Lose that tag please

It all started last night when I tweeted some Hindi film dialogues (In India, we have two major religions - films and cricket).

(to zoom, click the image)

And then, we got around to discussing the bestest comedy film that's ever come out of Bombay. And, this was the tweet that got me to writing this blog post.

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How is this relevant to techwriting?

Well, if I were an indexer, I'd have probably tagged all my film content with some of these words: bombay, bollywood, hindifilm, <nameOFfilm>, <nameOFstar>, and so on? Very search friendly and all. But say, my reader was a sociologist researching corruption in India (ahem!).  This dialogue ("Thoda khao, thoda phenko" #epic) would never even show up in the search results, yet it contains exactly what the sociologist is looking for - the entire social mileu from which the phenomenon has sprung (including the defence mechanisms people employ to forget the misery it produces).

So, how did I link this dialogue to scams (that are occupying the entire front page - and more - of newspapers these past weeks)? Because in my mind, my content database is neither indexed nor tagged. I can pull out random references and tag it to anything random and yet make it look relevant.

Me: To copy, perchance to paste; Aye, there's the rub for in that paste what copies might come when we have shuffled the platforms and the versions out of the filters.
Colleague: Coils. Not filters. Coils.
Me: Coils.
<silence for one minute>

Colleague: A coil is a wrapper, right?
Me: Right.
Colleague: So, if we put a wrapper to call the boolean....

So, here I am, thinking if there is more to indexing that meets the eye. More to content reuse? More to "context"? Thoughts?

Where is the User in the Design

Creation and delivery of help content was what was on my mind as I sat crocheting a tiny coin purse for my mother.  She has a very cute, 3-inch, pot-bellied leather purse that she uses to keep her loose change in but it's coming apart at the seams, hence I sat there, crocheting this:

To zoom in, click on the picture

And, have we not often come across something like this:

To zoom in, click on the picture 

[Note: Thanks for catching the misplaced apostrophe. Feeling too lazy to edit the pic.]

I am picturing a scenario with me and my mom:

 To zoom in, click on the picture

Creating and delivering help content is very similar to creating any other product.  So, I ask myself, Where, How, and When is my reader going to need this information.  If I can answer these three questions, the content I create will truly be User Assistance.