RE: Get Offended

["Jason A. Czekalski" <topsidefarm -at- mva -dot- net>]

Andrew Plato <intrepid_es -at- yahoo -dot- com>  wrote:
<< Truth is never inappropriate. Truth saves lives, educates
the dumb, and keeps the incompetent out of harms way. If we took a
little more
time looking for truth and a little less time worry about how offended
we were
we might actually communicate something useful. >>

And it's not just the marketing dweebs, the corporate legal types can be
just as bad. One of the hot issues I always find myself running into is
safety, especially in heavy machinery. The legal eggheads always have to
interfere.

Yes, there are legitimate legal issues involved when it comes to safety.
But there are two issues I keep running headlong into with regard to
safety documentation.

The first is the watering down of safety info so that machines do not
appear to be unsafe. "If we admit that there is a potential problem, we
could get sued." So safety warnings get deleted or watered down. This
actually does more damage in the long run. Someone ends up getting hurt
because they didn't know about a potential problem.

The second (and this is probably more in line with Andrew's complaint)
is the namby-pamby wording of safety warnings. Everybody is afraid of
offending equipment users by using stern warnings like "Do not...",
..may cause serious harm or death.", etc. These get replaced with
"Please...", or "...could cause unpleasant results.", and other childish
drool.

It is a sad fact of life that we cannot please everyone. Showing
pictures of the Nazi concentration camps offends some people. Talking
about AIDS offends some people. Writing a warning that a piece of
machinery could kill you will offend some people. All three of these
unrelated topics have one thing in common. They all involve information
that must be made available to those who need that information, whether
it offends people or not. As Andrew said, it's called communication, and
that is what we are suppose to do: communicate.

Jason