Documentation as Empathy
summary
Read the Docs launches as a hosting platform in 2010 that uses a commit hook auto-build to publish docs, and the community tool grows into Read the Docs with roughly 15 million pageviews a month (about 60% English, 40% other languages). A grassroots conference called Write the Docs scales from an expected 75 attendees to hundreds. Claim: tangible infrastructure plus translation and onboarding power get contributors; absence of docs reliably repels anyone without time to spare.
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chapters (19)
- 0:00Intro
- 0:59I was writing Perl for the Military
- 2:36DOCUMENTATION CULTURE
- 3:05People don't use projects that don't have docs
- 4:30Created Read the Docs to reduce friction to writing & publishing docs
- 5:24FROM TOOL TO UNDERSTANDING
- 6:19Started Write the Docs in 2013
- 6:55Learned about a whole community of writers
- 8:33Documentation is more than a tool
- 9:21Technical writers know what makes software understandable
- 9:41More communities are valuing documentation
- 10:19DOCUMENTATION AS GUILT
- 10:38Coding & Testing have objective results
- 11:01Documentation is a "soft skill"
- 12:03Leads to putting off writing docs
- 12:29We need to lower the barriers in our industry to writing documentation
- 14:10You don't want a community full of people who don't read documentation
- 14:51Documentation is Outreach
- 17:19My path is the path of many others
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