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I agree with Mark Levinson's "reader's perspective" observations on
comment forms. (This doesn't only apply to doc, either!) I am most
effective at delivering feedback when I can do it immediately. When
the feedback I want to give is internal (about some aspect of our own
products or documentation), I actually do that. This involves a
certain amount of noise and flamage, as my immediate responses are
sometimes wrong and too often generated in a fit of pique. But it
still seems to be better than long-after-the-fact or summary feedback.
As for electronic approaches to feedback: I've long been impressed
with the tacky-but-effective approach used by designers of mail-order
catalogs, where the phone number used for ordering can be found on
*every* page. I wonder whether something like that would work for
(some kinds of) documentation -- a legend on every page (in the
footer, perhaps?) reading "Please send comments on this manual to
<insert-comments-address-here>".
Ed Blachman edb -at- ileaf -dot- com (or) ...!uunet!leafusa!edb
