Re: Tracking document complexity

Subject: Re: Tracking document complexity
From: Steven Jong <SteveFJong -at- comcast -dot- net>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Thu, 20 Nov 2003 08:13:00 -0500


Christine quickly concluded that no measurement of documents is valid, because they can all be perverted. I think the formal solution to this problem is named multidimensional testing or something, but the informal solution is: you're kidding, right?

I don't mean at all to pick on Christine; other people have taken this line of argument here. Frankly, it does not exist in the real world, because other constraints, usually in the form of a supervisor, resolve the apparent paradox. To wit:

* A parent will punish the child even if he never admits that he took the electric shaver to the cat.

* A judge will not allow the witness to answer exclusively with "Will you repeat the question, please?"

* The development manager will not allow the engineer to check in 500,000 lines of comments without any compilable statements.

* The writing manager will not accept 300 one-page manuals in lieu of one 300-page manual.

Without supervision, I admit that perversity can take root. For a while, Enron got away with swapping electricity with other suppliers and calling it sales. (At the end, they didn't even bother transmitting the power back and forth--they just called it a deal.) But such cases are pathological. If anyone is paying attention, the desired results can be obtained, and measured.


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