How to create online Help topics that are editable by clients

In the Agile Technical Writers forum on LinkedIn, one of its members posted this question: “I need to create an contextual online help for an complex web tool (ok, that´s not that hard). The customer must be able to add some specific job instructions to this online help by himself. The customer part must not be overridden when the… Read more »

Stack Overflow is moving into documentation (get the popcorn)

Stack Overflow, a collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers, has announced its plans to add documentation to the site: “Lately we’ve been asking ourselves “what else could we do to improve developers’ lives on the internet?”. Jeff’s original announcement of Stack Overflow said this: There’s far too much great programming information trapped in forums,… Read more »

Atlassian no longer lets users comment on its documentation – good or bad news?

Last week, Atlassian sent out this message on Twitter: We’re changing our documentation platform, including closing comments. Read more and learn why http://t.co/PjZVCV1Vze — Atlassian (@Atlassian) April 14, 2015 This was a surprise, as Atlassian has been a strong advocate for having user comments appended to user documentation. Sarah Maddox, when she was working at… Read more »

The secret to user generated and crowd sourced content

Mozilla’s Janet Swisher had a number of useful tips at Technical Communications UK 2012 on how to encourage user generated and community based content: People contribute because they want to learn something and for personal growth. You need to recognise this work. Crowds aren’t smart, communities of peers are. Create a community about the topic… Read more »