Praise: Rev Documentation to the rescue

[Richard Gaskin]

Dan Shafer wrote:

> On Jul 25, 2005, at 11:36 AM, Timothy Miller wrote:
>> It still seems to me that it just wouldn't be that hard or  expensive 
>> to make it a whole lot better
>
> > Speaking as someone who's written a few words of documentation over  the 
> decades....
> 
> It is a LOT harder and more expensive than you think to make it a  whole 
> lot better.

Maybe there's a third way, at least to edge things forward at minimal cost.

With more than 3,000 pages of content, most of what anyone needs to get 
started is in there somewhere.  It's the "somewhere", the finding of 
things, that seems to be the most common problem.

Better indexing would help, but Search is only part of a complete breakfast.

I wonder to what degree simply changing the taxonomy might help people 
get to what they need without restoring to Search at all?

The Dictionary is straightforward enough, but I can never seem to 
confidently guess whether something is covered under Objects or Topics. 
  For example, there's a topic called "Control Structures" in Objects, 
even though a control structure is not an object.

A revised taxonomy could be done in just a couple days, and whether or 
not it proves a panacea it would certainly be a big step forward.

--
  Richard Gaskin
  Fourth World Media Corporation
  __________________________________________________
  Rev tools and more: http://www.fourthworld.com/rev