User:Pavithraes/Sandbox/Technical writer guide

Overview
Effective technical documentation is a product of effective planning, production and presentation.

This document contains brief references for Wikimedia's technical documentarians.

Steps to writing technical documentation

 * 1)  Clearly define the context and purpose of the documentation.  This will help you focus your ideas in the right direction. The best way to define your purpose is to design a specific problem statement that your documentation solves. An important part of this step is to outline the topics your documentation should and shouldn't cover.
 * 2)  Understand your audience. Take a moment to think about who your intended readers are, their background, their levels of expertise, etc. This will help you recognize the best way to deliver your content.
 * 3)  Decide on a document genre once your purpose and target audience are clearly defined. There are many different types of documents that can be used to deliver your content. See technical documentation templates and suggestions.
 * 4)  Collect relevant content for the documentation. This is an elaborate and time-consuming process as content forms the foundation of your documentation. See #content_collection_strategy for more information.
 * 5)  Give the content a rough structure  before creating your first draft. It helps you organize your thoughts and have a clear mental map during the writing phase. It is important to keep the structure flexible. The Documentation/Style guide is a handy reference.
 * 6)  Create your draft using any text editor that you're comfortable with. Make sure to add hyperlinks, format the text, use templates, etc., wherever necessary.
 * 7)  Proofread and review the document against the #checklist. 

Content collection
Documentation users care more about the quality of documentation than the quantity of information, and the quality of documentation directly depends on the quality of content. Here are a few pointers:


 * It is commonly advised to start, and not end with Wikipedia.
 * Going through similar technical documentation of other open-source projects can help understand the type of content needed.
 * Besides websites, books, articles and research papers are good reference materials.
 * Make sure to refer to MediaWiki/Wikitech/etc. pages to avoid content duplication and to collect useful references.
 * Sometimes the related codebase and phabricator tasks are also good places to find recent information.

Checklist
A list of items to review your documentation against before publishing.


 * Check for structure consistency - style guide
 * Language and tone - style guide
 * Check for any biases. Ask another person to review the doc if needed.
 * Account for any information gap.
 * Make sure the document is easy to translate.

Communication
An open-source community depends on its volunteer contributors and effective communication becomes important for collaborations. At a place like MediaWiki, where anyone can edit, communication is especially important. In Wikimedia, communication happens in the talk pages, Phabricator tasks, sometimes on Gerrit(code-review) and additional group chats like IRC, Zulip, Slack, etc.

Points to note:
 * Be mindful of the previous work done on a project and it's documentation.
 * Understand that a new contributor may work on a project in the future and include all the necessary remarks and references in the doc/talk-page.
 * Use simple language and a friendly, professional tone at all times.
 * Follow the Code of conduct strictly.

Technical writing

 * What is technical writing
 * Technical writing specifications
 * Write the docs - Beginner's guide to docs
 * Technical style

Documentation tools

 * Comparison of automatic documentation generators
 * Confluence documentation

Documenting APIS

 * Documenting your API
 * The ten essestials for good API documentation