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Marketing view of documentation was Re: dispensing with documentation reviews
Subject:Marketing view of documentation was Re: dispensing with documentation reviews From:"Ned Bedinger" <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Tue, 1 Jun 2004 14:08:33 -0700
I committed a howler recently when I characterized the "marketing
view of documentation", and thanks to a poignant inquiry sent to
me off-line, I have purged any errant pejorative sense of
"marketing" from my vocabulary, and now retract anything that I
implied was attributable to the term "marketing" or the field of
Marketing in general. By way of explanation, I'd like to say
that the project I was describing, where I worked under the
"Marketing" department, was my sole project experience with a
marketing organization, and under the circumstances and in
retrospect, was probably far from normal. I am grateful for the
clarification in email about Marketing as a business function.
So, please let me clarify what I was trying to say; the message
has change little but the unintended insult to marketers has been
removed:
"Marketing" was the name of the internal group that wanted
incomplete documentation releases with all of the bows and
ribbons, like a finished product. Ann Pai may find this
interesting because that Marketing department was an example of a
group that had the power to drive the documentation requirements,
and used it in a way that ran counter to my professional values.
To them, the documentation, whether complete or not, would
fulfill their commitment to providing documentation along with a
test release of the software. If I had not understood the
special requirement for delivery of a good looking but incomplete
doc set PDQ, it would have seemed that Marketing had arrogated a
large portion of the tech writers' professional role, humiliating
us and our best efforts by shipping out a "pig with lipstick."
I didn't mean to extrapolate and attribute those situational
ethics to the ethics of the entire professional field of
Marketing.
Sorry if anyone else was insulted by my apparent slight of
marketers. I hope my meaning is clearer now.
Ned Bedinger
Ed Wordsmith Technical Communications Co.
doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com http://www.edwordsmith.com
tel: 360-434-7197
fax: 360-769-7059
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ned Bedinger" <doc -at- edwordsmith -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2004 1:40 PM
Subject: Re: dispensing with documentation reviews
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