User:Pavithraes/Sandbox/New technical writers

Overview
MediaWiki's documentation is a significant resource for a lot of developers and software users. It relies on its contributors for constant improvement and update.

This page contains some useful information for new technical writers to get started.

Basics
See Help:Contents.
 * 1) Sign up for a Wikimedia account.
 * 2) Learn to create and edit Mediawiki pages (Wikis). Wikis can be edited using the source or visual editor. Wiki markup is used for formating the text.
 * 1) Search and navigate Mediawiki pages effectively. Checkout Special:AllPages and Namespaces.
 * 2) Learn to use templates.
 * 3) Go through the Wikimedia Documentation Style Guide.
 * 4) Familiarize yourself with the task tracking tool Phabricator and code repository Gerrit. Also see, Set up your development environment and Communicate that you work on a task at How to become a MediaWiki hacker.
 * 5) For discussions, join IRC and mailing lists.

Contributing

 * Edit pages on the go. You might come across outdated, missing or incorrect content when you refer to certain pages. Make changes to the docs, file a bug report or create a new task in Phabricator. Note to discuss the issue on the talk page and understand the task creation terms on Phabricator before proceeding. See Technical documentation prioritization.
 * Work on a documentation task. The tasks tagged 'good-first-bugs' are beginner friendly.
 * Write new documentation, new templates, READMEs, etc. See User:Pavithraes/Sandbox/Technical documentation templates and suggestions.
 * Contribute to the Web APIs hub.
 * Translate a page.

Suggestions for new writers

 * 1) Developer documentation is your primary reference; IRC, mailing lists, source code, etc., are secondary.
 * 2) Use the search bar in the top right instead of google-search for mediawiki specific search results.
 * 3) Before making major edits or starting a new page, you can create a page in your Sandbox. Replace username with your Wikimedia username and pagename with the name of the page you want to create at https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:username/Sandbox/pagename.

Documentation structure
Mediawiki's developer and end-user documentation can seem overwhelming to newcomers. Here's an imperfect outline:
 * On mediawiki.org:
 * A Technical Manual for information about the MediaWiki Software.
 * Project based documentation. This includes user guides, tutorials, development information and reference materials related to specific projects.
 * Help pages contain end-user specific documentation and Special pages provide some on-demand documentation.
 * An API reference in svn is auto-generated from the MediaWiki source code using the Doxygen tool.
 * Text files in the /docs directory of MediaWiki’s source tree have code related information.

Supporting resources include blogs, talk pages and discussion forums.

Documentation audiences
Major users of the MediaWiki documentation and the most useful set of pages for each user-group are listed below.

Help:Contents at mediawiki.org and meta are concise forms of end-user documentation. Pages linked to Category:MediaWiki for site admins and Sysadmin hub contain sysadmin specific information. Manual:Contents serves as the reference guide. MediaWiki Administrator's Handbook and Manual:Administrators contain resources for administrators. Manual:Contents serves as the reference guide. New Developers, Manual:Contents and linked pages are a starting point for beginners. Experienced developers refer to Developer hub. References include Developer hub, Manual:Extensions, Category:Extensions, Gadget kitchen, Gadget Studio, Manual:Bots, etc., besides the software installation guidelines. Pages linked to Design. Translator hub and Help:Contents for getting started followed by the project specific mediawiki pages.
 * Wiki users (end users of the MediaWiki software)
 * System administrators
 * Wiki administrators
 * Developers
 * Code developers and administrators
 * Add-ons developers
 * Designers
 * Translators and technical writers