In 2008, Adobe introduced Adobe Community Help, “an integrated online environment for instruction, inspiration, and support. Community Help combines content from Adobe Help, Support, Design Center, Developer Connection, and Forums—along with great online community content—so that users can easily find the best and most up-to-date resources.” Peggy Harvey, a graduate student in tech comm at North Carolina State University, has written and spoken about Adobe Community help as an example of a company engaging users through interactive user assistance.

I’ve used Adobe Community Help when trying to get answers regarding Creative Suite products. I like the emphasis on searching and the integration of results that aren’t within Adobe’s domain. I’m not someone who cares much about rating systems most of the time, with the exception of ratings on open source software. Ratings break down unless you have more than three people leaving ratings.

But I think Adobe Community Help is a great example of what help can be: pulling answers and information together from various sources and formats and then showing context in search results.

So if it’s good enough for Adobe, why are they dishing out AIR Help to technical communicators?

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