This page documents the work and processes of the Wikimedia Foundation Technical Documentation Team (Tech Docs Team).
Mission
Empower people to use and contribute to Wikimedia technology by making technical documentation easy to find, use, create, and maintain.
Contact us
- Leave a comment on Talk:Documentation or Talk:Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team
- Tag a Phabricator task with #Tech-Docs-Team
- Email us at techdocs@wikimedia.org
Goals
Drive documentation work with data
Documentation success is notoriously difficult to measure. However, in order to prioritize our work and create a shared understanding of documentation quality, we must establish metrics, based on quantitative and qualitative methods, for measuring documentation health and tracking improvements.
Documentation effectively meets users’ information needs
Better understanding the health of our technical documentation across technical areas enables us to identify where the need for improvement – and potential for impact – is greatest. Technical writers provide documentation strategy to support critical user journeys across products and projects. Our holistic view of Wikimedia technical content helps us create and structure content for multiple, overlapping audiences. As partners in development workflows, technical writers provide a crucial user-focused perspective, helping improve our technology so that it needs less documentation.
Build the culture of documentation
The Wikimedia technical ecosystem spans hundreds of services, extensions, libraries, and tools, created by both staff and volunteers. To effectively manage technical documentation at this scale, we must empower Wikimedians across the movement to create and manage docs. This requires community outreach, self-service tools, and processes that support (and require) documentation updates. We must also invest in automated tools, like CI-based documentation checks and content linters, to make it easier for everyone to participate in maintaining great docs.
Active projects
For more details, read our twice-monthly updates on Talk:Wikimedia Technical Documentation Team, and visit our workboard on Phabricator.
| Project | Contact | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Cloud services collection update | TBurmeister | In progress |
| Conceptual framework for landing pages | TBurmeister | Planning |
| Data access docs strategy | TBurmeister | Research |
| Initial buildout of team practices | APaskulin | In progress |
| mediawiki.org project docs update | APaskulin | Planning |
| Documentation metrics dashboard | KBach | In progress |
| Pywikibot collection update | KBach | Re-scoping |
| Pywikibot workshop materials | KBach | In progress |
Ongoing maintenance
Wikimedia Developer Portal
The Developer Portal is a static website that helps people find Wikimedia technical documentation. For more information, see the project documentation.
Documentation resources on mediawiki.org
Documentation and its subpages provide resources to help you find technical documentation, improve your docs or your writing, and get involved in contributing to Wikimedia technical documentation efforts.
Team members
- User:APaskulin (WMF) (team lead)
- User:TBurmeister (WMF)
- User:KBach-WMF