Re: Change bars considered harmful (Was: Re: The worst doc problem ever?)

["Caroline Tabach" <caroline -dot- tabach -at- gmail -dot- com>]

However,  I have been in a situation where I was working on at least 7 user
guides that had to be approved for the release, some of which were over 200
pages long, and I had only changed  a few sections in each user guide.
The SME found in hard enough to review the books as it was, so I used the
change bars to say, "this is all you have to look at". I know this is a
compromise, as I would really like them to look at the complete book from
time to time, but in this way, they at least looked at the material that was
changed.


On 4/8/08, Janice Gelb <Janice -dot- Gelb -at- sun -dot- com> wrote:
>
> Peter Neilson wrote:
> > I've tried to be careful about handing out review copies with change
> > bars or their equivalents. If the SME who is new to the project gets a
> > review copy with change bars, whaddya bet he'll only look at the changed
> > material and ignore the errors in the rest of the document?
> >
>
> I would only recommend change bars for a second round of reviewing
> by the same reviewers, so they don't waste time looking at content
> that they've already presumably examined.
>
> -- Janice
>
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-- 
Caroline Tabach
Technical Writer
e-mail: caroline -dot- tabach -at- gmail -dot- com
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Create HTML or Microsoft Word content and convert to Help file formats or 
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Help & Manual is the most powerful authoring tool for technical
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