Let’s Keep Talking About Documentation

Good documentation is key to gaining wider adoption of Drupal, and making the lives of existing Drupal users better. Yet every time someone does a survey of, "What does the Drupal project need?", documentation comes out as one of the top results.

Over the years the documentation available on drupal.org has grown, and expanded, and then grown some more. But our tools, policies, and processes for maintaining it haven't always kept up with that unchecked growth. So how can we as a community update the way we do documentation to make it as well structured, thought out, and maintained as the code base it seeks to document? Lets talk about the current state of Drupal documentation, and the initiatives to improve it. Including the changes being proposed for Drupal.org by the various Working Groups and how they impact documentation, things the Documentation Working Group has identified as priorities, and where they stand today.

At DrupalCon Los Angeles I participated in a similar session in which I talked about adding additional curation and editorial review to our documentation. And how doing so improves the quality of our documentation, our ability to recruit people to help with documentation, and our opportunities to celebrate the work of people who are volunteering.

Recently, I've helped, in conjunction with the Documentation Working Group, and other community members, to propose writing a Drupal 8 user manual. And imposing editorial control and guidelines on the writing process. In addition to the things mentioned above this session will share what we've accomplished so far, what we've learned along the way, and what we've got left to do in order to ensure Drupal 8 has the best documentation yet.

Objectives:

• Outline the current state of documentation on Drupal.org and existing initiatives and proposals to improve it
• Share information about the work being done, and the status of, the Drupal 8 user manual
• Lessons learned from work towards implementing the Drupal 8 user manual
• Encourage conversation amongst the community around the improvement of documentation