How do you publish your documents, guides or completed help

[Ned Bedinger]

Daniel Ng wrote:
> 
> Often I end up having to email documents to ppl, I think it could be a
> misuse of email though.

Yes, but not because of anything you can control.

The classic complaint comes from people who have disk space limits on 
the mail server. Obviously, in an age where terrabytes of hot-swappable 
hard disks can be had cheeper than ever, disk space should and could be 
increased for people that use more, but no-o-oo-oo, they'd rather blame 
the tech writer for maxing out their quotas.

Another complaint comes from people who dial-in.  They get all honked 
off if you've mailed them documents that they have to download in order 
to get the rest of their email. Web mail or mail client add-ons could 
fix this problem for dial-ins, but the admins are just too busy to set 
up a server or support the add-on.  A simpler solution is to put the doc 
on a share and announcing it with an email (subject line "DOCUMENTATION 
UPDATED: Disaster Recovery Plan v1.3").

I like to have a standard first word like "DOCUMENTATION" for 
work-related emails that I originate. Doing so gives me some 
gratification, as I look over the shoulder of the reviewer who didn't 
review, and say "Sort by subject. Now scroll to the subject lines 
begining with DOCUMENTATION. See, there it is, two weeks old and never 
been opened. When can you have your review comments for me?"


Ned Bedinger
doc at edwordsmith