[Sigia-l] Findability

[Derek R]

Madhu wrote:
>| What do you label the practice of 'helping'
>| users find the information they *are* looking for?

I would label it 'hand-holding,' 'oppression,' or some other similar
removal or redirection from original concern. 

Call it even 'pacification,' if you prefer -- you're just giving the
user/person 'something/anything/stuff' to shut them up (to pacify,
divide and disquiet).

On the other hand, I envision users getting *immediately* what they
asked for -- not a 12-volume 'user's manual' or 'help-file' to stand
between user and an already-issued command.

To quote Morpheus from the movie 'Matrix' --> "Stop trying to hit me and
hit me!"

And similarly: The 'practice of helping' as you Madhu, and Lou phrase
it, is a world pulled over the eyes of users *to blind them* from the
truth. The 'practice of helping' has no concern with *presentation* of
the truth, only with *orchestration* in a Big Brother/Orwellian
kind-of-way. Your 'librarian'-ship puts forward, as its primary
attribute, the necessity of a *mediator* -- that users/people are not
genuine enough in their own right to handle their own affairs (the
truth), but must *defer* themselves to some self-proclaimed authority.

You, Madhu, and Lou and friends, have to learn the difference between
'knowing the path' and 'walking the path.' 

Learn this and you will discontinue your *burdensome* activities which
constrain the user/person.  

___________________________

"Do not try to bend the spoon, that's impossible... There is no spoon...
It is not the spoon that bends, it is you."