ADMIN: The Scenario

["Eric J. Ray" <ejray -at- RAYCOMM -dot- COM>]

Revised 3/15/97, several scenarios added. EJR


THE INAPPROPRIATE POSTING SCENARIO

     THE SCENARIO
  You are in a large lecture hall full of people in your profession.
  Included in the audience are students, educators, professionals.
  You cannot make out their faces, but they could reasonably
  include your employers or potential employers, your coworkers,
  and the ever-present violently obsessive technical writing
  groupies.

  Most of the audience members sit quietly as one member at a time
  gets up, walks to the podium, and shares information or advice or
  asks questions. Some of it is rich and detailed, some cursory but
  helpful, some trivial but relevant in a roundabout way.  Somewhere
  in this stream of information, someone expresses an opinion or
  gives a piece of advice that you feel obligated to respond to.

  You get out of your seat and walk to the front of the room,
  everyone's eyes upon you. ...

        (Listowner's note: At this point, the paths may diverge.
         Some of the following unfortunate cases have been played
         out over the past few years.)

   A) You approach the podium, clear your throat, and say "Me,
      too."   You are greeted with a combination of quizzical,
      patronizing smirks and incredulous silence.

   B) You relate that really good joke about Microsoft and operating
      systems that you overheard at the restaurant last night. Some
      laugh. Some wonder why you just now heard it. Many wonder why
      you'd use their chance to discuss technical communication to
      tell a old joke.

   C) You take your turn at the microphone to clarify a point. One
      of the previous speakers had mentioned, in the context of
      developing and using context-sensitive, interactive help files,
      that they used MS Word v3.0. Obviously, that's incorrect, therefore
      you clarify that they MUST have used a different version because
      that one didn't even exist. Not only that, but the incompetence
      of anyone who could make such a mistake is certainly astounding.
      It only takes you about 10 minutes to impress upon everyone that
      you know far better than the speaker what versions of Word exist.
      (You don't make any points about the issue at hand, but your
      audience has already made their assumptions about your knowledge
      in that area.)

   D) "Does anyone know how much the cheapest Internet service provider
      in Kansas costs?"

   E) You replay the entire videotape of the MS Word v3.0 speaker,
      including the introduction, the walk to the podium, and the walk
      back to a seat. The quality isn't all that hot, but it's important
      to make sure everyone knows the context in which you speak. 12
      minutes later, you point out that there is in fact a version of
      MS Word v3.0 and you had used it once, briefly, but didn't like
      it much and would always choose Frame. Furthermore,  anyone who
      uses any version of Word is a certifiable idiot and if your company
      or clients require Word, you should quit and find a real company.
      You return to your seat satisfied about your demonstrated TW
      proficiency and wonder about the copy of "How to Win Friends and
      Influence People" that ended up on your chair. (Thanks to Jim Barton
      for the initial suggestion and Arlen Walker for the quibble.)

   F) You take your chance at the podium to publicly mock the
      pronunciation and diction of the three speakers before you, not to
      mention their poor spelling on overheads. As you return to your
      seat, someone passes you a note pointing out that one of the three
      is hard of hearing, one is not a native speaker of English, and
      that many people in the world don't see a problem with spelling
      "defense" as "defence". Whoops! Oh, well, you think, they'll get
      over it.

   G) You walk up to the podium and say "I'm glad you all
      finally stopped talking about that subject, because you were wasting
      everyone's time. I'm so relieved we're not discussing it any more."
      (Thanks to Tracy Boyington for this one.)

   H) You reach the microphone and say the exact same thing that all 8
      people before you have said because you didn't bother to listen to
      them. (Thanks to Chris Boehm.)

   I) You piously denounce the majority of subjects that have
      been discussed thus far as irrelevant to the original
      scope of the conference, berate the conference organizers
      for allowing such irrelevancies to be introduced into the
      dialogue, and announce that you will leave the auditorium
      if discussion of such issues continues.

   J) You complain that the seminar does not provide a wide enough
      scope for discussion of your particular interests (which may
      be of only cursory interest to a minority of people attending
      the conference), accuse the conference organizers of promoting
      censorship, and ask if anyone knows of another conference
      organized by nonfacists. (Thanks to Bill Burns for these last 2.)

  As you walk back to your seat, you try to make out the faces around you.
  (Thanks to Lisa Higgins for the original scenario)



**************************************************
Eric J. Ray                      ejray -at- raycomm -dot- com
TECHWR-L Listowner         http://www.raycomm.com/

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