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> Is it better to include substantial content that's mostly right and mostly
> useful but unreviewed, or is it better to include substantially
> less content
> that is known to be 100% right?
John,
Every piece of information has an associated degree of provenance, either
stated or implied. As readers we attach a greater or lesser degree of trust
to a piece of information based on a wide variety of context clues such as
the author's reputation, the publisher, the medium, the physical quality,
etc.
I think that the key thing is not that everything that you print has to be
verified 100%. If that were true, newspapers would be unable to function,
for instance. I think that what you have to do is make sure that the reader
does not attach a higher degree of provenance to the information than it
deserves.
We do this with internal pre-release sections of our documentation by using
a yellow background and a warning message on sections that have not yet been
verified. (One of the advantages of a modular system is that we can do this
at a very granular level.)
I think as long as you do not mislead the reader, either implicitly or
explicitly, as to the provenance of your information, you should be fine.
---
Mark Baker
Stilo Corporation
1900 City Park Drive, Suite 504 , Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, K1J 1A3
Phone: 613-745-4242, Fax: 613-745-5560
Email mbaker -at- ca -dot- stilo -dot- com
Web: http://www.stilo.com
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