Wikimedia technical documentation: Friends of the Docs/Meetings/2020-06-17

Attendees: Alex Paskulin, Bryan Davis, Dan Shick, Gergő Tisza, Nick Wilson, Pavithra E, Sarah R.

• Sarah R.: Welcome and intro
  • You may not be officially a technical writer or documentarian, but you may be a Friend of the Docs. Plenty of documentation happens on the projects but there are only 2 technical writers officially working for the Foundation. This means a lot of folks are voluntarily working on docs -- people we think of as Friends of the docs. You are a Friend of the docs if you:

1. Are enthusiastic about documentation.
2. Help out with the documentation in some way.

Friends of the Docs can help the team cover way more ground!

• Alex P.: Using Mermaid for diagrams in technical documentation
  • Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1wx2U97LpDYZOZSAmX34fSLfYLEREjMb2TlZAHafNbbE/edit?usp=sharing
  • Discussion of open tasks for Mermaid: https://github.com/mermaid-js/mermaid/issues
  • Phabricator task: https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T183689
• Pavithra E.: Resources for writers
  • https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Documentation and subpages
• Link sharing
  • What resources have you found helpful for creating documentation?
    • Writing in Global English: https://www.worldcat.org/title/global-english-style-guide-writing-clear-translatable-documentation-for-a-global-market/oclc/237164324
    • https://developers.google.com/tech-writing
  • Season of the Docs is open for proposals!: https://meet.google.com/linkredirect?authuser=0&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fdevelopers.google.com%2Fseason-of-docs%2Fdocs%2Fparticipants
• Open discussion: Ask a question, request feedback, share what you'd like to get out of this group
  • Call out to Timo's re-design of https://doc.wikimedia.org/ (compare with https://web.archive.org/web/20190513215204/https://doc.wikimedia.org/)
• Sarah R.: Closing
  • Monthly cadence
  • Feedback and resource sharing