Quote:

So, I was just probing, in my post, for whatever consensus there might be on the consequences of bad practices. I will continue to make my case here against them.

Oh I think you have total consensus. We can ALL agree that the consequences of the bad practices you mention can be disastrous.

It is a good thing you at least start off with templates, but...they are no guarantee that things will not go sideways.

Obviously the more people who use bad practices that have input, the more chances of the document going sideways.

Unfortunately while there some things that can be done to help - Charles mentions most - the environment you describe does not help. Alas, also unfortuantely, the main route to preventing things going sideways is not likely to happen.

A dedicated full-time document editor.

Good luck with that. This is the result of documentation moving to everyone. AND the somewhat badly thought out collaboration scenarios that many (Microsoft in particular) envisioned as the future.

Quote:

by folks who simply don't know better

As long as that is the case, you WILL have issues. I understand your pain. I worked for 30 years (until I retired) for a large (25,000 users) entity, doing documentation. I strived for years to educate on how to use Word properly. I strived for years to deliver well-designed templates to people.

All I can say is that it worked to a limited degree. Interestingly, the WORST offenders were the intelligent managers who thought they knew better.

As an aside, the best success I ever had was to finally get agreement from senior techincal management that NO technical support would be given to anyone who messed up their computers. If it was not easily fixed, the machine was blown away and reimaged. Boom.

So if someone effed up Word...BOOM.

I did get all actual legal documents go through ONE editor. To try and stop exactly what you are talking about. This is not always practical.

I can not really improve on what Charles wrote. Templates and restricted styles are the way to go.