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> You seem to have little respect for the users and believe
> they must be innately timid, passive and dependent, yet you
> advocate that they learn how to use products by exploring and
> experimentation? I don't want to waste their time. I want
> them to be able to use the product and if they have a
> question I want them to be able to look it up quickly and get
> back to work, not get off on some experimental tangent.
No, that remark referred to the _minority_ who aren't turned off by a
mind-numbing manual that "almost on one uses." I have lots of respect
for my users, and am convinced that, with the slightest encouragement,
the vast majority of them will become active instead of passive
learners. But I know the innate human drive to learn and explore can be
suppressed (more easily in some than in others) by an avalanche of
stupidity, pointlessness, and mind-numbing material. Check the average
high school for evidence.
I suspect we're thinking about different specifics more than
disagreeing. I suspect that "It depends" pretty much concludes the
discussion. But where's the fun in that, eh? ;-)
You say "look it up," so you seem to be thinking in terms of reference
manuals. I do mainly task-oriented material. In a reference book, more
information is usually better, and people can just ignore what they
don't need. But in task-oriented or conceptual material, too much
information -- of the wrong kind (trivial, obvious, unimportant, etc.)
-- can be harmful because it ends up obscuring the important stuff and
discouraging use of the documentation.
When I started at the predecessor of my current employer, every
procedure step involving selection of a menu item started with something
like "Perform one of the following steps," followed by several substeps
describing alternative ways of selecting the menu item -- mouse,
function key, Alt key and arrows, ... People messed up difficult tasks
all the time because they didn't read the procedure carefully or their
eyes glazed over.
That's an extreme example, admittedly. But I've seen a lot of that kind
of over-documentation in my time, and I really think it's a bigger
problem than not being told how many characters an input field accepts.
> Start up Microsoft Word, choose the Tools>>Options menu item,
> then click the Compatibility tab. Scroll down the list and
> explain to me the differences between "Suppress extra line
> spacing at top of page", "Suppress extra line spacing at top
> of page like Word 5.x for the Mac" and "Suppress extra line
> spacing at top of page like WordPerfect 5.x". This is vital
> information...
> there's no way I can make an informed choice without an
> understanding of what the difference between these options
> is. It's not in the documentation.
No fair using Microsoft as an example! :-) I don't routinely bash MS,
but their help often drives me crazy. In excruciating detail, they
document blindingly obvious stuff like the First Name, Last Name, and
City fields, the Cancel button, etc. But, they never get around to some
of the less obvious stuff, like the example you chose. Their
documentation priorities seem perverse at times, tackling the easiest
things first and then running out of time for the hard parts.
Since it's Friday, maybe someone can post a copy of that old joke about
the helicopter flying over a fog in Redmond. :-)
Richard
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Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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