Documentation/Toolkit/Collection audit

This is the landing page for a 4-step process designed to help you audit a collection of technical documentation and determine a strategy to improve it.

Process overview

Step 1: Determine documentation goals

Define your audience and scope your topic.

• Step 1

Step 2: Survey

Understand the documentation landscape and how your topic relates to others.

• Step 2

Step 3: Prioritize

Focus and scope your doc improvement work.

• Step 3

Step 4: Assess

Determine the improvements necessary to address information overload, gaps, and doc maintenance challenges.

• Step 4

Step 1: Define the goals and audience of your documentation collection

Before you start assessing your docs, take a moment to consider why they should exist.

• Why does someone need to know about the topics your docs cover? Try to fill in the following sentences:
  • "These docs will help ______ [audience] to understand what _____ [technology/project/process] is, and how to use it to _____ [do what?]."
  • "After visiting these docs, ______ [audience] should be able to ______ [do what?]."

• What will happen if you don't create or improve these docs? What is the problem?
  • "Without these docs, ______ [audience] will continue to be confused about ______ [technology/project/process]."
  • "Without these improvements, it will be harder for ______[audience] to ______ [do what?]."

Your answers to this question will be crucial as you audit your content to determine what is essential, and what should be archived or moved.

Resources to help with this step

Explore Documentation/Audiences_for_Wikimedia_technical_documentation to find out about the types of people who use Wikimedia technical documentation and their motivations.

Next step

In the next step, you'll survey the docs to understand the current landscape and how your topic relates to others. Get ready to feel some empathy for your readers! Go to Step 2.