I've thought for a little while now that online help should be presented in wiki form. That way anyone who comes along and notices a mistake or omission can correct it straight away. Of course, like any wiki, it will require a bit of moderation. I expect the main issue will be filling in user-created question sections rather than correcting vandalism.
Many open-source projects provide a wiki for users to generate documentation and help each other out, but they seem to be much less maintained than they should be.
Mokalus of Borg
PS - I haven't gotten to try this for any of our web-based systems here at work yet.
PPS - If I ever get to do so, I'll let you know how it goes.
2 comments:
I've used wiki's for documentation purposes in a number of development processes. They can be handy but there are basically two problems.
One, you have to have a lot of buy-in for editing the wiki. Most developers and users aren't good at writing documentation (it's a hard but often disregarded job) so if they notice an error they tend to just move on; pages they produce have very sketchy details about what worked for them.
Two, "RTFM" frequently becomes "RTFW" except the wiki is far less reliable. I've asked for help with certain areas, been told "that's on the wiki," then had to come back and say something like "the instructions on the wiki haven't been relevant for fifty builds."
You really have to push "update the wiki." Every staff meeting, every time someone raises an issue. Because few people take that initiative.
I can't speak for the reliability of a wiki vs a more traditional document, but I do know the difficulty of getting good documentation out of developers or even managers. You need people who are good at documentation to make a documentation effort work. The tools won't help that point.
So, well, I guess it's not about the tools in the end. Good people with bad tools will outshine bad people with good tools every time, but good people with good tools do better than both.
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