Re: Is a bad index better than no index?

Subject: Re: Is a bad index better than no index?
From: "Maggie Secara" <maggiros -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 22:19:12 -0700

As a compulsive user of indexes, I'd ALWAYS rather there was an index of any kind, even an inadequate one. (A truly bad index is one where the page number given doesn't actually contain a reference to the word I looked up.) As a writer, I kind of like the indexing task, although my preference is to do a section as I finish it, as opposed to trying to do the whole 500 pages at one go. It's actually an exercise in imagination, if you think about it.

Indexing is something I often do when there is a little down time, like waiting for reviews to come back or when the network is down. I'm not a trained indexer either, but I do try to think of every way someone might look for the same topic:

approving a work order
work orders
approving
creating
creating a work orders
new work orders

That kind of thing. All part of thinking "like a user". I know when I'm using an index, I sometimes have to consider how many ways someone might have indexed the thing I'm looking for.

Full text search is cool, but I do find it hard to imagine using a manual of any size *without* an index! A poor one will make me swear, but not as much as no index at all.

Just my tuppence ha'penny, of course.


Maggie Secara

From: David Castro <thetechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com>
Reply-To: David Castro <thetechwriter -at- yahoo -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Subject: Is a bad index better than no index?
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 14:53:33 -0700 (PDT)

I may have posed this question a couple of years ago...I tried searching the
archives, but "index" is a word that you can't use in the search tool,
apparently.

Anyway, my question is, is it better to create an index that isn't great (due
to my lack of an indexer's skill), or to leave the document without one?


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