User-Authored Online Help
Is it manageable by technical communicators?
If so, then how would the good content become promoted over the 'bad' content?
To what extent are technical communicators who write online help for a product prepared to manage user-authored content that may or may not be accurate, timely, fair, or reflective of company values?
Has the term 'online help' evolved to encompass the content that serves those who go online for any kind of help? For example, my dog is having an unresolvable itching problem which the vet says is an allergy. I want to find out if anyone 'online' can offer any 'help'.
If yes, and the read/write web seems to reflect this, then should technical communicators be involved in online help at all, or should we now turn our efforts to disseminating user-authored content, applying a style guide, and re-posting it as "approved" content. What would happen to technical communication as a respected field?
Perhaps the analytical, research, and organizational skills of the technical communicator are custom made for managing content in the read/write online help social universe.
Aim and FocusTo what extent are technical communicators who write online help for a product prepared to manage user-authored content that may or may not be accurate, timely, fair, or reflective of company values?
Gap in KnowledgeQuantity vs Quality of User-Authored Content
QuestionsIs it manageable by technical communicators? How?
Why or why not?
Is anyone managing user-authored content now?
What tools or methods are they using?
What has been the outcome?
Sub QuestionsNow is the time to look at user-authored online help by the technical communication community. Each day I use Google to find answers and last week I used a discussion board to try to find out what was wrong with my PDA. I did this for a full two-three days before I even considered calling Tech Support. Why?
I don't know what work is being done in this area. I need to find out.
My position is that the technical communication industry is being overrun by user-authored online help and that user attitudes towards corporate-sponsored content is negative.
I need to find out what the experts are saying about this.
I'm not sure what my research methodology should be other than researching articles. There is a possibility of conducting a study at my place of employment where we are trying to determine why our own users are turning to wikis.
I don't have an outline plan of study or stages of my work.
There are ethical considerations, not for the statement but for the industry. As companies fail to act on the quantity of user-authored online help and allow it to become the accepted voice of the product, there could be legal and ethical considerations.
For example, a prominent blogger may post his or her favorite usage of a certain OTC medication. Say, they combine acetominophen with ibuprofen and they down it with a red bull and they profess this is the way to manage a headache, or something like that. The blogger's followers might try it and some may suffer consequences. Who is to blame?
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Third Edition
A 2010 review of this 2006 book urges "novice folks to read the Richardson chapter on blogs or wikis or whatever was to be covered" in a tech tools workshop. "Richardson calls for researchers to identify ways in which instructors can take full advantage of read/write Internet capabilities to enhance learning for their students." Cifuentes (2009). Cifuentes does not mention whether or not Richardson's book explains the technical writer/learner relationship in the read/write environment. This book holds promise and so I plan to check it out.
Friday, September 24, 2010
Why users prefer the “chaos of the Web” over the Online Help
Why users prefer the “chaos of the Web” over the Online Help
In addition to the sources shown in my blog, my continuing research involves the following:
· Definitions of Web 2.0 (read/write Web) and Online Help
· History of Web 2.0 and Online Help
· Sources supporting user preference for Web over Online Help
· Sources either refuting the theory or stating some other unaligned claim
Research Topic Search Terms and Search Method
Search Terms and Phrases used on MNSU Library Services
1. Collective knowledge
2. Knowledgebases
3. Read/write web
4. Wikis
5. Wikipedia
6. Ever-changing user requirements
7. Dynamic online help
8. Dynamic user communities
9. User-created product manuals
10. User-design products
11. Collective information
12. Public realm
13. Are all the old books and dictionaries bad then?
14. Terms searched
15. Web 2.0
16. Online help
17. Kids and the internet
18. Community
19. Internet communities
20. Chat rooms
21. Discussion boards
22. Forums
23. Blogs
24. Facebook
25. Twitter
26. Online documentation
27. Online manuals
28. Product manuals online – accessibility and usability
29. Times a person used online help vs the internet chaos
Quick Fix: Product Manuals Online
Meyers would applaud O’Keefe’s suggestion of taking advantage of search engine business rules to make product documentation appear prominently in search engine results. Meyers gives no-nonsense and practical ways of finding user’s manuals for company products including going to the manufacturer’s Web site. Written in 2003, Meyers may not have been aware of the great Web 2.0 transformation taking place. I suspect users would not go to these lengths to find a product manual unless they are looking for technical specifications or proof that a product can or cannot do something. I suspect users would like to poke fun at product manuals through their Twitter accounts.
Meyers, Peter. 2003. "Quick Fix: Product Manuals Online." Wall Street Journal - Eastern Edition, August 12. D1. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 17, 2010).
As kids go online, help lines go quiet
This report, focused on telephone help lines in Canada, provides factual information about how organizations are being forced to go online by teens’ use of the Internet. This proves to me that younger generations are either too lazy to use a telephone help line or they prefer the community of the Internet. I suspect there is a little bit of both.
Findlay, Stephanie. 2009. "As kids go online, help lines go quiet." Maclean's 122, no. 34: 21. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 17, 2010).
Using Customer Contact Center Technicians to Measure the Effectiveness of Online Help Systems
This technical article is of interest to me as a technical writer employee in a data management environment. This is one resource that I can use to refute any claims that all online help systems will eventually contain user-generated content or be user driven and owned. Customer contact centers cannot give away sensitive data and so the customer service representative is not likely to turn to user-generated content to help a customer. At least not today. In the future, I think it is highly likely that organizations will go out and gather user-generated content from Web 2.0 and bring it back into the online help systems. Perhaps this will be done in real time.
Downing, Joe. 2007. "Using Customer Contact Center Technicians to Measure the Effectiveness of Online Help Systems." Technical Communication 54, no. 2: 201-209. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 24, 2010).
Developing a Web 2.0-based system with user-authored content for community use and teacher education
This will be one of my main resources. There are quite a few quotes from this resource that support community and user-based online help. From this single source, I have created a list of mandatory elements that are missing from traditional online help:
Missing and Needed in Traditional Corporate Online Help
1. Read/write
2. Growable site, remains up to date with ever changing data
3. Ability to harness community
4. Community made, community owned
5. Where learners can talk back to the material and to each other
6. Where learners can express themselves
7. Shared files
8. Social redistribution
9. Intelligence generated collaboratively within discourse communities
10. Accomplished intelligence vs possessed intelligence
“Distributed cognitions theory follows from the philosophy of social constructivism and
proposes that ‘‘knowledge is commonly socially constructed, through collaborative efforts
toward shared objectives…’’ (Pea 1997, p. 48).”
According to this resource, Web 2.0 was made for gathering community intelligence. The author points to users with disabilities as an example of someone with a discourse community who would engage in creating and using community intelligence.
In addition, this resource points to how learners and educators can work together to create online content. “In short, everyone together is smarter and more accurate than any single person.”
This explodes my original, now simple-seeming theory that people are turning to the “chaos of the web” rather than the online help. There is much more going on here. The collective body creates a better knowledgebase than one person or one company acting alone. Perhaps Microsoft created Windows 7 but the user community together as a body is smarter than the creator when it comes to using the software and solving issues that it creates.
Cifuentes, Lauren, Amy Sharp, Sanser Bulu, Mike Benz, and Laura Stough. 2010. "Developing a Web 2.0-based system with user-authored content for community use and teacher education." Educational Technology Research & Development 58, no. 4: 377-398. Academic Search Premier, EBSCOhost (accessed September 18, 2010).
Friend of Foe? Web 2.0 in Technical Communication. Why Users are turning to the chaos of the web rather than the online help.
In her whitepaper, O’Keefe gives practical advice on how to integrate Web 2.0 with online help. She warns that user-generated content is not a “fleeting fad” and is not going away. Most of her suggestions make sense and are supported by other sources I’ve found. However, she indicates the use of search engine business rules as a way to get the online help files to display in search results. She states that users are more likely to use something if it is easier to find. I disagree with this. I think the users will keep turning to other users and will continue to shun corporate-generated product documentation.
O’Keefe, Sarah. “Friend or Foe? Web 2.0 in Technical Communication. Why users are turning to the chaos of the web rather than the online help.” Scriptorium Publishing, 2009. Retrieved December 4, 2009.
Sunday, September 19, 2010
Expertise! Expertise! Get your expertise here! Hot off the press!
Things change or die (Pontin 2009).
First agriculture and then manufacturing and then information - and finally expertise. Information is free and so something has to have value - this is expertise. (See What comes after the information age by Andy Oram)
What expertise is valuable? Expertise about agriculture and manufacting? Perhaps.
"But a combination of technological support and user commitment could promote more online learning. We should have rich media that allow people to differentiate themselves through avatars or other indications of personality, and technologies for forums that mix the immediacy of chat with spaces for posting and manipulating files. Culture change is also required: experts have to be willing to guide a new user step by step during explorations of a problem, and the new users have to take correction in good humor. " (Oram)
Sarah O'Keefe, founder and president of Scriptorium Publishing responds with a White Paper: "Friend or Foe? Web 2.0 in Technical Communication" in which she discusses why people turn "to the chaos of the Web" rather than reading the manual. She suggests technical writers ensure their user guides display in Google search results. She says this is what will allow people to find expertise as opposed to chaos.
The Read Write Web Environment
I don't agree. I think people turn to chaos instead of the online help or user guide because they don't trust corporate-speak anymore if they ever did. They don't trust big brother to help them with their problems. They know there are hundreds maybe thousands of people out there just like them with the same issue and they crave this community of answers. They would rather hear from, say, Beth, 27, in Tulsa than consult a stiff, impersonal online help content window. Users consider unfiltered content to be valuable (O'Keefe 11, 2009).
Wikis, blogs, webcasts, you tube, facebook, twitter, and storefronts, such as Amazon, with product reviews by real people, enable the voice of the real person vs the traditional paid-columnist or corporate-backed writer (Cifuentes 2009).
By 2003, 44% of adult Internet users had participated in the interactive capabilities of the Internet by posting in at least one read/write Web environment (Lenhart et al. 2004).
The Real Technical Writing 2.0
O'Keefe projects the future of technical writing as more of gatekeepers for product documentation. She states that the paid technical writer will have to keep up with user-created content and comments on the Web and respond to this content or take it into consideration when maintaining the documentation (13). Unofficial documentation will continue to dominate over official documentation.
The "chaos of the Web", then is really the preferred method because it is personable, current, relevant, and it just feels good. Technical writers will have to learn to write like they are someone's best friend rather than some company's employee. They will have to maintain the integrity of product documentation in keeping with corporate strategy.
Users Determine the Rise and Fall of Products
Perhaps Technical Writing 3.0 then will be all about researching and validating user-created content and compiling a living user guide based on that content. The online help and user guide of the future will be the voice of the user and not the corporation. This will spawn a new age in product design, corporate strategy, and technical communication. The product documentation of the future will involve the following:
1. a living user guide, more like Facebook, of running commentary from actual users of the product
2. product development based on feedback
3. corporate strategy geared towards preventing negative feedback
In a sense, Web 2.0 will cause a major disruption in the way corporations make money and the way corporations communicate. Since users will be driving product development and therefore the bottom line, users will own the product. The surviving products will enjoy a ride not unlike that of a major rock star or other iconic figure. The rise will be meteoric as micro blogs, tempered by savvy technical writing agents, tout the features and benefits of a user-designed product.
And the fall will be like taking down an NFL runningback just before the goal line, seconds before the game ends. Users will take products up and take them down. Technical writing agents will try to manage both the needs of the corporation and the emotions of the user. Kind of like a family therapist, which is what a technical writer is afterall.
Sources
Cifuentes, Lauren, Amy Sharp, Sanser Bulu, Mike Benz, and Laura Stough. 2010. "Developing a Web 2.0-based system with user-authored content for community use and teacher education." Educational Technology Research & Development 58, no. 4: 377-398.
Oram, Andy. 2007. "What comes after the information age." O'Reilly Radar. (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/what-comes-after-the-informati.html)
Pontin, Jason. 2009. "A Manifesto: NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES WON'T VANISH. BUT THEY WILL CHANGE." Technology Review 112, no. 3: 8-9.
Content creation online. Pew Internet & American Life
First agriculture and then manufacturing and then information - and finally expertise. Information is free and so something has to have value - this is expertise. (See What comes after the information age by Andy Oram)
What expertise is valuable? Expertise about agriculture and manufacting? Perhaps.
"But a combination of technological support and user commitment could promote more online learning. We should have rich media that allow people to differentiate themselves through avatars or other indications of personality, and technologies for forums that mix the immediacy of chat with spaces for posting and manipulating files. Culture change is also required: experts have to be willing to guide a new user step by step during explorations of a problem, and the new users have to take correction in good humor. " (Oram)
Sarah O'Keefe, founder and president of Scriptorium Publishing responds with a White Paper: "Friend or Foe? Web 2.0 in Technical Communication" in which she discusses why people turn "to the chaos of the Web" rather than reading the manual. She suggests technical writers ensure their user guides display in Google search results. She says this is what will allow people to find expertise as opposed to chaos.
The Read Write Web Environment
I don't agree. I think people turn to chaos instead of the online help or user guide because they don't trust corporate-speak anymore if they ever did. They don't trust big brother to help them with their problems. They know there are hundreds maybe thousands of people out there just like them with the same issue and they crave this community of answers. They would rather hear from, say, Beth, 27, in Tulsa than consult a stiff, impersonal online help content window. Users consider unfiltered content to be valuable (O'Keefe 11, 2009).
Wikis, blogs, webcasts, you tube, facebook, twitter, and storefronts, such as Amazon, with product reviews by real people, enable the voice of the real person vs the traditional paid-columnist or corporate-backed writer (Cifuentes 2009).
By 2003, 44% of adult Internet users had participated in the interactive capabilities of the Internet by posting in at least one read/write Web environment (Lenhart et al. 2004).
The Real Technical Writing 2.0
O'Keefe projects the future of technical writing as more of gatekeepers for product documentation. She states that the paid technical writer will have to keep up with user-created content and comments on the Web and respond to this content or take it into consideration when maintaining the documentation (13). Unofficial documentation will continue to dominate over official documentation.
The "chaos of the Web", then is really the preferred method because it is personable, current, relevant, and it just feels good. Technical writers will have to learn to write like they are someone's best friend rather than some company's employee. They will have to maintain the integrity of product documentation in keeping with corporate strategy.
Users Determine the Rise and Fall of Products
Perhaps Technical Writing 3.0 then will be all about researching and validating user-created content and compiling a living user guide based on that content. The online help and user guide of the future will be the voice of the user and not the corporation. This will spawn a new age in product design, corporate strategy, and technical communication. The product documentation of the future will involve the following:
1. a living user guide, more like Facebook, of running commentary from actual users of the product
2. product development based on feedback
3. corporate strategy geared towards preventing negative feedback
In a sense, Web 2.0 will cause a major disruption in the way corporations make money and the way corporations communicate. Since users will be driving product development and therefore the bottom line, users will own the product. The surviving products will enjoy a ride not unlike that of a major rock star or other iconic figure. The rise will be meteoric as micro blogs, tempered by savvy technical writing agents, tout the features and benefits of a user-designed product.
And the fall will be like taking down an NFL runningback just before the goal line, seconds before the game ends. Users will take products up and take them down. Technical writing agents will try to manage both the needs of the corporation and the emotions of the user. Kind of like a family therapist, which is what a technical writer is afterall.
Sources
Cifuentes, Lauren, Amy Sharp, Sanser Bulu, Mike Benz, and Laura Stough. 2010. "Developing a Web 2.0-based system with user-authored content for community use and teacher education." Educational Technology Research & Development 58, no. 4: 377-398.
Lenhart, A., Horrigan, J. B., & Fallows, D. 2004.
Project.Oram, Andy. 2007. "What comes after the information age." O'Reilly Radar. (http://radar.oreilly.com/archives/2007/09/what-comes-after-the-informati.html)
Pontin, Jason. 2009. "A Manifesto: NEWSPAPERS AND MAGAZINES WON'T VANISH. BUT THEY WILL CHANGE." Technology Review 112, no. 3: 8-9.
Content creation online. Pew Internet & American Life
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Code of Ethics for Technical Writers
A code of ethics sounds so serious I wonder what that would entail for technical communicators.
I think I am just a little bit afraid of certification. What does that entail? I know as a TDWI follower that certification as a BI Developer for TDW is quite something. There is so much to know and study. Yet they are so revered. The data architects are gods where I work. The business analysts (ever heard of a BA in Business Analysis?) aren't quite the gods that the dba's are but they are still above technical writer.
I remember once working for a small-med sized election systems company and discovering 75% of the technical writers in the group did not even have a bachelor's degree. One was working on their undergraduate degree while working full time as a technical writer. Another had a machinery background but no writing skills other than the desire to write. He seemed to catch on to FrameMaker quickly.
I guess that is something. It made me feel powerless, invisible, stupid, like why did I go to college, why am I going to grad school if it isn't even recognized?
I think I am just a little bit afraid of certification. What does that entail? I know as a TDWI follower that certification as a BI Developer for TDW is quite something. There is so much to know and study. Yet they are so revered. The data architects are gods where I work. The business analysts (ever heard of a BA in Business Analysis?) aren't quite the gods that the dba's are but they are still above technical writer.
I remember once working for a small-med sized election systems company and discovering 75% of the technical writers in the group did not even have a bachelor's degree. One was working on their undergraduate degree while working full time as a technical writer. Another had a machinery background but no writing skills other than the desire to write. He seemed to catch on to FrameMaker quickly.
I guess that is something. It made me feel powerless, invisible, stupid, like why did I go to college, why am I going to grad school if it isn't even recognized?
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