Not a good start

The other day, I was about to begin writing requirements for a project I've wanted to do for some time. It's a special Welcome Wagon project for the online communty of parents I help foster over at SchwabLearning.org. The idea is to alert special volunteers when someone has posted to our board for the very first time who will then be sure no newbie is left behind.

I often start documents by taking previous ones and ripping out the writing, retitling it and then start the work I need. It helps keep my documentaiton format consistent. My initial requirements docs answer these simple questions before we start working on the design: what is the problem, who is impacted by the problem, what's the solution and are there any pitfalls? Well, I grabbed a document about email subscriptions and started tearing it out to leave just the structure.

Then I looked at it again:


I'm going to Community Manager Hell.