Re: plagiarism (long, long rant)

["M. Dannenberg" <midannen -at- SI -dot- BOSCH -dot- DE>]

Phil Brittenham schrieb:

...

>  I have already seen things torn
> apart that never should have been separated, and some corporate
> intranets
> where these mutant documents largely reside are nothing but garbage
> cans for
> the anal compulsive.  The one who will suffer the most is the reader,
> who
> will also have to be "standardized" to fit the documentation.   The
> "parts
> is parts" approach to documentation may have its moments, but as a fan
> of
> the judicious use of explanatory text, I think we're about to see a
> binge of
> stripped down, recycled text that challenges our professionalism in
> ways we
> haven't anticipated.

Phil, I think you're being a bit too pessimistic there. The mutant,
garbage-can documents for the anal retentive have always been with us.
Whether you torture your reader online or on paper does not make all
that much of a difference. There'll always be carelessly thrown together
crap, and well written, useful documents in every delivery medium.

The new technologies do provide loads of new and craetive ways for
mucking things up, but they also provide new ways to solve old problems,
like keeping stuff up to date and giving people just the stuff they need
when they need it. I think modularising docs recycling stuff are simply
necessary to cope with the ever increasing amount of information we have
to handle. When done badly the result is bad, when done well, the result
is good. And if that doesn't win the prize for truism of the day, I
don't know what will.

Mike

--
Mike Dannenberg
ETAS GmbH & Co.KG
midannen -at- si -dot- bosch -dot- de

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