Throughout this reading it is interesting how ethics is never defined. It really gives you a chance to see others views of ethics so that you aren't clouded by the true meaning of ethics. The question of the title along is eye catching. Is This Ethical? Because really how do you know if something is ethical or not anymore when there are so many factors to consider?

This is difficult questions to answer evidently because there are many different factors to consider when discussing this. The educators purpose, the criteria of it. A lot is to be asked on whether teachers are avoiding the topic of ethics or if they aren't.

It is interesting to see the different responses that people have towards this. There are some who give exceptions and others who gave none.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/consensus I had to look the word up because for some reason I just couldn't pronounce it or remember what it means. But this means the majority of opinion.

Although that is a very good turn out of surveys received back it is still not useful information because some did not respond to certain questions. In away it can not be helpful in the long run. But it does bring interesting information to the table to see where the similarities are and where the differences are.

This is a really good point on how to take it a step farther to determine whether or not these specific details have an effect on a persons definition of ethics of document design.

I found this really interesting because he isn't asking them necessarily if they believe these questions to be ethical he is rather seeing what the people's definition of ethics is.

https://www.stc.org/bodyofknowledge/wiki/stc-ethical-code-and-guidelines/

I found this website to be very useful while reading over the Code for Communication

I would consider this to be unethical. Because by making things appear different from the way they are then it gives the wrong impression to others. The information should be displayed the way that it is given.

An ethical obligation is something that someone is required or compelled to do based on a predetermined set of standards of what is right and wrong. https://www.reference.com/world-view/definition-ethical-obligation-a1bb89f13aa062f4

I agree with Gilligan's claim about men and women. Mostly because women are naturally nurturing and more caring individuals than men. Women tend to practice ethics of care. They take into consideration what they are doing and how it could affect them and others before doing it.

The title intrigues readers before even reading the article to get their gears going. This question alone gives the reader a taste of what the article will entail, but what it will mean through a readers eyes based off what ethical is.

I think that what Dragga was trying to prove doesn't really work here. Because, he wanted to gain insight on men and women's thinking and actions but, I believe the only way to actually gain insight on what a person thinks is ethical or unethical is to observe their actions in everyday life. Their thinking my change as well as their actions but simply taking a survey doesn't completely measure the statistics properly.

This relates back to my initial argument about how different types of people would rate ethical and unethical situations, and also supports it.

This is a good point to make. This reminds me of how there are a lot of writers, photojournalist, and videograhpers that have the ability to edit and view their content before the general public can see it. Being the public, we view what these people put out and take it at face value. While for all we know the writers, photojournalists and videographers can edit these pieces of work taking away its truthfulness. There was a report of this doing during the afghan war with a photojournalist who edited a photo for TIME Magazine. The journalist said that the photo didn't convey the right message about the war. He edited the photo so much from the original that it conveyed a different message.

I found this question a bit humorous because although it may be unethical, I have done this. My current resume is in font 8 while the title is in about a 12 or a 14. I feel like the answers to this questions would vary depending on the level of experience. If you ask a high school student they would probably think why would someone even decrease the font in the first place due to the lack of experience and the need to have a bigger font to fill a page. Whereas a recent college graduate is going to say no because they want to fit all their experience for their future employer to think they are well-rounded. For a seasoned professional they may answer this question saying 5. That doing something like this is completely unethical because they have enough valid experience to fill their resume at a font 12.

This note from the editor makes me question the upcoming reading. This statement, while it is necessary, makes the author seem less credible due to these mistakes.

This seems like an interesting book title. I won't mind reading a couple pages of this.

If you get a five in this rating you are less likely to get the promotion. At my old job we had a six month employee evaluation similar to this grading scale. Your grading was based on every day performance, attendance, customer service, growth, speed and accuracy in completing tasks, etc.

I guess Photoshop is an unethical software! This explains why so much propaganda mislead voters and influenced them during election time. Editing pictures or distorting them to send a certain message to viewers is a method of unethical persuasion.

Disclaimer alert. I like how the editor made it seem like the author had proof read his work before submitting. Well I can't be too hard on the author, after all there was no auto correct when this was written. That auto correct makes everyone seem like a spelling genus.

OMG!! That's a lot of data to examine. This must of been a very important observation for Sam to collect so much information.

Consequence means a result of an action. If consequences didn't exist there wouldn't be any point in writing anything. Usually consequences has a negative connotation but in tech writing consequence doesn't necessarily mean something good or bad.

This article was publicized two years after I was born! I wonder if there are any recent scholarly resource on ethics of technical writing. In comparison to twenty years ago, how has the analysis of tech writing change? Has the demand for a tech writers gone up or down? Those are questions I would like to know the answers to.

In the past writers and graphic designers had separate roles that never crossed paths. Now in the modern era it's becoming more and more beneficial for both to be well versed.

Every time I see a question on a job application about "ethics" rating 1 to 5 or highly agree to highly disagree I immediately get annoyed. I'm not sure if they are trying to trick the applicant because I'm pretty sure everyone wouldn't answer 100% truthfully in fear of not getting the job.

The "why" is always a thought provoking word. We can always say yes or no but to explain our answer shows the true motive behind an ethical or unethical decision. I sometimes find it difficult to explain my why when being interviewed.

The client a technical writer is working under may provide strict guidelines on how to organize or change information to fit the clients ideal wants. Once a technical writer receives that power he/she can decide if they want to follow instructions form the client. An example of a rough technical communicator is Edward Snowden, because he decided to break the ethical code of silence to leak classified information.

This is important because awareness is key towards making a more ethically inclined workforce. Research will not only reveal ethical issues and solutions for those issues, but it could make more efficient modes of communication

This demonstrates how the field of technical writing is not as concerned with ethics as perhaps it should be. People continue to offer the same ethical explanations as they become more experienced/educated. This means that their experience and education is not better preparing them to grapple with potential ethical issues.

These explanations tend more towards Kant's categorical imperative as they imply that the ethical infractions in question are not wrong because of their eventual consequences. They are wrong because the actions themselves are implicitly unethical.

These explanations tend more towards Mill's utilitarian sense of ethics, as they are concerned only with the final consequences of a possible ethical infraction rather than infraction itself.

The internet has massively increased the amount of sources available to the public, however, it has done little to acknowledge the varying level of credibility of these sources. In the years to come as the people become more internet savvy, i think we will be moving towards a culture that puts ethical weight on the reader's responsibility to sift through various sources and come to their own conclusions.

The disparity between there final ethical judgement and the lack disparity in their reasoning indicates that the methods by which men and women examine the ethical concerns within a situation are the same, because they are, in the abstract, coming to many of the same conclusions. It indicates instead that men have a greater willingness to assert their opinions regarding the situations ethical standing.

The medium and type of document being reviewed is all part of the situational context, and the situational context has a huge baring on the concept of ethics.There are some situations in which the author is expected to be more impartial than in others. And so different situations will call for different levels of scrutiny from different individuals.

As I alluded to in an early annotation, it seems that peoples sense of ethics is transient and so evolves as the situation demands. That is why there is no moral code that resonates with people universally. This quandary is only made worse when applied to such diversely undertaken skills as rhetoric and technical communication.

None of these moral codes conform infallibly to the the popular notion of lay ethics. Take, for example, the trolley problem. The situation can be edited in such in ways that make each of these individual codes look unreasonable, and so they cannot be very useful when trying to survey a larger conception of ethics across a field of work.

I would think that majoring or minoring in technical writing would have the opposite effect. The more education one has on the topic of technical writing the more one should see that the line between what is ethical and unethical technical communication is not always clear cut. There is some technical communication that can tend persuasive in nature without becoming unethical. On the other hand, there can be some communication that is badly arranged but not intentionally unethical in its message.

When answering this question, one should keep in mind that ethical standing is tied to the situational and cultural context. There are situations where the manipulating of the presentation of information is expected, and so the audience is more wary. In this situation the act itself is not unethical.

This seems to be an overall ethical urge, but the problem with blindly trusting the ethical leanings of a large population is that there are differing feelings correlated with ethics (justice V feelings) as well as experiences with manipulation of information changing ideals. This should be remedied with professionals aiming toward clear ethical goals.

I think this is a direct response to the lack of true definition of ethical responsibility. Everyone knows the job requirement is to "Assist the reader in comprehension" (8) but it's an easily logical excuse to organize information with the ideas of "reader responsibility"

This is another parallel to "Defining Plagiarism", as the world of academia is refusing to interact on a functioning level with the professional world.

It's interesting to see that people who have become comfortable in their field are more confident in their choices (seen by "complete" answers) while the students who are learning the field without practicing it are more willing to allow instances against their opinion ("mostly")

With an issue as difficult to navigate as Ethics, it's important to try and "unpack" potential issues so that it's easier to encourage a dialectic about terms and situations regarding the issues.

This is a curious observation because many fields that deliver information to consumers have ethical codes that are strictly followed. Doctors, Therapists, Teachers, and even Business Administration all follow their ethical guidelines strictly. I believe clarity in expectations is needed and would be appreciated in the industry.

A popular example of unethical editing is Target's photoshopping history. Through Photoshop, there is a clear manipulation of the swimsuit and the model; which changes perception unethically.

The moral of design manipulation, here, is that as long as the information is left without harmful manipulation, it's ethical. As soon as the information displayed alters the reality of the product, it is an unethical representation.

This reminds me of the article we read for our last annotations that discussed how the concrete definitions and parameters within the Academic world differ from the business world. The expectations change, which means there are new ethical conundrums to address.

This is also a categorical issue throughout Rhetorical History. Consider the five cannons of Rhetoric and how they battled the Rhetorical uses beyond verbal language. And again, the new acceptance of Multimodality within the Academic community addressing more modes of communication.

Rhetoric is constantly being redefined and broadened as new forms of persuasion and communication are discovered and created.

He continued Scott's research on communication-ethics pedagogy that believes in the disciplined action of theory education.

Dragga questions educators ability to prep students for these challenges that are faced by communicators.

Based on Dragga’s analysis he thinks that case studies are the best means/method that reinforces instruction upon the working tech. comm. class.

He ends his article with a call for further research, or if the answer is already provided by professionals and needs to be communicated.

Ethical statements about character play off of questions like “Who will I be?” and “What will I do?”. Studies like this article are analyzing behavior and choosing their (the authors side) on these dilemmas. Maybe feelings, intuition, and conscience should be in play more when looking at ethics.

In his article Dragga goes about presenting his survey and its results solely on return statistics. There are no opinions or though processes of his own present throughout his work, but instead as a sample from an audience.

The fact that he doesn’t define ethical throughout the entirety only allows the readers to see ethics from peers eyes and viewpoints.

His writing presents his concept so that the reader becomes more aware of, and conscious of their daily actions.

Drag used technical communicators’ perspectives on the ethics of various senecrious as the substance of his article.

The Academic Theory here met the workplace. He wanted better his students by teaching them to emphasize ethics, make 'it’ (his work) sufficient, prepare them for real world, and guide them through disputes.

http://www.stcrmc.org/documents/open/resources-codeforcommunicators In the Code for Communicators, attached above, the requirement to hold oneself responsible for "how well an audience understands my message" seems vague and does not encompass issues of interpretation, only understanding. An effective way to phrase the statement could potentially be: Hold myself responsible and accountable for the various ways that an audience could interpret my message, based on societal factors.

Consequences of "little deceptions" are certainly something that technical writers should consider when presenting content, especially when utilizing visual aids such as charts. Examples of extremely unethical and poorly represented charts have become the norm on Fox News, which is a severely biased right-wing news outlet. For example, here, http://www.dailykos.com/story/2013/10/28/1251247/-One-Fox-News-chart-that-will-mislead-you-about-welfare-and-jobs-in-three-different-ways Fox News utilized a chart to demonstrate how many more people are apparently on welfare. Instead of counting adults, they included children and infants as well, and used an inflated scale, in order to make it look like there are more people on welfare than people with full-time jobs. Although most people know that Fox is biased, it also takes away from the credibility of other news outlets and turns "the media" into a bad word.

I believe that small typography is often used to decrease readability in technical writing for pharmaceuticals. When a pharmaceutical company, such as mega corporation Gildead Sciences wants to sell a medication, they must highlight the benefits of the drug as much as possible, while limiting the attention given to negative side effects. Gilead Sciences is the current manufacturer of wonder-drug Harvoni, which cures Hepatitis C. Harvoni also sells for over a thousand dollars a pill, so a total three- month treatment cycle for Hep C would cost around $96,000. Because of this price, Gilead is especially calculative in presenting the side effects of Harvoni. For example, on their website below, the side effects are listed individually on the right side of the page, and they ask users to "scroll to continue" all the way to the bottom of the page, making it very tedious to read. http://www.harvoni.com/discover-harvoni/about-harvoni?utm_source=bing&utm_medium=cpc&utm_campaign=Search%20-%20Harvoni%20-%20Decision&utm_term=%2Bharvoni&utm_content=Harvoni%20-%20Broad&gclid=CPnp47jpqdACFVIngQodmacI3Q&gclsrc=ds

These comments related to "Writer's Responsibility" relate back to the Purdue OWL article, In that article, it discussed the importance of accurately presenting information in graphs. I also noted that flowcharts can be tricky because an overwhelming or complicated flowchart can be so difficult to read that the information becomes virtually inaccessible. Here, the interviewees note that intentionally sabotaging the presentation of information in order to deceive viewers is completely unethical, as technical communicators are responsible for maintaining ethical practices.

Question 4 asked whether it was ethical to display strengths and weaknesses of an employee in different ways, in order to subtly hide the weaknesses. I believe the gendered difference in answers relates back to sexism in the workplace, which i mentioned on the first page. For example, womens' resumes are critiqued much harder than mens', particularly if a woman has a feminine and racialized name. Because of this, women are used to tweaking resumes to highlight positive traits and hide gaps in employment or low level jobs in ways that men don't have to. This experience led women to be more lenient in answering question 4. To read more about gender bias regarding resumes, the Clayman Institute for Gender Research has a great article: http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2014/why-does-john-get-stem-job-rather-jennifer

I hypothesize that the technical writing students would be less likely to declare a situation to be unethical, due to lack of experience in the field. At the same time, there is also the argument that the students would be more likely to declare a situation to be unethical because they would want to be especially careful as new technical communicators.

I disagree that deleting "unsightly or unsafe items" is unethical because of one photo that surfaced across the news this year. In Ohio, a police department shared a photo as a warning against the dangerous affects of heroin use. the photo included two parents in the front seat of a car, passed out due to heroin overdose, with a four year old child in the backseat. The photo that the police department shared did not blur the child's face out, and when the lack of privacy was called into question, they stated that the graphic photo was to be a warning. However, I found the photo offensive and "unsightly" because the identity of the child was not concealed, so he could carry the burden of the photo for years. To read more on the tragic story and photo, click here: (trigger warning: drug use, child abuse) http://www.cbsnews.com/news/east-liverpool-ohio-heroin-photo-police-department-releases-disturbing-photos-of-suspects-in-car-with-child/

Another challenge that technical communicators could face is the fact that their work is often interdisciplinary in nature. As "Wicked Problems in Technical Communication" noted in Unit 1, the interdisciplinary nature of technical communication allows for increased collaboration and sharing of differing ideas and values. However, this also may lead to a lack of consensus regarding what is considered ethical practice. For example, while lawyers may use "boilerplate" legal text at times, this would be considered unethical in other fields.

This is an extremely difficult question to answer. In part, it appears ethical at the surface level, because the intent is to be inclusive and non-ableist. At the same time, asking an able-bodied employee to pose in a wheelchair would be deceitful, and thus, unethical. I think an ethical design choice that would demonstrate inclusivity and a positive workplace for people with disabilities would be to subtly display accessible areas of the facility, such as wheelchair ramps and elevators.

I strongly believe that there are no biological cognitive differences between men and women, but I do believe this is directly related to the gendered socialization of the workplace. While men are applauded for being bold, assertive, and dominant, quite frankly, women are called "b*tches" for doing the same. Because of this type of socialization, I believe that women would be less likely to "call out" a situation due to an ethical issue, so as to not seem aggressive or mean.

As a technical communicator, I feel that the technical communicator is the entity that has more responsibility to communicate the point they are trying to argue. We should aim to communicate as clearly and ethically as we can. We should aim to avoid being deceptive in our work; however, we may be limited on what we can do by our employer(s).

I feel like this is a loose definition of "high response rate." The rate of response was 45.5%, which seems low to me.

I agree that ethics is an important topic to consider in any occupation, and I do believe that Dragga's hope for more exploration on ethics has occurred throughout the 2000s. Even within the last ten years, our society (as a whole) is becoming more open-minded or aware of ethical boundaries. The growing awareness of ethics is apparent in the university and college system, as many of these entities now offer undergraduate and graduate degrees in health policy ethics, business ethics, bioethics, medical ethics, environmental ethics, etc.

It also seems that technical communicators operate individually but somehow develop similar ethical ideals, I wonder why this is. It also seems that the technical communicator(s) operate within the scope of their employer. Technical communicators are tasked with completing directives from their employer at their own discretion. Perhaps all ethical ideals are similar because the technical communicators and educators are remembering to keep their audience/readers first. After all, that is the most important role.

This makes sense from a professional standpoint. All of these changes would be related to the technical communicator's business practices (which I would argue is more relevant in this research since fewer technical educators responded). It makes sense that making typography changes can benefit the business; inflating type can make a work appear longer, while compressing type allows the creator to fit more on the page. I utilized different typographical aspects on my own resume, and feel that was completely ethical. I approach the color change decision with caution because certain colors have different meanings for different readers. A challenge to both typographical and color changes is usability, an example would be when the technical communicator's audience is made up of older individuals, a larger font size should be used. For color, a usability challenge to take into consideration is addressing a population of readers that may have red-green color blindness.

I guess I was a little less lenient on the question about the warranty because I am looking at it from a consumer standpoint, and not from a business one. A question that I have from this explanation is: Does a common business practice define how ethical something is? Can common business practices be unethical? Also, it is hard to define "ethical" as the definition may change depending on your point of view. In this case, a technical communicator in a business setting sees this issue differently than I do as a consumer.

Reference the Speech Act Theory

I see this a lot in my current job position in the field of market research. It is my job to screen respondents over the phone with questions similar to the survey that is being used in Dragga's research. In my occupation, they are called algorithms and require the recruiter (me) to input the respondents' answers into an excel spreadsheet, which then outputs the percentage results of their answers. More often than not, the respondents I speak with also stick between "agree strongly" and "disagree strongly" with nothing in between. I have found that this is more likely to occur when there are fewer than seven questions to ask them.

1. (The resume) Completely ethical Reasoning: it is my own work. I can align elements and use typography to my benefit and to conform to what is needed.
2. (The pie chart) Ethics uncertain Reasoning: I am uncertain because specific colors cause people to think of certain things and colors are associated with different ideas.
3. (The photograph) Completely unethical Reasoning: The employees viewing the photographs may or may not know that the person is actually disabled or not; however, I would not condone this if I were a part of the group designing the materials/photographs. If there are no employees with disabilities, don't portray your company as having something it does not.
4. (The evaluation) Mostly ethical Reasoning: I don't think bulleted lists and paragraphs are all that different when it comes to portraying information. It would be similar to a resume.
5. (The proposal) Ethics uncertain Reasoning: this is similar to the resume question, I would just be cautious creating this because it doesn't only represent me as an individual, it also represents the company.
6. (The line graph) Completely unethical Reasoning: this would be making the information appear to be the opposite of what it actually is.
7. (The warranty) Mostly unethical Reasoning: I see this as a comparison to "the fine print," which is something that customers usually do not read.

I think this is a good question to ask. After reading it, I thought "this is completely unethical." However, it made me think of another question, is it ethical to have abled actors to play the roles of a person with a disability? This historically is what has been done in the movie industry. In today's industry, there appear to be more opportunities for actors with disabilities, but there is still a preference towards abled actors (even when the role character is disabled).

Edward Tufte a highly regarded and well-known statistician.

Here is a website that has more information about him,