Last spring I wrote up a blog entry pointing out some additional technical documentation wikis to add to a list I had in my “Wiki-fy Your Doc Set” presentation. A recent Twitter request asking for technical documentation wiki examples brings me back to both lists to try to compile an even longer, more updated list. These are in no particular order and the links were tested in August 2010. Other wikis are behind support logins but this list offers wikis that can be viewed without a login.

• All of the manuals on FLOSS Manuals site are authored and displayed in a customized Twiki wiki.
• Sun Microsystems (now Oracle) has many documentation wikis. The OpenDS Wiki offers a nice example. Also all the OpenOffice documentation is available on a wiki.
• Mozilla Developer Network
• Adobe Labs wiki
• Splunk product documentation
• Atlassian product documentation, specifically the Confluence documentation
• OpenCloud
• GigaSpaces
• Firefox Support Knowledgebase
• Second Life In fact, they single-source their embedded online help with the wiki as source.
• Ubuntu
• RightScale
• ExactTarget
• IBM developerWorks Wiki
• The MSDN Library from Microsoft offers many wiki-like features.
• Embarcadero RAD Studio wiki is actually 9 wikis, read the manager’s blog entry about it.
• WebWorks Documentation Wiki
• Tideway (now BMC Atrium Discovery) documentation

It’s no wonder I have to keep creating new lists. The examples are constantly changing. For example, the Facebook Developer wiki is being moved to another site.

Finally, if you are considering a wiki for technical documentation, I recommend reading my post, Hurdles and Hardships using Wikis for Documentation, reading Sarah Maddox’s blog, buying my book, and sharing your experiences with others. Here’s to enjoying the wiki journey.

I love reading different community perceptions of both FLOSS Manuals, where we write open docs for open software. I’m also lurking on mailing lists and forums where open source projects are figuring out documentation needs for their users. Forgive me if I ramble a bit, but I’ve been thinking about these concepts lately while discussing them with other writers.

Attention on FLOSS Manuals

Here is a great quote from a recent outburst of articles and blog entries mentioning FLOSS Manuals. On the Linux and Open Source blog on ZDNet, Dana Blankenhorn summarizes his post explaining “Why open source documentation lags” by saying,

If programming is like bicycling, documentation is more like basketball. The best players don’t always win.

He offers great explanations for the lags in documentation, and let me tell you, the reasons are not just tied to open source software, all software documentation could use more team sport and collaboration efforts to create decent documentation.

On Network World in a post titled “Creating a library of FLOSS Manuals,” Amy Vernon asks, “…why do so few applications have manuals to start with?” Her initial answer is tied into the use of manuals, asking her readers, “When’s the last time you read a user manual?” Fortunately, she found the offerings on FLOSS Manuals to be quite useful. And I think that’s the key to software documentation, whether it’s open or closed, the usefulness of the doc no matter what form it takes will be its final measure (such as, distance to be tossed or microseconds spent on the page).

What’s Free and Open Software?

At the STC Summit someone asked me quite earnestly, “But what is FLOSS? What does Free, Libre, Open Source Software mean?” I think she wanted to know, is it a philosophy, a concept, a rubric, a religion? I believe the explanation she sought is available in a question and answer set on the FLOSS Manual’s About page, describing both free and open.

Open Source emphasizes availability of source code to software users. … Free Software emphasizes the freedom to modify and reuse software, which of course also requires that source code be readily available.

I wish I could pull these great quotes out of my back pocket when speaking about FLOSS, but I keep learning myself and integrating the definition more fully in my own mind.

Talking Even More about FLOSS and Docs

Last week I talked to Michael Cote last week about wikis, open source documentation, and so on, for his new “make all” podcast. See Coté’s People Over Process » Beyond Documentation – make all #004. I immediately jumped to “who are you writing for?” as the very first question to ask. I think you also should ask, “What are they reading already?” Audience analysis is important everywhere but even more so in open source I would say, because much documentation effort is focused on the developer, which sometimes means non-technical end users get ignored. Also, there is so much free, liberated content in open source, you have to visit (ans answer!) the question, do we make it or gather it.

I also said that FAQs are a perfectly good starting point, especially if customer support is your main goal. In an email exchange later, we talked about how documentation is a great conversion tool for website visitors. With web analytics, that measurement is possible. In essence, your documentation can be your storefront. Aaron Fulkerson describes it well on the MindTouch Blog, in “Your Most Valuable Storefront.”

After seeing this great instructional guide to eating sushi, I realized the only way I knew any of the rules or guidelines for sushi dining was through example. I learned that one of my examples was wrong – you’re not supposed to make a “soup” with your wasabi in your soy sauce.

Sushi Rules, Social Media Rules

These sushi instructions remind me how tough it can be to teach social media. I have had a few college professors ask me, what should I be teaching in a social media class, and how will I know if they have the lessons learned that they will need? I have been thinking about this question often.

One answer is, social media is just another tool in the toolkit to help you do your job. So, the same rules apply as in other learning situations. Yet, I think this answer is a copout. Some lessons are harder to learn than others and may be quite public and offer some humiliation. With an online community marching towards a goal, the stakes are higher than whether or not I made a wasabi soup.

In some cases, the situations are as specialized the rules of a golf foursome. Don’t talk or make excessive noise while someone else is concentrating on their swing. But golf has many more detailed rules that you learn as you practice, or rules that apply when it’s hotter than 90 degrees, such as where you can drive a golf cart. Golf insiders know these rules from years of practice and from having someone show them the rules.

So what are some of the rules we should help online community members with?

Understanding Subtleties and Helping with Guidelines

Social media and online community settings have many obvious rules, yet there is also subtlety in many online communities that insiders must explain to others. Guidelines you would find for online communities are basic for any people skill.

• DON’T TYPE IN ALL CAPS. You sound like you’re shouting! The same sensation can occur with exclamation points!
• Some communities will have more or less tolerance for people who sell things – be it software or services.
• Introductions are still important in online communities.
• Your dress and appearence may not matter as much as in-person meetings, but your online representation of yourself can either look spiffy or slobby.
• Interruptions are also difficult to judge in an online setting, so you want to go with the normal flow of conversations that you can observe.
• Make sure community members have the resources and connections they need to do the job. This guideline is basic business etiquette but might be more difficult in an online setting.
• Know when to switch communication to real-time – whether it’s phone or Skype or IRC, having a good feel for when to talk synchronously is valuable.
• Understand local cultures and norms, even when participating in a global community. Basically, be considerate of others.
• Know when to ask questions, how much to research before asking, and figure out where questions are answered.

I know there is much, much more to business etiquette than just these guidelines. What am I missing that is essential for a student of social media to understand before approaching an online community? How should a student conduct themselves online?

“Anne, I see you as an advocate for community documentation” – what a great compliment. I was so pleased with the response to my STC Summit talk last week, Strategies for the Social Web for Documentation. Here’s the short description of the talk:

Let’s say that the most driven and driving developer on your team, who also happens to be a popular blogger, comes to you and asks why your end-user documentation doesn’t allow comments or ratings. Rather than stammering something about Wikipedia’s latest scandal, or reaching for imperfect responses that sound like lame excuses, do your homework and learn best practices from others who are implementing social web content that is conversational or based on community goals. Along the way you may realize there are good reasons not to implement a social media strategy, based on studying the potential community and time you’d spend in arbitration with community members on contentious issues, or you may discover that you can borrow from benefits of a single approach while still meeting business goals.

Objectives:

1. Identify specific types of tools on the social web, such as tags, blogs, wikis.
2. List risk areas and pitfalls.
3. Identify writers’ roles with social media (instigator or enabler).
4. Plan a strategy of listening, participating, building and then offering a platform or community.

I’ve also posted the slides on Slideshare for all to see and share with others.

While talking to technical writers who are struggling to find the vocabulary to describe their new way of working in a content curator or community role, I got the sense that we’re all trying to reinvent our approach to traditional documentation. Coming together at a real-time, in-person event helped me focus my thinking and I appreciate all the dedication that went into the event.

I’m reading (with vigor!) the The State of Community Management Report: Best Practices from Community Practitioners
from the Community Roundtable, and finding so many wonderful tips about content from people who are community managers. I had to start a list of items that are relevant to technical communication and web writing to share. I naturally tend to target technical communications when I interpret the report, but this report is rife with content strategy.

I agree with this statement, and I think it means a positive impact on technical writers and web writers who are paid to create content by businesses.

The percentage of content that is desirable and
feasible to be formally produced versus community-generated
will have a big impact on resource and
budget planning. This aspect is likely to change – often
dramatically – over time, although it should not be
assumed that content should ever be exclusively
community-generated.

I personally haven’t found that completely community-generated documentation will serve most business goals. In the case of FLOSS Manuals, though, the community-generated content meets the main purpose of supporting and documenting  open source software. Still, hiring professional writers makes sense when you need to create content that meets very specific goals for a community, whether your goals are raising awareness, troubleshooting, or learning.

Now, this particular comment puts a bit of a stake in the heart of technical communication’s beloved single sourcing. I like the idea of associated content for technical writers to create. It’s branching into new media, such as audio or video, while still valuing the technical content that you work so hard to create. It’s not that one births the other, but rather the two types can compliment each other.

Instead of directly repurposing content from one format to another, create
associated content. For example, instead of turning a white paper into an
audio transcript, create a podcast discussion about it with the author.

Another line that causes me to press pause and ponder for a bit:

People seldom form relationships with text alone.

Instead, offer images, video, or music as part of the user experience in order to grow relationships. Fascinating.

And finally, the one that might be the toughest for professional writers, copy editors, and technical communicators to accept:

Learn to accept imperfection. Concentrate on making content interesting
and relevant rather than perfect. Imperfection actually allows community
members to better relate to it and engage with it.

And with striving towards imperfection as my excuse, I’ll close out this blog entry and encourage you to read the report for yourself, drawing your own arrows from the quiver and targeting what is important to you.

I’ve put together a Facebook page for my book, Conversation and Community. I’ve had requests for a place for people to talk about the ideas in the book, and after talking it over with others, I settled on Facebook as a good place to bring together all the different sorts of communicators who have found my book helpful. From a pastor in Michigan to a small business on the west coat, to all the technical communicators who have found it useful, let’s gather together to socialize and talk about this shift towards enhanced social communication techniques.

I’ve published a long-ish article on the WritersUA site where I describe techniques for user assistance that let the user participate. It starts with simple techniques such as comments and moves towards community documentation efforts. Please read and share Putting the User in User Assistance. I’d love to hear what you think about these techniques.

While doing some research for LugIron, a startup here in Austin where I serve in an advisory role, I found a slideshow discussing signs of successful community launches by Joe Cothrel, a VP of service at Lithium.

Now, what they mean by “community” is a larger than 5,000 person audience, enterprise-type (B2B or B2C focused communities), and containing primarily forums and blogs (followed by everything else.) So, it’s not quite the same as the wiki communities that I’ve studied and participated in. But, what’s interesting to me is that one of his Warning signs on page 8 is a quote from the enterprise:

“We want to do a pilot.”

Huh? Really? Wanting to do a pilot is a warning sign of eminent failure? I guess with blogs and forums, you would want full dedication to the efforts and the goals of the community. But with wiki communities, I think a pilot is a great idea. Pilot content, pilot collaborators, pilot wiki.

What do you think? Do wikis fold up easier than forums? Are pilots getting a bad name in corporate-sponsored communities? Is this a case of the vendor wanting full dedication in their sales engagements?

Never permit a dichotomy to rule your life, a dichotomy in which you hate what you do so you can have pleasure in your spare time. Look for a situation in which your work will give you as much happiness as your spare time.
Pablo Picasso

Someone pointed out a bit of a dichotomy in technical communication the other day. It was such an interesting observation that I’ve been thinking about it for a while. The dichotomy is between the power of plain old writing skills and the power of “sexier” specialized skills.

What are the specialties?

Directions for tech comm that  Tom Johnson and Alan Porter discuss on their respective blogs is a movement towards videos and screencasting (screencasts category on Tom’s blog) or graphics and illustrating (comics category on Alan’s blog). Mostly the posts talk about how users don’t read the manual (which is apparently okay). Perhaps specialization is a wise direction to take, because it’s a specialty that won’t be taken over by “the crowd” as easily as writing. WordPress.tv, for example, was seeded with 20 professionally-produced how-to videos, and the community can add videos to the site as well. You can mostly detect which were made by professional film-makers, so it would appear they’re employable longer.

Content farms go moo

Since anyone can write, and content farms are impacting the web, filling it to the brim with quickly written, search-engine baited fast-food content, hone more specialized skills in order to thrive in the shifting sands of the web, right? However, content experts like Brian Massey say that all content, no matter the source, is what’s driving the successful websites and web applications today. The written word is still effective with measurable results, and is overwhelmingly more prevalent on the web today, page for page. Mint.com, for example, is a wonderful redistributor and aggregator of banking and investment accounts, a specialized type of content. Mint also creates content, such as the weekly summary newsletter, that encourages you to return to the site. This content is text and numbers, with lovely graphs, but it’s really the numbers that shine.

To summarize

With both sides pointed out to me now, I’m leaning towards the broader content strategy movement. I will help people get content from any source, even if it’s built by a community or (gasp) ordinary users. But I do see the value in video and especially in non-text-heavy mobile content as we roll into the new year and a new decade.

Here’s my observation. If it’s true that bit.ly, the link shortener that’s popular on social sharing sites, has counted over a billion click-throughs per month, then it’s possible that social sharing will overtake search engine optimized content. As noted in 5 Trends That Will Shape Small Business in 2010, “Social search has the ability to eclipse the value of traditional SEO efforts.” A comment counters with the trend to go from text to video, saying clients should “record, record, and then record some more.”

Let me repeat that. Eventually there could be more people reading and clicking through links on social sites than searching and clicking through links in search results. How will that shift change how you create content, and how will you strategically choose the content that you create?

Community purposes vary as widely as the people who comprise a community. You know that participants on Twitter Moms are not the same people as those hanging out on Dad Labs community, instinctively. But what are some of the factors that differentiate communities?

Types of communities

As I learn more about open source communities, support communities, and documentation communities, I’m finding that people who talk about community in the enterprise use categories for the types of communities that exist: business to business is B2B, business to consumer is B2C, and customer to customer (or consumer) is C2C. Besides the audience and membership targets, what are some other factors that differentiate these communities from each other?

Participation

Does 90-9-1 hold true for B2B communities? Apparently, no. The participation inequality ratios are even more, well, inequal in a B2B community. Here are notes from a Twitter chat on the socialtext.com site, as recorded by Shara Karasic @sharakarasic. “Mike Rowland doubts the community manager’s myth of 90-9-1 participation ratio. In B2B space, blog metrics have a ratio closer to 99-.9-.1. In support communities where people can ask a quick question, the 9% expands.”

Focused communities

I also heard an interview with Gartner’s Adam Sarner where he addresses the question, “What if it’s drill bits, not “cool,” products that generate lots of buzz and conversation between consumers?” I’ve often wondered as a technical writer, knowing that not many of us work on products that would generate “fan” feelings, whether “fandom” indicates whether its worthwhile to pursue community or social interaction techniques. Apparently, focused communities can generate just as much excitement and connections, whether it’s drill bits or accounting tools.

Trip-ups for communities in categories

I think one basic flaw in categorizing communities is that talking about who talks to whom makes you think of community like it’s a publishing channel, which is not a good analogy. Whether you’re publishing reviews or complaints or questions or answers, the type of community matters a lot because of the changes in audience and author. But, not all the work of a community has to do with content production, and a community is not a “channel.” Connections, building trust, communication, and maintenance of all of the system are other tasks within a community.

In summary, I appreciate the desire to strictly focus a community. I’m learning more about how those communities operate, and it looks like lots of good people are doing the same. Feel free to point to more research in the comments, and I’ll continue to share my findings.