Tuesday 1 April 2014

Turgid Text Tuesday 1

Here begins a semi-regular display of print screens of PDFs found on corporate and governmental websites.

They may include use of horrid jargon, asinine buzzwords or superfluous graphical flourishes. 

They are all awful.


"Point Nepean Forts Conservation Management Plan"
Parks Victoria, 2006 (PDF download)

It is understandable why historic national structures such as the fortifications of Point Nepean require conservation. What is not so clear is what the fuck that flowchart is doing there. What is it? Where did it come from? What does it do?


Why are there arrows? Do the management plans consult with one another? Obviously not as the Point Nepean Forts Conservation Management Plan doesn't have an arrow between it and the other three plans, just the one bidirectional graphical pointing device towards (and from) the overarching management plan.

This seems inefficient. If I were the South Channel Fort Conservation Management Plan, for instance, I could not share my outcome by engaging with key stakeholders of the Point Nepean Forts Conversation Management Plan. I would have to go through the Point Nepean National Park and Point Nepean Quarantine Station Draft Management Plan in order to talk to the Point Nepean Forts Conservation Management Plan.

And how would I know, as the South Channel Fort Conservations Management Plan, if my message had been passed on in full, verbatim as it were? The bottom line is that I wouldn't. I would have to trust my hierarchical and graphical superior that the my message was passed on promptly and efficiently.

The next question is obvious: what do the bidirectional graphical pointing devices mean? Why are their lengths different from one another? Was the Point Nepean Forts Conservation Management Plan not important enough to be completed by someone with competence in bidirectional graphical pointing devices palette in Word '97?

Of course all this is moot. I am reliably informed that none of the draft or final plans mentioned in the post have the capability of speech or even of sentence sentience. Never mind.

Best regards.


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