Re: Value of technical writers - Sort Of.

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

>Cam Whetstone wrote:
>> Most just listen to the 'SME'
>> and go from there.  If the SME is
>> not such an E, and the SM is flawed in
>> translation

Tom wrote:
>
>And whose fault is that? The tech writer's fault?
>Should she become an engineer first? From which
>discipline?

Although it's undoubtedly more fun to paint everything
in black and white, I think the grey scales here obscure
the real point. In my experience, the technical expertise
that a tech writer needs is NOT necessarily how to code
the application, design the interface, fix the car, or
whatever. It's in having a sufficiently developed
BS detector to tell what's likely to be legitimate and
what's not. All of the (in my opinion inane) engineer
superiority discussions aside, it's fairly unlikely that an
individual who is completely prepared to design a
circuit board or code a database backend is going to
be doing the documentation on the project rather than
doing the project development.

However, the more a technical writer can critically
assess the information and judge the relative value
and worth, the better off he or she is.

As an extreme example, if a programmer explains
that the Web-based application under development relies
on the Archie protocol to provide secure submission of
form data to the VM-based database server, you
as a technical writer will be far better off if you
immediately chuckle along with the joke and ask
"No, really, how does it work" than quietly taking
notes and nodding silently. You don't need, in most
cases, to walk into the project knowing how everything
works, but you should be able to at least recognize
and respond to the appropriate jargon.

Back to a Dilbert reference, one of Scott Adam's
preferred humor devices is the "which is more likely"
question. You should be able to ask yourself that
about whatever technological issues you're dealing
with. In this case, you'll be better off if you have
sufficient background to be able to ask what is more likely:
!) That our developers are using an old and relatively
obscure protocol that doesn't provide for security
features to submit data to a completely unlikely
host platform, OR
2) That our developers like to pull my leg or want to see if
I know my stuff or that this particular developer works
with a different part of the app and doesn't have any
more idea than I do about how it works.
If that's a snap, you likely have the technical knowledge
you need to get where you want to go.

To return to Cam's point--I don't need to know if the
info I get from a developer is completely accurate or
not, at least not on the first pass. I need to be able
to assess how credible the information is and if it
meets the WIML test. If the info sounds like it's from
left field, I've got more research to do. If it's plausible
in the context of the system, application, and technology,
I'm off and running until the first review pass.

And, back to Tom's point--I don't need a degree
in any particular field, but the more background I
have or can quickly amass, the more valuable I'll
be as a tech writer.

Eric


^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Eric J. Ray    RayComm, Inc.
http://www.raycomm.com/      ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com

*Award-winning author of several popular computer books
*Syndicated columnist: Rays on Computing
*Technology Department Editor, _Technical Communication_

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