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Improve resources for technical documentarians across Wikimedia projects
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Description

Improve resources for technical documentarians across Wikimedia projects

This is not meant to be exhaustive.

  • Improve MediaWiki Documentation/Style_guide
  • The guide should provide a set of best practices for technical writers and documentarians who want to create better technical documentation for Wikimedia projects.
  • Provide well-written examples of technical documentation found on Wikimedia projects
  • Provide examples of technical document types found on Wikimedia projects that follow these best practices.
  • Create a clear, ease to follow system/process to surface and resolve critical issues with technical documentation
  • This system / process should make it easy for folks who encounter issues with technical documentation (out of date, missing, just wrong) to surface and resolve them.
  • Foster a community of supportive technical documentarians across our projects
  • We should be working to foster a supportive community of technical documentarians who are interested in learning and sharing and improving Wikimedia projects.

Event Timeline

Vvjjkkii renamed this task from Improve resources for technical documentarians across Wikimedia projects to x6aaaaaaaa.Jul 1 2018, 1:04 AM
Vvjjkkii triaged this task as High priority.
Vvjjkkii updated the task description. (Show Details)
Vvjjkkii removed a subscriber: Aklapper.
CommunityTechBot renamed this task from x6aaaaaaaa to Improve resources for technical documentarians across Wikimedia projects.Jul 2 2018, 2:05 PM
CommunityTechBot raised the priority of this task from High to Needs Triage.
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CommunityTechBot added a subscriber: Aklapper.

I'm interested in working on this task as a part of Google's Season of Docs 2019. I'd like to know if it would be acceptable to include it in my proposal.

Hi. I believe you're already working on https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Pavithraes/Sandbox/Technical_documentation_templates_and_suggestions (as a replacement for https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_documentation_templates_and_suggestions) which definitely covers part of this.

I'm not familiar with the nuances of the GSoD processes/etc, but help is certainly appreciated with these items! If it would make things easier or clearer, then you might consider splitting parts of it out into sub-tasks (which should be done eventually anyway). Cheers. :)

@Quiddity Thank you. :)
As you mentioned splitting parts of this task into subtasks, I think many project ideas (besides templates and suggestions) at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Season_of_Docs/2019#Potential_technical_writing_projects_for_2019_season can also be fitting subtasks. Namely, ideas about a content collection strategy, https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_documentation_prioritization, and creating a set of documentation user personas. Another suitable addition could be a checklist for technical documentation. (4th task in the table here: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Technical_Document_Re-working_Group/Wikimania_2018#Resources_for_building_and_supporting_technical_documentarian_community)
I tried addressing to some parts in https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Pavithraes/Sandbox/New_Technical_Writers. All of the above might need some refining to avoid overlap and most can be merged into existing technical documentation pages.

@Pavithraes All of these tasks that you are planning to address seem like good ideas to me! Feel free to suggest in your proposal whatever seems doable for a ~3-month long project. And, yes, it would be ideal if the tasks you plan to work on are all related, and linked to an umbrella project exactly like this one. Whenever you are ready, create a proposal on Phabricator following our guidelines and then we might be able to give more feedback on what seems feasible or not.

I believe we've addressed the first three points in T226018 and there is an ongoing effort to "Foster a community of supportive technical documentarians across our projects" -- Friends of the docs. :)

Closing per last comment