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> However, let's not confuse WHY info (which IMO is always needed) with conceptual info that might be needed by very few users in John's particular case. Not giving the WHY is an insult to the user's intelligence. Did the user do something wrong or is it a temporary network problem? Can the user apply the steps if the problem occurs again in the future or the cause of the problem may be different each time?
Don't misunderstand me. I believe there should be a representation of
conceptual material. I agree that if you educate someone about how a
feature or device works, they will stay out of trouble and not need
problem resolution.
To our customers, there are three main categories of topics; features,
devices, and billing.
Our service has features, such as caller id. There is the device,
which, being voice over IP, connects their phone to their Internet
service, and there is paying their bill.
Take features. How many different articles do we need to describe
caller ID? It does what it does. Now, there may be 3, 4, or more
different things that they need to resolve by it doing something
unexpected, However, if I can give accurate information in the one
concept article on what it does and doesn't do, maybe I'll avoid
several issue by not having the customer try to do something it was
never intended to do in the first place.
My wish to have minimal conceptual articles, not minimal conceptual
content, which isn't driven so much by not wanting to tell them
everything, but should we have multiple conceptual articles, they read
one and miss what we told them in the others. It is by having multiple
articles that we are doing them a disservice.
This is all besides the simplification of maintenance of the content,
better See also linking, and more streamlined search engine hit
lists.
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