Re: documentation going away

[Lauren <lauren -at- writeco -dot- net>]

Dossy, are you saying that employers are hiring technical writers to use 
Wikipedia in order to produce support documentation?  My prediction is 
that employers will hire technical writers to use the content from the 
company's support forums as a basis for company documentation.  As 
though the content in the support forum is a rough draft.

Employers often seem to think that they can cut time and expenses by 
requiring that technical writers use various forms of in-place 
documentation and that employers may start to consider these support 
forums are in-place documentation.  Generally, for me, it is easier and 
faster to produce documentation from scratch with interviews and use of 
the system or product, but also use in-place documentation as a 
reference and possible starting point.

I think it would be potential nightmare if an employer said, "we need 
you to document what is on Wikipedia and what is in our support forums 
because that is the only documentation we have for our product."  I 
would do the job, but I would charge a lot.


On 1/16/2012 3:37 PM, Dossy Shiobara wrote: