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What do you look for in documentation?
May. 5th, 2009 10:57 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
holyschistI am by no means an expert on entering A&S competitions; I don't do it often for a variety of reasons (not very interested in competition, like writing really long documentation for its own sake, don't want to have to avoid getting distracted by side projects for the months it takes to prepare an entry...etc.). I've only judged once. So when I document I'm generally doing it for myself, not to what I think judges might want to see.
When I write documentation for competition, and I'm trying to be brief (not writing a research paper is HARD), I like to include the following sections:
Summary/Abstract - short description of what I made, what the thing was in period, who used it/its function in its culture.
Background A few more in-depth paragraphs about the historical item and evidence for how it was made.
Materials - list of the period materials in one column, mine in the other. Ideally they're mostly the same, but perfection is for people with bigger budgets than mine.
Process - Step-by-step "what I did" (including comments on where this deviated from period practice).
What I Learned - This is my favorite section, and I think the least universally included. I usually put a bulleted list of the things I learned in making my project, which may include things like "I learned how to make my lines even!" or "Next time I would do this differently" or "This was such a pain to make, I will never do it again, but I'm glad I had the experience."
References - Works cited.
Appendixes - If I have recipes, diagrams, or lots of supporting images, I may include them in a separate section.
I try to keep the whole thing under three pages, which I hear is still pretty long; I'm not totally convinced that you can convey everything important on an index card. But this is one of the reasons I don't compete often and prefer to enter research papers. :D
What do you like to include in your documentation? If you judge, what do you like to see in documentation? Do you think it's a problem, plus, or neutral that the SCA does not have a standard format for A&S documentation? How should judges be briefed to fairly compare different documentation formats?
When I write documentation for competition, and I'm trying to be brief (not writing a research paper is HARD), I like to include the following sections:
Summary/Abstract - short description of what I made, what the thing was in period, who used it/its function in its culture.
Background A few more in-depth paragraphs about the historical item and evidence for how it was made.
Materials - list of the period materials in one column, mine in the other. Ideally they're mostly the same, but perfection is for people with bigger budgets than mine.
Process - Step-by-step "what I did" (including comments on where this deviated from period practice).
What I Learned - This is my favorite section, and I think the least universally included. I usually put a bulleted list of the things I learned in making my project, which may include things like "I learned how to make my lines even!" or "Next time I would do this differently" or "This was such a pain to make, I will never do it again, but I'm glad I had the experience."
References - Works cited.
Appendixes - If I have recipes, diagrams, or lots of supporting images, I may include them in a separate section.
I try to keep the whole thing under three pages, which I hear is still pretty long; I'm not totally convinced that you can convey everything important on an index card. But this is one of the reasons I don't compete often and prefer to enter research papers. :D
What do you like to include in your documentation? If you judge, what do you like to see in documentation? Do you think it's a problem, plus, or neutral that the SCA does not have a standard format for A&S documentation? How should judges be briefed to fairly compare different documentation formats?
