Technical writers’ mailing lists - Careers

The TWIN (Technical Writers of India) mailing list has crossed 1,000. As the founder and owner, I wanted to stop the list a few years ago when it had touched 675, because I was afraid it would touch 1,000 within a few months. I had other reasons for wanting to stop the list. But the voice of the members prevailed and I handed over the list to the current owner.

Why did I start the list? Well, I saw that Indian technical writers (and others), were making a fool of themselves on Techwhirl (a list with around 4,000 members then, today perhaps it has 8,000) and other lists. A professor from a reputed institute in Bangalore had asked about a problem of printing on the list. I was embarrassed. I said, why not restrict this ignominy to ourselves and started the TWIN list.

Recently, an interesting message was passed on to me from the TWIN mailing list (printed verbatim):

Tough question indeed. I feel the writer makes valid points. I am in full agreement with what he/she says. Of course, I do not agree with the tone and the language. Also, I do not like the fact that this person is hiding behind an e-mail address! Naturally, people on the list pounced on this person. Some were downright rude and called the person names. But most seemed to be missing the point that the writer was making. Why not reflect and make the list more interesting and more useful?

There are too many errors in the post! There is no capitalisation. Even India is spelt without a capital letter! This clearly indicates that the person is not a technical writer! The writer is an Indian, perhaps, living abroad or frustrated about not living abroad and hence the disdain for an Indian list! No Indian technical writer worth his salt (yes, I am assuming it is a male who is being bitchy!) would write in such an illiterate manner.

Of course, there were some very good responses. These were from proper technical writers. Here they are:

To take up one point—I was in touch with TechWhirl for about a year. There were more threads on non-tech writing, irrelevant topics, and very few helpful ones.

I thought it was a poor source of information or troubleshooting and Twin was far superior in this regard. Though Twin seems to have lots of useless posts today, it is still way above Techwhirl.

—Regards,

Lakshmi

While the tone of this guy’s mail is acerbic—maybe malicious—he has a couple of valid points. I do not blame him/her for these observations on TWs in India, thanks to that spoof on forming a Tech Writing Union (or something close to that effect)….

It is also unfortunate that many respondents to this mail just got wildly emotional—pardon me if I’m wrong, but from the retorts about idiots, etc, this is what I could infer—instead of devoting some time to the observations this guy has made.

I repeat, I particularly dislike the tone of his mail, but some responses could have been well thought out, like Paresh’s.

—Sandeep

One of the reasons for my wanting to stop the TWIN list was that I thought we had matured as a technical writing community. Most of us could intelligently participate on Techwhirl or any other list without embarrassing anyone.

Technical writers are supposed to dig out information and write about it. So why do technical writers rush to the list and ask simplistic questions on Word, FrameMaker, and what have you. Why not first look up the Help files? Why not look for information on the Internet? Why not ask the Help Desk? There are mailing lists for Word and FrameMaker and all other products. Why not look up the archives? Only as a last resort, write to the list.

What about the answers that you get from the list? Most of them show half-knowledge. Unbelievable, but questions themselves are framed badly, they are not understood properly, and the replies are even worse. It is as if people are having a casual discussion.

“The debates are shallow.” Half the discussions in most lists are hollow. People are fond of making empty noises.

I receive at least one e-mail per day thanks to this column. I do not reply to any one of them. I have started a mailing list called DocuMentor on Yahoo groups. The Group home page: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/documentor.

The Group email address: documentor@yahoogroups.com. I am sure both newbie, wannabe and established technical writers can participate in this list.

I ran a similar list ages ago for mentoring newbie writers. Established writers joined the list.

Everyone should participate. If you have any questions or feedback on this column, feel free to write to this group.

Hope this column encourages you to be a good list member. Read the list behaviour advocated on Techwhirl, Techshoret, and TWIN. They serve as good models.

Gurudutt Kamath is a technical writer based in Mumbai. E-mail: documentor-owner@yahoogroups.com