I read this interesting article this morning by Gerry McGovern about some ‘protective’ (my description) thinking behind most web pages. I was wondering if you see this as true for web pages published by your government agency. One would hope that government agencies publish actionable information. Do you think this is more of a concern for commercial agencies?
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THIS ARTICLE IS FOR INFORMATION PURPOSES ONLY
Do not act based on anything you might read in this article. It is purely for information purposes only.
Information is the “communication or reception of knowledge or intelligence,” according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary. But
that’s not how most organizations see information; written information in
particular.
When most organizations say the information on their websites or in their documents is for information purposes only, what they’re
really saying is: Reader Beware. They’re telling you that if you act on this
information, you are acting at your own risk. In other words, there is a whole
world of information that is published by commercial organizations and
governments on which we are not meant to act.
The reason for this is that, historically, much content (written information) was created under the assumption that an expert would be
interpreting it. In other words, before the Web most information was not
written for self-service.
Take for example information that is written in a sales, marketing or promotional vein. If you act on what you read and something
positive happens, that’s great. However, if your action results in something
negative, the organization that created the content does not want to be held
legally responsible.
“If it is reasonable to assume that someone will act in reliance on information given to them by a professional,” my lawyer colleague
James Buckley states, “and that action transpires to be to the person’s
detriment, and the information given wasn’t of the quality you would expect
from the professional, then even though the parties never signed a contract and
even though the “client” did not pay for the information, the
professional (or company) can be made liable for the negligence in compiling
the information simply because it was reasonable to expect that it would be
relied upon.”
That’s why when organizations want to protect themselves they write something like: “This document is for information purposes only.”
That’s a key reason why web teams have said to me over the years: “We don’t
have tasks. We just have information.” A great many writers are terrified by
the very idea that what they write might be acted upon. That’s why so little
content that is published on the Web is action-oriented. It’s for information
purposes only, which means that it’s vague meaningless waffle that takes as
long as possible to say as little as possible.
That was at least somewhat acceptable before the Web, when content (written information) was nearly always there as a support to a
human-to-human interaction. But the whole business case of the Web is
self-service. It means you read something, act on it on your own and complete
the task you needed to complete.
We need a new generation of content writers who are focused on helping the customer complete tasks. We need to reward not the
creation of the content, but rather the completion of the task. This is a big
mental shift, but a very necessary one if we are to create websites that work.
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I’ve generally figured that that’s left over from printed brochures, etc., which can be expected to linger long after they’ve been superseded. Maybe, since Web pages are so easy to update, the warnings will fade out and people will know they can rely on information from authoritative sources. We can hope!