Topic on Talk:Documentation/Hackathon 2022 docs discussions

Documentation motivations and rewards

2
TBurmeister (WMF) (talkcontribs)

A. What can make writing (or updating) technical documentation rewarding or worthwhile for you in general?

B. What unique aspects of the Wikimedia ecosystem can make writing (or updating) technical docs worthwhile?

C.  Is there a type of documentation contribution that you feel especially good about making?

TBurmeister (WMF) (talkcontribs)

Comments from the Hackathon discussion etherpad and meeting chat transcript


Helping other people, especially newcomers, have a better experience:

-- "Making the on ramp less terrible (or make it actually exist) for the people who come after me"

-- "That it might get better or easier for other people in the future"

-- Helping people who are "looking for starting points to enter into the documentation"

Improving the overall health of the system

-- "so by modifying or contributing to technical documentation, it's a long-term goal towards having a "better system" I guess." (+1)

-- "Making things easier for my future self" (+1)


The challenge and fun of translating tech to human


Making content more correct (https://xkcd.com/386/ (Duty Calls))


Helping increase understanding by adding simple clarifications:

-- " I feel good about adding simple clarifications to installation instructions on mediawiki.org.  We can wikilink to some explanation of unexplained things (PCRE? what's that?  replace by [[PCRE]]) or clarify what directory a script should be run from, etc. "

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