Re: STC Letter to the Editor

[Andrew Plato <gilliankitty -at- yahoo -dot- com>]

--- Jan Henning <henning -at- r-l -dot- de> wrote:
> > 2. The community gathers and spends most of their time discussing 
> > everything -
> > except content. Huh?
> 
> What's so hard do understand? When a number a people gather, they tend 
> to talk about topics they have in common. "Content" is a very abstract 
> concept that could be discussed but isn't all that interesting. 
> Specific content, on the other hand, may be much too varied to discuss 
> fruitfully at an STC meeting.

So call it the Society of Layout and Formatting. If you're not talking about
content and content issues - then don't call it a communication society. 

> You could talk about network protocols, sure. But that would send those 
> 90% of the techwriters packing who don?t do anything with networking 
> protocols and presumably never will. And for a third of the remainder, 
> the level is too high, and for another third it is too low.

That's sad. Because if those writers actually listened, they might learn
something valuable. And then they might realize that knowledge - even about a
seemingly unconnected issue - is valuable. 

> Same with other content topics. So the STC choses to focus on those 
> topics that actually benefit the majority of its members. This appears 
> to be a very well-founded approach, especially given that there are a 
> large number of separate societies such as the IEEE where all kinds of 
> content can be discussed.

Like I said - call it the Society of Documentation or Society of Technical
Presentation. Since content isn't dicussed, then its not a society of
communication. 

Andrew Plato 

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