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And who wants to watch YouTube videos in a bathroom stall? On Thu, Mar 12, 2015 at 5:49 PM, David McFarlane <[log in to unmask]> wrote: > My apologies for polluting your inboxes with my personal rant, but here > goes ... > > > I demand documentation that has the following qualities: Comprehensive, > Systematic, Local (which brings along the quality of Durable or Lasting), > and Personalized Pacing. > > Lately, every time I ask for "documentation", people blithely steer me to > some websites, and often specifically to videos. These in particular fail > on every count: > > - Video collections are selective. Even if I diligently view all the > videos (which would take too much of my time), they will not expose me to > *every* aspect of the system, unlike traditional documentation. I.e., > video collections fail to cover matters comprehensively. > > - Video collections do not provide a clear orderly path for viewing the > entire collection, unlike traditional documentation with a fixed, known > sequence of pages to follow. Websites are totally hopeless in this > regard. And forget about leaving bookmarks so that I can pause and later > pick up where I left off. So video collections fail at systematicity. > > - Streaming video collections require online connectivity at every > moment. I cannot view streaming videos, or a website, while offline, > unlike traditional documentation. This also makes them ephemeral, bound to > disappear at the whim or fortunes of the provider; by contrast, traditional > documentation lives with me, and lasts as long as I hold onto it. So video > collections fail to be "local", and with that fail to be durable or lasting. > > - Video collections force me to proceed exactly at the pace of the video. > Unlike traditional documentation, I cannot "skim" videos to get the gist of > the content, and then come back to drill down to details of interest. So > video collections fail the test of personalized pacing. > > Much of this critique applies to other forms of modern "documentation", > e.g., websites and downloadable html collections in particular. A good > .pdf, or set of .pdfs, however, may have these qualities, just as a > traditional set of printed manuals did back in the day. Given a > traditional manual set of, say, 1000 pages, I can master any system in a > matter of days. Doing things the modern way puts me at the mercy of a > chaotic collection of people of dubious mastery, and impedes my own > attainment of mastery. > > > OK, now you kids get off my lawn! > > -- dkm >