RE: Ideas for Help 2.0

["McLauchlan, Kevin" <Kevin -dot- McLauchlan -at- safenet-inc -dot- com>]

> From: jimmy -at- breck-mckye -dot- com [mailto:jimmy -at- breck-mckye -dot- com]
> 
> > This would be where you create WebHelp that runs on a server
> > in your own company?
> 
> Of course. No other context would make sense.

I'm curious how many people create Help for internal 
use at their own employer, or for use by external 
customers, but served from the employer's website, 
versus
how many of us create Help for products that we sell 
to companies or individuals, to be used on their 
desktops, behind whatever firewalls and IT policies 
the customers might have.

There might also be those of us who would provide 
help for software, that our big customers might 
serve from their own servers to their own people 
(and maybe to their own further customers, with whom 
we have no connection). 

> 
> > Indeed.  And I've pointed out some barriers to simply
> > automating the collection of data.
> 
> I don't like your tone. I didn't say the idea of 'iterative feedback'
> was bad, just that there were tricky details to iron out. I then said
> that those producing help online (web help as in help on the web, not
> help that's marked up in HTML but deployed locally) would find it
> useful
> to exploit analytics for ammunition when handling stakeholders.

Granted, you said (lowercase) web help, while I create 
WebHelp that is never actually served on the web, and is 
never, ever served by my employer. So I have no path to 
collect analytics data.  I'm probably not alone in that. 
That's all I'm saying. 

I understand that a lot of writers create WebHelp because 
it is cross-platform and will therefore work on Linux, Solaris, 
HP-UX, AIX, etc., using only generic browsers, with no need 
for installed run-time engines, not because they expect to serve it 
to the web at large.  Others _do_ write for their own employers' 
web servers, and do get to observe (or let an analytics engine 
observe) people visiting with browsers and trying to find 
stuff. That's a distinct advantage over the rest of us, who 
might never see an actual customer interact with our products 
or help.

In the absence of fairly blatant sign-posts (in this medium of 
e-mail anyway), imputing "tone" is a subjective undertaking 
at best. 


 -k



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