Know Your Audience

Peet1 asked a question and Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist tried to answer the question. Derrick Qian | Microsoft Community Support Specialist, but it didn't go especially well as you can read here https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/musicandvideo/forum/all/file-explorer/5f4ee4ab-5336-4480-82e8-924dc6bb98e5 - File Explorer. What Peet1 wrote exemplifies the question that has no answer in the technical writing community: How do you write content that authentically helps your audience?

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Hi Derrick. Thanks for your reply and thank you VERY much for the effort you made to try and help me. It takes time and patience to provide the information you have provided. Thank You. What advanced technical people like you do not understand, is that there are millions of people, like me, who do not have a clue what you are talking about. For example:

"1. Manual：　

First create a Desktop.ini file in the folder that needs to be changed, for example:

[.ShellClassInfo]

ConfirmFileOp=0

InfoTip=my folder

IconIndex=0

IconFile=MyFolder.ico

explain:

parameter ConfirmFileOp s........................"

No-one out there, unless they are computer technically trained, knows what this means. Create Desktop.ini: What programme is used to do this? Notepad perhaps? It doesn't say, so I don't know. Does "MyFolder" refer to the folder I'm in? I have too many questions.

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Derrick's answer was helpful to me but not to Peet1. How does Derrick write content that serves BOTH Peet1 and me in a technical support forum?

My manager and I discussed something similar to this yesterday. We were talking about how the SME  who writes the disaster recovery documentation for their system is writing for themselves and how there is really no way to standardize whether their content is useful to someone else until the following (which I am fleshing out after contemplating the discussion overnight): 

• There is a disaster and System ABBA has to be restored
  
• The SME for System ABBA is unavailable
• The SME for System ASIA is available and has technical expertise and knowledge but not for System ABBA. However, given the circumstances, the SME for System ASIA is going to attempt to use the documentation that the SME for System ABBA wrote.
• If the SME for System ASIA uses the documentation that the SME for System ABBA wrote and the SME for System ASIA is able to restore System ABBA, 
• then documentation = useful. 
• Else, the SME for System ASIA uses the documentation that the SME for System ABBA wrote and the SME for System ASIA is unable to restore System ABBA, the documentation is not useful.

I also said that I hope we never have a disaster when we have to find out!