This is fun. Fedora has “beat writers” which harken to journalists tracking a story. Each beat is a section in the release notes. I found it while poking around on the Fedora wiki pages that describe how they do documentation. See fedoraproject.org/wiki/Documentation_Beats.
I like this approach for a few reasons. One is that the term “beat” seems fresh. While I did have to look for the definition of “beat writer,” I had a notion in the back of my mind and it turned out to be correct. My initial reaction was, oh, it’s like a journalist chasing down a story, or beat reporting, being assigned to a regular route.
The second strength I see in this approach is that you can divide writing tasks and track progress. Having a “beat” assignment also matches knowledge areas to experts in that area.
Assigning someone to a “beat” also means they’ll try to uncover a story. More software documentation could use story telling. Try to tell the stories your users tell you – or better yet, let them tell their story. Curate these from blog entries or chase the story down yourself with interviews.
We’ve probably used this type of approach for ages in enterprise documentation, but this strikes me as a particular good way to parcel out work in a collaborative environment while still maintaining a high quality outcome.People are naturally drawn to their interests, and assigning them writing tasks based on areas of interest is a great method for making community documentation fun and engaging.