"community" or "user" generated documentation

["Victoria M. Sharpe" <victoriasharpe -at- comcast -dot- net>]

Hi fellow colleagues,

I've been working part-time for a company writing documentation and find 
myself in a new situation. The product I am documenting already has some 
online community/user generated documentation, due to the previous poor 
customer service response and lack of detailed documentation. At first I 
thought it would make my job easier, but I'm finding much of it to go 
against standard protocol for department inclusion in our official products.

Have you experienced this with any of your documentation projects? If so, 
how do you handle this already existing documentation? Do you simply ignore 
parts of it that traditionally might not be included or happily incorporate 
it?

While I'm interested in any responses on this issue, I'd love to hear from 
anyone whose documenting open source materials. How does this affect your 
job?

Speaking with other colleagues on a regular basis, I'd hear plenty of 
complaints about company executives not appreciating documentation efforts, 
so does this affect those efforts and if so, in what way?


Cheers,

Victoria 



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