The Content Wrangler is featuring an article by Richard Hamilton entitled, “Content Reuse: Is it Harmful?” Hamilton questions the blanket statement that reuse will increase efficiency and says that minimizing reuse is a better approach than maximizing it. He states:

There are two main reasons for minimizing reuse:

  1. Every time you reuse content, you give your users another place to look at when they search for that topic. If you have the same content in several different places, your users can end up jumping around among those places, trying to figure out which one they should use. Having one, authoritative place for any particular module will simplify their search and avoid confusion.
  2. Even with highly structured methodologies, reuse is not free. When you reuse content, you need to take steps to be sure that content will work in multiple locations. This takes effort that might not need to be expended for content that is not reused.

Chunks of content needs context, and if you reuse content, you still need to make sure that the context makes sense. Hamilton suggests that the practice of providing content in one place and then linking to it (rather than reusing it) is often overlooked. Some great thoughts here and definitely worth a read.

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