A good friend of mine, Emily Kaplan, was kind enough to let me interview her via email to find out more about her experience with managing a wiki for technical documentation. She writes for the Motorola Q phone. Back in November of last year, just in time for holiday shoppers, the Motorola Q was on the cover of October’s Wired Magazine special issue (Wired Test). Here’s the article: http://wired.com/wired/archive/14.10/play.html?pg=14. Here’s a link to the Q wiki: http://www.motoqwiki.com/index.php?title=Motorola_Q_Wiki. An excellent starter reference page is found at http://www.motoqwiki.com/index.php?title=Motorola_Q_Wiki:About
Emily says “I’m a senior technical writer contracting with Motorola. My group has about six writers, an editor, and a graphic artist. We’re spread across state and national lines in Illinois, Florida, and the U.K. We write user’s guides for the high profile mobile phones that you see everywhere. (We have a sister group that produces the in-device help and videos.) I go to the office once a week and work from my house the rest the of the week in my pajamas.”
Here are the questions I asked her, along with the answers. I am trying to find out more about real experiences with wikis for technical documentation. The concept of wikis for technical documentation and user-created content was mentioned recently at the Writer’s User Assistance conference as the future of online help systems in the session “User Assistance Trends Panel: What’s Ripe, Hype, and Out-of-sight.” The panel consisted of Rob Houser, Dana Chisnell, Paul Mueller, Bernard Aschwanden, and Joe Welinske. By learning from others experiences, perhaps we can avoid pitfalls or craft best practices.
Anne: What types of information (concept, task, or reference) goes on the wiki, and did you pre-populate the wiki with certain basic information?
Emily: The foundation for the MOTO Q wiki was the user’s guide, which has mostly tasks and some reference types of info., such as diagrams of the keypad and how to insert a memory card, etc.
Anne: What are the main goals for the wiki – customer support, customers making connections on their own, community building, or using it as another way to publish information that customers can get elsewhere?
Emily: The main goal of the wiki was to provide customer support. Some users lose their manuals or don’t keep them or want to learn the latest details that might not be in their manuals if they have upgraded their software. Secondarily, customers can share information, which builds a sense of community. Not as much as a blog or user forum, but a little.
Anne: What type of maintenance do you perform on the wiki?
Emily: So far, I’ve had to do a product name change and also add new sections as new features have been developed. I do not touch any customer input, and we haven’t had to deal with malicious users.
Anne: Does wiki maintenance require more work on navigation or on content?
Emily: I haven’t touched navigation at all, only content.
Anne: Have you discovered a core group of users taking the wiki content under their wing?
Emily: We have two users who regularly add information for Verizon-flavored phones. Other user-based sites for this phone exist already, so they might be going there instead.
Anne: What feedback have you received from customers, if any?
Emily: I haven’t been involved with user feedback for the wiki.
Anne: Was there a customer request for a wiki or did the business decide to do this on their own?
Emily: One person in the marketing group spearheaded the idea. There wasn’t a customer request because it was a brand new product, but the type of product (a computer-like phone) suggested that the average user might be more web savvy than for other phones, so it was a natural thought progression.
Anne: What is the business justification for building the wiki?
Emily: It’s fast, cheap, and easy to maintain. And it reaches potentially millions of users. Like everyone else, we’re trying to reduce paper docs, and this is one attempt…
Anne: What underlying technology does the wiki use? MediaWiki? (That’s what it looks like to me, anyway.)
Emily: It is indeed MediaWiki. It also uses a SQL database in the backend for some user information.
And a bonus question/answer!
One of the downsides of the wiki that we haven’t been able to address yet is that we have many flavors of the MOTO Q phone coming out. These are phones that have totally different keypads and some unique features. We haven’t figured out how to reuse the info. or if we even want to create more wikis. (We’re talking 7 or 8 varieties right now.) Anyway, a dilemma…
At BMC, we do have user-generated content and are always looking for more ways to connect fellow BMC product experts. We have forums on BMC DevCon as one place for expert users to share advice, tips, tricks, and so forth with others. And, you can ask other users questions there, and our support staff chimes in as well. AR System has had an active developer community for years and the current site can be found at http://www.bmc.com/arsystem/dev_community/. TalkBMC is yet another place for us to connect with users, and give users the chance to let us know their experiences, and hopefully offer advice as well.
What do you think of wikis for technical documentation? Would you like contributing what you know? Let us know.