5:11 PM
5:41 PM
Technical writing - the profession - is on topic here (same as, say, journalism, editing, fiction author, etc.).
Management and organization techniques for tech writing are on-topic, same as management and organization techniques for fiction writing.
6:15 PM
@@writers.stackexchange.com/users/1993/… (See above, we're discussing a question of yours for illustrative purposes; at the moment, we're not going around and closing old questions.)
@Standback - I think it's a very well-asked question, and is quite clear. However, I don't think it's on-topic, and here's why:
The question is about managing a media library, in this case screenshots and other graphics. While the project its for is a technical document, the question really doesn't get into much about the actual writing itself.
I'm seeing this as analogous to the bike touring discussion on Bicycles: If the question is about aspects of touring involving actual riding or support for riding or planning for riding (or the bike), well and good. If the question is purely about, say, camping, which is an integral part of touring, it's off-topic and would be closed.
If it's a support activity for writing - tools, language (barring exceptions in our FAQ, like proofreading and single-word requests that belong on EL&U) - then its on-topic.
However, something like how to use photoshop or InDesign to make a book jacket is off-topic, and would be gently migrated to Graphic Design.
Similarly, this question is really about tools and systems that have nothing to do with the actual writing; it's a document management question.
7:04 PM
2 hours later…
8:51 PM
9:10 PM
@NeilFein And while I didn't make this clear in the original question, the screen shots have text implications -- you usually don't just have a screen shot, but rather a screen shot and text that talks about the options or what you can do with that tool or whatnot. If a screenshot has to be updated you have to look at the places where that image is used, but finding those points is easy (in my case just grep the source for the file name).
9:27 PM
10:08 PM
10:54 PM
@NeilFein @MonicaCellio : I understood Monica's intention from the original question. I think it was clear - though, unsurprisingly, the more familiar you are with the field, the more clear the relevance is; that's a general "issue" with SE - it's harder to moderate in areas you don't know well.
Neil, you've got to consider what tech writing is - it's the collection, organization, and presentation of technical details in a useful manner.
Organization and maintanence are crucial - they're not tangential concerns. Other fields certainly also need to organize information, but the necessity of keeping up an accurate collection of dozens of different types of information across multiple projects and interacting in every which way, but still needs to be kept perfectly understandable to the average reader... that's a tech writing issue.
Now, I hear your concern about that being kind of far from what you see as the site's "core business."
That's why there was a big split; that's why we've seen very eloquent explanations about how there's not really any common ground between fiction writers and tech writers.
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The Overlook Hotel
General discussion for writing.stackexchange.com. Writing exer...