Documents Have No Teeth: Wikis Used as Online Help

Scott Hanselman of ComputerZen.com (Programming, Life and the Zen of Computers), claims that "Documents have no teeth."


What does he mean?  According to the Providing Thoughts On Development blog, maybe these reasons are a start:

1. Requirements change rapidly
2. They are stored everywhere
3. They are hard to search for relevant information
4. Developers dislike documentation
5. Changes in personnel

Documents start becoming obsolete as soon as they are written. And much software today is customizable by its customers.  How can you create and software documentation that is dynamic and customizable?   The Wiki is one answer.

Wikis can even provide content-sensitive help.  ffeathers — a technical writer’s blog, discusses the difference between a wiki and a help authoring tool:

Well, there’s a big difference, of course. A wiki is essentially a collaboration platform — your online documents become a place where everyone goes to find information, share their own tips with others, and pick up the latest updates. A help authoring tool is tailored towards building a documentation set which is essentially static (even if you update it every day, it’s still not a discussion platform) but which has all the bells and whistles of an integrated online help system.

You can read more about how to make a wiki context sensitive here, and out on the Atlassian blog, you can get into more detail, complete with pretty pictures!