Re: Workmanship

[Sybille Sterk <sybille -at- BOFFIN -dot- BEYOND2000 -dot- CO -dot- UK>]

Hiya,

I agree, criticising other people's work is one thing, but contacting a
company to tell them (for any reason) that their documentation is no good
and that they need to get rid of their technical author is bad style, very
arrogant and self-righteous.

It reminds me of these kids who go to the teacher to tell them Mary did
this or something else, just to see Mary punished.

What's the world coming to, if we sanction such behaviour?

If you see somebody else making a mistake (in your humble opinion) just try
not to make it yourself, use it as a lesson, rather than teaching somebody
else how much better you think you are.

Also, from my experience I know that many smaller companies cannot afford a
technical writer and so a programmer writes the technical documentation. A
programmer is neither trained to do this kind of work, nor (in most cases)
is he cut out to do this work . What good would it do, if somebody told
that company that their documentation is crap. There's nothing they can do
about it, if they can't afford it.

And, what's bad style to you is great style to someone else.

It's fine to find out what your customers want, and this is something I try
to do, too. Which is the reason why I work closely together with the people
in our company who demonstrate the software to customers and also train
them. However, I am always prepared to improve myself, but I am not
prepared to go out and tell others to do so.

IMHO,

Sybille




Sybille Sterk
Technical Author and Translator (German)
Boffin Technology Ltd.

Email: Sybille -at- boffin -dot- beyond2000 -dot- co -dot- uk