seen the doc nor understand the
content contained within. 

At the very least, the name of this sort of competition should be changed
from "technical communication" to "style and layout" if in fact that is what
is being judged.

Chris Grant

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