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MDXBase article

Started by Oluseyi Oct 5, 2004 at 1:42 AM 3 replies 150+ views

Original Post

Oluseyi

526

Oluseyi

Oct 5, 2004 at 1:42 AM

Informational notice. I find the style of this article unsatisfactory. I think it's time we started encouraging a less colloquial writing approach with fewer personal anecdotes and less conversational tone. These are technical resources, after all! I also disapprove of some of the code in the article, particularly the name warts: every class name begins with MDXBase, which suggests that there should simply be a MDXBase namespace. The article also is too unfocused, meaning that its significant size (12 pages) is bloated by material that is probably covered elsewhere. I'd like us to reduce redundancy and perhaps use a system of references or "Related Content" instead. [Please note that while these comments refer to this article, they are general policy opinions that will be applied to all future articles.] I'm going to email the author and make recommendations for a rewrite. I have one larger problem, though. I find material that merely paraphrases the contents of published documentation (DirectX introductory tutorials are extremely guilty of this) to be of questionable merit. What are your opinions?

Myopic Rhino

452

Myopic Rhino

Oct 5, 2004 at 2:05 PM

Quote:
Original post by Oluseyi
I think it's time we started encouraging a less colloquial writing approach with fewer personal anecdotes and less conversational tone.

I agree with that, although I don't want to be too hardline about it. After all, we *are* still a website, and people do tend to expect a bit less formal tone in web articles than what they find in books or magazines. But excessive use of colloquialisms, asides that have nothing to do with the content, language that makes certain assumptions about the audience (e.g. that they are fellow teenagers just getting started), and so on should be avoided.

Quote:
Original post by Oluseyi
I have one larger problem, though. I find material that merely paraphrases the contents of published documentation (DirectX introductory tutorials are extremely guilty of this) to be of questionable merit. What are your opinions?

I'd agree that tutorials that take readily available material and repackage it without adding anything aren't of much use to us. As long as we don't apply that rule too broadly, I'm okay with it.