RE: Structure and substance: stability and flexibility

Subject: RE: Structure and substance: stability and flexibility
From: Mike Stockman <stockman -at- jagunet -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 13 Jun 2000 12:44:33 -0400

On 6/13/00 12:07 PM, Carnall, Jane (Jane -dot- Carnall -at- compaq -dot- com) wrote:

>Content and structure are each as important as the other. Without structure,
>you have no useful content.

Interesting how you go from Andrew's "content is more important than
structure" to "without structure..." Nobody ever said, anywhere in this
discussion, that we should be without structure, therefore nobody is
disagreeing with you. It's easy to pose an extreme position and argue
against it, but that's not a discussion.

Of course, given the choice between the two extremes (which nobody is
likely to do, but for the sake of argument), a mass of disorganized
information (content without structure) is still marginally more useful
to a desperate user than an empty outline (structure without content).
That's an unrealistic situation that nobody is proposing, however.

I have been on many, many projects where formal processes and structure
were piled on unnecessarily, in spite of the obvious lack of knowledge
and understanding on the part of the writers. The content suffered, and
all the people running the show could think of was to implement more
processes. Those cases gave me a distaste for process and structure at
the expense of content.

----->Mike

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