This site lists who they’ve identified as the top 50 technical writers on the web, which I stumbled upon via a link from Scott Nesbitt’s blog. While this list will certainly provide me with additional documentation resources, I notice a dearth of open-source documentation names in that list. No Shaun McCance, no Emma Jane Hogbin, no Matthew East, and certainly no one with a name as cool as Milo Casagrande.
Paul Cutler, a member of the GNOME documentation team, has said that he wants to make documentation cool again. He used some different phrasing (ok, he actually said, he wants to make it “sexy,” again, but I don’t really feel like going there), but what I take his comment to mean is that he wants to make documentation something that people see as technically innovative and relevant to users, even if most users instinctively turn to Google as their first line of support. After all, Google’s search results don’t just grow on trees – the content that comes up in all of those search results has to come from somewhere. Why shouldn’t the answers to user questions come from carefully prepared and researched documentation?
I don’t say this to denigrate blog posts, forums, or IRC support networks – that’s where users get most of their support these days. Comprehensive documentation has its place, though.
With that in mind, I’m making initial, but steady progress on the Xfce 4.8 documentation, and really want to improve the Xubuntu documentation. (I’m actually a bit ashamed of its current state given the beauty that is the rest of Xubuntu 9.10.) I will be at UDS (though, unfortunately, only for the last two days), and look forward to meeting with fellow doc-team members, and anyone else who would like to discuss documentation and translations.
I should have made a rule that what I said in Owen Sound stays in Owen Sound! (Just kidding).
Heh… I forgot that it came up in discussions at WOSDOCS.
http://identi.ca/conversation/5956670#notice-5956731
As a developer I take a slightly different view. The software should be so perfect that it requires no administration or configuration. The admin/config should be so perfect that no documentation is needed. The documentation should be so perfect that no support is needed.
Of course nothing is perfect, but a certain part (and IMNSHO a large part) of documentation is really treating the symptoms of usability in the software and its admin/config. I would really see more of a focus on why pieces of documentation are being written and efforts to help ensure they don’t need to be written in the first place.
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I agree that the lack of open source doc writers on that list points up the lack of overlap and interchange between the open source and commercial tech writing communities. Both groups have much that they could learn from each other, but may not realize it.
I’ve been neglecting my blog lately since starting a new job. Your post helped me realize that I could at least start giving some link love to open source tech writers, to start spreading some awareness of them to commercial tech writers.
I’m doing a talk this weekend at a local conference on contributing to open source projects and one of the areas I highlight is getting involved with documentation. It’s the first real contribution I made to an open source project, and I work hard in my talk to explain how vital it is and how easy it is to get involved as a point of entry when you start getting involved with F/OSS. Hopefully my blurb with do it’s part in making documentation cool again
I’m thrilled to hear you’ll be working on the 4.8 documentation, I’ve been a long-time committed XFCE4 user and improvements everywhere are exciting.
See you at UDS!
Hi Elizabeth, I’ll look forward to seeing you at UDS. If you would like to share what you talk about with regards to getting started with docs, I’d love to see it. Thanks!
Jim