Technical Writing Fail - Guernsey Press

2011-02-28

Categoriesrants

I know that Jason was going to cover this on his blog over at deedoubleyou.net, but he hasn’t. And this was posted on the 4th of February, back when the IPV4 exhaustion thing was current. So I thought I would write a little something about this before it's entirely outdated.

Everybody knows we are running out of IPV4 addresses, and has read about it on about a million technical sites. Well, our local paper decided to do a small section about it in its 'world news' section.

As an IT Professional/Technical person, reading this explanation was painful, to say the least. Now, I know they are writing for a non-technical audience, but a small attempt for some sort of accuracy would have been nice.

So without further ado, look after the break for a copy of the article, and my points after reading it.

Oh, and Guernsey Press, keep away from technical writing for a bit please Guernsey Press IPV4 article - 4/2/11 Please read through the article, on the bits that I have highlighted. You should be able to click on it, to get it full size. Then each of these numbered points below addresses my comments on that highlighted part.

Fail 1 - Web Address

Web addresses: Wikipedia Article We are running out of IP addresses, not Web addresses, I’m pretty sure every perceivable domain, on every single TLD isn’t about to be taken.

Fail 2 - Internet Numbers

Internet numbers is a fail, I'm pretty sure somebody with even a basic idea of networking could explain it better than that. An internet address would have been better, or an internet postcode. That would have made a lot more sense. Also, 192.168.1.1 isn’t an internet address, as it is reserved for internal use. So I wouldn’t call it an internet number/postcode at all.

Fail 3 - Wrong number

The number of addresses is actually 2^32, which is more like 4,294,967,296. Unless they have taken out broadcast addresses etc, although judging by the standard of the rest of the article, I doubt they would know what they were.

Fail 4 - Lying

(http://ipv6-test.com/validate.php) - if you run that on channelisles.net, then it fails all tests and says that even their website isn’t IPv6 ready.

Fail 5 - NATing exists

Fridges and cookers would be behind your router; unless you have 4,000,000,000 devices connected to your personal LAN, it isn’t going to be an issue. NATing, it works bitches.

Fail 6 - More Lies

IPs aren’t necessarily unique, especially ones connected to private numbers. Please don’t set your router’s IP to 192.168.0.1, that’s one I use for mine! You’ll break the Internets!

Conclusion

Well, kids, this is why technical writing should be limited to technical people. Another point I would like to make is if you are 'dumbing' down a technical subject, for a non-technical audience, please keep it accurate. There is no point in misinformation.

So in final conclusion: 6 technical fails in a few hundred words is pretty appalling, although it did give me and the rest of the IT team at work some laughs. Well played Guernsey Press.