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> Sigh. This obnoxious bit of trash (Worst Manual Contest) has resurfaced.
> At the risk of sounding like a stick-in-the-mud, is this contest a
constructive
> way to improve the quality of our manuals?
> As a rule, I LIKE my fellow writers, and I realize that most of us do the
> best we can, under *challenging* conditions. Most of us have had to
> deal with ill-fated projects, wishing in vain that we had more time and
> administrative support to turn out better work.
> I'm not going to slam any of my peers for a T-shirt reeking of geek humor.
Scott - While I'm not familiar with the contest, I welcome such an event
specifically because these people are _not_ our peers - the manuals from
hell more often than not get written very much as an afterthought by some
junior engineer or even a summer student. But their product still
reflects on our community.
Even today, too many companies look on documentation as a low priority item
- after all, it's not a profit making item, is it? Maybe being "branded" by
this contest might finally spur them on to hire a "real" technical writer
(whatever that means).
