Documentation

Overview
Technical documentation refers to any documentation that contains information regarding a technical product, process, or task.

Documentation for Wikimedia projects is widely spread across different wiki's and websites. This page focuses on technical documentation for MediaWiki and related software.

Documentation pages

 * MediaWiki's documentation style guide
 * Templates for formating text
 * Resources for technical documentarians
 * Guidelines for technical documentation tasks
 * Different technical writing genres
 * A guide for new technical writers

Documentation structure

 * On MediaWiki.org:
 * A Technical Manual for information about the MediaWiki Software.
 * Project based documentation. This includes user guides, API documentation, 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.
 * Auto-generated API documentation:
 * Action API reference
 * REST API reference
 * Documentation generated from the source code of MediaWiki: doc.wikimedia.org.
 * Text files in the /docs directory of MediaWiki’s source tree have code related information.
 * 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
Primary 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

Hackathons and outreach

 * Technical Documentation Tasks for Hack-a-thons
 * Season of Docs