In addition to once again inviting SDN members to join docupedia, SAP’s product documentation wiki pilot at: https://cw.sdn.sap.com/community/docupedia I wanted to share similar endevours in using web 2.0 in context of product documentation . Let’s face it – not even the most skilled technical writer will ever produce perfect documentation – only a community of knowledge can.
Here is an article from someone at Lucent using the wiki for internal project and other informal documentation. What I like about this article is that it points out the ease of annotation. And I am glad we are getting to use a plain text editor for our documentation wiki:
http://www.llrx.com/features/librarywikis.htm
This one here is Moodle, which is an Open Source Course Management System (CMS) . http://docs.moodle.org/en/Main_Page
They have a nice lightweight approach to their website, and sandbox, so people can try ( very nice idea) . Their documentation wiki is split by audience – so for example here is the Developer documentation: http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:JavaScript_functions
Some of their pages are calling for content, others are more populated.
Here is one for Open Office: http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation . They have resolved the hierarchy challenge in an interesting way. http://wiki.services.openoffice.org/wiki/Documentation/OOoAuthors_User_Manual/Draw_Guide/3D_settings_for_3D_bodies
by having a little drop in box on each page. Also note that they have addressed the various versions of documentation with seperate workspaces, and if nothing exists yet, they refer back to the older release. Also interesting is their nice lightweight disclaimer.
This one here starts by stating their terms of use smack on the homepage: http://community.zikula.org/Wiki.htm I am not quite sure that I understand their taxonomy, nor how to contribute. I have a hard time telling what Zikula is about. However there are some nice design elements on some of the pages for example here: http://community.zikula.org/
So as I tell my documentation authors – docupedians – we are not alone.