Personally, I have never heard of a White Paper before and I can imagine I am not the only one. After reading through the readings, I am still left with one question, why is it called a White Paper? Did I miss something in the readings? Anyhow, after completing the readings, I realized not only have I read a lot of White Papers, it is actually the ideal document I look for when I need information on a topic. I look for these because not only do they contain lots of information, but they typically contain both pros AND cons to a subject. I think this is something to keep in mind while drafting our White Papers. I know when I read something and it is overwhelming biased, I normally disregard what they have to say. I think this will also be a very difficult part of the project. I know personally I can be opinionated at times and want to persuade people to see an issue my way. I am going to make a special effort to stay neutral when drafting our White Paper.
Most technical readers will also want unbiased information. They typically see themselves as intelligent enough to see past the marketing and hype to find out what is really going on. These readers, myself included, have seen the ads, but now just want to facts. On the other hand marketing departments also use White Papers to sell their products. As it states in “Steak Behind the Sizzle”, companies put them on their websites to educate potential customers about their products. The problem I see with this is that if you are using it as a sales tool, it will more than likely be biased.
Another challenge of writing a White Paper will be writing it at a knowledge level that it can reach a wide audience. If it is too technical, only engineers or scientist will be able to understand it. But if it is too watered down, it will not provide sufficient information to be seen as credible.
white papers are everywhere
I am like you in that I had never heard of white papers or knew what they were until the readings this week. However I also realized Ive read quite a few of them at work in the past and so on. But what surprised me most was while looking for potential sources for this project on the internet, I was stumbling upon white papers on almost every other site I looked at it seemed. It really surprised me how often I may have come across these in the past while doing research for other projects and I never knew what they were or how helpful they might have been in my research.
Patrick Griffin
pgriffin@purdue.edu
Everywhere
White papers are definitely everywhere. This is especially true for those of us in technical majors. Many of us have become reliant on them for sources of information about complicated technical products. I often find myself scanning through them looking for key information without even realizing that I am looking through a white paper. Without these white papers, finding information would much more trouble. In regards to the name white paper, I have no idea why they are called this. This is especially confusing since quite a few of these documents have colored diagrams. Believe it or not, Wikipedia doesn’t even have an explanation for the name.
white papers indeed
Your not alone. I have never heard of white paper documents as well until doing the reading. I agree with you about how valuable white papers truly can be, if written properly. The aspects of white papers give an unique presentation of information to potential customers about their product. Even with the solution provided with detailed arguments of the product, I still believe there's still with slanted statements presented.
I think this will truly be the hardest part of the project is to write the white paper without persuading people. It's really boils down to how well you can craft your contents to convince them to buy your product without actually saying it.
Unbiased
I had also never heard the term 'White Paper' until this week's readings. However, once I finished the readings I realized that white papers were a very common form of literature that I probably see most every day. I had just never heard them called white papers. The term actually is pretty counter-intuitive if you think about it. Technically, white paper makes me think of a blank paper, where what the term means seems to have to do with filling a paper with as much information as possible to sell or pursuade an audience to be interested in supporting or buying a product.
As far as technical information goes, I agree that most technical readers will want unbiased information. However, if I am the one reading the report, I wouldn't mind them telling me explicitly why they think their product is better for me than the other product.
Just the facts
Isaac, I like how you addressed the persuasion side of things here. I feel like most white papers that I've ever utilized in any research have been strictly factual. As far as technology goes, I think most of the audience just wants the cold hard facts. Usually I am just trying to find some sort of command or information on current technology trends. For example I recently read a white paper on a huge internet security hole that deals with the BGP routing protocol. I wasn't reading it to find out what someones opinion on the security issue is, I just wanted to know how this threat works.
I also have never heard of a
I also have never heard of a white paper until now, though I now realize that I have seen and read many documents that were white papers, I just didn’t know at the time that they had a specific name. I learned form the reading that white papers are most common in technical majors and that they are a good way to inform consumers in a very unbiased way. I also learned from the reading the importance of putting as much information as possible on the paper in order to persuade the reader. The white paper should be neat and easy to read, but should definitely contain a very large amount of information.