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"Iain.Lang" wrote:
>
> The documentation team at Leitch Technology is thinking about entering some
> of their documentation in a contest.
>
Why would they want to? I'm not asking to be snide; I'm genuinely
curious.
If you've a professional writer, you probably (or should) keep track
of the current standards. Therefore, you should be a reasonable
judge of the quality of your work. You'll also know from other
clues: the calls to technical support, the way the geeks treat you,
and what money you get are some of the more obvious ones.
At any rate, I seriously doubt that a contest will tell you much.
Writing contests of any sort - whether it's poetry or manuals - are
influenced by prevailing fashions, and, all too often, by cronyism,
with the judges' company or the judge's friends winning far more
often than you'd predict by probability. Even though blind judging
is supposed to prevent such things, it rarely does. If you don't
win, you have to wonder whether the main reason is that you're an
outsider. If you do win, and you have any relation to the judges
whatsoever, you can never be sure that you won on merit alone.
Naturally, exceptions exist, but finding the exceptions is often too
much trouble for the return.
Or is there another reason for entering a contest that I haven't
thought about?
--
Bruce Byfield, Outlaw Communications
Contributing Editor, Maximum Linux
604.421.7177 bbyfield -at- axionet -dot- com
"Rationality itself, tied to moral decency - the most powerful joint
instrument for good that our planet has ever known."
-Stephen J. Gould, Introduction, "Why People Believe Weird Things"
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