I'm currently developing a set of processes and procedures for indexing in my company's DITA XML CMS tool. It's a much more complicated project than I'd anticipated it would be, and I've spent way too much time lying awake in the middle of the night as I work through these indexing issues (which, granted, feel a lot more pressing at 3:00 A.M. than they do in the daylight).
There isn't much information on the Web about indexing within the context of DITA and the new XML CMS tools, and I'm extremely grateful to those people who have posted the information that is available. My fluctuating confusion and frustration levels during this exercise have led me to wonder how many other people are struggling, as I am, with how to develop and implement a solid, workable indexing process. If I figure it all out (ha!), I'll be sure to share my thoughts here.
At the moment, I'm evaluating stand-alone tools for managing controlled vocabularies for our DITA maps. At my last job, I was the sole indexer, so vocabulary control wasn't much of an issue. My index WAS the controlled-vocabulary list. Ah, things were so much easier back then...
While I'm on the subject of indexes, may I mention how annoyed I get when a Help system offers some sort of natural-language query tool instead of a proper index? Maybe I'm hopelessly old-school, but I just love a good index. When I need to search for information in a Help system, I always turn to the index first. I much prefer to browse the list of available index keywords than play hit-or-miss with a search function. If I don't find what I need in an index, then I (grudgingly) turn to the search function. Being forced to bypass the index-scanning step irritates me to no end. I know everyone's all atwitter about how natural-language queries can solve all of the world's findability problems, but I don't buy it. Used in conjunction with a well-crafted index, I'm all for it. But as a substitute for an index, I don't buy it. Do you?
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Saturday, October 13, 2007
Maybe I'm just 14 on the inside
I was reading a book this morning, and I came across a contraction that I'm pretty sure I'd never seen before. (I may have heard it before, but I probably just misinterpreted what the speaker was saying.) Because the book in question is a non-fiction book that discusses best practices for communication in the workplace, this particular contraction caught me completely off-guard.
The contraction?
who're
A quick Google search confirmed that who're as a contraction of who are is indeed used relatively frequently, at least colloquially and predominantly on U.K. sites. How had I never seen (or paid close attention to) this word before today? Have I been living on another planet? A planet without awesome, titter-worthy contractions?
Merriam-Webster doesn't recognize who're (and I'll leave it to you to figure out which definition does appear if you search for it), but dictionary.com does include an entry for it. I wish I had immediate access to my English-usage books, but they're at work and I'm at home. I'll check my reference books on Monday morning and post my findings here.
More than anything, after the surprise wore off, I was supremely amused by who're. I think I need to start working it into my personal correspondence. I just hope I don't accidentally omit the apostrophe.
The contraction?
who're
A quick Google search confirmed that who're as a contraction of who are is indeed used relatively frequently, at least colloquially and predominantly on U.K. sites. How had I never seen (or paid close attention to) this word before today? Have I been living on another planet? A planet without awesome, titter-worthy contractions?
Merriam-Webster doesn't recognize who're (and I'll leave it to you to figure out which definition does appear if you search for it), but dictionary.com does include an entry for it. I wish I had immediate access to my English-usage books, but they're at work and I'm at home. I'll check my reference books on Monday morning and post my findings here.
More than anything, after the surprise wore off, I was supremely amused by who're. I think I need to start working it into my personal correspondence. I just hope I don't accidentally omit the apostrophe.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
More Web 2.0 goodness
October is turning out to be a Web 2.0 kind of month, isn't it? I just received the September/October 2007 issue of the STC magazine Intercom. It's the "Web 2.0 Issue." How timely! I don't know about you, but staying on top of these emerging technologies is keeping me on my toes. To be honest, I think it's all pretty exciting, and I'm curious to see how this will all shake out over time.
The two Intercom articles that really caught my eye were "Web 2.0: What Technical Communicators Should Know" and "The 'Quick Web' for Technical Documentation."
In the Web 2.0 article, Bill Hart-Davidson describes the new challenges and opportunities that technical communicators face. He also discusses four key trends that technical communicators need to be aware of:
I responded especially well to Hart-Davidson's advice to "curate ever-growing content collections." Maybe I just always wanted to be a curator. The bottom-line recommendation is that we technical communicators revisit and strengthen our role as user advocate. We need to stay agile, listen to users, pay attention to where users naturally go for content, and develop new ways for users to find and work with our content. Always good advice.
The "Quick Web" article, written by Anne Gentle, is a great overview of using wikis to create collaborative technical documentation. I still have liability-related concerns about opening up a wiki to users without enforcing strict moderation. I must admit, however, that Gentle's article mostly won me over, and I'm eventually going to initiate this discussion at my company. Gentle provided some examples of existing wikis-as-technical-documentation. (As a side note, can I just say that I wish the Quadralay ePublisher Pro wiki had existed when I was struggling with that application at my last job?)
So much Web 2.0 goodness out there... It's all feeling very fast and furious at the moment. Mostly in a good way!
The two Intercom articles that really caught my eye were "Web 2.0: What Technical Communicators Should Know" and "The 'Quick Web' for Technical Documentation."
In the Web 2.0 article, Bill Hart-Davidson describes the new challenges and opportunities that technical communicators face. He also discusses four key trends that technical communicators need to be aware of:
- Users produce and share content
- Users organize content
- Users access site content and functions well beyond the borders of the site's "pages"
- Users are pursuing social goals, not just work goals
I responded especially well to Hart-Davidson's advice to "curate ever-growing content collections." Maybe I just always wanted to be a curator. The bottom-line recommendation is that we technical communicators revisit and strengthen our role as user advocate. We need to stay agile, listen to users, pay attention to where users naturally go for content, and develop new ways for users to find and work with our content. Always good advice.
The "Quick Web" article, written by Anne Gentle, is a great overview of using wikis to create collaborative technical documentation. I still have liability-related concerns about opening up a wiki to users without enforcing strict moderation. I must admit, however, that Gentle's article mostly won me over, and I'm eventually going to initiate this discussion at my company. Gentle provided some examples of existing wikis-as-technical-documentation. (As a side note, can I just say that I wish the Quadralay ePublisher Pro wiki had existed when I was struggling with that application at my last job?)
So much Web 2.0 goodness out there... It's all feeling very fast and furious at the moment. Mostly in a good way!
Friday, October 5, 2007
Hey, look! Another blog!
This is just what the world needed--another blog!
My intention is to keep this blog focused on matters of writing and editing, particularly of the technical variety. There are so many terrific blogs out there that already cover writing, editing, and technical communication, and I may well discover that mine is just a redundant blip in the blogosphere. (OK, I hate that term, but it seems fitting here.) But I hope to create a virtual hub in which I can consolidate and share my favorite resources, solicit suggestions and recommendations from other writers and editors, and share my own thoughts on all things word-y.
I'd been considering blogging for a long time, and I was finally inspired into action today by Heidi Hansen, one of my favorite, must-read bloggers and a fellow technical communicator. In a recent post, Heidi expressed wonder over why no one had posted reactions to Neil Perlin's presentation to the Puget Sound chapter of the STC earlier this week. Consider this my rise to the challenge. (Thanks for the inspiration, Heidi!)
Neil Perlin of Hyper/Word Services has 28 years' experience in technical communication, which blows my little mind and inspires an "I'm not worthy" bow. He's seen it all and done it all, and he's generous enough to share his experience and expertise with the rest of us. Earlier this week, Neil presented Creating Help in the Web 2.0 Age to our local STC chapter.
Neil's presentation provoked a sense of deja vu in me as I remembered the User Assistance Trends Panel at the 2007 WritersUA conference in Long Beach, CA. The online user assistance tide is turning in an increasingly clear direction, and Neil's presentation was a great confirmation of what the WritersUA panel members had to say about the future of user assistance.
Web 2.0 Defined
Neil started by defining Web 2.0. You can find a great concise definition of Web 2.0 at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html. (Who better to define it than the guy who coined it?) The core concept here is the "architecture of participation" that Web 2.0 enables. How does that affect user-assistance professionals and our audiences? Glad you asked...
Web 2.0 in the context of user assistance (or vice versa!)
Neil explained how Web 2.0 is changing how users search for, digest, and influence online content. Users have more control than ever over the content they consume, in the form of wikis, comment-enabled blogs, forums, and other emerging formats. These emerging formats rely on a user-defined "folksonomy" rather than the traditional taxonomy as defined by a user-assistance professional. This disintermediation--or removal of the middle man--can be both good and bad.
On one hand, it's great when users can help other users find the content that they need. Demoralizing as it may be to technical communicators, there are many users who will turn to Google before they turn to our products' Help systems. There's a good chance that those users will have their questions answered by other users, in the form of a wiki, blog, or forum. If a user ends up finding the information that he or she needs in order to properly perform a task, that's a successful knowledge transfer. The user doesn't care where or how the information was found; the user cares only that the information was found. It's in our best interest to ensure that our content is found first. Even if some users are resistant to using Help, at the very least we can still do what we can to ensure that a Google search will lead them back to a company-hosted blog or forum. (And then--hey!--we can sneak some links to the Help content from there. Sneeeeaky.)
On the other hand, delegating even partial control of content to users can have unintended negative effects. For example, consider a company that hosts a public community wiki that users can freely contribute to and modify. If a user posts erroneous information that leads another user to experience product damage or personal injury, who is ultimately responsible for that content? Who owns the content: the poster or the company? The liability issues that this scenario conjures are too scary for me to think about too deeply. Even a well-moderated wiki of this type seems like a recipe for disaster. (Side note: Do any of you know of any companies that host this type of community-driven wiki? If so, please post a comment.)
This user-to-user information transfer is happening whether we technical communicators like it or not. It's in our best interest to jump on board and do what we can to ensure that content related to our employers' products and services is correct and appropriate. It remains to be seen how this will all shake out, but there are plenty of ways that we can take advantage of Web 2.0 now. (I'm a big fan of moderated forums on corporate web sites, and of corporate blogs that support moderated user comments.) The sooner that companies start adapting to Web 2.0 trends, the more control those companies will have over the content that applies to their products and services.
Summary
I barely scratched the surface of what Neil discussed. Neil also talked about server-based documentation and the resulting perpetual release cycle; modular, reusable, and conditionalized content; personalized, on-the-fly content delivery; the shift away from traditional "Help" to "user support"; the challenges of handling content created by non-writers; the wisdom of the mob; the advantages and perils of community-controlled content (to wit: the DIGG riot); online training videos; and mashups.
It really was a wonderful talk, and it made me grateful that I work for a company that is on the bleeding edge instead of one that insists on sticking with old-school user-assistance methods that will soon be obsolete.
The user-assistance tide is turning. How are the rest of you adapting to, and taking advantage of, Web 2.0?
My intention is to keep this blog focused on matters of writing and editing, particularly of the technical variety. There are so many terrific blogs out there that already cover writing, editing, and technical communication, and I may well discover that mine is just a redundant blip in the blogosphere. (OK, I hate that term, but it seems fitting here.) But I hope to create a virtual hub in which I can consolidate and share my favorite resources, solicit suggestions and recommendations from other writers and editors, and share my own thoughts on all things word-y.
I'd been considering blogging for a long time, and I was finally inspired into action today by Heidi Hansen, one of my favorite, must-read bloggers and a fellow technical communicator. In a recent post, Heidi expressed wonder over why no one had posted reactions to Neil Perlin's presentation to the Puget Sound chapter of the STC earlier this week. Consider this my rise to the challenge. (Thanks for the inspiration, Heidi!)
Neil Perlin of Hyper/Word Services has 28 years' experience in technical communication, which blows my little mind and inspires an "I'm not worthy" bow. He's seen it all and done it all, and he's generous enough to share his experience and expertise with the rest of us. Earlier this week, Neil presented Creating Help in the Web 2.0 Age to our local STC chapter.
Neil's presentation provoked a sense of deja vu in me as I remembered the User Assistance Trends Panel at the 2007 WritersUA conference in Long Beach, CA. The online user assistance tide is turning in an increasingly clear direction, and Neil's presentation was a great confirmation of what the WritersUA panel members had to say about the future of user assistance.
Web 2.0 Defined
Neil started by defining Web 2.0. You can find a great concise definition of Web 2.0 at http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2005/10/web_20_compact_definition.html. (Who better to define it than the guy who coined it?) The core concept here is the "architecture of participation" that Web 2.0 enables. How does that affect user-assistance professionals and our audiences? Glad you asked...
Web 2.0 in the context of user assistance (or vice versa!)
Neil explained how Web 2.0 is changing how users search for, digest, and influence online content. Users have more control than ever over the content they consume, in the form of wikis, comment-enabled blogs, forums, and other emerging formats. These emerging formats rely on a user-defined "folksonomy" rather than the traditional taxonomy as defined by a user-assistance professional. This disintermediation--or removal of the middle man--can be both good and bad.
On one hand, it's great when users can help other users find the content that they need. Demoralizing as it may be to technical communicators, there are many users who will turn to Google before they turn to our products' Help systems. There's a good chance that those users will have their questions answered by other users, in the form of a wiki, blog, or forum. If a user ends up finding the information that he or she needs in order to properly perform a task, that's a successful knowledge transfer. The user doesn't care where or how the information was found; the user cares only that the information was found. It's in our best interest to ensure that our content is found first. Even if some users are resistant to using Help, at the very least we can still do what we can to ensure that a Google search will lead them back to a company-hosted blog or forum. (And then--hey!--we can sneak some links to the Help content from there. Sneeeeaky.)
On the other hand, delegating even partial control of content to users can have unintended negative effects. For example, consider a company that hosts a public community wiki that users can freely contribute to and modify. If a user posts erroneous information that leads another user to experience product damage or personal injury, who is ultimately responsible for that content? Who owns the content: the poster or the company? The liability issues that this scenario conjures are too scary for me to think about too deeply. Even a well-moderated wiki of this type seems like a recipe for disaster. (Side note: Do any of you know of any companies that host this type of community-driven wiki? If so, please post a comment.)
This user-to-user information transfer is happening whether we technical communicators like it or not. It's in our best interest to jump on board and do what we can to ensure that content related to our employers' products and services is correct and appropriate. It remains to be seen how this will all shake out, but there are plenty of ways that we can take advantage of Web 2.0 now. (I'm a big fan of moderated forums on corporate web sites, and of corporate blogs that support moderated user comments.) The sooner that companies start adapting to Web 2.0 trends, the more control those companies will have over the content that applies to their products and services.
Summary
I barely scratched the surface of what Neil discussed. Neil also talked about server-based documentation and the resulting perpetual release cycle; modular, reusable, and conditionalized content; personalized, on-the-fly content delivery; the shift away from traditional "Help" to "user support"; the challenges of handling content created by non-writers; the wisdom of the mob; the advantages and perils of community-controlled content (to wit: the DIGG riot); online training videos; and mashups.
It really was a wonderful talk, and it made me grateful that I work for a company that is on the bleeding edge instead of one that insists on sticking with old-school user-assistance methods that will soon be obsolete.
The user-assistance tide is turning. How are the rest of you adapting to, and taking advantage of, Web 2.0?
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