Post current product user docs to company website?

[Beth Agnew]

Companies don't even have to be in a regulated industry to have 
liability issues arising from unverified documentation. A few companies 
I've worked for had concerns over users creating "crib sheets" from the 
published documentation we gave them, because someone else's shortcut 
caused data or financial losses. We could go back to the approved 
documentation and show that there was a correct procedure, so not our 
fault if you didn't follow it. While you can't keep people from making 
their own notes, you can keep them from fiddling with your original 
documentation and making it look like it's official. For that reason, we 
never sent customers anything but PDFs or printed materials. If they 
were going to make their own notes, they could be distinguished from ours.

Another concern is whether you really want the competition, and everyone 
else, to have copies of your documentation, even if they don't own your 
product. Depending on your industry, that may be just too much 
proprietary info floating around. If customers, developers, or sales 
people need access to information about your products, there are other 
ways to provide it, and make it available to search engines.

It's not job security that motivates keeping documentation under our 
control but usability and professionalism. If users are contributing to 
documentation, where is the process for feeding those issues back to 
marketing, specifications, and development for product improvement? 
You're going to have to rewrite it anyway, because most users haven't 
been trained in plain language, procedural writing, or clear communication.
--Beth

Gene Kim-Eng wrote:
> Not in our industry.  Not in a million years.  The liability
> issues arising from allowing the posting of unverified 
> information on a company-sponsored forum would be
> potentially staggering.  
Beth Agnew
Professor, Technical Communication
Seneca College of Applied Arts & Technology
Toronto, ON 416.491.5050 x3133
http://www.tinyurl.com/83u5u