I wonder if you read this, right?

[nuttycyclist]

Is it just me who takes delight in slipping in an innuendo or irrelevant sentence in lengthy draft design documents just to test if they are actually being read and feedback will be received?

[mrcharly-YHT]

I once inserted a couple of easter eggs into online help for some software.

One customer had declared that they always reviewed every (updated) page in the help, and grumbled that it didn't cover all of the software changes.

I strongly suspected they'd done no such thing.

So on a couple pages there was an easter egg icon, which, if clicked on, played a short track.

No, they didn't notice the easter eggs.

[Jurek]

Is it just me who takes delight in slipping in an innuendo or irrelevant sentence in lengthy draft design documents just to test if they are actually being read and feedback will be received?

No.
I used to write O&M manuals for one of the museums in Exhibition Road.
Instinctively, I knew they were never read.
In one, I included the line "These surfaces should never be exposed to Spanish speaking fish".
No one ever noticed or commented.

[rogerzilla]

We had certain words and phrases we tried to get into press releases, but the press office used to spot them and take them out.  Until an Essex-born colleague managed to get a Brentwood "as such" on the end of a sentence.  "Dead cat bounce" was the one we really tried with, but no luck.

[ian]

Is it just me who takes delight in slipping in an innuendo or irrelevant sentence in lengthy draft design documents just to test if they are actually being read and feedback will be received?

No, I've been doing it for my entire career. It might even my career. I do it in reports too, sometimes just random stuff that really ought to raise a question. It never, ever has. It's almost like no one reads my weekly and monthly reports.

[meddyg]

A GP colleague of mine was hounded by the Health Board to have protocls for every conceivable event
(aren't we all?). Usually you can borrow H&S manuals, protocols for suspected Weever fish stings,
managing hostile or aggressive patients get more difficult.

ANYWAY, Sam was asked for the nth time to submit his practice Diabetes management protocol.
Reluctantly he dispatched 50 pages of A4 with nice cover sheet.
All were blank.
He never heard any more.

It's what's called a 'shelf document.'Once on the shelf, everyone can relax.

[Feanor]

I maintain the help documentation for our software products, and no, I've never put any little nuggets in there ever. Honest.

Some of them are subtle, and you need to look at the screenshots of the example datasets being processed.
Some, less subtle!

Aside from little nuggets I throw in, there's also the issue of example datasets.
There is data which is publicly released, which I can use.
But sometimes, I need to illustrate a specific unusual issue.
I might need to fake data to do this.
My faked data might have to be based on real-world data to illustrate the point.

The specific sub-division of the industry that I now inhabit is very small indeed, and the various consultants who use our software all know each other and all have moved between all the major oil cos.
The example datasets I Illustrate are all anonymised and adjusted from the originals, yet there are several of our customers who can look at the examples and say "hmm, that looks familiar..."

[Pingu]

I put the Loch Ness Monster in a freshwater species list for a demo I did the other day and nobody said anything. I'm tempted to put it in the production version.

[Feanor]

It's what's called a 'shelf document.' Once on the shelf, everyone can relax.

See also: ISO 9000 accreditation

[T42]

A few years back when our club committee was mulling over where to take our cycling school's kids for outings, I slipped "Abattoir de Strasbourg" into the minutes.  That was noticed, though.

[Nuncio]

I've never included an innuendo in a technical document but now you've suggested the idea I might knock one out and stick it in when I get the chance.

[Jaded]

 

[Cudzoziemiec]

I haven't read a word of this.

[jsabine]

I've never included an innuendo in a technical document but now you've suggested the idea I might knock one out and stick it in when I get the chance.

When I worked on an IT news site many years ago, the networking results headline we never quite got past our editor was "3Com beats off stiff competition to become WAN king."

[Regulator]

I was once included a suitably risque Latin phrase in the Schedule of a draft Contract to see whether my counterpart (who was a friend) would spot it.  She did - but we decided to leave it in to see if anyone else would spot it.  They didn't and the Contract was duly signed.

[CAMRAMan]

In the emails we send out to customers - that were admittedly far too long - I added 'Leones ducitur asinae*' in the signature for a few weeks as a protest against our shite management. As expected, nobody saw it...

*Lions led by donkeys

[rogerzilla]

We did the Chris Packham thing of trying to get Smiths lyrics into meetings.  My colleague managed to address a senior manager, "Oh, Glen", which was pretty subtle.

[mcshroom]

Unfortunately most of my text goes through committees of very boring people who do read the documents, so sneaking in Easter eggs would be difficult. I do like to use unusual words where I can. Describing the algae I was trying to remove from a storage pond as 'indefatigable'* is one that springs to mind. I also claim the record for the oldest reference used in a technical paper (Archimedes, c.225 BCE)

*My first choice of "annoying little bastards that refuse to FOAD" would not have been allowed through the committee

[spesh]

Not something I've ever perpetrated, so I'll offer up my favourite story on this theme, which is Van Halen's tour rider specifying bowls of M&Ms as one of the refreshments to be laid on, with the brown ones removed.

Everyone had a laugh about this when it was first reported, thinking it was just another example of a hair band being frivolous, but David Lee Roth revealed in a later interview that it was done to test whether people had read the entire document, especially the safety-critical bits about stage set-up.

[MattH]

We received an updated spec from a customer for a complex gadget we were designing and building for them. There was a whole list of standards that it had to (quite reasonably) comply with - safety, environmental, together with technical stuff so it would interoperate properly. In the midst of them was ISO 3103. We caught it, apparently a couple of competitors didn't. It was put in purely to check we had covered it all.