Devdocs stack overflow6/17/2023 ![]() We can stop trying this model with the latest technology that sells itself on how easy it is for everyone to contribute. That it failed presents us with a compelling argument that crowdsourcing docs, no matter the platform or topic, is an idea that doesn’t work. If any attempt at crowdsourcing docs could have worked, it would have been with Stack Overflow. It has a functional gamification model that incentivizes many contributors. Stack Overflow is one of the most successful sites that programmers consult to find needed information. Good outcomes from the failureĮvidence against crowdsourcing. Was Stack Overflow’s Documentation good or bad for professional technical writers? I think the failure has both good and bad results. Now, to make sense of the failure for technical writers. ![]() Was the failure of Stack Overflow Documentation good or bad for professional technical writers? As a result, the effort to contribute isn’t as engaging. You start out expounding on a general topic, not answering an actual question a user asked and needs help with. ![]() “You aren’t documenting a specific problem you’re facing, you’re helping others deal with an entire class of problems by documenting” ( Welcome to Stack Overflow Documentation. Documentation, on the other hand, is more general. With a forum post, you’re directly helping someone. The interaction model for writing documentation isn’t as compelling as answering forum posts.Additionally, in a forum you’re contributing your perspective amid a variety of other potential answers, not providing a single authoritative answer. It takes more of a sense of expertise and authoritativeness to write documentation than to answer a forum question. Contributing authors felt less confident writing docs than they did forum posts.Forum responses are much easier to crowdsource than entire documentation topics. If the effort for contributors is too high, fewer people participate. It’s a lot of work to write documentation. Documentation doesn’t granularize into little chunks that can be easily crowdsourced.The model of foregrounding examples before textual explanations was supposed to be the differentiating characteristic in Stack Overflow’s Documentation, but it didn’t seem important enough to users to persuade them against the original sources. For example, when creating a new project in Android Studio, would you go to Stack Overflow or Android’s docs? Turns out more people went to the latter. ![]() There’s not a compelling reason to go to Stack Overflow instead of the more authoritative source.
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