Somebody made the comment the other day that my columns assume my readers know certain things. I'm not sure if it was favorable or not because we didn't take time to discuss it.
If favorable, the person probably meant that I assume my readers have a reasonably broad understanding of current events: political, scientific, and cultural. If it wasn't favorable, I can't do much about it without tripling the number of words in an article and leaving many people bored.
I remember when I was sysop of the Genealogy RoundTable on GEnie, a CompuServe competitor, one user said I should explain everything about using GEnie. Do I have to tell people how to sign-on, do I have to explain every command (including those which have explanations given by typing the "question mark" key), do I have explain how to hit space twice to separate paragraphs, do I have to explain turning off the "caps lock" key so not to SHOUT AT EVERYBODY?
Is this getting into efficiency? Making sure some have complete understanding at the cost of driving others away?
