Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team

This page documents the work and processes of the Wikimedia Foundation Technical Documentation Team (Tech Docs Team). For information about how to find and create technical documentation, see Documentation.

Mission
Empower people to use and contribute to Wikimedia technology by making technical documentation easy to find, use, create, and maintain.

Drive documentation work with data
Documentation success is notoriously difficult to measure. However, in order to prioritize our work and create a shared understanding of documentation quality, we must establish metrics, based on quantitative and qualitative methods, for measuring doc health and tracking improvements.

Documentation effectively meets users’ information needs
Better understanding the health of our technical documentation across technical areas enables us to identify where the need for improvement – and potential for impact – is greatest. Technical writers provide documentation strategy to support critical user journeys across products and projects. Our holistic view of Wikimedia technical content helps us create and structure content for multiple, overlapping audiences. As partners in development workflows, technical writers provide a crucial user-focused perspective, helping improve our technology so that it needs less documentation.

Build the culture of documentation
The Wikimedia technical ecosystem spans hundreds of services, extensions, libraries, and tools, created by both staff and volunteers. To effectively manage technical documentation at this scale, we must empower Wikimedians across the Movement to create and manage docs. This requires community outreach, self-service tools, and processes that support (and require) documentation updates. We must also invest in automated tools, like CI-based doc checks and content linters, to make it easier for everyone to participate in maintaining great docs.