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Taxonomy of web content delivery
Thursday, September 11, 2008 — posted by Sarah O'Keefe
I really like the new article from Richard Hamilton on the Content Wrangler, in which he describes various categories of web content delivery, ranging from "no-ware" to "shovel-ware" to "active-ware."Active-ware is "anything that lets you interact with users online." And most interestingly, Hamilton points out that:
Active-ware is orthogonal to the other categories and suggests that successful approaches to Active-ware will draw from a different set of models than the other categories.
You might also describe "active-ware" as Web 2.0 content. In which case, you might find our Friend or Foe? Web 2.0 in technical communication white paper of interest.
(Side note: These white papers are now available as HTML and you can rate each page and leave your comments.)
Hamilton implies that the role of the technical writer will change for Web 2.0 content (active-ware). He writes:
[... S]ome of the things we value most in technical communication, like good writing and complete and accurate solutions, may have less importance, if any, in Active-ware.
I started my career in technical communication as a production editor. Technical writers wrote content, technical editors reviewed the information for grammar, mechanics, and completeness, and the production editors were responsible for verifying that the documents were formatted correctly and printed properly.
These days, production editors and technical editors are endangered species. Some organizations have eliminated production editors with automated formatting (usually an XML-based workflow); other organizations place the responsibility for final document appearance on the technical writers. In neither case do we have people whose primary responsibility is to give content that final gloss.
As a former production editor, I find this unfortunate -- and the formatting errors that are so abundant in today's technical content make me cringe. But from a business perspective, I understand the reasoning -- for most organizations, the value added by checking pagination, fixing awkward line breaks, and verifying formatting is not great enough to justify the expense. (A few organizations, especially those in consumer electronics and similar industries, still emphasize high-quality printed manuals.)
Which brings me back to active-ware, which is often of lower quality than traditional technical communication because it's poorly written, not complete, and not entirely accurate (as Hamilton says in the quote above). Active-ware, however, has one huge advantage: immediacy. On a forum, you can ask a question and expect help within hours or even minutes. If the documentation doesn't address your particular issues, waiting months for the next release of the documentation is probably not a viable solution.
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