The concept of a white paper is unique, and pretty interesting, to me. For starters, how can such a specific title be so misunderstood by so many? End sarcasm. I don’t think the term ‘white paper’ is a fair name for these documents, as it offers no description or support as to how advantageous they can be. Throughout the past 3 years in Computer and Information Technology, and working in IT, I’ve read more white papers than I care to recollect. The one quality that each document shared is ‘effective education.’ By this, I mean that each white paper outlined a specific problem and thoroughly informed me, as an IT professional seeking an answer, how to resolve the issue. White papers offer numerous benefits over other means of potential solution documents, i.e. service brochures, many of which were covered in this week’s readings. However, the primary benefit, to me, is that white papers are inherently unbiased, and strive only to educate the reader of a problem and offer possible solutions. This is exactly what we will be doing in the upcoming project; outlining a known problem or vulnerability and propsing a number of unbiased potential fixes.
The key to writing an effective white paper is the same as composing any other purposeful document: consider the target audience and the context. Drafting a white paper that doesn’t relate to the targeted readers, or prove to fit well in regard to the context of the situation or problem will fail. The fact that the documents must relate to the audience is obvious, but what about context, is it equally obvious? The examples in this week’s readings work well to differentiate various contexts and why said context is import to anticipate. Consider a marketing white paper and a government white paper. A marketing white paper, according to Elissa Miller in “The Steak Behind the Sizzle,” is written to ‘sell’ and “lacks objectivity, which alienates readers and instills doubt about the paper’s validity.” Government white papers, however, prove to be very effective and universally accepted because, as Elissa Miller states, they “provide adequate and appropriate technical detail, are sufficiently objective, and cite outside sources, which strengthens credibility.” One must be aware of the appropriate context when writing these documents, in order to be successful that is - green paper v. red paper.
As my team and I progress in this project, I anticipate that we will frequently reference Elissa Miller’s “The Steak Behind the Sizzle,” as it outlines every aspect of drafting a clear and effective white paper, and is itself an effective white paper. I am confident that the team roles portion of that article will prove helpful in the immediate future as we decide who will take on each roll within our group, and other portions and readings will assist in future deliverables as well.
Unbiased
When you "the primary benefit, to me, is that white papers are inherently unbiased", are you talking about all white documents or just the ones that you have read for work. It seems to me that many white papers, especially marketing white papers, can be pretty biased because it is another way for the companies to sell their product. I guess it would depend on whether the white papers that you had to read were used within the company or between company and consumer. It seems like white papers used within a company are primarily to educate and probably would not be biased. But white papers being distributed to consumers offering solutions to problems would almost have to be biased unless they want to also promote their competitors.
Teamwork, yay!
Being part of your team, I agree that we should reference Elissa Miller’s paper in order to create a successful and informative white page. While I write this we are slowly becoming a productive team by creating a Google group as well setting up meeting times. I feel that we will be able to create a successful document by creating a document that is informative and with little to no bias to it. To agree with you on one of your key points, a white paper needs to help the user find solutions to their problems. Just recently I had found a white paper for my wireless class on how to secure a router. I must say, it really helped me out with my lab.
A big help
Elissa Miller's white paper has already played a pretty big role with our preparation for this project. It has definitely helped us organize our group and figure out what we need to accomplish in our white paper.
When Miller was talking about lacking objectivity and alienating readers, I took that more as a way that some marketing white papers fail instead of how all marketing white papers are written. I interpreted it as "here's where some companies go wrong" and the white paper is essentially a huge backfire on their attempt to promote themselves. Companies wouldn't get anywhere if they consistently wrote inadequate, explicitly biased white papers.
Sell it
It seems like if a company's product is good enough they do not have to be that biased. I guess it goes with "the product sells its self". I like that white paper document are unbiased but think that it is a hard thing to do when writing. You are concentrated on one subject and are trying to get your audience to like your subject. With this mindset, you will eventually start writing a paper that is bias. The white paper project that we are doing seems like it will have a lot of obstacles to cover to make a good white paper document.
Bias
I agree that there can certainly be a level of bias in white papers, but that that is mainly constricting to those that have been made for commercial purposes. I like to think of them, in this sense, as sort of pamphlets for a more technical crowd that wants to see the "streak behind the sizzle", as Ellisa Miller appropriately states. With this said, I don't really see how this bias will really concern our group too much, as we plan to write our white paper concerning sustainable energy. There will certainly be some bias, undoubtably, but not to the extent that you would likely see in a commercial white paper, attempting to sell a product.
The term white paper is very
The term white paper is very easy to misunderstand because with all of the information that needs to be packed into a white paper document it actually does not end up being a white piece of paper at all. The fact that a white paper needs to remain unbiased makes it a very hard document to construct, especially if the person writing fully believes in the product. I had no idea what a white paper was by definition, but have seen many of them in my life, I feel that they are like brochures that go very in-depth on a particular subject, with very factual information.